Paparazzo

Snaps and casual photos around  interesting cuisine tourism venues.

This month - Boxing what?, Tasty people watching, Southern burger rules , An Auckland oyster or two, Dining for Christchurch, Crunchy crunchy squid, Queenstown’s wild seafood, French taste in Nelson, Vegans need not apply.

Squid - homage to the 1980s

This recipe of squid stuffed with scallop mousse and served on twin purees is attributed to a period that launched today’s general media infatuation with foodism; a period when restaurant cuisine deviated from the classic to a new age of freshness, colour, and food-art on a plate. 

The beginning of the 1980s, a whole decade before stacking food high, foaming sauces and the rebirth of the Caesar salad, witnessed the invention of food critics, as we still love and hate them, and an age of light cuisine - purees, vinaigrettes, mousses, under-cooked meats and the use of fruit – especially Kiwi fruit.

Ross Woodvine - Keeping it simple, keeping it Kiwi

Ross Woodvine, executive chef at Sofitel Queenstown Hotel & Spa, is guided by a singular focus when creating his five-star recipes – ‘keep it simple’.

“Using quality ingredients is paramount, but I don’t mess with the food,” he tells us.

What -- not distracted by a little alchemy and culinary wizardry from the molecular school of cooking? 

Pavlova de-mystified

Pavlova dessert has been a Holy Grail for generations of Kiwi household cooks, with a rich folklore built around granny and mum reputations for baking a fine pav.

First the truth – our national dessert dish has been around for centuries under other recipe names, such as meringue cake. The cake-like size of the pavlova, the baking process and, arguably, the common use of corn flour, all make for a soft centre, for which the dessert is famous.
Meringue is simply sweetened foamed egg white, baked (dried out) slowly under low heat. In other words, you are pumping air into egg white to make a tasteless but textured medium for sugar, flavouring (essences, fruits and nuts) and fats (cream).   

Lamb & Feta Terrine 

Coco’s Cantina on K Road in Auckland has hit a nerve with the city’s dining hordes in search of flavoursome food as dining theatre..

The venue is in the tradition of cantina casual eating and drinking houses, serving rustic cuisine – in this case, in its own words, ‘Italian with influences from the Mediterranean’.

There’s a difference between dining decor and dining atmosphere – the two are not synonymous - and Coco’s Cantina, with its rustic decor, certainly radiates great atmosphere; bustling and with a no-nonsense, sharp service that is not as common as it should be in the country’s largest (and most uptight) city.
 
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Taste of Queenstown & beyond

Foodstyle Review’s cuisine itinerary covers three nights in Queenstown and one in Otago, savouring much of the region’s satisfying food and beverage offerings and other stuff. By Alan Titchall.

Any travel agent worth their IATA accreditation will tell you, quietly, there’s two Kiwi townships really worthy of sharing the list with the world’s top tourism offerings -  Queenstown and Taupo - in that order.

International tourists, on short time and want to pick the eyes out of one of the most isolated and expensive to-get-to tourism destinations in the world, that doesn’t necessitate a backside full of vaccination shots, should make haste to Queenstown, gateway to the country’s most jaw-dropping scenic landscape and tasty tourism.