Over the weekend in New Zealand, there was a huge earthquake in the province of Canterbury. The city of Christchurch had a rather large shake up with an earthquake of magnitude 7.1. That’s a big earthquake! It woke us up and we are 200 miles away. All our cats with their keen animal senses slept right through it…. cuddly, but not very smart. I would have thought with three cats at least one of them might have opened one eye. Christchurch is a mess, to put it lightly. Roads are completely broken, buildings shattered and pipes burst. There are many people still without water, power, sewage and telephone services. Now people are getting sick from contaminated water.

You can see this home has virtually exploded outwards.

However.. the response to this is one of the reasons I love to live here. Banks have donated money to the city to help put it back together again and suspended loan repayments and fees. Fire fighters, police, glaziers, builders and contractors of all kinds from different cities have all rushed in to help. Students have given up their week off university to help with the clean up. Over 1500 university students and more are expected to volunteer their time. Food drives and fundraisers are happening in every city in New Zealand.

There are shelters and offers of places to stay for people that have lost their homes. The mayor has set up a fund for people that have no insurance so that no one is left homeless or without the things they need. Our Govt has said - don’t worry we’ll sort it out. I have confidence that they will. Wow I never thought I’d find myself making that statement!

One of the older areas of town - many of the cities heritage buildings were destroyed.

There were one hundred and sixty thousand homes damaged. The earthquake commission will cover much of the damage to property, both commercial and private for those that have insurance. There are more volunteers offering to clean up and help out than you can imagine. New Zealanders are fantastic people! Our thoughts are with all the Canterbury folk that are now sorting out the mess. If anyone reading this would like to make a donation towards helping with the clean up and help out the Cantabrians you can make a donation here and choose from any number of organisations.

Fire breaks out in the background as the gas mains and electricity are turned on.

There are so many beautiful old buildings, particularly churches that have fallen to pieces, it’s quite heartbreaking. Christchurch has some simply glorious stone buildings that are now condemned. Leah and Ryan had just returned from Christchurch the day before the quake; I was very glad to have them home.

Look at the asphalt, just folded like paper.

While Christchurch was waking to the devastation around them, I was here in Dunedin thinking about all the people up there and making granola. It’s one of those times when you count your blessings. I was standing in my warm kitchen while people were knee deep in mud and rubble only 4 hours drive away.  Life deals us all some harsh blows at times. I’ve been in an earthquake of this magnitude and I know how truly frightening it is.
Christchurch folk, I’m still thinking about you and wondering what I can do to help.

For now, all I have is this granola recipe and the donation I made.

I made the granola and sat it in a big glass jar on the bench top, it was too yummy looking to put in a container I could not see through. The granola looks and tastes amazing, I don’t hold out much hope for it making it through to the end of the week.

Kiwis will be asking themselves why I’m referring to this as granola rather than muesli, which is what it’s commonly known as here. Strictly speaking muesli is raw and granola is toasted.

This recipe should be used as a guide only, adding ingredients that you like. The options are endless. Cranberries, blueberries, papaya, pear, dried strawberries, yoghurt covered raisins, currants, mango spears - recreate or improve on your favourite at home, and get better value for money. Christchurch people have a poke through your pantry and see if you have some oats, throw whatever you have in it and make yourself a treat.

Earthquake Granola with Honey and Almonds

Pre-heat your oven to 150C/300F

• 4 cups of porridge oats (not instant)
• 1 cup of bran flakes
• 1/4 cup sesame seeds
• 1/4 cup pumpkin seeds
• 1/2 cup sunflower seeds
• 2 Tblspn pinenuts
• 1 tspn cinnamon
• 2 tspns vanilla extract
• 1/4 cup of brown sugar ( more or less according to taste)
• 3/4 cup of chopped raw almonds
• 1/2 cup of chopped unsalted cashews
• 1/3 of a cup of honey ( more or less according to taste)
• 1 cup of sultanas
• 1/2 cup of chopped dried apricots
• 1/2 cup of chopped dates
• 1 cup of shredded unsweetened coconut
• 1/2 cup of coconut flakes

Place all your ingredients in a large roasting pan except for the dried fruit and coconut.

Roast for roughly 25 minutes stirring every 5 minutes. When you stir make sure you stir around the edges, it will cook slightly faster around the edges of the pan.

Add in your coconut in the last five minutes only - keep an eye on it, the coconut will burn quite quickly.

Add in your dried fruit once you’ve removed your granola from the oven. Once cool store in an airtight container.

Serve with yoghurt and fruit if you so desire! It’s tasty like that.

Dear Christchurch, I’m sorry you’re broken. I lived there for 13 years and had two of my children there. I’m sure you will be beautiful again soon with your plumbing sorted out and everyone will be safe in their homes. People are working hard to make you as gorgeous as you always have been. We’re all thinking about you.

Love, Lisa

Many years ago I aquired a copy of Café@Home, this is a fantastic recipe book written by Julie Le Clerc. She’s a well known chef and author here in New Zealand. Her food is always stylish and delicious and often surprisingly easy and practical to make. With a family to feed I don’t often have time for a lot of fiddling about with food (although when I get the chance I relish it!) and her recipes are often exactly what I’m looking for. My copy of her book is well worn.

I’m not the kind of person that leaps out of bed in the morning to make cooked breakfasts. Generally a piece of toast or a bowl of cereal are my breakfast staples. Having said that, breakfast is my absolute favourite meal of the day. On weekends I like to make breakfasts and brunch when I can.

My days of early rising are well gone - I used to get up at 4.30 am for rowing practice down on the Otago harbour and then run to school - all before 7 am! I have no idea what possessed me to do that.

Now I haul myself out of bed quite bleary eyed and stagger around the house in a dream for at least 30 minutes when I get up. So I am not up for anything that requires thought in the morning. The beauty of these is that the mixture can be completely made up the night before, stored in the fridge and then all you need to do is pour these and flip them in the morning. With oatmeal, milk, and fruit they are a sustaining breakfast.

Cinnamon Oat Pancakes with Bananas & Bacon

Julie Le Clerc

• 1 cup of rolled oats
• 1 cup of milk
• 3 Tbspns sugar
• 2 Tblspns fruity olive oil
• 1 egg lightly beaten
• 1/2 cup of plain flour
• 2 tspns baking powder
• 1 tspn cinnamon
• 1/2 tspn salt
• 1-2 Tblspns extra milk if required
• bananas, maple syrup, yoghurt and bacon for serving.

Place the oats in a bowl, cover with milk and set aside to soak for 10 minutes.

Add sugar, oil and egg and stir to combine

Add remaining dry ingredients, and stir to combine. If you need to, add a little extra milk.

At this point you can put the whole lot covered in the fridge until the morning if you are making these the night before.

Cook in large spoonfuls over medium heat. Just turn once. These are small pancakes of roughly 5- 6 inches in diameter when cooked.

Serve pancakes with bananas stacked in-between, maple syrup poured over, yoghurt and bacon on the side. Dust with a little icing sugar if wished.

This recipe will serve 4.

Oh- incidentally these got nicknamed mancakes in our house - I forgot the baking powder in the first batch I did and they were rather umm .. hearty - Still Ryan ate the lot without complaint!

Nancy was one of the winners of my giveaway and I said I would make what ever the winners suggested. Nancy suggested croissant. So I made them and of course we ate them on her behalf. They were delicious!

I’m sure you would have enjoyed these Nancy! I know you asked for chocolate and I have some chocolate ones in the making but I wanted to get this post up for you before the weekend. I could not decide on the photos I liked, so there are too many of them in the post. I’m sorry I could not help myself, I liked them all!

I felt a bit nervous making these since I really wanted to get it right and the last time I made croissant was in high school in my french class. I seem to recall I failed french, I’m pretty sure it was not because of my croissant making efforts.

I researched and read and watched a billion videos and even attempted to phone a local french trained pastry chef for a few tips and tricks - but he did not return my call, perhaps I sounded somewhat desperate on the phone and scared him off.

I finally settled on a recipe and a method. When you look around online you find there are so many different recipes about and as many methods for making laminated dough as there are recipes. My choice was eventually dictated by the fact that my local supermarket where I normally buy my fresh yeast had the audacity to run out of fresh yeast so I decided to make a recipe that called for active dry yeast instead.

I decided to start even though I was still not one hundred percent sure of what I was doing and hope that it started to make sense as I moved through the recipe.

I think this is definitely one of those things that you have to just take the plunge with and hope for the best your first time, a little like bungy jumping.

Croissant

• dough from Nancy Silverton

• 1 1/2 cups whole milk, heated to warm (110°F/43 C)
  1/4 cup packed light brown sugar
  1 tablespoon plus 1/4 teaspoon active dry yeast
  3 3/4 to 4 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
  1 tablespoon salt
  12oz/340 grams cold unsalted butter

You need

• A rolling pin
• a measuring tape or ruler
• a thermometer for your milk (not essential - just test to lukewarm)
• plastic wrap
• a pastry brush
• kitchen towels - I just used paper towels they worked fine.

First you are going to make your dough. It seems more complex  reading through the recipe than it actually is I think. It’s really just time consuming and a few things that seem minor are important to do. I’ve put those things in bold type for you. It just needs a bit of patience really. My apologies to the seasoned bakers if you feel that this is too simplified.- I wanted to make sure that this was in plain language for those learning the technique for the first time.

I made mine over the course of a day, a lot of the time required is just time chillin’. I’m going to try to make this simple, but if there are any questions please don’t hesitate to ask and I will clarify. These are not perfect, but I was really happy with them for a first effort.

For the Dough

Mix your warm milk, brown sugar, and yeast in bowl or in your stand mixer bowl if you are lucky enough to have one and wait for it to foam - that usually takes about 5 minutes.

Add in your flour and salt and mix for about 7 minutes on low speed with the dough hook followed by two minutes hand kneading if you are using a mixer, or knead gently for about 10 minutes if you are working by hand.

You should have a soft and slightly sticky dough. If you need to you can dust a little flour on the work surface to stop it from sticking. Shape it into a rectangle roughly 1 1/2 inches ( 4 cm) thick.

Wrap your dough tightly in plastic film and place in the fridge until cold - roughly an hour.

Prepare your butter

It is important that your butter is cold from the fridge - not hard enough to break, but not soft and greasy. Butter that has been stored in the fridge should be about right. If at any point things seem to be getting warm or greasy - put it back in the fridge to chill for a bit. Work quickly with your butter.

Once your dough is nice and cold you can shape the butter package that gets tucked inside the dough. 

Have your butter in three even portions (if you are in the US it’s 3 sticks of butter). Line up your butter with the sides touching and pound the butter with the flat of a rolling pin to flatten it out into a rectangle that is 5 x 8 inches (13 cm x 20cm). If it’s still nice and cold you should be able to run a knife under it and scrape it up in one piece on to a paper towel, cover with the other paper towel and put in the fridge. It’s very quick.

Leave your butter in the fridge while you roll out your dough for the first time.

Rolling the dough and putting in the butter

Roll the dough on a floured work surface into a 16 x10-inch (40cm x 25cm) rectangle. Lift the dough and sprinkle some flour underneath if you need to, make sure it is not sticking. Place the dough with a short side nearest you.

Put the butter in center of the dough so that the long sides of butter are parallel to the short sides of  the dough. Fold the bottom third of dough over the butter, then top third down over dough.

Brush off any excess flour with a pastry brush. Do this regularly throughout all the folding.

Turn the dough so a short side is nearest you, then flatten dough slightly by pressing down with a rolling pin across dough at regular intervals, making uniform impressions. Roll the dough into a 15-x 10-inch (38cm x 25) rectangle, rolling just to but not over ends. Don’t squish the ends of the dough. This will help to keep your butter where it should be.

Make your first fold

Brush off any excess flour. Fold in thirds, like you did before stretching the corners gently to square off the dough, forming a 10x 5-inch (25cm x 12 cm) rectangle. You just did the first fold! 

Chill, wrapped tightly in plastic wrap for 1 hour.

Remaining folds

Make 3 more folds in same manner, chilling dough 1 hour after each fold, for a total of 4 folds. (If any butter oozes out while rolling, sprinkle with flour to prevent sticking.)

Wrap dough tightly in plastic wrap and chill at least 8 hours but no more than 18.

You need to mark in some way that you have completed a fold of your pastry. I chose to put a small indent in the corner of my pastry with the blunt end of a skewer, each time I did a fold, adding one more each time. Some people prefer to write the number they are up to on a piece of parchment under the dough. What ever method you choose, do keep track otherwise you are going to find yourself taking the dough out of the fridge and thinking .. “hmm was this fold three or four?”

Rolling and Shaping your Croissant

This is the fun part- at least I thought it was. Turning your pastry dough into croissant. Croissant means crescent, but it’s perfectly acceptable to also have a croissant that is straight. I’ll give a few instructions here, but there are some excellent video resources on this that I strongly suggest you watch if you have not rolled a croissant before. I’ll give you those at the end of the post.

Divide your dough in half - unless you have a very large work surface. Place the remaining half in the fridge while you roll and shape the first half. Roll your dough out to roughly 13 inches (33 cm) height and as wide as needed to obtain 1/8th of an inch (3mm) thickness.

You are going to cut your dough into triangles - like the photo below You’ll notice mine are not that even and some are slightly larger than others. This does matter, different sizes like mine - are not good.

Next time I will take a ruler and mark an even base for the triangles along the length of the dough. I would say roughly between 4 and 5 inches (10.5cm to 13 cm) at the base of the triangle is a good size. The smaller ones cooked a little quicker - but Isaac was pretty happy to eat a pile of them with plum jelly.

Make a small cut - as shown in the base of each triangle, this helps you get a nice roll.

There is no specific size to cut your dough to - but this recipe makes roughly 24 croissant. So aim for roughly 12 triangles for half of the dough. I’ll make these a little larger next time, because we like slightly larger croissant. So I might make 20 out of this batch of dough.

Next you are going to fold the sides of the cut you made,  back - like this.

This is the end you will start rolling from. When you roll this - have the pointed end away from your body and the wide end closest to your body.

When you reach about 2/3 of the way, then turn it around so the pointy bit is pointing at you and pull gently on the pointy bit slightly to hold it slightly taught .. as you continue to roll the croissant with your other hand. This makes more sense when you see it done. Do watch the video here for a great demonstration of cutting and rolling croissant.

You should end up with something that looks like this.

Set them on parchment paper on a baking tray and leave to rise, covered with a cloth in a warm place until triple the size.

Brush with an egg wash made by lightly beating a whole egg and bake at 180C/350F for roughly 15 minutes. They should be dark golden.

Leave to cool before eating. If you eat them hot from the oven they will collapse. If you can resist temptation long enough to let them cool you will have them just as they should be. Crispy and flaky on the outside with little crumbs that shatter when you bite them, soft and buttery on the inside.

If you want you can leave the egg wash off. You’ll still get a lovely croissant, it will just not have the shine. One without the egg wash looks like this one below.

If you have some free time - do give these a try, they are not as difficult as you might think, but they do take a long time.

Thank you Nancy for suggesting these, I really enjoyed making and eating them! I’ll post soon about the chocolate variation.

I was reading about this dish to try and find it’s origins. Apparently it was introduced to India by the Scottish soldiers in 1790. I can’t really see the Scots eating curry in Scotland at that point in history but perhaps that became a natural addition once they arrived in India. Of course I could be wrong, the Scots in the old days might have had curry on their porridge every morning for breakfast!?

However it came about, it’s become a traditional English breakfast item. It’s not that commonly eaten or even known about here in New Zealand. It seems to have some slight variations depending on which recipe you are reading. But the basic ingredients are fish, rice, boiled eggs, onion and curry. If you are reeling from the sound of it, read on and don’t be scared, it’s really very good. Creamy, a little spicy and very more-ish.

I could not even tell you when I first had Kedgeree; my memory is failing me with regards to that. I do know it’s been a part of our menu for quite some time, although not for breakfast. I can’t face fish first thing in the morning, even though I love fish. We tend to have it for lunch in the weekends or a light dinner in the evening. When we eat it, I always find myself thinking “I must make that more often”.

If you’re not used to eating fish and curry it does sound a little odd, but this is a very mild flavoured curry and does not overpower the fish at all. This is a great dish to use with cold smoked, flakey fish, which also has the bonus of often being a little cheaper. This recipe is adapted from Julie Le Clerc - Cafe @ home

I think I should mention in passing that Kit grew that beautiful red spring onion in the photo, It was pulled out of the garden and plopped in the fragrant and golden yellow Kedgeree a few minutes later.

If you want to make this as a breakfast dish - cook your rice, fish and eggs the night before to make this fast to put together in the morning.

Kedgeree

• 2 cups basmati or long grain rice
• 50 grams of butter
• 1 onion finely sliced
• 2-4 tspns medium hot curry powder
• 2 bay leaves
• 1/2 cup of milk (or fish stock)
• 1/4 cup of cream (optional)
• 400 grams of smoked fish - cooked and flaked in big chunks
• small bunch of green onions - sliced
• 3 Tblspns fresh parsley finely chopped
• zest and juice of one lemon
• 3 hard boiled eggs peeled and quartered
• salt and pepper to taste

Cook the rice and keep warm.

Melt butter in a large saucepan, add onion and cook for a few minutes until golden. Add the curry powder, milk, (or fish stock) cream, bay leaves and bring to the boil.

Add the remaining ingredients - except the eggs- and stir fry until hot.

Add salt and pepper to taste and garnish with the eggs on top and a slice of lemon.

Many recipes also have the addition of a tomato - which would be added in when the fish was added in.

If you are having this for lunch or dinner, some small papadums make a nice addition to be able to scoop up blobs of wonderfully sticky Kedgeree and take mouthfuls from. They have a resounding crunch which is a nice contrast to the soft, buttery, spicy rice.

You can cook papadums in the microwave without having to use a lot of oil to fry them, which is a big plus. They are fun to watch, they puff up like a balloon inflating in just a few seconds. I did find a recipe for them online, but that will be something for another day, they are quite time consuming to make.

I found some beautiful mini papadums, which were just the perfect size for this. They were only a couple of dollars for quite a large packet, Isaac was most amused by them and ate a stack of them. I suspect that he had mostly papadums for dinner actually…

I remember when I was little, Dad would make the porridge (that’s what all good Kiwis and Scots call it) and tell me with great gusto, “that will stick to your ribs!” Then he’d regale me with tales of how the Scots liked to put salt on their porridge. Considering I had usually just tipped half the sugar bowl on my porridge to make it palatable, that did not sound that great.

Over the years my father continued to make porridge every morning for breakfast, although I think after a time, it was only Mum and Dad eating it. I was always more of a toast fan.

I also remember really appreciating porridge on wintry mornings when we were getting ready to go out on a hunt (riding a horse kind of hunt- no foxes). As I got older, porridge started to appeal more, but I still find it hard to eat it plain. Isaac asked me for apple porridge this morning, so of course I obliged. Now in my wiser years, I find I quite like it after all.

Cinnamon and Apple Oatmeal

This quantity serves four hungry people that need a tasty and healthy start to the day, easily made vegan, and it’s also easy to increase or decrease the quantities. Increase the milk, use all water, or low fat milk - it’s very flexible.

• 2 cups of rolled oats
• 4 cups of milk (or vanilla soy milk)
• 1 cup of water
• pinch of salt
• 1 apple peeled and chopped finely (or grated if you do not want chunks)
• 1 Tblspn soft brown sugar
• 1 tspn of cinnamon

Place the oats in a saucepan with the milk and water. If I can, I like to leave this to soak for a while. If you are really organised, you can place the oats in the liquid overnight and be ready to cook in the morning. Soaking makes the oats a little softer. If you don’t have time to soak them, don’t worry - it will still turn out just fine.

Add the rest of your ingredients and place on a low to medium heat. Stir occasionally while it’s cooking to make sure it’s not sticking to the bottom. The faster you cook it the more bite the oats and apples will have. If you like soft oats and soft apple then cook it slowly.

When your oatmeal looks thick and creamy remove from the heat, sprinkle with a little brown sugar, pour over a small amount of milk or cream. This is really a delicious way to start the day.

Now, what’s all this about a Kiss you are saying? It’s not exactly a kiss, more like KISS the rock band. I want to let you know, we’re not going to talk about the fact that I had a KISS Album as a tween and I thought I was so incredibly cool, and that Paul Stanley was just ultra dreamy. We’re going to talk about my youngest son again.

Isaac was invited to a party today for a little female friend from his kindergarten. She was turning 5 years old. She decided that she would have a Star party, the children had to dress as either a movie Star, a sports star, a dance star or a rock star.

My little guy decided he would dress as a rock star, and after browsing some images of rock stars online, he picked out …… Gene Simmons….. as the rock star he wanted to be. We hurriedly leapt in the car and went and found a $3 wig and some bling for him to wear and then I got out the face paints left over from halloween.

Trying on the hair …

Trying on the pose!

Transformation - complete - Mini Gene Simmons.

If you look closely you can see the real Gene on the computer behind Isaac. He had a great time - the only boy at the party, among roughly ten Ballerinas. He had a serious amount of attention and way too much sugar, so everything was just as it should be.