Chocolate cheesecake re-re-engineered

Chocolate cheesecake just got even easier to make! I've tinkered with this recipe over many years, removing the sugar from the base (it's sweet enough without it), halving the sugar in the topping then deleting it altogether, deleting the egg whites and increasing the amount of chocolate. It works well.

First, make the base

200 grams plain, sweet biscuits [I like to use Malt or Digestive biscuits]
100 grams butter

Crush the biscuits. Melt the butter and combine well with the crushed biscuits. Press the mixture onto the bottom of a foil-lined springform pan and chill.

Next, make the cheesy topping

250 grams cream cheese
200 grams chocolate [milk, dark or white]
300 ml pouring cream

Soften the cream cheese a little and beat well. Melt the chocolate over a bowl of hot water or in a microwave. Allow the chocolate to cool slightly, them combine with the cream cheese mixture. Whip the cream. Combine the chocolate and cream mixtures well, and pile on top of the base. Decorate with extra cream, grated chocolate, or fresh fruit. Refrigerate until ready to eat.

New Zealand: the 2025 edition

Every second year or so Andrew and I go to New Zealand to catch up with my family. This time we went in late May and early June, and have made a mental note to go earlier in the year next time, as several tourist attractions had closed for the winter already. Anyway, there's not much to report. Apart from spending time with family, the trip was largely about eating, drinking, and walking. Some highlights:

Wellington coffee @ Lazy Juan

Chilli oil eggs @ Kind Wish Café, Kelburn

Whanganui River (at a rare, non-raining moment)

Tram ride! Whanganui

Virginia Lake, Whanganui

Lunch @ Tasty Indian Restaurant, Whanganui

Double decker bus in Whanganui

Dinner @ Tasty Indian Restaurant, Whanganui (yes, we went there twice)

Coffee @ Jolt Coffee House, Whanganui

OMG! Deconstructed lemon meringue pie @ Union Square

Bistro & Bar, Martinborough. A revelation :-)

Nasi lemak @ Little Penang, Wellington

More Wellington coffee!

Lunch @ Curry Heaven, Newtown, Wellington. We used to go to

their CBD branch but it closed so we tracked them down to the suburbs

The Wellington Cable Car (funicular railway)

Thanks to Andrew for (most of) the pics. He thoroughly documented the trip.

Farewell, NZ. See you next time.

Feijoa smoothie

It's feijoa season! The feijioa – sometimes nicknamed pineapple guava due to its pineapple-y flavour and guava-ish texture – is well known and easy to find in New Zealand but not so common here in Australia. I have two feijoa trees but, sadly, they've never produced fruit. Our neighbour has a large tree that presses up against our fence, though, and I gratefully receive any fruit that falls over the fence or rolls underneath it :-)

Mostly I eat the feijoas simply by halving them and scooping out the flesh, but today I experimented and made a smoothie. Four small feijoas, a couple of tablespoons of coconut yoghurt, and some iced water. Delicious!

We're off to New Zealand in two weeks and I'm hoping feijoas will still be available there. NZ feijoas are gigantic and plentiful. Fingers crossed ...

Recipes for (temporarily) abandoned blokes

The spring Lifeline Bookfair was held over the weekend and, to my delight, conversation in my boot camp group today was about what books people had bought! The bookfair is a Canberra institution and raises money for an excellent cause so it's always great to hear people have enjoyed it. Particularly as Andrew and I have volunteered behind the scenes for 17 years or so. 

Anyway, one of the guys in the group described a cookbook he'd purchased. It sounded awesome. Dinner party recipes in categories such as 'recipes for dull people' and 'recipes for abandoned men'. Oh my goodness. I didn't find out if the recipes for abandoned men were for the permanently abandoned or those whose partners might eventually return. (More details please, Michael.)

The discussion inspired this blog post. Andrew and I have been together for about 32 years and (to my shame) I've never really let him spread his wings in the kitchen. I like cooking and tend to take over. However, I'm off to Sri Lanka for 2.5 weeks in November – the country has been at the top of my bucket list since I was seven – and will be leaving Andrew at home. It's not the first time I've gone somewhere exotic and left him behind – Timor-Leste in 2018 was amazing – but maybe he'd like some recipe ideas for when I'm away? Just in case, here goes …

Chunky avocado salsa

Curries (with a little help from the good folk of Byron Bay)

Lots of salad ideas

Pea and tofu soup

Ratatouille

Simple pizza from scratch

Seasonal stir fry

Shakshuka

Spanish omelette

Teriyaki tofu and veges

Enjoy!

P.S. my apricot tree has blossoms :-)

In praise of pearl couscous

I can't work out how I managed to live for so many years without stumbling across pearl couscous. It's delicious! And has the coolest texture. When en route to NZ a couple of months ago, the vego dinner option on the Air New Zealand plane was pearl couscous and some sort of vegetarian casserole. Nom nom:

then a week or so later I encountered it again in dinner at the Rutland Hotel in Whanganui:

On returning to Australia I bought a packet and have now served it several times alongside, for example, a vegetarian tagine. A happy discovery.

South Island wanderings

In a leap of faith (as the Cook Strait ferries have been notoriously unreliable lately) Andrew and I departed New Zealand's North Island for its South Island one week ago. It's been a fun and varied week! Some highlights:

We booked premium tickets on the Interislander ferry Aratere and they plied us with food and drinks …

Dinner at Pepper Bridge Indian Restaurant in Christchurch

A journey from Christchurch to Greymouth, return, on the TranzAlpine train

Cheese and wine tasting at Whitestone Cheese, Oamaru

Dinner with old friends at Restaurant 1861, Oamaru

A delicious vegan Thai curry at Alice May Restaurant, Franz Josef …

… and glimpses of Franz Josef and Fox glaciers!

Lunch @ Tasty Indian, Whanganui

We'd been hanging out for some spicy food! Turns out that Whanganui, New Zealand (where I grew up but which I abandoned for Australia over thirty years ago) is much more multicultural than it was when I left. There are now MANY delicious-looking eateries. Unfortunately my nieces don't like spicy food (sigh) but my sister does and she recommended Tasty Indian to us. We had a lovely vegetarian lunch there today.

For Andrew:

Dal makhani, naan, rice, pappadum and salad

For me:

Vegetable madras, naan, rice, pappadum and salad

Sadly, my sister wasn't able to join us. But we're grateful for the recommendation.

Wellingtonian delights

Andrew and I last visited New Zealand in February 2020. About five minutes before the COVID-19 pandemic kicked off. So there has been a longer gap between visits to my family than usual. Finally, we've taken the plunge and returned, notwithstanding the ongoing COVID risk. In many places, we're the only weirdos wearing masks. Eeeek. Anyway … we spent a couple of days in wonderful Wellington before heading to see my rellies. It's still delightful. Phew.

Mural spotted from inside the Wellington

Cable Car (funicular railway)

View of the city from Kelburn

Caffeine!

My brunch (truffle mushroom medley, beetroot hummus,

halloumi, rocket, hazelnut dukkah and poached egg) at Cabletop Eatery

Feijoas. The fruit of my dreams. Currently

in season and available everywhere :-)

Roti canai with vegetable curry and (bonus)

Lemon & Paeroa at Satay Kingdom. Oh my!

Next stop Whanganui.

White choc chip macadamia cookies

200 grams butter
250 grams sugar
200 grams (half a can) sweetened condensed milk
300 grams flour
2 heaped teaspoons baking powder
200 grams white chocolate chips
100 grams macadamia nuts

Cream butter and sugar, add condensed milk and beat well. Mix in sifted flour and baking powder. Add choc chips and nuts. Roll into balls, place on cool tray and press with fork. Bake at 160 degrees C for 15 to 20 minutes. This recipe makes about 24 large-ish cookies.

NZ yams in Canberra. At last!

It's been an adventure. Ever since moving to Australia from New Zealand, more than thirty years ago, I've missed yams. While yam is often used as a generic word for sweet potatoes, here I mean oca or Oxalis tuberosa. It's a small, pinkish, finger-shaped sweet potato that melts in the mouth when added to a roast dinner. While it's possible to buy many NZ groceries in Australia (at the supermarket or via mail order) I craved, and couldn't find, NZ yams for a long time. 

In 2018, I discovered that an online garden store in Queensland was selling yam plants by mail order so I ordered three (very expensive) plants, which arrived safely but died soon after. Later in 2018 I ordered ten yam tubers from an online garden store in Victoria. They produced foliage but the plants didn't survive the Canberra summer. After a year off to ponder my failures, I bought yet more tubers (nine, this time) from Queensland in 2020. Once again, they sprouted foliage but produced no yams. 

What was I doing wrong?

When, in 2021, I found that Feijoa Addiction in Brisbane was selling 5 kg boxes of yams by mail order, I bought 5 kg. Then another 5 kg! They were delicious. Given all my failures in growing them, I intended to eat rather than plant the whole 10 kg. But a couple of green-thumbed friends suggested we should each plant a few at our respective houses and see if anyone could successfully grow yams in and around Canberra. So I shared little bags of yams with five friends and also put some tubers aside to plant at my place. Here's a rough timeline:

August 2021: purchased yams

October 2021: planted yams in pots

November 2021: foliage appeared

December 2021: planted the yam plants in four different locations

(with different exposure to the elements) around the house

(above and below) June 2022: success! We have yams

The yam plants in shady spots on the southern side of the house produced tubers (1.2 kg in total) whereas the plants in sunnier places on the western and northern sides of the house produced none. My guess is that the reason those plants failed (and previous years' plants failed) was that I planted them in full sun and they cooked in the ground. D'oh. It also seems important to plant them in mounds of soil so there's plenty of room for the wee tubers to develop.

Delighted to finally have some home grown yams. Last night I made a vego roast dinner with pumpkin, onions, yams and broccoli. Yum.

Mincecraft and Aunty Bri

Many, many years ago I studied at Massey University, in Palmerston North, New Zealand. Well, when I say I studied there, it was mostly as an 'extramural' or external student, so I didn't spend much time at the actual campus. My degree was spread over seven years of part-time study (and full-time work) and I attended the campus a couple of weeks per year to participate in lectures and schmooze with fellow extramural students.

Anyway! Massey's student newspaper was called Chaff. The Macquarie Dictionary defines chaff as:

the husks of grains and grasses separated from the seed

and I guess the name was derived from Massey's previous identity as an agricultural college. It wasn't unusual to see Massey students wearing gumboots to class. My favourite thing in Chaff was Aunty Bri's advice column. It was hilarious. When I spotted Aunty Bri's Cook Book and Guide to Flatting Life in the university bookshop circa 1990 I couldn't resist buying a copy. It remains a treasure to this day.

Aunty Bri's book is a guide to negotiating life with flatmates but also contains heaps of simple, cheap recipes. Some of the recipes are philosophical rather than edible and many of the (edible) recipes involve mince. When I think of Aunty Bri, I think of mince. I don't cook much meat these days, but if you do, and you're trying to think what to make for dinner tonight, here are some of my mince recipes (no, not stolen from Aunty Bri):

Chinese dumplings
deconstructed samosas
Greek-style meatballs with tomato sauce and olives

If you, like me, are getting less carnivorous in your old age, there's always the plant-based option …