All posts by j

New Zealand Food Exploration: Kumara

I’m really pretty crap at this blogging malarkey. Every time some food turns up, my laden fork is halfway to my mouth before H exasperatedly reminds me yet again that we should have taken a photo first.

This is for my blog, you understand. I know, I know, I should be suffering for my art, nobly allowing the photographer to work while my dinner starts to cool. I should probably be taking the photos myself in fact, instead of lazily allowing H to exercise his skills. However photography is his thing and he does it brilliantly, so I view it as a win-win.

Besides, my “forgetfulness” means I get to eat straight away while H instead has to take a photo of his still-intact plate. Score!

Anyway, all this is leading on to explain why there is no picture of a kumara to accompany this post. Kumara chips? Ate them. Kumara mash? Ate it. Any other form of kumara? Nothing to see here, folks. I suggest utilising the wonders of Google (yep, I’m a failure and I give you homework…hey, why are you reaching for that X in the corner of the browser window?).

So kumara (which peeps seemed to pronounce as coo-mer-a with the emphasis on the first syllable) is a sweet potato. It turns up all over the place, adding a mealy heft and caramel note of sweetness to the plate. Buy it and try it, oh and send me a photo please…

New Zealand Food Exploration: Feijoa

The morning after we arrived in New Zealand, we lurched, jet-lagged, down an Auckland street and stumbled into a café for breakfast.

The dawning realisation that my strict food budget really wasn’t going to go that far put a severe downer on proceedings, but I perked up when I saw a bottled smoothie of an unknown fruit for sale.

The cross-section illustration on the label was disturbingly similar to a cucumber, but I was feeling optimistic and took a generous swig.

feijoa

Continue reading New Zealand Food Exploration: Feijoa

New Zealand Food Exploration: Introduction

When me and the boyfriend decided to visit New Zealand as part of our “We’re Having an Early Mid-life Crisis Freak-out Tour 2011”, I fell to researching straight away.

I devoted perhaps 25% of my time to hotels and tourist attractions, and the rest to tracking down must-eat food tips. From Chowhound to random Google searches combining place names and cunning key words such as “food” and “blog”, I gradually created lists of restaurants and notes on treats to try.

Our strict budget meant many delicious-sounding venues were discarded, but for the benefit of fellow cash-strapped food lovers, I’ll be posting on some of the thriftier edibles we’ve sampled.

Thailand Food Exploration: Rotee

Roti is something that may be familiar to you from the breads section of a UK “Indian” restaurant menu. It is a round, flat, slightly layered bread, which is good for soaking up curries.

It clearly shares roots with Roti Canai, something ambrosial I first encountered in Malaysia. This is a puffy, crispy flat bread which is heavenly dipped in dahl, fish curry or topped with condensed milk.

So when we passed a Rotee stall near the lower end of Phra Pok Klao Road, Chiang Mai, by a Siam Bank, I was irresistibly drawn to it. The options were fairly limited, standard (which comes topped with condensed milk), egg (where an egg is broken into it and cooked), banana (filled with sliced banana) and a few other choices which I think were mainly combinations of the above.

rotee

Continue reading Thailand Food Exploration: Rotee