The Engine Room cont..

Last week I posted about the Engine Room -just to give an up-date, yesterday we received a lovely note in the mail apologising if the clams had caused my husband's food poisoning and a voucher for the restaurant. As i mentioned earlier we did not expect anything other than understanding, so we were pleased to get this. I will be deleting my comments from the earlier post re: the food poisoning as a mark of thanks to the Engine Room.

TWD - Blueberry Double Crusted Pie

The TWD recipe this week is blueberry double crusted pie and is chosen by Amy of South in Your Mouth. This was an exciting challenge as in my mind blueberry pie is quite American – not something we think of making in NZ, so it was something different. Also, apart from apple pie, I’ve never made a deep dish double crust pie before! I didn’t want to make a whole pie because it would have been a waste with just the two of us to eat it, so I decided to do a third of the mixture and make little pies.



The pastry called for shortening – not something we really use in NZ. I used kremelta (a solidified coconut oil) which I happened to have in the fridge. I wasn’t sure what to make the little pies in. The majority of my dishes etc are still packed away – they got packed away last year when we moved into our house which we are going to re-build (by the way we are on track to start building in the Spring, so this time next year hopefully I will have a brand new kitchen and scullery!!) – so I had limited dishes to choose from. I decided to make the pies in large muffin tins I have that are more straight sided than usual muffin tins. I was a bit nervous though that they wouldn’t turn out that well, but I went with it anyway.

I used frozen blueberries for the filling (being the middle of winter here, it’s not exactly blueberry season). The berries were tossed in a mixture of flour, sugar and lemon zest and then piled into the pies with a layer of dried bread crumbs between the pastry and the berries. There have been some comments that breadcrumbs are a funny thing to put into blueberry pie, but I think that they did a really good job of making sure that the berry juice didn’t seep into the pastry.



I was so pleased – the pies turned out beautifully and tasted delicious! I made two little pies, but wish that I had made more. The nice thing about making little pies is that the ratio of pastry to berries was higher and that pastry is so yummy! We had the pies with natural yoghurt. Dorie calls the pastry “good for everything” double crust pastry, and she is right – the pastry would be good with most things!



See what the other TWDers thought here.

Weekend Meals

We have just had a fabulous weekend! Very relaxing – sometimes it is so nice to have no plans. Even Friday night, we stayed at home and I made a yummy prosciutto and mozzarella omelette for dinner. It was so tasty, very simple, but with fabulous ingredients. The eggs were organic, free range, which my friend, Jenny, collected from her hen. It is amazing how vibrant the yolks are – even more so than market bought free range eggs. I filled the omelette with mozzarella (actually kapiti boccocini), prosciutto and basil leaves. The photo was taken before I folded the omelette over. This was the perfect Friday night meal!

On Saturday we went up to Matakana and went to the markets. It was a really cold, yucky day and there weren’t as many people at the markets as usual – not a lot of fresh produce, but we came home with Italian sausages, free range chicken, mandarins and agria potatoes. I also enjoyed a whitebait fritter there and my husband had a mussel one.



Saturday night was a quick meal at home before heading to the pub to watch the rugby. My husband felt like pizza, so I used the rest of the mozzarella on a home made pizza base. I made a quick tomato sauce by reducing sautéed garlic, a can of tomatoes, smoked salt, pepper and basil, spread this over the base, scattered over torn mozzarella, anchovies, capers and a sprinkle of chilli flakes. Drizzled with parmesan infused olive oil, this was another yummy, but quick and easy dinner. So much better than take aways!

Baby Shower Cookies

Last Saturday was my lovely friend, Summer’s, baby shower. Her baby is due in the end of August. A few weeks ago I received a new order of cookie cutters from the States and amongst them were these rattle and baby bottle cutters. I am not sure of the sex of Summer’s baby, so decided to decorate the cookies in mint green which is a fairly neutral colour.



To be honest, I didn’t give these cookies the time I should have, so they are not as polished as I would have liked them to be. I used fondant to cover the cookies and then piped on the detail with royal icing. I tried making the fondant on the rattles spotted, but learnt a valuable lesson on not rolling the icing too thin. I read somewhere that cake and biscuit decorating is a bit like a Picasso or other painting – when you look closely at the individual brush strokes, they don’t look that great, but when you stand back and look at the painting as a whole, it looks great. Sounds like a good theory to me!

The Engine Room - Northcote Point

Last Friday night we went to the Engine Room in Northcote Point for dinner. The Engine Room is probably the best restaurant on the north shore. We had only been there once before not long after it opened. It was a real treat to go back. There was a group of six of us and we all thoroughly enjoyed our meals.

I didn’t have an entrée, but there was lovely sour dough (perhaps a tad on the dry side) and olive oil to begin with. We were also treated with a gift from the kitchen of arrancini – little deep fried risotto balls, which were incredibly tasty. From the main menu, the salmon was the meal that caught my eye, salmon being my favourite protein! However, it came with champ and mashed potato is my least favourite carbohydrate. I asked the waitress if I could have the salmon with the chicken’s accompaniment of lentil tabbouleh, roast pumpkin and labneh. She happily said yes and the meal was delicious – the salmon was perfect, not over cooked, but not too rare either.

I was looking forward to dessert as the previous time I had been to the Engine Room I had shared churros with chocolate and it is still on the menu. Churros are little Spanish doughnuts served with a chocolate sauce to dip them in. The chocolate sauce is pretty much warm chocolate ganache. The churros did not disappoint. My husband chose the pear crumble with vanilla bean ice cream as his dessert and it was also delicious.


Also, please check out my latest feature on Foodlovers on Unbaked Slices.

Warming Winter Dinner

My brother in law and his girlfriend came to stay on Sunday night. It’s great to have a valid opportunity to make pudding! I hadn’t really thought about nibbles, so quickly made a dip using half a bottle of marinated artichoke hearts, cannellini beans, lemon juice, parmesan and basil leaves. We had that with some little crispbread crackers and wine while I got on with making dinner.

For the main I roasted a beautiful free range chicken. I stuffed it with a mixture of bulghur wheat, olives, walnuts and sage. We had it with a simple rice pilaf flavoured with white wine and bay, a spinach and red pepper salad and wee mini pumpkins which I cut in half and roasted with a mix of maple syrup, walnuts and pine nuts in the cavity (adapted from a recipe in the Autumn Donna Hay magazine). I love pumpkin and the maple syrup and nuts were the perfect accompaniment.

Pudding was these little apricot and ginger caramel puddings. The recipe is from Taste magazine and you can find it here. The puddings are almost like little steamed puddings – there is a fudgy caramel sauce with dried apricots and crystallised ginger in the bottom (or on top once turned out) and then a caramel flavoured sponge. I made 8 little puddings from the recipe and have frozen half of them. We had them whipped cream. It’s not often that I find something a bit sweet, but I did find the caramel in the bottom very sweet and a bit sugary. I don’t think that I stirred the caramel enough to help the sugar properly dissolve, so if you are going to make them, make sure the sugar is dissolved before spooning your caramel into your basins.

This was a great menu for a cold winter’s night.

TWD - apple cheddar scones

The TWD recipe this week was chosen by Karina of The Floured Apron and is Apple Cheddar Scones. I made these on Sunday for lunch. I love scones! Especially cheese scones. Whenever we are at a café I can almost always be persuaded by a good cheese scone. Some of the best cheese scones I have tasted are from Bosco café in Te Kuiti (always something to look forward to on the long trek south to Taranaki to visit the in-laws) and Zarbo in Newmarket. My Grandma used to make fantastic cheese scones as well. When I was at university she would often make me a batch and I would take them back to varsity for the freezer. But, the best cheese scones ever are made by my mother-in-law. They are divine and I can eat quite a few of them in one sitting.

Anyway, back to Dorie’s apple and cheddar scones!!! I wasn’t sure about the apple in the scones, but went with it anyway. Rather than those shrivelled up dried apple rings you often get, I bought apple that was dried in chunks – it looked a bit like crystallised ginger. The other unusual ingredients in these scones was apple juice and cornmeal. I used a very fine cornmeal and there wasn’t a lot of it, so it didn’t add a lot to the texture of the scones.



The scone mixture was very wet – often I would add more flour, but I just went with it and I think it contributed to the lightness of these scones. My scones were huge as well! I should have made them much smaller. The verdict – my husband loved these. He ate four of them with my home made blackcurrant jam. I ate one with butter and while I enjoyed the texture, I think they needed more cheese and probably no apple! Mind you, as I have mentioned many times before, I don’t like dried fruit.



See what the other TWDers thought here.