ANZAC biscuit-free zone
For the last few days we’ve been working our way through these ridiculously small but highly perfumed fruit. Home grown and picked by one of the guys at the market, last week I got a kilo of these under-sized feijoas for less than the price of a coffee. Each time I enter the kitchen, it’s like coming home. Literally. My olfactory senses tell me I’m back in New Zealand. The small, taste and texture is pure nostalgia.
This week I also made my first green curry paste from scratch, ridiculous considering how many other curries I make from first principles. I based it on this recipe throwing in more liberal quantities of most ingredients (including lots more green chillies) and omitting the coriander root, being the only herb I was out of. At first I was very disappointed. Yes the flavours had a vibrancy to them but the concoction didn't knock my socks off. Then I remembered the paste is only half of the flavour balance. After frying off the fresh paste and then simmering with coconut milk, I got out the fish sauce, palm sugar and split open a lime. A Thai curry is an alchemical process. The paste may be the base metal but it's the final three ingredients that create the magic.
Staring at me accusingly in the kitchen is also a bag of lemons, gifted from a visitor from over the border. I’ve been hanging out to make more lemonade, a perfect antidote to the unseasonably balmy weather of late.
No ANZAC biscuits for me, to commemorate the day instead I’ve a round up of old posts from my Grandfather’s WWI diary at my other blog, there’s also a post on what he ate at the front, in hospital and at Christmas while waiting to be shipped off from camp in my archives.
Enjoy the long weekend, take a leaf out of Princess Prissy Paws book and take it easy!
This week I also made my first green curry paste from scratch, ridiculous considering how many other curries I make from first principles. I based it on this recipe throwing in more liberal quantities of most ingredients (including lots more green chillies) and omitting the coriander root, being the only herb I was out of. At first I was very disappointed. Yes the flavours had a vibrancy to them but the concoction didn't knock my socks off. Then I remembered the paste is only half of the flavour balance. After frying off the fresh paste and then simmering with coconut milk, I got out the fish sauce, palm sugar and split open a lime. A Thai curry is an alchemical process. The paste may be the base metal but it's the final three ingredients that create the magic.
Staring at me accusingly in the kitchen is also a bag of lemons, gifted from a visitor from over the border. I’ve been hanging out to make more lemonade, a perfect antidote to the unseasonably balmy weather of late.
No ANZAC biscuits for me, to commemorate the day instead I’ve a round up of old posts from my Grandfather’s WWI diary at my other blog, there’s also a post on what he ate at the front, in hospital and at Christmas while waiting to be shipped off from camp in my archives.
Enjoy the long weekend, take a leaf out of Princess Prissy Paws book and take it easy!
Labels: cats, curry, feijoas, thoughts on cooking, thoughts on eating
posted by GS at 10:14 am
3 Comments:
Mmm, feijoas. The store I work at has been getting these in, homegrown, and the customers have been going nuts for them - even calling us up and demanding we get more in! Have you seen the flowers of the feijoa plant? So beautiful!
never tasted feijoas but love thai curry - even though am a wuss about the spice factor - interesting thought about the alchemy
am watching the lemons ripening on our little tree - very exciting - maybe we will have enough for lemonade or for the lemon barley water lucy posted ages ago!
Feijoas are truly underated and don't they have a beautiful and totally unique flavour?
I remember my first crack at making a green curry paste from scratch. It was for a fish curry I was making as a special treat for my partner. I combined the ingredients, chillis, lemongrass, garlic, lime and fresh coriander. I made this amazing bright green curry with coconut milk and a great piece of fish.
My partner starts eating it, and I can tell she is really, really trying. So I asked her if it was okay. And she turns to me and says 'I can't eat coriander! I fuckin' hate the stuff.'
Ah bless her.
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