{"id":35543,"date":"2018-06-25T06:30:12","date_gmt":"2018-06-24T18:30:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/?p=35543"},"modified":"2018-06-24T17:36:13","modified_gmt":"2018-06-24T05:36:13","slug":"a-midwinter-feast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2018\/06\/25\/a-midwinter-feast\/","title":{"rendered":"A Midwinter Feast"},"content":{"rendered":"

As those who’re The Wall Of Night<\/a> series readers may have picked up, festivals and to a lesser extent the food associated with them, are a minor but (to my mind, anyway) still significant part of the world-building for the story.<\/p>\n

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Proof pictorial of August snow…<\/p><\/div>\n

As something of a “foodie” in my everyday life, I’m also into seasonality and celebrating that through making and sharing meals whenever opportunity arises. Midwinter is no exception, and since it’s the darkest if not necessarily the coldest time of the year (i.e. sometimes July and even August can up the cold stakes more) it’s the perfect time for comfort food.<\/p>\n

I cooked my midwinter dinner on Friday night (one day after the solstice) but the conditions still supported\u00a0drawing the curtains, lighting the fire, cranking up the stove and getting into festive mode.<\/p>\n

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The traditional leg of lamb<\/p><\/div>\n

Roast lamb with associated vegetables is arguably “the” quintessential Kiwi dish and to that extent I stuck with the tried and true. However, courtesy of (NZ) Cuisine<\/a> magazine’s featured chef for Issue 189 (current), Samir Allen of Auckland eaterie Gemmayze\u00a0Street<\/a>, this time I gave the meal a Lebanese-Kiwi twist.<\/p>\n

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Getting started…<\/p><\/div>\n

So for starters, we had Chef Allen’s Muhamarra dip, which is a (mainly) red pepper, walnut and pomegranate molasses combination. Although normally paired with Lebanese flat bread in this case I used Rachel Scott’s<\/a> sourdough bread instead, which was still really good—and the dip got the thumbs-up from all the guests.<\/p>\n

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Vegetable goodness<\/p><\/div>\n

For the main course, I stuck to the recommended lamb roast with potatoes and carrots done with a garlic and mint infused tomato sauce. The result, I have to say, was outstanding and I’ll certainly be doing the roast this way again.<\/p>\n

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Brussels sprouts goodness<\/p><\/div>\n

For the supporting vegetable accompaniment, however, I went for a green vegetable dish from the same Cuisine issue but a different recipe sequence: in this case the roast brussels sprouts with capers from Ginny Grant’s Italian themed menu, ‘Home On The Range’. For those of you who (like me) normally turn up your nose at brussels sprouts, this recipe may turn you around, as it did me. Done this way, the brussels sprouts were as delicious as everything else on the menu.<\/p>\n

The proof of my assertions regarding these recipes is, I believe, evident in the ‘before’ and ‘after’ snaps. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

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Before…<\/p><\/div>\n

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…& After<\/p><\/div>\n

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\n\"\"<\/a>When it came to the dessert, though, I abandoned the current\u00a0Cuisine<\/em> — despite its many and self evident excellencies — for another of my favourite recipe sources, the NZ House & Garden Magazine<\/a>. In this case I went for the July 2015 (Issue 251) Chocolate Chip and Spice Biscuits, courtesy of Bernadette Hogg. It’s the first time I’ve tried this particular recipe but the taste result was outstanding, an initial response being, “My goodness those are good!” Not least with coffee, so I’ll definitely be making them again, too.<\/p>\n

And my thanks, obviously, to Cuisine and NZ House & Garden for making so much goodness possible. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

Matariki<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The next festival up, of course, will be Matariki, the traditional Maori New Year, which I’ve discussed before here<\/a>. Matariki is the Maori name for the Pleiades and the period of the constellation’s setting, then subsequent reappearance in the NZ skies, marked the New Year. So it’s actually the Matariki period now, but the constellation doesn’t rise again until the 6 – 9 July, so I’ve got that marked down to do something specifically Matariki, rather than more generally solstice-midwinter.<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

If you’re on Twitter, I’ll also be tweeting some of these pics as part of #CookCuisine<\/span> \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As those who’re The Wall Of Night series readers may have picked up, festivals and to a lesser extent the food associated with them, are a minor but (to my mind, anyway) still significant part of the world-building for the story. As something of a “foodie” in my everyday life, I’m also into seasonality and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-funstuff","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35543"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35543\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35561,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35543\/revisions\/35561"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}