Food Food Food & Beer

Thing are heating up around here ... need a beer to cool down! You'll find plenty at The Great Kiwi Beer Festival this weekend.

Food Food Food & Beer!Ho Ho , not for Santa, just for speed … the clock is ticking and I’ve got 2 mins to write this, so if you spot a typo just keep it to yourself! This week, so much to cook, so much to drink, not enough time! Sound familiar? BUT we’ve got a few crackers this week. I LOVE tartlets, mainly because I love homemade pastry (you can cheat if you like, but buy the best you can find). These are gorgeous and you’ll be very popular when you trot them out. Mini Onion Tartlets Radish and cucumber are a really good price at the moment, so I came up with a salad using them together, except I used one of my green chillies from the garden and it nearly blew my head off! This was serious. I had to have an enormous bowl of ice cream (Lewis Road Strawberry if you must know), to calm down. It took about 15 minutes to subside and I felt like I’d gone up with Rocket Lab’s latest test (bit of a head trip if you get the drift). Fun though, rockin’ away in Rocky Bay. Tra la la la la…. Talking about Rocky Bay … I have been scoffing these miniature bananas from the palm tree in our garden. Who knew you could grow bananas in Auckland (not me, until now). Bananarama in Rocky Bay Eggplant are coming along nicely … well, that’s if you planted any. I didn’t (I always make out I have this fabulous and very enormous garden full of all these gorgeous vegetables, but mostly I just pinch from friends!). But you’ll get great ones at farmers’ markets and veggie shops. Here’s a simple way of using them. The preserved lemons makes this dish, so get on to them as well. Baked Eggplant with Spices & Preserved Lemon And what mad person would serve a hot soup in weather like this? Well, if it is a spicy soup, you will get that lovely effect of hot, slightly sweaty (or glowing) sensation on the neck and arms, then as the sweat evaporates you get a cooling effect. Nice. This uses up a chicken carcass from a roast ­ just remember to save a bit of chicken meat to add to the soup. While it is great made fresh, it reheats okay for a refreshing work lunch. Chicken Soup with Noodles, Coriander & Lime Beer – yep, we are off to Christchurch, make that SUNNY Christchurch this weekend to perform in The Great Kiwi Beer Festival at Hagley Park. If you are there, come up and say Hi! Gotta go … Julie PS just realised I've titled the tartlets Bacon & Onion Tartlets and there is NO bacon in them. OMG. Gotta calm down ...