Snow in siggie and the first time this Passat has EVER been in snow. Guaranteed!!!

Andy's cool shot of our candle

Dessert

Freeze dried passionfruit meringue with frozen raspberries and damn good chocolate ice-cream sitting underneath.  OK not a pretty plate but it tasted Glorious.  

Pork, parsnip, brussel sprouts, apple, onion, fennel, tarragon.

Pork fillet, not the most forgiving cut to cook but when wrapped in plastic (I KNOW AND PLEASE DON’T GO THERE WITH ME, IT’S FINE) cooked just on boiling.  This is not sous vide.  This is cooked quick, rested.  I dusted it with the most incredible fennel seed I’ve ever had.  Green, fresh, vibrant.  Along with tarragon.  This pork was cooked au point.  i.e to the point i.e perfect.   

Served with acidic caramalised apple, roasted cauliflower, chewy parsnip and sweet onion puree.  The fresh Brussel spout leaves finished it off.  Yum. 

And it snowed!!!!

Duck breast with star anise, roasted jeruselum artichoke, brussel sprout leaves. Toasted & ground fennel seed with a reduction pigeon sauce.

This was gorgeous.  It also had cepe mushroom in the sauce.  Reduced with just the correct amount of sweet and acid.   Yum.

Seriously kid you not, knock out, yum.

Our fire visit and 2018 calander

 We were having a rather interesting day today.  The cars arrived.  Not in the best of nick it must be said (and as it cost us many thousands of euro, that's crap).  But then the door bell rang whilst I was in the midst of cooking a rather complex dish for some unfathomable reason, to see the fire brigade.  After a lot of discussion and up to our computer so we could all google translate, (we thinking they wanted to do a full house inspection for fire regs etc) all these lovely people wanted to do was sell their 2018 calendar!  Bless.  I gave then 20euro out of bloody relief!  I thought we were in trouble somehow.  So there it is, our calendar for 2018 and we are I'm sure the biggest donors in the region so far!

Atlantic salmon, duck fat confit egg yolk, confit garlic, fennel and saffron puree with chicken stock reduction and caramelised cauliflower.

So, it was a tiny bit of a stressful day TBH.  Our cars arrived.  Not in the best of nick and we have to work out how the f...k to get them compliant!  BUT I did a run in the freezing rain.  Andy met the cars and worked things through with our lovely neighbours so that they are at least sitting on our property.  His wheelbarrow was also delivered which he assembled.  And I (after my bloody cold run) focused on the thing I like to focus on... dinner.  A very very complex dish.  Not something I would repeat anytime soon either!  But it tasted good and looked pretty.  I loved the confit egg yolk.  A cool technique I will use again in a heartbeat.  

And then there's dessert. Chocolate self saucing pud.

Main course Sunday dinner, pork belly with reduction, crispy jeruselum artichoke and dried mushroom, red cabbage and red cabbage sauce, onion puree, sweet beetroot juice.

Sunday dinner.... entree - chilled tomato soup with beetroot and textures.

A surprisingly snowy evening. Andy by chance was cooking dinner (veal with leak. absolutely gorgeous). my idea of all time favourites. Andy cooking, snowing outside.....

Rooster. Very delicious rooster at that.

 We bought a very cheap and very lean bird.  It looked like one of those incredible jobs.  It was the sort of bird we don’t get in Dubai and certainly not in NZ. Was it a chicken? No.  A Guinea fowl? No.  A partridge or whatever? No.

It was only upon deconstructing this winged creature that I realised.  The bones big.  The skin had very very little fat.  The meat on the legs dark.  The tendons fierce (I did manage to cut off most tendons as effectively as I could.) This winged creature, we discovered, was in fact a rooster 

Strange maybe but we'd never happened upon a rooster.  

We made a pea puree.  We cooked celeriac in the fat from the skin and crispy cooked extra skin taken from the carcass. We made a sauce from the carcass. The sauce was left in Andy’s deft hands.  Bones cooked down with the usuals of wine and aromatics.  Balanced with salt, sweet, acidity at the end.  Utterly scrummerly.  The extra coq skin was oven baked until crunchy.  The celeriac pave was cooked in the coq fat until meltingly tender. 

The bird was 3euro.  And by god it was tasty. 

I love the satisfaction that comes from boning joints.  To do this with a cheap male rooster was so damn awesome.

 Yeap.  A little beaut of a bird.   And all for $5NZ.  I also have, in my fridge even more leftover bones to cook additional stock and make another gorgeous meal.