With Thyme

You don’t need to be very precise with what goes into this recipe. Pork belly, chorizo, tomatoes and white beans are the main ingredients; vary the quantities of each as you wish. Method Cut a large piece of pork belly into cubes approx 4-5cms square allowing approx 2 per person. Cut up chorizo into 2 […]

For a long time, until it was replaced by duck breast in berry sauce. Emma always asked for Seven Hour Lamb for her birthday dinner (in winter). I think it’s the ultimate in comfort food. On top of that it’s very easy. In Paris a few years ago I had a pleasurable but slightly weird […]

Last weekend in our Kitchen Shop Frances and I made fresh pasta. I find it a very relaxing thing to do and the result is always so good. Probably the hardest thing is to remember to take the pasta machine out of the cupboard and use it. I had some left over slow cooked lamb […]

This recipe came about one Sunday afternoon last year on a cold winter’s day having arrived home from a day at our market. We felt like something filling and warming for dinner. I just made it up from produce I’d bought from our stallholders during the weekend – lamb shanks from Jamie, chorizo from Salash, […]

Last weekend Deirdre of Wild Game tempted us with her wild goat osso bucco pieces. Although we’re in the middle of summer and usually BBQ every night we decided to slowly cook it but in a lighter sauce than I might in the winter.  It was very tender and light – a bit like very […]

Last week customers raved about our chef Lou’s slow cooked goat dish. No doubt partly because of the liberal quantity of Madeira involved and the fact that goat is a really flavoursome meat. If you can’t quite face it, use lamb instead. Our stallholder Deidre sells wild goat or in Auckland you can buy it […]

Last week for our family dinner on my mother’s birthday I decided to cook duck. That’s pretty usual for a family celebration but this time I tried a new recipe from a book, published in 1982, on the cooking of south west France that I bought a few weeks ago. The recipe is very easy […]

I’ll never forget spending a morning at the Cordon Bleu cooking school in Paris – four hours on how to roast a chicken. Nothing could be easier could it? What I learnt was how you can get a great flavour and have a very moist properly cooked bird. Ingredients: 1 medium size free range/organic chicken […]

The inspiration for this dish came from the one we ate at ‘Aux Lyonnais’ back in the 1980s. Poached chicken may sound a little but boring the sauce going with this is anything but boring – it’s delicate, full of flavour and easy. As well you’ll have a good chicken stock to keep and freeze […]

This is a very casually put together BBQ. The combination of plenty of fresh herbs, pohutukawa leaves and lots of garlic and herb butter ensure a very moist, flavoursome bird. Cook two at once and have one cold for lunch the next day. Ingredients (serves 4): 1 whole chicken 3-4 cloves of crushed garlic 3 […]