a few of our favourite things

Miriam: Whenever I go home to my parents place I have a wee chuckle as I see bottles of wine labeled with post-it-notes saying 'expensive'. This is Mum's strategy to ensure that family members with less refined tastes (i.e. Dad) select the appropriate bottle to match the occasion. For my birthday this year, my family gave me two knives, one a bread knife, and one the Scanpan knife picture above. Mum (rightly so) felt I wasn't very educated on knives, so informed me that the bread knife was in the 'expensive' category and the yellow one was not. Well, both knives have proved to be dreams to cut with. But I was astounded to hear that this yellow knife cost around $10. What a bargain! It's become my go-to all purpose knife. I wonder if the wines minus the post-it-notes are also as good?!

Becs: Now that the weather is warmer it has been goodbye to porridge and hello to more summery breakfasts. Here is todays - bircher muesli. I just soak rolled oats, linseed and chopped dates in milk overnight with a little honey and cinnamon. In the morning I add a grated apple, spoonful of yoghurt and any other toppings lurking around. Today it was accompanied with a dollop of lemon curd, some strawberries foraged from the garden pre-breakfast, and some toasted almonds and pumpkin seeds. It was so good I may just have more for lunch!

a few of our favourite things...

Libby: I don't like having the same thing for lunch or dinner two days in a row but I will quite happily eat oats for breakfast day-in, day-out. In cool weather I eat them cooked as porridge and in warmer weather I like them soaked overnight to make bircher muesli. Now that we've had a glimpse of spring I've made the switch to bircher. My "recipe" is a simple, cheap mix of oats, a few raisins and a small handful of whatever seeds I have - sesame, sunflower, pumpkin - soaked overnight in milk. In the morning I stir in yoghurt and as long as I'm not about to miss the bus, grate in 1/2 an apple. It's very portable. More often than not, it comes to work with me to be eaten a little later on.

Becs: I have several of these spice tins and they are so handy. Much tidier than having loads of little jars and bags cluttering up the pantry, and easy to use when cooking as there is only one lid to take off. I bought mine at various Asian food stores, they do vary in quality it seems, so go for the heavier stainless steel and ensure the lid fits on snugly. I group my spices how I would usually cook with them, so keep sweeter ones separate. I was inspired to make a chicken curry for dinner after seeing Al Brown's version on Get Fresh; yesterday was quite a spice filled day with lunch enjoyed at the Vegetarian Expo - we ate the most delicious samosas with cumin seed-flecked pastry and a date and tamarind chutney, I love a good samosa.

microwave muesli

I know the title is tragic but this is my go-to muesli recipe, thank you Dame Alison. In the eighties when the microwave was all set to take over from the conventional oven, Alison Holst was at the forefront of microwave cuisine. Our family embraced Alison's microwave muesli and microwave brownie recipes - she was so ahead of her time, in the eighties hardly anyone in NZ had heard of a brownie, nowadays we'd probably prefer it wasn't microwaved...

I started making this muesli when I was nine or ten and it made page 5 in my handwritten recipe book (oh and check out that handwriting, I marvel at it now and if you saw my current illegible script you would too...) While these days I think most of us accept the limitations of the microwave (melting butter, reheating leftovers yes but scrambled egg, roast chicken, brownies no) it still does a great job of a quick batch of muesli. If the oven is on for something else or I am making a big batch I will bake it, but otherwise it is remarkable what the microwave can achieve in around 10 minutes.

I make it in a large pyrex casserole, and melt the wet ingredients in this first before adding the dry, so it is a one-bowl job. This batch was for the market so is just oats and seeds, but I would normally add nuts to it too. It's amazing how crunchy it gets, it crisps up on cooling, much like a biscuit does.

Alison Holst's Muesli (microwave)

1/4 c honey
1/4 c brown sugar
1/4 c plain oil
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp salt
3 c rolled oats (I use a mix of jumbo and regular)
1/2 c oat bran (sub for extra oats if none in your pantry)
1/2 c wheatgerm (ditto)
1/2 c nuts
1/2 c dried fruit

Mix the first 6 ingredients in your large microwave proof dish and cook for a minute or two until melted and bubbly. Add the dry ingredients (excluding the fruit) and mix thoroughly to coat evenly. Cook for 3 minutes, then in blasts of 2 minutes, stirring well after each to avoid burning in hot spots where the honey mix has settled. I find it takes about 10 minutes or so, as my pyrex is large so the mix is quite shallow in it. Mix in fruit after it has cooked.

Maple-roasted oats & spiced prunes

Perhaps I am far too motivated by food but I find it much easier to get out of bed if I know there is something nice waiting to be eaten for breakfast. Make these roasted oats and spiced prunes over the weekend and you'll have the makings of a beautiful breakfast you'll want to get our of bed for on Monday!

The oats are based on a recipe from the beautiful Modern Pantry cookbook for "Honey-roasted oats, seeds and nuts"with a few minor tweaks. "Honey-roasted oats, seeds and nuts" is really just a pretentious name for muesli but whatever you want to call it, it makes a delicious start to the day. I came very close to eating at the Modern Pantry on almost exactly this day last year. I made it as far as the front door... just as they were closing early for a bank holiday. Disappointing but a good reason to make another trip to London one day.

The recipe below is as I made it - with maple syrup instead of honey and rice bran oil instead of extra virgin olive oil. I did intend to make honey-roasted oats, seeds and nuts as per the recipe but after scraping together 75 grams of honey from various sources I proceeded turn it into a toffee-ish mass by heating it for too long with the oil and sugar. I started again using real maple syrup and it was lovely.

Feel free to use EVOO if you prefer, I just thought it odd to use a distinctive flavoured (and expensive) oil in a muesli so I used the more neutral-flavoured (and cheaper) rice bran. And change the mix of nuts and seeds to suit what you have in the cupboard and like to eat.

Maple-roasted oats, nuts and seeds

Adapted from Anna Hansen's The Modern Pantry

75g maple syrup

60mls rice bran oil

40g brown sugar

250g rolled oats

250g jumbo oats

50g coconut threads

75g hazelnuts, toasted, skinned and lightly crushed

140g pumpkin seeds

140g sunflower seeds

1 Tbsp black sesame seeds

1 Tbsp white sesame seeds

Preheat oven to 160 degrees Celsius.

Gently heat maple syrup, sugar and oil in a small saucepan until the sugar has dissolved. Set aside to cool. Mix the oats, seeds and nuts together in a bowl and pour over the syrup mixture. Stir thoroughly.

Divide the mixture between two baking-paper lined trays and spread evenly. Bake for 20 minutes or so, stirring occasionally. Once the mixture is golden, remove from the oven and leave to cool. Store in an airtight container for up to a month.

Now for the best part... the tea-soaked spiced prunes!

Becs starting making these prunes after we enjoyed Nikau's gorgeous tea-soaked prunes a few weeks ago. They're not quite the same but we think they're equally good. And we're not the only ones who think so. Becs has been serving these up to lots of fellow prune-lovers on Saturday mornings at her Posh Porridge stall the Christchurch Farmers Market.

This method of preparing prunes comes from Nigella Lawson's How to Eat (she called them "muskily spiced prunes"). It's such a delicious treatment for prunes - the prunes become more tender and the liquid more syrupy with each day. After three or four days of steeping in the sweet, spicy syrup the prunes absolutely explode with deliciousness as you eat them. When I was at high school I worked in a kitchen at a rest home on a Saturday morning. One of my jobs was to "mouli" up prunes in an industrial food processor and divide it into little silver dishes for residents. If I ever reach a stage in life where I need my prunes "mouli-ed" I would like them to receive this treatment first please.

You could change the tea you use for a subtle variation. I use English breakfast because that's all I have but the original recipe calls for Earl Grey which would lend a floral, fragrant flavour. I might try a mix of English breakfast and lapsang souchong sometimes for a little smokiness.

Marsala is the perfect addition to the syrup - sweet and lightly spiced but not so alcoholic it burns your throat on the way down. Important if you're going to be consuming these prunes for breakfast! But in saying that, don't feel limited to eating these prunes at breakfast time - they'd also be lovely for dessert with something like rice pudding or homemade custard.

Spiced prunes

Adapted from Nigella Lawson's How to Eat

500ml tea (I use English breakfast)

150ml Marsala

100g brown sugar

Zest of one orange

1 clove

1 cinnamon stick

1 star anise

250g prunes

Put the tea, Marsala, sugar and spices into a saucepan. Peel the zest from the orange with a potato peeler in one long piece and add. Bring to a boil and add the prunes. Reduce the heat to a simmer and allow the prunes to poach for 20 minutes.

Once cooled remove the orange zest and spices and store in the fridge.

A few of our favourite things...

Becs: While I usually like to make my own cereal - porridge in winter, bircher or granola in summer - I like to mix it up a bit sometimes with something from the cereal aisle at the supermarket. I tend to buy a treat cereal (something clustery that feels a bit nutritionally void for an everyday breakfast) and dilute it with a box of something more earnest and healthful, that is, fibre containing. Now Kellog's have done it for me with their new All Bran Apple Crunch product. I am loving this at the moment, there are treaty bits as well as bran flakes and sticks, and it is not too sweet, nice one.

Miriam: I was sitting down to do my favourite thing, when we received an email from our landlord informing us that they're putting our lovely Kingsland bungalow on the market. In 90 days we have to move out. Suddenly the vege garden dug from scratch (with the rhubarb almost coming to fruition), the outdoor furniture rescued from the inorganic collection and the romantic gas fireplace all flashed before my eyes. As a psychologist I know the stages of grief (denial, bargaining, anger, depression & acceptance). I think currently I'm caught somewhere between denial and depression and feel unable to do a favourite thing.

Positively, on Saturday I'm off to South America for 5 weeks, (so can embrace the denial stage some more). Hopefully over the next few weeks I'll be able to do some favourite things from Peru, Bolivia and Argentina!

Libby: I bought some raw milk to have a go at making mozzarella cheese (not that you can't use pasturised silver top) and after trying a glass of it almost didn't want to use it to make cheese. The milk was delicious: rich and creamy, and so, so fresh! It would have been such a waste of beautiful milk had it been a complete disaster. I am a complete amateur when it comes to making cheese so consulted the internet. I used a combination of methods from two trusted sources: Mrs Cake/Rosa and Pease Pudding/Allison. I am not sure I got it entirely right - especially the "cooking the curd" part, but when used on a pizza for dinner on Sunday night it looked and tasted reasonably authentic!