Spinach and Fetta Rolls

theme song for today’s post: (click the link to listen) AC/DC : It’s a Long Way to the Shop if You Want a Spinach Roll.

Whaddaya mean, those aren’t the words? ok, you’re right, it should be sausage roll, it’s true. But today this version is very apt, because the inspiration for making spinach and fetta rolls came from the amazing ones we ate at the Beechworth Bakery in North Eastern Victoria. Which really is a long way to the shop - about 7 hours drive!

We stopped in at Beechworth on the car convoy back from our summer holiday in Bright, Victoria, having read about Beechworth Bakery in Australian Gourmet Traveller. Some of us may have been feeling a little under the weather (look, there are a lot of wineries in that part of Victoria, OK?) and the delicious spinach and fetta roll perked me right up. It was, even through the hangover, the absolute best spinach and fetta roll I have ever eaten (and as a former vego, I have eaten plenty!). They sold out, and I waited until the next batch came out of the oven and brought another one for the car (the car didn’t want it, so I ate it. boom-tish!). So not surprisingly, I was keen to try and recreate them a bit closer to home.

I used the cheater’s puff pastry recipe I found over at the lovely Cook & Eat. Cheat sounds like my kind of puff pastry. And it is SO easy.

the filling: crushed garlic, finely chopped onion, sauted, then chopped English spinach added to the pan just to wilt. Into a bowl, then add crumbled fetta, some cottage cheese, salt, pepper, nutmeg. This mixture was quite sticky, so I didn’t add egg, but one could.

Roll pastry into longish strips, fill, roll pastry around filling, with sealside ending up down, and cut into portions. I gave the tops of the rolls a milk wash, and sprinkled with sesame seeds. I made small rolls, and baked for ~25 mins @ ~180 degrees C.

The pastry was lovely and flakey, and the filling was tasty, but to be honest these were no comparison to the Beechworth Bakery’s ones. I’ll try making them again, but if you’re ever in Beechworth, I recommend the spinach and fetta rolls, hangover or no!

what the smoked fish did next, a Fable.

the smoked fish became PIES.

I have oddly vivid memories of being a very small child living on Waiheke Island, and my favourite thing to eat when I went with my mum to Oneroa (the only place on Waiheke (”why-heh-keh”) with a largish grocery shop when I was a child, although I understand now there is a SUPERMARKET. WTF?) was smoked fish pie at some hippy cafe (long closed). (the whole island was hippy in those days actually. not anymore!).

I can so vividly remember eating smoked fish pie, which I’m sure some people do not consider a very child-friendly food, but then again apparently I also demanded (garlic and parsley laced) omelettes, so I definitely did not suffer from ‘white food syndrome’ as a child!

anyway, I could tell you how my pies were made, but since I didn’t take ‘during’ photos (I was actually too busy having lie downs every 5 minutes, because being up with my recently surgery-ed leg for that long was still very tiring and painful), and in fact it is ridiculously easy, so instead here is a diagram demonstrating the pie-structions.

which leaves me time to tell you another riveting smoked fish pie related story. Once upon a time, in 2002, while living in Nelson Bay a princess (me) went along to the really quite wonderful Red Ned’s pie shop to grab some lunch. I asked Mr Red Neds (AKA Barry Kelly) if he had plans to make my favourite, his Smoked Haddock Pies any time soon, as I had a pie hankering which his teriyake kangaroo, honey-lime-chilli scallops and prawn, fiji curry steak, nor any of the other 50-odd regulars just wouldn’t fulfill.

Mr Kelly looked at me for a minute, then told me to come back in the next couple of days. He had just been pottering around the bakery, mulling on which pies to enter in the upcoming pie competition, and yes, my favourite would just fit the bill, so he would make some for the competition, some for the shop and one for me (I am a princess in this story, remember?).

Needless to say, because I have extremely good taste, my favourite pie not only took out the Gold Medal for Gourmet Seafood Pie, but also Gold Winner Overall. Best Pie In The Competition. seriously - check out their awards list! The day after the competition Mr Kelly called me in to gave me a complementary Smoked Haddock Pie, and the whole village rejoiced. well, ok, mostly the Red Neds peeps. and me!

the end.

NZ - Far North and then Orewa.

I’m in hospital for my knee surgery tomorrow, so before I’m off again, here’s the other foody things we ate in NZ.

We drove ‘Up North’, where we had massive amounts of massive green lipped mussels, marinated artichokes from mama’s garden, fresh smoked tuna, and fish and chips from the world famous Mangonui Fish Shop, followed by a cone of goody-goody-gum-drops icecream. mmmm. we ate lots more on top of that too, and I also didn’t photograph everything, but here are a few pics.

freshly caught, battered and cooked tarakihi, chips and a chilled glass of cab sav.

on the way back down to Auckland we stopped in at Orewa and went to Waiwera hot pools with my cousin Chris and second cousin Grayson, 11, who took this sweet pic of me underwater.

oh, about those cookies. they were milk chocolate and macadamia, and I’ll do the photos and recipe thing when I’m out of hospital. they are too easy to eat.

NZ - Whakatane & White Island

well, wordpress has finally fixed the uploading glitch, and I can post this!

my recent trip to my homeland involved quite a bit of driving around and socialising and quite a bit of eating.. I’m sure no-one is surprised! I’ll break it down into a couple of posts, but I certainly haven’t recorded everything we ate! here is the first leg…

I flew into Auckland, and was met by Mother, Uncle & Aunt, and promptly driven 5 hours to Whakatane. this is the Eastern Bay of Plenty, a truly spectacular part of the world. I have many memories of traveling through here as a child; this coastline, with it’s dramatic white cliffs and black sand is exquisite, especially in summer when the iconic Pohutukawa are in bloom.

In Whakatane we met up with Grandparents and Aunts, and spent a couple of days eating, walking, shopping, talking and laughing, as well as fitting a trip to an active marine volcano in. you know, just casually. we visited Whakaari (White Island) with PeeJay, and were all blown away (NOT literally!) by the island and the tour company.. if you are ever in that part of the world, I can only recommend you go, it is certainly unlike anything else you will ever experience.

We stayed at the White Island Rendezvous (also owned by the tour company) where suites are well equipped, with massive bathrooms, and again, we were impressed by the service and genuine friendliness of the staff, not to mention the cafe’s breakfasts and coffee!

as we were celebrating Grandad’s 84th birthday (that’s him with mama and I in our volcano safety gear), we also enjoyed rhubarb and lemon syrup birthday cake, courtesy of aunt Kim, and Limoncello made last year by mother from her overproducing lemon tree.

we also ate out a few times, including the lovely hidden gem; Roquette, a short stroll from our hotel. it’s been open about a year, and we were all impressed with their staff (esp. the kindness and humour in accommodating an unbooked table of 6), as well as the yummy menu and great winelist.

next leg: Northland.. coming soon!

slightly less appetising

folks, I know I promised a very good write up of the yummy kiwi things I ate, but I have a very good excuse why nothing has shown up here yet. for those who do not keep up with the goings on in the t+z sphere, I’m sure you will be shocked to hear that I painfully twisted and dislocated my knee (due for reconstruction in a mere 2 weeks time) and may well have caused some additional damage, possibly to the remaining major ligament, resulting in an ambulance ride to emergency, and spending most of this week in hospital.

I can hear your collective gasps and cringes, and I immediately must address your utmost concerns for my wellbeing as you commiserate “oh my dear, poor you! the food must have been awful!“

yes, it was, well, not great. but it wasn’t horrible. apart from a truly awful beef soup one night, which I spent the rest of the night bringing back up (probably for unrelated reasons), the food was ok, and the shepard’s pie was actually quite good, although it happened to be the first thing I was really up to eating after 2 days, so that may have clouded my judgment a little. but, overall, not too bad at H’otel Prince of Wales, although the ambiance was a little stark, and some of the other patrons did not behave themselves.

here we have: chicken noodle soup; roast beef with ‘Italian vegetables’ (kind of a rattatoulle, ok), potoatoes (good), baby carrots (insipid) and gravy (tasty); a slice of white bread with margarine (wholemeal bread and butter was selectable on the daily menu, but this was the first day of meals for me so no selections); a banana-y muffin (dense and moist) and gluten-free vanilla icecream. every meal also came with hot water, and a tea bag (or presumably coffee sachet if elected), and a cute cutlery, napery and seasoning package.

so really, I am quite ok, it wasn’t so painful after all.

(oh, the knee is mending too. Tom is in the field, so I am recuperating at the ‘in laws’, where stair negotiation is supervised, and it is very peaceful and comfortable, not to mention the food is of a considerably higher standard. I will post the nz and other more appetising foody things soon!)

the puku is in nz

I’m in my birthland Aotearoa, visiting the whanau. just a quick 10 day visit, I am actually flying back to Oz first thing tomorrow, so it’s my on last day that I get internets again. not because nz has no internets, just because I have been driving all over the north island visiting family and hotpooling and touristing and, um, eating.

so when I am back in sydney I will start posting some food things in earnest, but in the meantime, to whet your appetites, here are some crunchy kumura chips, from a mountain top cafe, which you can also buy frozen, in any supermarket.

mmmm.. sushi

mmm.. I just love sushi. and I just love love love sushi that is 5 mins walk up the road! the Rayners + Baker (me) went to Sushi Fusion on Saturday, where we consumed a ridiculous amount of sushi and a bit of red wine and beer. we then rolled back down the road for fresh scones with jam and double creme, and the final time trial of the Tour (go, Cadel!).

for us down this end of the globe, The Tour means staying up to 2-3am every night for three weeks. really, we work just as hard as the riders… so we are all still recovering proper sleep patterns a week after the tour ended. we are still all bright awake at 12, feeling an odd sense of *waiting for something*. anway, it’s a very social time, we watched with the whole gang, taking turns to host in our small apartments; make dessert, tea, coffee and chocolates, and providing heaters, blankets and pillows for the occasional nap. thank god it’s over for another year!

and yes, that is 32 sushi plates in one sitting. there was 5 of us!!

duck and coffee

we ate duck, then went to the rocks coffee festival (not all at once!).

it was good. so good, in fact, that all I have to show for the duck is the remains. this was also because we went for Joelle’s birthday, with a bunch of her friends, and I didn’t want whip out my camera and tripod at the dinner table and start snapping away when I’d only just met the people.. it is kinda weird behaviour, especially in front of strangers, right? do you sometimes feel a bit sheepish taking photos of your food?

the coffee festival was also gooood, BUT: it’s bloody crowded, and there are looong lines (check out the photos on the site - linked above). to add to this insult, they were handing out free pastries to the line next to ours, but we were already committed… we only made it through one 10 min line, and then in rained a bit and we were the only people in the WHOLE OF THE ROCKS without unbrellas (or babies for that matter).. we decided to cut our losses and go to a real cafe. next year: having a coffee before we go, and, ummm, going with my patient brain?

A weekend in Sydney; Japanese and beer

spent the first of what will be many weekends in Sydney, now that Tom is back down there, but I am still up here!

sooo.. we ate. lunch: twice at Tokyo Ramen in Hornsby (their website is in Nihon-go, which I took - and failed! - at uni last year, so obviously I can’t translate for you!) Tokyo Ramen do awesome ramen. yep. also katsu don, gyoza and other tasty tasty things. it’s long and narrow, and always busy. everything comes out quick-as, and I just love it.

we also went to Redoak Beer Cafe on Clarence Street for dinner (ok. beer) for Tom’s birthday. I ate the Twice Cooked Duck on Sesame Noodles, Tom had Redoaks Spice Cured Ocean Trout, Bob ordered Brick Pastry Wrapped Jewfish (what’s brick pastry? well, it came with a little 5cmx5cm cube/brick of pastry on top. maybe that’s what brick pastry is?) anyway, there were 15 of us, so I won’t go any further with the descriptions, and the photos aren’t swell either, but I can recommend it as a social venue..

although there was an Australia v England cricket game on, and even though the restaurant section was less then 1/2 full all night, they put us right at the front, which is pretty much next to the bar. it was friday night, there was loud ‘bar music’, and cheering Britons to shout over. the back of the eating section was much much quieter, and empty when we arrived and for the rest of the night, so that would be the only complaint - plus, we would have been able to sit at a long table, rather then be split onto two.. but, enough quibbling, because: BEER! they brew! they know their stuff! it’s yummy and fun, and I love that the staff make sure you have a huge water glass, which they constantly re-fill. that is such a good policy.

then, more Japanese. Bob organised dinner at Sushi Samurai in Neutral Bay (who also seem to have ventures in Pyrmont and Darlinghurst - on business card, couldnt find a website). Bob has unbelieveable taste, and Sushi Samurai rocked. the set meals are sooo very worth getting, 6 of us ate far too much food, ordering both sets and assorted entrees and mains, and ended up being approx $25 pp! Bob’s tofu/seeweed salad, Ben’s pork belly, Andy’s sushimi salad.. ok, I’ll just say it was all great, otherwise I’m going to just list everything, and this post will be way too long. HIGHLY RECCOMMEND! and the staff are sooo cute and friendly - upon entering and exiting, you get a chorus of “Irashimase! Welcome!” and “Arigato gozaimasu! thank you very much!” from every staff member in sight.

oh. and the ice-cream (your choice of lychee, green tea or black sesame, all good) comes with Savoy Cake (dense sponge roll sort of thing) and nestled on a bed of…. cornflakes. which really works. hello, next dinner party trick!
YUM! I’m can’t wait to go back to Sydney to eat see Tom! xxx