tagliatelle with walnut-basil pesto

I have finally transfered a bunch of photos from tom’s computer/camera to my laptop, so I can fill in some puku blanks.

Here is the walnut pesto I alluded to when I posted my almost perfect walnut cracking, complete with homemade tagliatelle! This was my second round with the pasta roller I got for my birthday (thanks Rob!!) and I’m really enjoying the process (in fact, there is a big ABCD ravioli-off post coming soon!).

For the pasta I think I followed Jamie Oliver’s recipe. The pesto was simply a bunch of walnuts, a handful of basil and a grating of parmigiana, blitzed in the food processor with a bit of seasoning and some olive oil and zest/a squeeze of lemon, and I tossed it all together with some pan-fried mushies and brocolli and a few handfuls of rocket. simple! I really like walnuts, especially in something like this for a change - a bit more bitter/earthy than a pinenut or cashew.

Shout outs to Alex, who was staying with us when I made this - Hi! it was great seeing you and having a week of vege-love and pretentious yoga on the beach!

cracking the nut

I was cracking the last of my bag of Bright walnuts for a pesto the other day, and as anyone who has cracked a pile of nuts before knows, it can get a bit meditative. I like to start trying to crack my walnuts so to leave the nutmeat whole, which believe me, is delicate work! Well, as delicate as possible with a hammer and a bloody hard shell to remove. It is pretty rare to get them out, so here is evidence of a (mostly) successful attempt!

In the spirit of disclosure, I have put the missing lobe section at the front, I hope that wasn’t the lobe responsible for deliciousness!

The pesto and accompanied handmade pappardelle coming soon! (when Tom downloads the pix from the Nikon)

Happy bloggiversary, Puku

Well, the puku has turned one year old. My first proper food post was a year ago this week, and was about the spiced oil I’d made as xmas presents. What fun!

I’ve been less frequent with the postings than I’d like, been involved in less foodblog events than I’d like (every month I look at Is My Blog Burning and think of all the interesting events I want to be part of, and then… do nothing), and actually not even cooked as much as I’d like (moving states, surgery etc), but I’ve had some fun, some great conversations, been warmly welcomed by the foodblogging community whenever I do get my ass into gear and get involved, and been inspired to do plenty more.

I love that in WordPress you can check the site stats, including referrers and search engine terms that have lead people to your site. It’s quite addictive. I tend to get several visits a day from people searching for ‘puku’, ‘papaya’, ‘risotto’, ‘mashed potato’ - even a ‘why eat fresh mashed potato’ the other day (which had me wondering why anyone would prefer eating off/rotting mashed potato until I remembered powdered instant mash existed in some revolting alternate world), and ’snow pea/fetta/avocado salad’ which leads to my highest hitting post to date.

Every day or two there are ‘dragonfruit’, ‘fruit salad’ ‘coffee’, ‘lentil soup’, ‘kedgeree’ and a growing variety of ’smoked’ searches. Then there are the totally weird ones - lately; ‘Pizza’ - I’m pretty sure I don’t have any pizza posts on the puku, ‘Fiji hospital’, ‘poor hospital’ (WTF?), 2 searches for ‘insipid food’ and on Friday alone ’sachet food’, gross food’, ‘awful food’ and 2 searches for ‘eating gross food contest’!! ummm… is Google trying to tell me something?!

On the other hand, in the past couple of days there has also been a ‘love’ and a ‘pleasurable eating’, so I can only hope, dear reader, that this is what you have found here.

Aroha nui, ka kite ano, bring on 2008!

xxx z

a peck of pickled peppers (ok, smoked actually)

Tom and I decided (ahem, and our bank balances strongly suggested) more homemade xmas presents this year. Roddi gave us an idea with his mention of chipotles during our smoker craze (admittedly, ongoing)… so we thought we’d have a go at smoking our own chillis.

Traditional chipotles take several days to slow cold smoke and basically dry out, but we couldn’t be bothered spending 48 hours straight attending to and refueling our small smoker every 20 minutes. Instead we simply hot-smoked a selection of mixed chillis and capsicum-y things (banana caps, long green chilli, long red chilli and birds eye chilli), and jarred them up prettily in olive oil.

The finished product was distributed to Sydney friends and family, unfortunately the Ikea rubber-sealed jars we used were not as tightly sealing as one might like, but hopefully the contents is ok!

Interestingly, we left a couple of the un-jarred smoked chillis in the fridge and they are still sitting there in a ziplock bag, looking quite unblemished (about 3 weeks now).. so the smoking process does quite a bit of preserving.

We kind of made it up as we went, so no recipe for this, but roughly; hot smoke chillis for 20-30 mins, squash into sterilised jars, cover in olive oil (add garlic cloves, herbs if desired). Easy!

someone was spoilt rotten this xmas…

it was me!

processed to date:

xmas day handmade lime mayonnaise, xmas day finely sliced fennel, celery & toasted almond salad, boxing day hummus, more hummus, oliebollen (NYE/birthday doughnuts) holiday mushroom pate, more hummus(!), carrots grated in seconds, thai beef salad dressing…

I love processing stuff! thanks Tom! (I love Tom!) xxx

GRAINWAVES - a food puzzle resolved

the mysteriously textured foodthing in the previous post was correctly identified by Ves as a Grain Wave. She even guessed correct with Sour Cream and Chives flavour! But she also had a Kiwi advantage…

as Grain Waves are a beloved kiwi snack - well, beloved by me, and Vesli, at least!

They are super crunchy, thick waves of grainy crispy goodness, and are pretty irresistible.. for those not in NZ, if you are traveling to Aotearoa/NZ any time soon, I highly recommend doing so, and making your way straight from the airport to the nearest Dairy (=cornershop), Foodtown or Pak’N'Save and grabbing yourself a bag.

or…. you can buy them online! woot! AND apparently, you can buy them in Sydney!!

and just because the Bluebird advertising theme has been buzzing around in my head the whole time I’ve been writing this post, here it is for you to enjoy too:

the ad on youtube (I can’t seem to embed it, such a noob!)

a food puzzle

dear puku readers,

as we plunge headfirst into the holiday (and birthday!*) season, the foodblogs around the blogosphere are full of cookies, mince tarts, the Northern hemisphere’s ubiquitous turkeys, stuffing, revolting canned(!) pumpkin pie and sweet potatoes with marshmallows(!) and the Southern hemisphere’s altogether more appetising prawns and seafood, lush salads, cold hams and turkeys (ok, we are preparing stuffing too), berries, stone fruit, mangoes and melons (soaked in bubbly, of course!).

here at the puku, we are a little bare on holiday trappings so far.. my apologies. I will blog some seasonal food things, but I am a bit behind the ball, and seasonal eating is only really beginning today for us, although I ate my first mango of the season on Friday, so that’s a start, right?

in the meantime, and as a distraction perhaps, I am posting a photo of a mystery foodthing**. I will update with the full story soon.

any guesses?

MERRY CHRISTMAS, SEASONS GREETINGS & CHEERS, XXX Z
* mine!  ** I do know what it is 

we’ve started smoking…

and boy is it good.

as you can imagine, I have not been on my feet very much post-surgery, and therefor not really doing any cooking. Tom bought a smoker on one of his recent field trips, and we (that’s the royal we - it was really all Tom + YLD&YLM) finally broke it out the other weekend, smoking a trout and some mackerel steaks. it works unbelievably quickly and well, and is absolutely delicious, we had smoked trout dip, and makerel with wedges and salad.

we’ve had another go on the weekend, and next I will upload the pics of what we did with the leftovers this time….

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.