Duck is something I have only ever cooked once before, and not overly successfully when I did. I decided to tackle duck again when the poultry (including duck) theme was listed. After eating a duck dish at a restaurant in Rotorua on the weekend, I was convinced that I must be able to do a better job than they did! (They did not really do a very good job of their duck dish, so it wasn't that difficult of a target really.)
I had a look on the very useful internet, and found this tasty sounding recipe for Duck with Pears
When I went to the vege store to pick up some green veges, I was appalled at the price of broccoli - $3.50-$4.00 for one head of broccoli! What has happened in the last couple of weeks? I am sure it was bout $2 when I last bought it! This exorbitant price left me with a bit of a dilemma as to what veg to serve with the duck. After another look on the internet, I found this recipe for Peas & Spring cabbage with Pancetta.
As cabbage was one of the few reasonably priced green veges, I decided to try it.
It was really tasty, and we will have it again I am sure.
So, the final dish, served with mashed 
potatoes:
The duck was a bit overcooked, but even so, was still tender and very tasty.
The pears and sauce were good too, and the veges went really well as part of the dish.
4/5 from me - will try to leave the duck a bit pinker next time... if I can bring myself to cook duck again, having seen the crazy amount of fat that comes out of it - still, I suppose the fat is better out of it than in!
On a completely unrelated note - for any of you who do not follow Kyla's (normally inactive) blog, check it out. She is updating it while she is on holiday in Japan.
As I mentioned in the previous post, this weeks challenge theme was chosen by someone in Christchurch, finding that cooking after the earthquake posed new challenges in itself.
I chose to cook a recipe that Jill cooked for us a couple of weeks ago, called Chicken and Coconut Quinoa.
This is where she found the recipe.
It is a really nice dish, and at the end I 
added broccoli, cauliflower, beans and sugar snap peas to make it a truly all in one dish.
It was very tasty, although a bit of heat would have been nice. I only had smoked chipotle chillies rather than the chipotle in adobo that the recipe called for. I will try sourcing the correct chillies for another time.
Verdict: 4.5/5 - will definitely do this again as it is easy, tasty and everyone liked it!
Well, Kyla went to the Auckland Champs for cross country, back at Woodhill Sands. This time though, the course was shorter at 2.5km instead of 3.5km that the Kaipara and Norwest races were. It was a very fast race, and Kyla did amazingly well, finishing 19th out of 127 in her race! We are hugely impressed by her ability and stamina!
Food Challenges - Week 27 & 28
The challenge for week 27 was to use rice - 
either a variety we hadn't used before, or in a way we hadn't tried before. I had some cooked rice in the freezer, and found a recipe in the Australian Women's Weekly Rice Cookbook, that used the rice and rice flour in a kind of pancake. This was then placed over an ovenproof dish, and baked until crisp.
In these rice pancake bowls, we had a vege stirfry topped with pork fillet marinated in soy, honey, garlic and ginger. It was very tasty, and everyone enjoyed it. Score 3.5/5.
Week 28's challenge was to use Browned Butter.
I have never tried to use browned butter before, but saw Raymond Blanc cooking fish in browned butter, and then using the remaining butter in the pan to make a light sauce. So, that is what I tried to replicate.
I bought Gurnard, and cooked it in the browned butter, then removed it to make the sauce. I finely chopped shallots, and then added lemon juice, parsley and a little water to make the sauce. Salt and Pepper and the sauce was ready. We had the fish with homemade oven chips and a pea puree - basically fish, chips and mushy peas!
I would give this a score of 4.5/5
It was really tasty, and didn't taste overly rich considering the fish was cooked in butter and the sauce had butter too. The browning of the butter definitely gives it a very nice taste.
Next weeks challenge has been posted by "Cantabcook" who lives in Christchurch. She has decided that "One pot/pan meal" is the challenge - particularly relevant to a lot of people down there at the moment who are trying to minimise dishes!
After a couple of fairly slack weeks, I have completed another challenge.
This week I used fish - gurnard was available at a reasonable price, and looked fresh so that was the fishing done.
I smeared a paste of basil, coriander and chilli onto the fish, and wrapped it in rice paper rounds that were soaked in water to soften them. These rolls were then fried in a little oil, until the fish was cooked, and the rice paper lightly golden.
We had these served on stir fried greens (cabbage, broccoli and bok choy) and drizzled with a sauce made of sherry, soy sauce, ginger and sugar simmered together until thick.
The meal was extremely tasty, and low fat as it turned out! The kids loved it, and asked for more - so I think this meal gets a 5/5 from us. Even better, the whole meal cost about $20 to serve the 5 of us.
For dessert, I made a recipe that I fist made several years ago, and then forgot about. It is called apple couscous pudding. Apple juice, raisins and cinnamon are brought to the boil, and couscous is then added. This mixture is layered with sliced apples, and finished with more sliced apple, and sprinkled with a little raw sugar. The pudding is then baked until browned. It was really tasty - alas no photo of this one. The kids loved this too, and again it is a very cheap dish - total cost about $5 for the whole dish!
So, an economical and well liked dinner. A win-win situation I think.
I have been having a bit of a bagel making session today, after making a batch of 12 yesterday that the kids practically demolished, leaving only 2 in the freezer for school lunches.
Bagels are very expensive to buy, at around $4 for 4 bagels, but very cheap to make as I worked out yesterday. The cinnamon and raisin bagels work out to about $2 for 12 regular or 16 smaller bagels, and the plain ones at around $1.50 for the same quantity. So they are well worth making if you like to eat them.
I made three slightly different batches today. One plain, one cinnamon and raisin, and one wholemeal cinnamon and raisin.The dough for the cinnamon and raisin batch was made in the breadmaker, and the other 2 batches were done in the Kitchen Aid mixer. Both machines coped fine with what is really a fairly stiff bread dough.
Here are the bagels shaped, and waiting to be boiled.On the left and half of the back tray are the plain bagels, with the cinnamon and raisin at the front, and the wholemeal cinnamon and raisin variety on half of the middle and back trays. I made 16 of each - they are slightly smaller than bought ones. A batch of 12 gives a bagel more the size of a typical bought one.
After the bagels rise for around 15 mins, 
they are dropped into a pot of boiling water with a tablespoon of molasses added to it. They are only boiled for around 30 seconds on each side. They puff up a bit during this stage, and look sort of lumpy when you take them out.
This is what they look like after boiling, ready to go into the oven.And the final product:
Back left is the wholemeal cinnamon and raisin, Back right is the regular cinnamon and raisin, and the Plain Bagels at the front.
Needless to say, the kids were very pleased to see them when they arrived home from school. We gave a lot of the plain ones to Sandra and the kids for their lunches, and Jordan,Zach and Jayna were all very impressed and happy to try one straight away.
Having never been a cross country runner myself, I am continually amazed that all 3 of our kids manage to perform very well in this sport.
This year has been no different.
Last term, Lauren's syndicate at school had their cross country, and Lauren placed a very impressive 2nd place in the year 4 girls race. A great effort.
Earlier this term, Kyla and Braden's syndicates had their cross country races. Braden placed 2nd in his, and Kyla 3rd in hers. We were very impressed!Last Monday saw the Kaipara Schools Cross Country being held at Woodhill Sands. This is an event which has about 8 schools participating. Both Kyla and Braden went to this, and did well there too. Braden placed 5th, and Kyla 4th.
Thursday last week was the Norwest Cross Country, involving schools from Kaukapaka down to Swanson and Massey - around 22 schools this time.
Braden placed 11th in his race, and Kyla an impressive 2nd place!!!
We were very proud of them both,
and look forward to seeing how Kyla does at the Auckland Champs on 2nd September.
Week 18 - Polenta or mussels
As nobody in our family likes mussels, the choice for this week was limited somewhat. For the polenta, I decided that having made soft polenta and set polenta on a couple of occasions, I could not really do either again.
I really ended up running out of time a bit on this one, so in the end made an Orange syrup Polenta cake. I was a bit disappointed with it, as I was hoping for a reasonably dense moist cake, and it was really a bit too spongy and dry for what I wanted.
Verdict 2.5/5
I wouldn't bother with that recipe again, but will try to find one that is more to my liking sometime.
Week 19 - Potatoes or Kumara
This was my week to choose the ingredients. I chose potato because I thought it would be fun to try making gnocchi. I did try making it once, about 15 years ago, and it was dense, doughy and stodgy. In other words a dismal failure.
This time, I made sure I kept the potato very dry by cooking them in their skins in the microwave. I then peeled them, and used the potato ricer to mash them. Then it was time to add the salt and knead the flour in. The dough still felt very light, but given my previous experience I was hoping this was a good thing.
The dough was rolled into long ropes about 1cm thick, then chopped into 2cm pieces. The recipe said to drop them in boiling water, and that they are cooked when they rise to the top. This only took about 2-3 minutes.
We had the gnocchi with a sauce made from fresh Italian style sausages which I took out of their casings, and browned with onion and garlic before simmering with tinned tomatoes. A bit of parmesan cheese on top, and dinner was ready.
The verdict? 3.5/5 from me
4.5/5 from Daryl
The gnocchi was light, not doughy but seemed to me to be lacking in texture. This may be right however as smooth potato mixed with flour is never going to have a lot of texture, I suppose. The sauce was great, and I will definitely do that again.
One recipe for gnocchi that I saw added parmesan cheese to the dough. I would like to try that some time as the flavour would be good. The gnocchi really didn't taste like much... but then I suppose that is reasonable given the ingredients.
All in all, not a dismal failure like my first effort 15 years ago, so maybe I have learnt something!
potatoes:
