Wednesday 30 January 2008
The conference wound up with a grand bang-up dinner out at Riccarton House (one of the old estates, complete with a couple of acres of "bush" intact.
This was pretty impressive catering for 160 or so people. So two nicely chosen starters: Akaroa salmon with a little sweet fennel and a blue swimmer crab cake with apricots and walnuts (two new fish species, if not genera). The mains were lamb rump with port wine and what they called a "traditional coq au vin." It wasn't, but fine for all that. It, too, seemed to be in a port wine sauce (concentrated and a little sweet0, with Portobello mushrooms and little criminis. Nuts seemed to be a running theme, so the desert was a berry salad with pecans and vanilla cotton candy ("candy floss"): pretty and silly but it detracted from the taste. People kept buying us bottles of wine, so we found a Crawford Farm Pinot Noir. The pinots in these parts tend more to soft fruit. They're simpler than Oregon and lack that California austerity. We like 'em.
Thursday, January 31, 2008
Indochine
Tuesday 29 January
Retro-Shanghai chic, says the guide book and so it was. Red and black lacquer dominate, and the food is sort of retro-chic, too. Nice takes on classic dim sum. So wheat-starch dumplings filled with "glass shrimp" (our New Fish of the Day), with a chili paste dipping sauce; and barbequed beef wontons: large crispy shells (needing knife and fork to attack) packed with a tender pulled beef with a hint of star anise.
We split a fine breast of Peking duck served over Chinese pickled vedge and scallops. A lovely Mount Cass Chardonnay left us ready for a brilliant performance of Euripides' Cyclops. Hail Bacchus!
Retro-Shanghai chic, says the guide book and so it was. Red and black lacquer dominate, and the food is sort of retro-chic, too. Nice takes on classic dim sum. So wheat-starch dumplings filled with "glass shrimp" (our New Fish of the Day), with a chili paste dipping sauce; and barbequed beef wontons: large crispy shells (needing knife and fork to attack) packed with a tender pulled beef with a hint of star anise.
We split a fine breast of Peking duck served over Chinese pickled vedge and scallops. A lovely Mount Cass Chardonnay left us ready for a brilliant performance of Euripides' Cyclops. Hail Bacchus!
Cook 'n' with Gas
Monday 28 January
Despite the name (Capt. Cook, get it?), a brilliant restaurant, with one of the more pleasant and sophisticated meals we've had in some time.
The starters were
Rabbit consommé: a rabbit loin, boned out, lined with kale (?) leaves, and filled with a tomato-rich force meat. Two slices of this at the bottom of a beautiful soup bowl with a burgundy and gold leaf pattern, scattered with thin slivers of red pepper, tomatoes, and sun-dried tomatoes (sensing a theme here?). Over this the waiter poured a perfect consommé (which the Dept. of Redundancy Dept. always serves all the time). Concentrated flavors, salty, but not overwhelming. The broth released the pop of tomato in the little rabbit rolls. Bold and delicate at once.
The other was a smoked venison salad, over a butternut (lettuce, not squash) and pickled walnut salad, also jam-packed with flavors that all seemed as if they would compete for attention and all of which worked harmoniously together.
The mains were a Canterbury duck (a famed local product), with green olives. We looked for the olives, expecting them to be tossed about, but instead they were nestled in a little packet of green leaves, along with a nugget of confit duck leg. All over an amazing turmeric spice cauliflower coucous (they had crumbled the outer bits of cauliflower, which look like couscous anyways, and cooked them all together). Plus a dab of pureed kumara (the Maori sweet potato).
The lamb (of course) was three perfect chops, their ribs leaning against a column of mashed potatoes topped with a goaty goat cheese (which they called a galette for some reason), with three other noisettes of lamb in between, glazed with tamarind. Nice thymy mushrooms and a minted pea salad.
A Whitehaven chardonnay (Waipara, the local region) refreshed us all.
Despite the name (Capt. Cook, get it?), a brilliant restaurant, with one of the more pleasant and sophisticated meals we've had in some time.
The starters were
Rabbit consommé: a rabbit loin, boned out, lined with kale (?) leaves, and filled with a tomato-rich force meat. Two slices of this at the bottom of a beautiful soup bowl with a burgundy and gold leaf pattern, scattered with thin slivers of red pepper, tomatoes, and sun-dried tomatoes (sensing a theme here?). Over this the waiter poured a perfect consommé (which the Dept. of Redundancy Dept. always serves all the time). Concentrated flavors, salty, but not overwhelming. The broth released the pop of tomato in the little rabbit rolls. Bold and delicate at once.
The other was a smoked venison salad, over a butternut (lettuce, not squash) and pickled walnut salad, also jam-packed with flavors that all seemed as if they would compete for attention and all of which worked harmoniously together.
The mains were a Canterbury duck (a famed local product), with green olives. We looked for the olives, expecting them to be tossed about, but instead they were nestled in a little packet of green leaves, along with a nugget of confit duck leg. All over an amazing turmeric spice cauliflower coucous (they had crumbled the outer bits of cauliflower, which look like couscous anyways, and cooked them all together). Plus a dab of pureed kumara (the Maori sweet potato).
The lamb (of course) was three perfect chops, their ribs leaning against a column of mashed potatoes topped with a goaty goat cheese (which they called a galette for some reason), with three other noisettes of lamb in between, glazed with tamarind. Nice thymy mushrooms and a minted pea salad.
A Whitehaven chardonnay (Waipara, the local region) refreshed us all.
Curator's House and Sticky Fingers
27 January 2008
A trip to the Canterbury Museum and stroll in the stunningly beautiful Botanical Gardens ended up at the very pleasant Curator's House. We sat outside looking out to the grand trees and nibbled on tapas: a fine feast of slightly spicy tentacles, then garlic prawns. These were vasty denizens of the vasty deep swimming (as it were) in olive oil flavored with tomato and handfuls of coarsely chopped garlic so nutty in taste and texture that at first we mistook them for pignoli. Finally, smoked salmon, thin, tender, with cucumbers, and a piece of pantomate (the Spanish form of bruschetta) that was used to sop up as much of the prawn oil as possible. All washed down with a glass of Wild South sauvignon blanc. A beautiful and pastoral meal. (We're going back for dinner.)
That night was the opening reception for the classics convention that we came to New Zealand to attend (!). The kiwi way, we were told, is drinks first (bubbly and more nice whites), nor were our hosts stingy therewith. An hour later some nice mid-east munchies circulated (phyllo cigars and the like) but not enough to absorb all that wine, so we headed out for a quick bite afterwards at Sticky Fingers: a comfy booth, and a Aquarian pizza—lots of prawns and fishy bits, on a good, crisp (but not too crisp) dough. Just the right size to fill in the gaps. We traded sips of Trinity Hills Chard and Chard Farms Chard (not a stutter).
Our Anniversary
Saturday 26 January 2008
Christchurch is filled with hikers, hippies (old and new), and street artists. They all eat at Dux de Lux. This was lunch, but exceptions must be made on vacation. A rollicking kind of place. Order at the bar, food in the courtyard. Eating outside in the sun in January. We laugh and say "Ha, ha!" We may not be able to attain our goal of having something we've never heard of before everyday, but we did have a lovely fish called, if I'm reading the nice waitress's handwriting correct, tarakihi.
Thick, white, meaty (that's the fish). In a lime mayo coated with bread crumbs and baked. Lots of little salads, particularly fine example of the potato variety. Topped off with a very tasty Hereford ale (local brew, with pacific hops).
Our dinner, I'm afraid, was only OK. Palazzo di Marinaio was touted by the same local magazine that had liked Hay's, but the P. di M. turned out to be the sort of old-fashioned Italian joint that might have been in any Midwest American town (Cincinnati, for example).
So a nice enough NZ bubbly, Deutz, to start with. The highlight was the opener: a dozen Pacific oysters, deep shells. A slightly musky taste, more complex than the usual shot-of-brine of their Atlantic cousins.
Then we had a frutti di mare, which turned out to more a sea-food platter with giant prawns and scallops (ho-hum) and our new Fish of the Day, the Gurnard: an imposingly ugly little bastard, triangular in cross-section, prehistoric in appearance, and pleasant in taste. It seems to be the fish of choice for fush 'n' chups.
Christchurch is filled with hikers, hippies (old and new), and street artists. They all eat at Dux de Lux. This was lunch, but exceptions must be made on vacation. A rollicking kind of place. Order at the bar, food in the courtyard. Eating outside in the sun in January. We laugh and say "Ha, ha!" We may not be able to attain our goal of having something we've never heard of before everyday, but we did have a lovely fish called, if I'm reading the nice waitress's handwriting correct, tarakihi.
Thick, white, meaty (that's the fish). In a lime mayo coated with bread crumbs and baked. Lots of little salads, particularly fine example of the potato variety. Topped off with a very tasty Hereford ale (local brew, with pacific hops).Our dinner, I'm afraid, was only OK. Palazzo di Marinaio was touted by the same local magazine that had liked Hay's, but the P. di M. turned out to be the sort of old-fashioned Italian joint that might have been in any Midwest American town (Cincinnati, for example).
So a nice enough NZ bubbly, Deutz, to start with. The highlight was the opener: a dozen Pacific oysters, deep shells. A slightly musky taste, more complex than the usual shot-of-brine of their Atlantic cousins.
Then we had a frutti di mare, which turned out to more a sea-food platter with giant prawns and scallops (ho-hum) and our new Fish of the Day, the Gurnard: an imposingly ugly little bastard, triangular in cross-section, prehistoric in appearance, and pleasant in taste. It seems to be the fish of choice for fush 'n' chups.
Lamb, lamb, lamb
Friday 25 January
New Zealand.
4.2 million people.
39.3 million sheep.
You do the math.
We arrived in Christchurch. Our bags did not. After a nice day wandering around, seeing pleasant river banks and buying underwear, we went to Hay's, a restaurant attached to a sheep farm (not physically). This is real locavore stuff, even if we came half-way round the world to be loca-. They serve lamb. Lotsa lamb. Canterbury lamb (DOC). Good lamb.
For openers (or what they call here "entrées") we had the NZ green-lipped mussels in a light tomato broth with chorizo. Good but sort of standard. Very good indeed were the little tortellini stuffed with goat curds (a goat's milk ricotta or the like) in a rich brown creamy sauce accented with toasted pine nuts. This went well with Te Awa (Hawkes Bay) Merlot 2004. We're not fans of merlot, generally speaking, but this had well-structured tannins and fruit, without that fructose bomb that many California merlots tend to detonate.
We had two specials: grilled lamb in a "Roman" sauce: dates (for sweet), anchovies (for salt), and mint (which we normally think fights with lamb, at least in the form of mint jelly [yuck]), all very subtle, then little bursts of olives, and fried mint along with fried sage. They served the slices of lamb with a butter knife (show-offs!).
The other was milk-fed lamb shoulder, braised till it fell apart, with a spice mixture called "ras al honout", a little pocket of roasted eggplant (aubergine to you; no, wait, other way round), on a bed of very creamy mashed garlic potatoes with a little basil and olives.
We had the last of the wine for dessert, though we did see pretty wine glasses of ice cream sailing by.
New Zealand.
4.2 million people.
39.3 million sheep.
You do the math.
We arrived in Christchurch. Our bags did not. After a nice day wandering around, seeing pleasant river banks and buying underwear, we went to Hay's, a restaurant attached to a sheep farm (not physically). This is real locavore stuff, even if we came half-way round the world to be loca-. They serve lamb. Lotsa lamb. Canterbury lamb (DOC). Good lamb.
For openers (or what they call here "entrées") we had the NZ green-lipped mussels in a light tomato broth with chorizo. Good but sort of standard. Very good indeed were the little tortellini stuffed with goat curds (a goat's milk ricotta or the like) in a rich brown creamy sauce accented with toasted pine nuts. This went well with Te Awa (Hawkes Bay) Merlot 2004. We're not fans of merlot, generally speaking, but this had well-structured tannins and fruit, without that fructose bomb that many California merlots tend to detonate.
We had two specials: grilled lamb in a "Roman" sauce: dates (for sweet), anchovies (for salt), and mint (which we normally think fights with lamb, at least in the form of mint jelly [yuck]), all very subtle, then little bursts of olives, and fried mint along with fried sage. They served the slices of lamb with a butter knife (show-offs!).
The other was milk-fed lamb shoulder, braised till it fell apart, with a spice mixture called "ras al honout", a little pocket of roasted eggplant (aubergine to you; no, wait, other way round), on a bed of very creamy mashed garlic potatoes with a little basil and olives.
We had the last of the wine for dessert, though we did see pretty wine glasses of ice cream sailing by.
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