We’re taking a light sabbatical

I’m just taking a light sabbatical while I do some writing elsewhere. This blog should be back in the **very** near future.

Mussels in Wellington

I recently had a chance to visit Wellington, which is the capital of New Zealand. It was warm (almost too warm!) and the Windy City failed to live up to its namesake – which was good for me.

My favourite thing visiting different cities though is catching up with old friends over hot food. This time around they suggested Leuven’s which is a Belgian Beer Cafe on Featherston Street. The place was easy enough to find and full of the after work crowd coming in to cool off with a beer. Speaking of beers Leuven’s sports a vary impressive range of Belgian beers. Unfortunately I didn’t get to sample it but if I get a chance to come back I certainly will!

For our main course, one of my friends and I shared a 1 kg pot of green lipped NZ mussels. That’s right 1 kg! It arrived in a small pot of its own! I love these mussels… fat and juicy, they were sweet flavour and just a hint of the sea that complements the lot. These were steamed in a saffron, garlic aioli and tomato sauce. To be honest, although the mussels were a real treat, I felt that the sauce really did not add much to the flavour. They could have just steamed it with water and a little salt and it would have been very similar.

But no matter! These empty shells show you how much we enjoyed it!

While that was certainly a substantial amount of mussels to go through, being a guy I wanted to have a little more to top the meal off. We ordered a pastei van kip met eend, a farmhouse chicken and duck pie. After the mussels, the pie made a refreshing change with the savoury flavours of the two birds.

Overall the meal was good. The company, of course, made it more so. The environment was relaxed and most of the patrons were busy making their way through Leuven’s stock of beer. Like I said, I didn’t get to try any but a hearty beer would have perfectly accompanied this meal. The pricing was a little on the high side and is about what you would expect from a boutique restaurant.

Hunger satiated, I faced a lone walk uphill to my accommodation as my friends headed off to the Nitro Circus playing at the Westpac stadium. On the way up all I could think of was “I wonder if I could fit in another kilo of mussels”. This time with the blue cheese.

Leuven Belgian Beer Cafe is located at 135-137 Featherston Street in Wellington.

Leftover chicken sandwich

Far from being a lazy Sunday I had to go into work today. So to motivate myself up after church and before I went into work, I wanted to have something quick but yummy for lunch. I had some leftover chicken from a potluck last week so I thought I would whip up a simple sandwich.

Let me tell you, there may be people out there who condemn bread for its carbs but there is nothing more delicious than freshly baked bread. I got a baguette from the local supermarket and my mouth was just watering from that delicious smell promising of butter and sweetness.

The filling was simple: shredded chicken and topped with some cheese. I stuck the whole sandwich in the oven on grill for about a minute to get the cheese all warm and melty (and burnt it slightly).

I then added some fresh vegetables, some barbecue sauce and mayonnaise and freshly ground pepper. The combination was just fantastic. The trick is to always use fresh bread. Nothing beats it! It only took me about 15 minutes to assemble and totally filled up for the day.

Anyway hope you all had a great Sunday!

Edit: BTW if you click on the post title you can totally see the new changes from the theme!

You may have noticed a bit of a change in layout. It’s all part of a new look I’m trying out! Look out for some new headers over the next few days.

I’ve been thinking about where I want this blog to go this year. If you’re a blogger you’ll understand how hard it can be to maintain a regular writing schedule. This multiplies when you try to make a blog about cooking and food because then you need to take pictures, edit them and remember all the ingredients and steps you took to get there.

I’ve been wanting to expand this blog a little more. Stretch out its horizons a bit. The reason I started this blog was to inspire myself to try different cooking styles and different recipes, as well as being a log of what I’ve done so far. Hopefully this can also inspire you dear readers to try something new as well!

So here’s what I’ll try to do:

• Write a new post at least once a week, most likely on Sundays
• Include more pictures of yummy food
• Take better pictures of said food
• Describe what I’m eating and cooking a bit more than just “oh it’s delicious” or “that’s well garnished”

If nothing else, I’m going to do my best to have fun, stop worrying and learn to love the blog!

Simple Chicken and White Wine Spaghetti

Don’t you love long summer evenings, warm breezes and balmy nights (sorry to those on the other side of the world!). For some reason these days always make me feel like having wine and good food to relax. As I seem to be in a bit of an Italian phase at the moment, I thought I’d try to make a simple chicken and white wine sauce spaghetti. I haven’t cooked much with white wine before so this should be fun! I looked up a recipe on food.com but decided to wing it anyway. If you want to cook along, this is what you will need:

• 700g chicken thighs, deboned and deskinned.
• About 5 cloves of garlic, diced
• 1 onion, coarsely chopped
  
• Parsley, dried or freshly chopped
• 2 bay leaves
• Mixed herbs: Marjoram, thyme and sage
• 1 cup white wine, I used a Sauvignon Blanc
• 2 tins of chopped tomatoes
• White mushrooms, sliced
• Salt, sugar and pepper to taste

You can experiment a bit with the herbs and the quantity. I personally don’t like it when the herbs are too strong and overpower everything so I’d err on the side of caution. The best thing is to keep tasting as you go and stop when you’re happy.

The method is really simple. First fry up the garlic and onion in a saucepan. When the onions start to go translucent, chuck in the herbs and chicken, and brown it on all sides. Then add the glass of wine in and let the sauce boil for a bit.

Add the tinned tomatoes and once it starts to boil, turn the heat down and let it simmer until thick. You can actually see when the sauce starts to thicken. It starts of a little pale but starts to go all lovely and red as it gets thicker.

Season it well according to taste and serve on a spaghetti. To jazz it up a bit, add some garlic bread and serve it with the remainder of the wine. This is the perfect way to spend a Sunday evening!

Wordless Wednesday: Breakfast

 

See more Wordless Wednesday posts at http://www.wordlesswednesday.com/newhome/