Potato Salad with Cactus Nopalitos

With the addition of some tender cactus nopalitos, citrus chilli salt and chopped coriander  I have just turned a plain old potato salad into a tasty dish which would not go amiss as part of a Mexican themed barbecue.

There's just enough left of the summery weather to plan one.

To make it

• I chopped two boiled waxy potatoes ( skins left on)  and  2 hardboiled eggs , sliced 1-2 spring onions ( white part only) and put these into a salad bowl.
• I rinsed and chopped some La Costena Tender Cactus Nopalitos  and added .
• I stirred  some Tio Pablo Citrus Chill Salt and a clove of smashed garlic into 3 tablespoons of  fruity olive oil. Then added 1 tablespoon of white wine vinegar.
• I tossed this dressing lightly through the salad.  
• And added plenty of chopped coriander.

The only change I might make next time is to use 1/2 chopped red onion instead of the spring onions to add a little more crunch.

Cottage Cheese with Tender Cactus Nopalitos

It could be my European heritage but I have always liked cottage cheese enlivened with little cubes of chopped gherkins served with crackers.

But when I  tried substituting the gherkins with some cubed  La Costena Tender Cactus Nopalitis recently I was won over. They are similar in texture but not quite so sharp. La Costena has preserved them in vinegar and added  a very subtle flavouring of coriander and serrano pepper.

Nopalitos are the pads of the cactus pear (also known as the prickly pear) Mexican cooks will often add them to scrambled eggs or as part of a taco filling.When you first lift these out of the jar they look like gummy snakes and are somewhat slimy so they do need to be rinsed before using.

Cuitlacoche : Not For the Faint Hearted

A can of La Costena Cuitlacoche:  full of a brown, slimy fungus but with healthful properties so not to be wasted!

Whizzed with blueberries and seasoned with Tio Pable Citrus Chilli salt, it's starting to taste better!

The La Costena Cuitlacoche and blueberry mixture stained some Israeli couscous an arresting black!

 Mango, blueberries, coriander, olive oil and lime juice are added to complete the dish 

Cuitlacoche or  Huitlacoche is an ancient Atzec food , a fungus that grows on corn. A healthy food as it has one of the highest protein contents in the mushroom family. 

It's all to easy to be put off by this blackish brown  mush with an unpleasant earthy smell. But I had said I would try it, so I did. The taste was not at all promising, rather like slimy mushrooms.

How could I possibly turn this into a tasty dish?

I wanted to retain the dark musty colour so I whizzed 1/2  cup of  La Costena Cuitlacoche with a small punnet of blueberries to add some fruity sweetness. It needed salt. In went one of my favourite condiments: Tio Pablo Citrus Chilli Salt.

It was beginning to take shape. But I wanted a more substantial dish.

At the back of my pantry lurked some toasted Israeli couscous. The toasty flavour would be good to add, and  it would hopefully  absorb the inky blue black colour which could make it look quite astonishing .

I fried 1/2 cup of the toasted Israeli couscous in 1 tablespoon of olive oil, added 3-4 tablespoons of the Cuitlacoche and blueberry sauce  and 3/4 cup of boiling water. In about 5-7 minutes , and with an occasional stir , the liquid had been absorbed and the couscous had reached the al dente stage. It needed a little more citrus chilli salt. 

For a little more fruitiness and some contrasting colours golden cubed mango and chopped green  coriander was added as well as a few more blueberries. A dressing of a splash of olive oil and a very small squeeze of lime juice completed the dish.

Lunch was ready! And it tasted really good!

The Baron's Gingernuts

When you have children and grandchildren with food allergies and intolerances as we do you start to be on the lookout for treats that they can have. I have a very limited repertoire of suitable recipes so I was really keen to try some new glutenfree, vegan and organic treats which my friend Gill brought over for us to try.

And this is how I came to find out about the mythical Baron Hasselselhoff ,alias Clayton McErlane, Chef, Father and Crown Lynn lover who conjures up treats that will appeal to  gluten free taste buds with ' a sense of grandeur, pastiche and whimsy ' in his wholesale bakery in Takaka, Golden Bay.

Now in my experience gluten free baking can taste too sweet, too dense or too chewy. His gingernuts de luxe did not suffer from any of these .The texture was slightly crumbly but light, nicely spiced with ginger and hint of cardamom. They were reminiscent of Indian sweets but not at all cloyingly sweet .

And they are a powerhouse of gluten free and organic ingredients including rice flour, hazelnut flour , tapioca flour, rice syrup,crystalized ginger and cardamom.


At $8.50 for a pack of four they are a little too pricey to tuck one into my granddaughters' lunch boxes.But I'd be more than happy to serve a gingernut de luxe to my gluten free daughter  for afternoon tea or an after dinner treat. Or tempt her with one of the other flavours , hazelnut and orange or Mexican chocolate Snickerdoodles

And I suspect that even my partner who is not gluten free would be won over by their gluten free ginger slice topped with pistachios. But we haven't had the chance to sample that yet!

St Pat's Greens

Here's my second all green St Patrick's Day salad, both healthy and festive.

On a bed of mixed lettuce leaves mixed with a little flat parsley casually arrange some seedless green grapes, sliced avocado and rounds of Lebanese cucumber. Dress with olive oil and fresh lemon/lime juice.

For a meatless meal add some grilled fish.

And having munched on such a healthy meal we'll be drinking a wee dram of whiskey afterwards!

Healthy Greens for St Patrick's Day

Here's my take on a healthy St Patrick's Day recipe, a bowl full of healthy green vegetables and herbs.
To make it use a potato peeler to make long noodles from a large courgette and two stalks of celery and half  of a large telegraph cucumber.
Toss these in some basil pesto, thinned with a little olive oil and lemon juice.
Stir through some rocket leaves, mint and cubes of feta.
Season to taste  and enjoy!

A Kiwi Summer Dinner

We've been the happy recipients again of fresh snapper caught by my daughter Rachel and partner Rod  in the Hauraki Gulf. So for dinner tonight it was freshly caught snapper, wholemeal couscous tossed with lots of parsley and feta , tomato salad with basil,  and butter lettuce tossed with  cucumber and avocado. So good!


To cook the snapper I heated the frying pan until really hot, then sprayed it with avocado oil spray ( as avocado has a high burning point). Floured the snapper fillets with seasoned flour, then tossed them through a beaten egg and fried them on one side. Before turning I sprayed the fillets with more avocado oil. The result was fish which was tender inside but and alittle crusty on th eouter.


We have so much flat leaf parsley growing in the garden right now that I chopped a large bunch of it, added it to aome wholemeal couscous, and small cubes of feta and dressed it with lemon juice and olive oil.
The tomato salad was simply freshly harvested and sliced tomatoes  with a drizzle of balsamic vinegar.
And the lettuce salad had cucumber and avocado added.

Hot Pink Spice Saga: An Indian Culinary Travelogue with Recipes

Two of New Zealand’s best loved cooks had an amazing time in India recently and recorded their journey in Hot Pink Spice Saga: An Indian Culinary Travelogue with Recipes. It’s a great read.

Peta Mathias, in her irrepressible way, wrote the words while Julie Le Clerc took the beautiful colour photographs. 

They stopped off in four very different locations: Rajasthan, Goa, Kolkata and Darjeeling where they explored markets, palaces, temples and a tea plantation .On the way they sampled much delicious food, some created by India’s finest chefs but also tasty street food cooked with the most basic equipment. 

Wherever they went they experienced outstanding hospitality from many generous cooks who welcomed them into their kitchens and shared their recipes.

In Delhi, Peta who is known for her colourful wardrobe and jewellery was finally out-blinged at an Indian wedding by the rich ladies from a high caste Indian family. They were attired in gold lame saris, silver embroidered hot-pink dresses, and real jewels dripping everywhere.

In this mega city she was also exposed to the huge gap between the exceedingly rich and the very poor. She visited a group of displaced women living in abject poverty in a roadside encampment to see their craft project.

In Jaipur: she and Julie saw the exquisite art of block printing fabrics at first hand and indulged in some serious clothes shopping.

In Kerala they hired a jackwood boat with a coconut fibre roof for a languorous meander along the tranquil and dreamy Kerala backwaters, ate fish straight out of the ocean cooked in shacks at the wharf, and were blown away by a performance of Kathakali theatre.

But one of Kerala’s main attractions, an all over ayurvedic massage, did not appeal to Peta. On one occasion she was so well oiled that she slid off the massage table.

In Kolkata they stayed in the ‘absurdly’ grandiose Oberoi with chandeliers the size of shipping containers and black marble floors.

A stay at a Tea Estate in Darjeeling in a luxurious lodge was heaven on earth. From there, if the weather was right, at about 5 am in the morning, one could see the white peak of Kanchenjunga, the third highest mountain in the world.

They did have one horrifying ten hour train journey from Siliguri to Kolkata about which Peta does not mince her words.

“It was a “cramped, dark, cockroach ridden, overcrowded hell” she writes and she and Julie were glad to escape 10 hours later from this “ambulant cesspit.” 

But overall they had many amazing times and, remain very passionate about the joys of travelling in India.

Included are 60 of the recipes which they gathered on the way, adapted so they can easily be prepared in New Zealand kitchens. Julie’s photographs make them look absolutely mouth-watering.

Hot Pink Spice Saga: An Indian Culinary Travelogue with Recipes 

By Peta Mathias and Julie Le Clerc. Published by Random House. $49.99

I wrote this review for GrownUps 

Curry Easy Vegetarian by Madhur Jaffrey reviewed

Madhur Jaffrey has long been one of my favourite cookbook authors. She was the one who taught our generation that we could easily cook authentic Indian recipes at home.

After winning a scholarship to a prestigious drama school in London she found she couldn’t stomach the stodgy English food dished out in the Varsity canteen. Homesick for fragrant curries she asked her Mother to send her some of the family recipes. These duly arrived handwritten in a series of aerogrammes.

It started her passion for Indian cooking which has never abated. At 83 years old, she is still a prolific cookbook author and a world authority on Indian cooking. So far she has written fifteen cook books starting with An Invitation to Indian Cookery, published in 1973.

On her frequent travels to India she continues to gather new recipes that families eat at home, in local cafes and temples, at parties they throw for each other, and at weddings and religious festivals.

Curry Easy Vegetarian is her latest book and it’s a real gem with more than 200 new and healthy recipes.


 Every recipe I have cooked so far: such as  her simple scrambled eggs, her vegetarian version of butter chicken,  Punjabi-style beetroot with ginger and a spicy peanut crumble have been easy to make and tasty.

This book would make a great present for any vegetarians in the family who enjoy Indian food.

Title: Curry Easy Vegetarian. Author: Madhur Jaffrey. Imprint: Ebury Press. RRP $65.00

I wrote this review for Grownups
http://www.grownups.co.nz/read/living/our_people/edi-hot-pink-spice-saga

Quark Lemon Cake with a Creamy Ginger Filling



When Joyce from IE Produce in Takapuna gave me some Hohepa Quark to try out I set to and created a really easy  Quark Lemon Cake with a delicious filling for afternoon tea. The filling tastes rich and sweet but has far less calories than if I had filled it with cream


You will need some stem ginger balls preserved in a sugar syrup for this. You won't need many so there will be lots left over in the jar. In summer I like to mix some of them with their syrup into a bowlful of melon cubes and blueberries which makes a quick, cooling and easy dessert.








To make it :

Whisk together until smooth:





1/2 cup of vegetable oil
1 cup of castor sugar
1 cup of Hohepa quark
1/2 teaspoon of salt
2 eggs
1 teaspoon of vanilla essence
2 tablespoons of lemon juice

The finely grated  rind of 1 lemon

Stir in 2 cups of self raising flour, Don't overmix

Scoop into a 20cm very lightly greased and baking paper lined springform pan

Bake at 180 degrees C for 40- 45 minutes



Fill with Quark and Ginger Cream



Quark Ginger Cream:

For this

Finely chop about 4 ginger balls

Mix into 150 gm of quark

add a little of the sweet ginger syrup
If wished can sharpen with some lemon juice or add some more sweetness with some honey

Hohepa describes their quark as:

Quark is a soft fresh white cheese, similar to cottage cheese but with a much finer texture and a lower fat content. Popular in central Europe for wide range of dishes, quark has a lower fat content than harder cheeses.  It is uniquely different than cottage cheese or cream cheese.  The fat content is around 14%.  The delicate flavour of quark makes very suitable for use in both sweet and savoury dishes — for example sandwiches, salads, pasta bakes, mousses and cheesecakes.