- Fiona
There are a handful of dishes – both restaurant and home-cooked – that the merest thought of prompts immediate salivation. They are nothing flash (well, with one exception, which I will come to later). These are the dishes lodged permanently in the memory, dishes that comfort, food that delivers an abundance of flavour but is in essence something quite simple.
There are a handful of dishes – both restaurant and home-cooked – that the merest thought of prompts immediate salivation. They are nothing flash (well, with one exception, which I will come to later). These are the dishes lodged permanently in the memory, dishes that comfort, food that delivers an abundance of flavour but is in essence something quite simple.
The first is one of my mother’s Saturday Night Teas. As kids, with both parents hard at work on our sheep farm during lambing, shearing, or dagging, various neighbourhood teenagers or family friends would be called upon to pop in and take care of my sister and I. In case said babysitter happened to be an imbecile, there was a an A4 hardcover book in our brown linoleum kitchen with handwritten instructions on how to make a basic Saturday night kids’ dinner – macaroni cheese, vegetable soup, and my favourite – eggs on toast. Surely not a recipe for eggs on toast, I hear you chorus. But it was the way Mum made them that needed to be replicated just so by any interloper. Two slices of Molenburg bread, well toasted and spread thickly with butter and Vegemite. Two perfectly poached eggs from the chook house atop toast. And the clincher – lots of grated tasty cheese, and a dash of pepper. Even as I type, I can taste the creaminess of the egg, the bite of the cheese, the savoury Vegemite and feel the crunch of the toast. Husband thinks this recipe sounds ‘gross’ – it’s really not. It’s perfect.
The second is somewhat more complicated – a dish from my early 20s and one I’ve never tried to replicate. From now defunct Wellington restaurant Castro's, blue cheese and peanut wantons. This was always the entrée of choice as a young journo in the capital – in fact, I recall one occasion when I skipped a main course entirely and simply ordered a triple serve of these delicious morsels. It was the incongruity of the dish that pleased me just as much as the flavour of it…. The idea that something as European as blue cheese should be married with crushed nuts and encased in an Asian wonton wrapper, deep fried, and served with a bittersweet raspberry coulis (yes – this was the early 90s people) appealed. They were pure decadence – crispy, nutty, buttery. These days you can order the Castro's blue cheese and peanut wontons at Chow http://www.chow.co.nz/ in Tory or Woodward Streets in Wellington.
Thirdly, from Scott’s Epicurean in Hamilton, spaghetti aglio olio. I can’t link to the site so you can check out this humming little central city café for yourself, because they don’t have one. What they do have is brilliant service, good coffee, a cabinet stocked with sugary goodness, and a short menu brimming with easy, comforting food. Scott loves the breakfast quesadilla – I can’t move past the spaghetti – a small bowl of perfectly cooked pasta, extra virgin olive oil, a smack of chilli, heaps of parsley, garlic and parmesan. When Scott’s away touring the world and texting me about the smokey barbecued mullet he’s eating on the beach in Portugal, I’m usually found in our herb garden, snipping huge handfuls of flat leaf parsley, which I chop roughly, mix with 3-4 cloves of crushed garlic (depending on how many meetings I have the next day) , a spoonful of chilli from a jar in the fridge, and a long slosh of oil. I love a good grind of rock salt on mine too. It’s the fastest, easiest, tastiest dinner I know and I now believe my aglio olio rivals the one I first tasted at Scott’s almost 8 years ago.
I could add in here a wee list of other café treats I love – the coconuty, lemony kedgeree from Savour and Devour http://www.savouranddevour.co.nz/ in Auckland’s Grey Lynn and the chicken and mayo sandwich from Nikau www.nikaucafe.co.nz in Wellington’s City Gallery to name just two.
But the final spot goes to the incredible soup I had just last month at Toto www.totorestaurant.co.nz. It was my birthday – I picked Scott up from the airport after one of the aforementioned mullet-eating tours, and we traipsed off to this much-loved stalwart of the Italian dining scene here in Auckland. It holds a particularly special place in our hearts because we’ve dined here many times before and also, got married in its private basement area, the Montecristo Room, 18 months ago. This time, we ate above ground, right next to one of the restaurants two blazing fires – and my starter of zuppa di pesce alla Toto (seafood soup) totally blew my mind. Obviously these guys know how to start their soup with a fabulous fish stock, because this plate of wintry goodness had a depth of flavour that I’d never tasted before. It was rich, savoury, tomatoey, packed with herbs, and full of mealy pieces of white fish, mussels, the most tender baby octopus, fat prawns, and pipis. In fact, it was faultless – and I almost cried with happiness. The rest of our meal at Toto was also excellent, in particular the dessert we shared– a light, soft ricotta cake served with a strawberry consommé that had the right level of sweet and zing to finish the meal perfectly. Oh Toto. How we love you.
As always, keen to hear comments and your contenders for tantalising meals you could eat over and over again… Let Eat, Pay, Love know and we’ll check them out.
