food finds

We had a family day out in Hoki today, beginning with lots of swimming. I thought I'd share my food finds. Hokitika has a delicatessen now, with nothing less than a proper temperature controlled cheese room. I still remember the first time I went into a cheese room, with the beautiful French name 'fromagerie', in London. This one had everything under glass within the room, so lacked that intense yeast waft. I didn't buy any cheese - I was saving my cheese money for a later treat.

But I did buy some Clement Fougier chestnuts all the way from France. I have been trying to buy chestnuts (I even got given some from my aunt but they were mouldy - hoping to send her a courier box this Autumn, or get up to see her at the right time) that are grown in New Zealand but so far to no avail. I loved Nigella Lawson's recipe for chestnuts and red lentil soup in London and have pined for it periodically for the last three years. Now we can have it. I'll save the chestnuts for an Autumn soup.

I also bought some preserved lemons. They weren't quite so extravagant in terms of food miles - made at Ludbrook House, Northland, New Zealand. If I've cooked with preserved lemons before, then I don't remember and I do fancy trying it. I have a spud recipe which uses them which I will make soon.

Now we can't buy fish in our smallwettown, Hokitika is our only option for locally caught fish and so I bought some Hoki and Lemonfish.

I went into the bakery to get some bread to go with the food I'd brought from home for lunch. I bought some foccaccia which was very average. I also bought some rye bread which the label explains is made from sourdough starter with no other added yeast and that the starter has been going since 1999. I spent $6.60 on that loaf and I'm keen to try it and compare to my own experiments. It also gives me a benchmark for assessing how much money I am saving once I'm up and running making our own rye sourdough on a regular basis. I did feed my starter this morning and made up some dough tonight for baking tomorrow. But I'm down to white and wholemeal flour at the moment and waiting excitedly for my order of freshly milled organic flours (Rye, Otane, Purple Wheat) from Terrace Farms towards the end of this month.

The last find was the best one. We now have a local cheesemakers based only 15 km from us!!!!!!! Gaalburn cheese is a farm raising it's own goats for milk and turning that milk into cheese on site. I stopped in and bought some feta and some halloumi. We are particularly excited about halloumi which we used to buy cheaply and often at the Turkish corner shop in London. The price of Halloumi when we returned to New Zealand, and I wanted some to make vegetarian kebabs for a barbecue, was horrific. Steak kebabs would have been cheaper. But I thought the price at Gaalburn was okay and anyway I'd rather support local cheese which is dear-ish than cheese from anywhere else. I have since wondered if I could persuade them to sell me raw goats milk. It is legal up to 5 litres per day.