eG Foodblog: lesliec (2011) - Beef, boots and other stories

[catdaddy]

What's for dinner?

[helenjp]

Thanks for the Ontrays tour! I think this is the first of your visits that covers a company I know...I'm having a great time seeing so much that's new to me.

Gin in Japan - it's not a big gin market for home use, though there are plenty of places that serve cocktails.

So what did you have for breakfast this morning?

[lesliec]

Hi all. Back at work today and having a crisis about having so many things still to write about and no time to do it. I'll try to get something good up tonight, promise.

Kent: The supermarket is still our source of the basics - I haven't yet gone fully artisanal for stuff like plain flour and paper towels! But for the more obscure things, or where I want to be more obsessive about the quality of what I'm going to serve, I'll go specialist. Ontrays is one source; I'll post about a couple of other good ones when I get a chance to write them up.

Catdaddy: Wait and see! (It should be worth it.)

Helen: You'll probably know the next two businesses as well (soon ...). You really don't want to know about breakfast. I've been unable to walk to work for a while (dodgy heel), so in a vain attempt to contain my girth I generally have a diet shakey thing for brekky and lunch. Another is due as I write ...

[lesliec]

OK, I've been promising and now here it is - your Valentine's Day surprise. Only a day or two late, but surely you can forgive that.

I must start with an apology. I've proved that the human eye is still better than the camera. Even with my nice new fast lens, I couldn't get acceptable photos of the later stages of the meal as it got darker outside. This is no criticism of the restaurant; the light inside was perfectly adjusted for an intimate dinner. Even some of the later photos I've included are marginal, but you'll get the idea.

Some history. Cooking's been part of what Martin does since very early in his life. His father was a commercial traveller with a subscription to Cordon Bleu magazine. Since he was away a lot during the week, Sunday was his day to get out his magazines and, as Martin puts it, 'trash the kitchen'. His parents were English and often entertained the expat community, so Martin was very familiar with cooking and hospitality well before his teens. Before leaving school he had a job as assistant porter at a motor lodge near Wellington. However, once he discovered the lodge kitchens they couldn't get rid of him and he worked his way up from washing dishes. One of the people he was working with offered him a job at a new restaurant he was leaving to open, provided Martin finished his school year with all his exams passed. That provided some focus for the rest of the year, and Martin went on to work in some of the iconic Wellington restaurants of the 70s and 80s. Talking about his new book in the City Market post above, I mentioned Brasserie Flipp, in which he had two stints as chef; since 2001 he's had his own name on the door at his restaurant in the headquarters of the Royal Port Nicholson Yacht Club, right on the Wellington waterfront.

It turns out Martin's been cooking for our family longer than any of us suspected. One of his previous posts was at the Grain of Salt (now The White House), along the road from where he is now. When I learned this I checked some dates with him. It appears very likely he was in the kitchen for this meal:

I'm not admitting anything, but let's just say our son was born precisely nine months later (he's 25 now).

On to tonight's entertainment. I cheated by taking this one the next day in daylight, but here's our table:

You'll observe out the window another horrible day in Wellington. How tedious ...

Here's our menu for tonight:

I think just that will give you a pretty good idea of what this place is about. I'm not going to say much more, just show you how some of the dishes came out. The only minor disappointment was the braised shoulder of lamb; it wasn't as melting as we'd expected (they substituted duck when we mentioned it). All the wine matching was brilliant. Here we go:

The amuse of lemon-infused marshmallow, rolled in olive 'soil'; very light, beautiful combination:

Crayfish, minted pea purée, etc.; crayfish perfectly cooked, oyster cream very subtle, purée fantastic:

Tuna tartare, octopus, ... served by the man himself this time - an honour! All was good, but the highlight was the texture of the sous vide octopus:

Salad of summer vegetables; I lost count, but there was at least fennel, carrot, cauliflower (summer?), radish. We were suprised the quail egg wasn't soft in the middle, but it didn't detract:

Duck liver mousse; there's a reason Sauternes is traditionally served with this sort of thing: it's wonderful. The rolled mousse went beautifully with the Iberico crumbs underneath. This was the highlight so far, but read on:

Crumbed sweetbread; starting to get marginal with the light, but bear with me. I haven't had a sweetbread for years and was surprised, pleasantly, at the firm texture:

Blue cod; dish of the night - I wouldn't have wanted anything changed about it:

And finally (because of the light) the first of the desserts. 'Mushroom sponge?', I hear you cry. Yes, and fabulous with the chocolate/hazelnut 'pudding' on top. It wasn't, as we'd anticipated, an Albert Adria microwave sponge; much firmer in texture. The strip of prune jelly along the front was deliciously intense:

So there we are. I hope you've enjoyed your night out, and again I apologise for my luminary inadequacies.

[nakji]

Beautiful pictures, Leslie! You were working in difficult conditions, but we can all easily see the wit that went into those dishes. The marshmallow reminded me of a very posh lamington.

I'm not admitting anything, but let's just say our son was born precisely nine months later (he's 25 now).

Bar tab $79, eh? We'll say no more. I love how you still have the slip, spatters and all.

I've never though of pairing basil and ginger for a sweet dessert - how did that work out?

[lesliec]

Thanks Erin. As you will have gathered I like Martin himself and I like his food - it's frustrating not to be able to present the images as I saw them.

The $79 was a couple of glasses of Moet and a bottle of Chateau Beychevelle 1976. Things have changed, slightly! For the kid's 21st we went back to the White House, as it now was, with another bottle of '76 Beychevelle I'd found and hung onto for some years plus oner from his birth year ('85). The '76 was better - much more complete, shall we say - but didn't have the same effect as the first one.

The basil mousse was a very small ball on the side of the plate and possibly got a bit lost. The highlights were the cake itself and the luscious 'Coeur a la Crème' - ice cream to us plebs.

Side note: Martin's original plan was to have a 'Blood' theme for the evening, but too many people he mentioned it to said something along the lines of 'Ewww'. Silly people - I think it would have been great, so I hope he brings the idea back later in the year, maybe for the Wellington on a Plate festival. He even found some moulds used to make the models of kidneys one sees in doctors' offices, veins and all, and was planning to make jelly in them. Cool!

And to answer an earlier question of yours: Lighthouse Gin should be available from La Barrique or Glengarry (three shops) in Auckland. Everybody up there will know where Glengarry is.

[nickrey]

Lovely looking food Leslie, thanks for sharing.

I know people have been commenting on the cross fertilisation of Australian and New Zealand food to the extent that the lines are often blurred as to which style fits which country (and don't even mention the debate over the Pavlova's origins).

Have you found similarities between the two country's restaurant foods, particularly "modern Oz" and "modern NZ" when you've travelled?

[lesliec]

Catdaddy asked what was for dinner. This was:

Well, we couldn't go through this week without a Beef Wellington, now could we?

I'm going to enter the realms of controversy here. It's generally supposed the dish is named for the Duke of Wellington, who caused Bonaparte some inconvenience a while back. However, it seems the evidence for this is remarkably slim. The Duke himself wasn't greatly interested in what he was eating, and in fact the earliest reference to the dish in an English-language cookbook was in the 1960s (the French have of course been making boeuf en crôute for years, but that's their problem. Don't be picky). There is a case to be made that the dish was named following a dinner at Government House, Wellington, New Zealand. Accordingly, I hereby claim it as ours.

Over in the sous vide thread we discussed recently the joys of SV-assisted Beef Wellington, so that's what this one's going to be.

It's a luxury dish and rewards you finding the best bit of meat you can, cut from the middle of the fillet. Look at this stuff!

If your butcher hasn't already done it, get rid of any silverskin and extraneous bits, then into the FoodSaver bag. I didn't use any seasoning at all for this one.

Then into the water bath - 53°C for 1½ hours is just fine.

When it comes out, dry it on paper towels and lay it on thin strips of something nice on top of a large piece of kitchen wrap. I happened to have some Jamon Iberico offcuts (thanks, Ontrays!); you could use Parma ham, even bacon if it was thin enough, I suppose.

Roll the whole thing up carefully and wind the ends of the kitchen wrap so you get a tight cylinder.

That's Stage 1; you can now keep it in the fridge for a couple of days if you're not ready for Stage 2.

On the day you want to serve it, roll out some pastry (this is from our local supermarket's bakery department, and it's remarkably good. I'd have to work hard to match it) and spread with a layer of cooked mushroom and onion purée (mine has a bit of red wine, cream and fresh thyme in it too).

Roll it all up neatly in the pasrty, sealing the joins with egg wash. Cover the lot with more egg wash and, if you have the energy, decorate it - I limited myself to knife scoring.

The whole point of the sous vide cooking stage is that now you're basically dealing with cooked meat, so the only thing you have to worry about is making sure the pastry looks beautiful. I put mine into a 230° oven and 45 minutes later I had this:

And inside:

It may even have been less than 45 minutes. At that temperature, check regularly so the pastry doesn't get overbrowned.

I served it, as you see above, with sous vide baby carrots (85° for an hour) and potatoes sautéed gently in butter and fresh sage.

It's a hearty dish and needs a good wine. This is one I picked up late last year; it comes from a specialist Syrah maker in Hawke's Bay, a few hours north of here. No screwcap for this one!

Dessert was a ginger crème brulée, served with a compôte of mixed berries cooked in a ginger, vanilla, lemon zest and star anise syrup. With a couple of fresh berries from the garden thrown in.

I'm blowing my own trumpet here (somebody has to!), but this was up there with the best Beefs Wellington I've had - certainly the best I've made. Another slice?

[lesliec]

Hi Nick. I was going to comment that you're up late, then figured out it's me that is! I'm getting a bit blurry, but I'll try to give a coherent answer.

I think the two countries are more similar than we like to admit to each other. In restaurant terms, it's probably safe to say Neil Perry there and Peter Gordon here were in right at the beginning of the fusion cookery style. Partly because of where we are, partly because of immigration, the Asian influence is quite strong in both countries. You would have seen things like edamame and umeboshi plums on Martin's menu, sitting harmoniously with 'European' ingredients, and I think that's a style we share. Even Europe is getting in on the act; there's been a distinct Asian influence in some of El Bulli's dishes for a few years now.

There have been debates here, and I imagine there too, about whether we have our 'own' cuisine. I recently came across a book called Afghans, Barbecues and Chocolate Fish - an ABC of New Zealand Cooking, which contains this passage:

For many years New Zealanders ... insisted that there was no real 'New Zealand cuisine', that our food simply belonged to the country or ethnic group from which it came. Our isolation helped keep this myth alive. However, international travel, immigration and greater worldwide communication has begun to convince us that our food and food customs do not exist in quite the same way anywhere else in the world. Somewhere between the passion, pride and respect for our own fresh produce and the comfort from and nostalgia for the food of our ancestors, there is a New Zealand cuisine.

I haven't spent much time in Oz recently to really get a feel for what your restaurateurs/chefs are doing, but I think I'd be surprised if it was greatly different in style to what's happening here.

And now I really need to go to bed. Good night.

[catdaddy]

The beef looks delicious. I can almost taste the wine.

Did you forgive your relatives after that meal?

[Shelby]

Your step-by-step instruction may finally get me over being scared to try sous vide cooking. It looks beautiful.

[lesliec]

Catdaddy: That bit of beef was good enough to get me to forgive myself. And I haven't even done anything.

Shelby: Definitely dive into sous vide (not literally, unless you have a really really big rice cooker). Above all, don't be daunted by all the scary stories about how you must be totally obsessive about time/temperature. Sure, for some things it can be critical - I have a recipe for prawns which must be in the bath for 12 minutes, no more, or they go mushy - but it's hard to go wrong with, say, a lamb rump or, at the other end of the scale, a piece of brisket which won't care if it's cooked for 34 or 36 or 38 hours. And duck confit is much easier (or at least much less messy) cooked SV than in a gallon of duck fat in the oven. The best source of tips (at least until Moderist Cuisine gets here) are the eG SV threads. And of course we expect reports on how you're doing.

[catdaddy]

How about a peek at your pantry and the kitchen where you cook everyday?

[Pam R]

How about a peek at your pantry and the kitchen where you cook everyday?

I second that request. Your dinner looked beautiful, I'd like to see where you prepared it.

And what did you eat today?

[lesliec]

Well, it's funny you should say that. As the week draws to a close I've been thinking about what I still had to tell you about, and a kitchen tour is pretty much at the top of the list.

What's slowed me down is not that I'm ashamed of my kitchen (hell no - you'll see) but that I've found it remarkably difficult to get decent photos - lots of reflective surfaces, odd distances. But yes, you'll certainly get a look before I hang up my blogger's ... whatever it is bloggers wear.

Pam, today was pretty dull - diet shakes again! And I'm still suffering from shock at how good that Beef Welly was last night. Tonight Jane's out and I have lots of leftovers. I'm thinking I'll stay simple; a cold roast lamb sandwich, probably.

[lesliec]

Something we're very fortunate to have in Wellington is some very long-established, family-owned food businesses. Here's one of them no self-respecting Wellington food lover could be without:

Frederick Moore came out from Liverpool in the 1890s and in 1918 formed Moore Wilson's (there was a Wilson back then, but he was only in the business two years. But they've kept the name. Traditions can be good). In due course he was succeeded by his son Stan, then Stan's son Graeme took over and is still Managing Director. But keeping a close eye on the day-to-day running of things is Frederick's great-granddaughter Julie:

(Apologies for the fuzziness - incompetent camera operator.)

The company was originally based in Mount Cook - not the big snowy one; it's a suburb of Wellington - but in the mid 80s moved to their current site on Tory Street, nearer the centre of town. This was near the start of the major growth of Wellington's current food culture. The company traditionally concentrated on its wholesale clients, with a range of dry and frozen goods and variety products, but ten years ago, seeing a demand for better, fresher, more traceable food they opened Moore Wilson's Fresh. It's still referred to in the company as 'the new business' - you can do that when you've been around 90 years. The key concept with Fresh was managing the supply chain - making sure suppliers were able to get their fresh products properly chilled as soon as they came out of the ground, or the sea, or the field, and getting them into the shop as quickly as possible. Fresh has turned around the 70%/30% wholesale/retail split of the rest of Moore Wilson's business; fully 80% of sales from Fresh are to customers like you and me.

We weren't living here when Fresh opened, but I'd certainly heard about it and it was one of the first places we visited when we came 'home' six or so years ago. It's now one of our regular Saturday calls. The vegetables are spectacular:

In the background you can see an artwork by Hawke's Bay artist Dick Frizzell ('watercress', 'large avos', etc.). It's very reminiscent of the fruit stalls which once lined our roads. Dick paints in a variety of styles, but this particular one is one of his trademarks. We met him at Moore Wilson's last year shortly after the release of his book Dick Frizzell - The Painter; he's also released a range of rather nice wines under his own label, with boxes in this same style. As I hope you'll be able to see when I show you my kitchen, we've broken down one of the boxes (which he signed for us) and have bits of it framed on the walls.

The Moore family has an interest in art and the natural spring outside, source of water for the old lemonade factory which once stood here, has been tapped for public use and surrounded by scuplture.

You can always rely on Fresh to have something a little different, something you would have to search to find anywhere else. Here's an example:

On Saturdays there's always in-store tastings. The man from Proper Crisps was there a few months ago, and I have to tell you - these things are as good as a potato crisp can get. The message on their packaging is straightforward: 'Ingredients: Potatoes, Sunflower Oil, Salt. That's all!'. The spuds are grown in Nelson, the salt comes from Marlborough and the packet I have in front of me says these particular crisps were made by Larry. Those in a different packet might have been made by Stuart. Very straightforward, these Proper Crisps guys, and man what a product!

For something a little more exotic, how about some oils:

I can't promise they all are, but a good number of the different oils on this shelf - olive, avocado - are made in New Zealand. Moore Wilson's also has imported products - we got a rather good truffle oil here a while ago, and their big cheese cooler in the middle of the shop is impressive. Along the back wall are the packaged meats - not only the standard beef or lamb; this is where you come for wild pork or hare or rabbit. In the corner, fresh fish. Along the south wall, dairy - cultured butter, buttermilk, a huge range of yoghurts, butters, milks, creams. And of course, this:

Yep, that there's the Kapiti and Kohu Road ice creams we were talking about earlier in the week.

And since one can't live by ice cream alone (yeah right), Fresh has a huge fresh bread counter, with products from most of Welington's artisan bakers (and we're lucky to have several - Bordeaux, Arobake, Pandoro, ...).

In just a few weeks this part of the store will be filled with hot cross buns, all competing for spiciness. Heaven. And speaking of smells, that's one of the most charming things about Fresh - it has its own smell, a blend of fresh oranges and coffee. It's quite distinctive and on a good day hits you as soon as you come into the car park.

Fresh isn't all there is to Moore Wilson's. Their wine and spirit department is amazing (that's where I get my exotic alcohols, like Saint Germaine and Domaine de Canton. And indeed, Lighthouse gin) as is the enthusiasm and knowledge of Courtenay, who manages that area. Next door is the bulk grocery department, also with a range of catering and chefs' supplies, while upstairs the Variety department has a big range of kitchen and other household tools, bed linen and homewares. Good pricing, too, I've found.

This is somewhere you have to visit if you come to Wellington. I think Frederick would be pretty happy to see how the third and fourth generations of the Moores are looking after the place.

[lesliec]

[font="Trebuchet MS"]It’s every meat-eating food lover’s dream – you go into a shop, tell the man behind the counter what you’re going to cook and he comes back with a piece he’s decided is best and cuts it to exactly the size you need. Even to the extent of trimming off a few stray bits of silverskin.

In Wellington, you don’t need to dream it – I did exactly that, last Saturday. You’ve seen my Beef Wellington post; this is where the meat came from. The second of the long-established family businesses I want to highlight for you is A.E. Preston Ltd, butchers since 1904. Founder Arthur Preston, it turns out, came out to New Zealand on the same boat from Liverpool as Frederick Moore of Moore Wilson’s. What are the chances – the founders of two of Wellington’s oldest family-owned food businesses, both arriving here at the same time? And let me just highlight what a young country New Zealand is; a company like Preston's has been here for a very significant percentage of our history.

Like Moore Wilson’s, Preston’s is still in the family. Scot Preston, current Managing Director, is Arthur’s grandson. He was very hospitable when I visited him and branch manager Frankie, if a little puzzled when I phoned out of the blue earlier in the morning and said something like ‘I’mdoingafoodblogonegulletandcanIpleasecomeandseeyouplease?’. Such is enthusiasm.

Scot, left, and Frankie contemplate another potential Beef Wellington:



Incidentally, before I forget: back here Peter asked about the relative popularity of beef, lamb, pork, etc. My reply was entirely off the top of my head, where there is little hair, and I’ve now solicited an expert opinion. Frankie says the most popular meat is still beef (in all its forms); maybe 30% of sales. Next comes chicken; maybe 25%. Lamb and pork sell about the same as each other but less than the other two. It seems lamb has dropped over the past few years as prices have risen. The ranking can vary with season and export price levels, but that’s more precise than what I gave you a few days ago.

Scot spoke about how the business has changed since Arthur started it. In the early years the shops would have whole hanging carcasses on display and pieces would be cut according to what the customer asked for. A fleet of horses and carts cruised the suburbs with meat for sale. Now, the picture is very much more one of pre-packaged cuts, with the emphasis on convenience for the customer (although, as I said above, they can still do it the old way if you ask them).

In the 20s Preston’s had seven shops selling bacon, ham and smallgoods in addition to their fresh meats (they also had a pickle factory in Wellington and a bacon factory in Blenheim, at the top of the South Island. Where I was born, as it happens). The Depression of the 30s had a major impact, though. Now they have three retail shops in the lower North Island; the Porirua shop has an associated factory which makes their bacon and ham, and the Wellington and Palmerston North shops also handle wholesale customers. The wholesale/retail split is close to 50/50; possibly slightly more on the retail side. An separate company, Taylor Preston, is the processing/exporting arm of the business, drawing its stock from the lower North and Upper South Islands. (At last year’s Wellington on a Plate food festival, one of the themed dinners was held in their killing room. I was too slow to get tickets, unfortunately.)

Prestons’ premium label is Ted’s Choice, named for Scot’s father. ‘Gate to plate’ is a horribly-abused expression, I fear, but that’s what Ted’s Choice is about – selected special cuts where Preston’s can trace the product from the farm, through processing and into their shops. Preston’s is where I go when I want some really special meat, but you don’t have to be looking for premium steak to get a great product. Their bacon has won awards, and there was an absolutely beautiful leg of ham – all from New Zealand pork, by the way – in the shop when I visited. Interesting side note about ham – Scot pointed out it’s often regarded as a ‘Christmas only’ thing, but in fact they sell it all year round and it’s one of the better-value meats you can get.

My favourite part of the shop: the non-prepackaged meats. The ‘oven prepared ribs’ are superb; my choice for Blumenthal’s 24-hour steak:



I think we Wellington food lovers do appreciate the history we have in Preston's and Moore Wilson's - I certainly hope so. It's up to us to make sure they're both still around in another 100 years.

Edited February 17, 2011 by lesliec (log)

[helenjp]

Thank you very much for the tour of suppliers...you are right to emphasise where your food comes from, though your Beef Wellington must be a project your butcher is happy to be associated with! It looked gorgeous, and wow, NO SHRINKAGE!

Is there a NZ style of food? I've often thought about the same thing...maybe not in the sense of "here, and only here", but there is a certain NZ idea of what's good. When I read (and cooked from) Peter Gordon's Salads book, it not only impressed me as good, it was an instantly recognizable approach to food.

P.S. After Peter asked about meat prices/popularity, I also checked out the supermarket that is my local when I'm in NZ - Clendon Foodtown, which serves one of NZ's poorest urban areas. Flicking through the specials, I noticed that only beef and chicken made it even into the first 5 pages of specials, though when I'm actually there, often mutton neck chops are about the cheapest buy. Interesting that the preference for beef and chicken holds true even at the top end!

Leslie, when I was a kid, chicken was an expensive meat and not eaten that frequently. Lamb and hogget were affordable, but starting to lose out to beef...I think my family was on the old-fashioned side and that maybe beef was already king in most homes. When I got back to NZ after years in Japan and couldn't remember how to do the dinner thing NZ-style, my friends were saying "You know, beef casserole!". How does that compare to your experience?

What about seafood? When I was in Wellington I was surprised at how different the local fish were from the regulars in Auckland fish shops. How often do you cook fish or other seafood, and what types?

P.P.S. Was that a purple carrot or black salsify with your Beef Wellington?

Edited February 17, 2011 by helenjp (log)

[lesliec]

Hi Helen. Clendon, huh? We used to live down the road in Manurewa.

I suspect the 'no shrinkage' thing with the Beef Wellington is due to the sous vide step. Because it's such a gentle way of cooking (you could put your hand in 53° water) the meat doesn't get the same shock it does when tossed into scary hot oil. Which is not to say I don't also do scary hot at other times.

Nick and I had a brief discussion a few posts upthread about what New Zealand food is. I'm not sure there's a good answer, and I'm also not sure a dedicated eGulleter necessarily represents the typical New Zealand cook, but certainly from my point of view places like Moore Wilson's support the style of cooking I'm now doing - but that might be based, depending on how I'm feeling, on Blumenthal, Adria, Keller ... or Bosley. I have invented the odd thing myself; there's a high-temp roast chicken slathered in a rustic form of pesto I've pretty well perfected. My parents would never have been exposed to the sort of ingredients I can now get. That's not to say they wouldn't have liked the results. Dad is no longer with us but Mum, although perhaps not sure why I spend so much time doing things in the kitchen, is very happy to eat what comes out. And none of that really answers your question either.

Yes, when I was a kid, chicken was the treat you had for Christmas dinner and rarely otherwise. I still remember the weekend mutton roast - and the 'bone', the shank I suppose it's properly called, is still the bit I always score for myself. Mince - ground beef if you prefer - was (and is) cheap; Mum used to boil it up with carrots and onions as a sort of stew. We'd have 'proper' beef stews and casseroles quite regularly. Mutton chops - sometimes hogget, rarely if ever lamb - also frequently appeared on the table. Surely we must have had pork sometimes, but I have no memory of it.

I'm not much of a fan of seafood myself - I find it's often a bit light and watery; give me something I can chew! - but then I'll have something like the blue cod at Martin Bosley's on Monday night and realise what I'm missing. It's not my impression Auckland and Wellington differ much in what's available - the 'standards' would be snapper, tarakihi, warehou (GREAT for fish and chips!), grouper, cod, moki ... probably a few others, plus shellfish, of course; lots of mussels, oysters and scallops in season. Supply isn't a problem; we have Rachel's Yellow Brick Road at the City Market to supply superb quality fish on Sundays (that's one of the very few places you can sometimes get fresh sardines); Moore Wilson's has a good fishy area and there are a few other individual retailers with good reputations. A big fish market opened in Auckland a couple of years ago but I haven't visited it.

Yep, those were purple carrots. I'd like to say they were from our garden, but ours have finished - I got those ones at Moore Wilson's after I'd talked to Julie.

So here we are on Friday and another clear, sunny day threatens. I'm planning a few miscellaneous topics for you today, including, if I can get my photographic act sufficiently together, the Grand Kitchen Tour. Stay tuned; I'll be back after work.

[kayb]

Oh, that beef. Luscious.

Loving your blog.

[barolo]

Beautiful tour, thank you. I have fond memories of my 4 days in NZ in 1995 - lots of friendly people and good food.

[lesliec]

Thanks, kayb. It really was (and guess who's having the leftovers tonight?).

Barolo: glad I could bring back some memories. But you really need to come back; as I hope I've shown this week, there's some good things happening here.

Coming soon - within minutes, in fact, as soon as I've processed the photos: the much-anticipated Kitchen Tour. Don't go away.

[lesliec]

TGIF

I've avoided talking about my breakfast and lunch this week, because, frankly, they're extrememly uninteresting. Trust me on this.

Friday, however, is different. There is a long-established tradition among a selected few of my colleagues that Friday means ... lunch at the pub. And it's good healthy stuff, too:

At this table sit Men. Clearly.

Our choice of location is D4, upstairs in Featherston Street in the heart of the CBD. We used to go to another place down the road, then its manager, the marvellous Dermot Murphy, opened his own place and named it, I believe, for a Dublin postcode.

Another round? And more chips?

[lesliec]

In the 17th century young English gentlemen used to set out on a Grand Tour of Europe to complete their education (in several ways we needn't dwell on). But it's the 21st century and this is eGullet, so by popular request, I present ... a Grand Tour of my kitchen.

I share the house with a wife, Jane, and two cats, Bloopers and Stilton.

(This is Stilton. He's my baby.)

We’ve been here a little over six years and remodelled the kitchen – now the most ‘finished’ part of the house - three or four years ago. Before we dropped a bomb in it, the house had a fairly standard 70’s-style New Zealand kitchen. Most distinctive feature: no bench space.

Before moving back to Wellington we’d replaced the kitchen in our Auckland house, so we had some idea of what worked and what didn’t. One thing I’d recommend to anybody considering a new kitchen: get a professional designer to have a look. They’ll listen to your ideas, learn how you intend to use your new kitchen and come up with some ideas you might never have had. In our case, a casual remark that it would be nice to have somewhere out of the way for the cats to eat led to our designer giving us one set of cupboards with a higher-than-usual space below the doors!

By the time we came to do this one it was clear that cooking was a very important part of our lives, so we decided to move things around to make the kitchen centre stage. The old layout flowed from the kitchen by the windows, to a tiny dining room, to the lounge and deck. We put the dining area by the windows – still small, but at least there’s something to look out at – lost an internal doorway and took out a wall to give space for our Andrew Scott-designed magnificence:

That’s three metres of black granite there. Granite’s lovely stuff; nothing we’ve done has marked it, it polishes up beautifully and there’s nothing quite like working with pastry or bread dough directly on your benchtop. We asked for the bench height to be a little more than standard to accommodate a couple of tall people. My sous vide setup and small espresso machine live on the far end. Of course, when you have a space like that, an ordinary tap just won’t do it - we had to have a lovely sweeping curve. But wait; there’s more:

Ever told an electrician you need to connect your tap to mains power? Imagine his face! This worked out to be the most expensive light in the entire house, but it’s (almost) worth it.

Under the island on the ‘working’ side we have most of our plates, our knives and forks, dishwasher and rubbish bin. On the other side, behind glass, live our glasses and some of our special serving dishes.

The pantry is in perhaps an unusual spot, on the opposite side of the island to where we work. We did have some concerns about it, but it’s worked out fine – you go to the pantry, get out what you need and put it on the island, then come round the other side to continue your food prep. In our Auckland kitchen we’d had a pullout pantry and liked the idea, but couldn’t see the benefit of pulling the whole thing out to access one shelf. Here’s the answer:

It's a double pantry. Behind each door we have six pull-out shelves (with soft close - lovely), with three fixed ones above. The ceiling spots come on when a pantry door is opened.

Opposite the pantry the induction cooktop sits above more drawers holding pots, mixing bowls and most of the cooking tools. One small drawer is for spices; another for knives (the good ones safely held in wooden slots). Oven tower on the right, fridge on the left.

One regret is we didn’t get the double version of the oven, but behind one of the doors above the oven we now have a small microwave/convection oven, mostly used for warming plates. There’s a ‘normal’ microwave behind the other door. I used to have my cookbooks in one of these slots but they grew – eG members will understand, I’m sure. The books now live out in the hall while I try to work out a better, more accessible place for them – Modernist Cuisine’s going to have another impact on storage when it arrives! Gratuitous shot of selected books follows:

Confession time: I like toys! And arguably, toys take up even more space than books:

Let’s take stock here. On the top, from left, we have a commercial-quality mixer we picked up at an auction of catering equipment, a masticating juicer, the power unit of our food processor and a small slicer. Underneath is most of the rest of the food processor (there’s still some more bits of it in a cupboard!), a MyCook we lugged back from Spain a couple of years ago, an ice cream maker and a deep fryer. There are a few more bits and pieces elsewhere, but that’s most of it. The stainless restaurant-style bench came from the same catering auction as the mixer. I’m still struggling with where to put a chamber vacuum, and a Pacojet, and …

In another corner, by the dining table, we keep a modest selection of cocktail ingredients:

That’s my happy place. I spend a lot of time in here; it works really well and it’s a delight to have space to spread out (and I say that as someone who’s quite good at cleaning up as I go). I hope you've enjoyed your visit.

[ScottyBoy]

Oh wow...really really nice space!