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Toast – a favourite food of the British……. Also the name of the NZ Wine and Food Festival in the UK. A fine sunny Saturday and what better way to spend it than heading off to one of London’s great parks, Regents Park, to indulge in some fine NZ food and wine.

With the wine selling opening at 12pm and it being really, really hot we set off to find a nice glass of vino blanco. But as it was so hot and the glasses were so small we had to have a few more…. The majority that we tasted were from Central Otago. Not sure we can remember what any of them are anymore! But the one we really wanted to try somehow managed to sell out in 40 mins, so there was either not much of it or it was extremely popular!

To break up the day and escape the sun for a while we went and watched a cooking demonstration – sushi skills. We learnt that fresh grated NZ grown wasabi is really yummy! It’s quite different to the normal paste, and I guess the best description would be the wasabi paste flavour without the really sharp bite. Good fun to watch, but we didn’t learn that much that we didn’t already know. Nice to know that we aren’t really that bad at making sushi!

Oh yeah and we made sure we used the food vouchers you get when you get your ticket by eating 2 lots of salt and pepper squid, some very expensive seared tuna, some fantastic green lip mussels and of course nothing better than to finish off with some boysenberry cheesecake!!

It was a great day out and good to taste some NZ favs again. But we were left wondering a little just what it meant for the exhibitors, and who the target “guest” was. The whole place was packed out with mainly young Kiwi’s, quite a few of us just there to enjoy the day and have a few drinks. It doesn’t really seem like a show where the products are getting introduced to a new audience, and I reckon you could count the number of people who can remember what wines they were drinking.

But it didn’t seem like the sort of show where everyone exhibiting was out to make a killing either. Most of the food and wine was relatively resonably priced (in fact, compared to some shows it was pretty cheap).

But I’m sure that for the Kiwi’s coming across to show off their stuff, a weekend in the London summer has to beat all the cold and snow back in NZ!

The organisers had also made a good decision (in our minds at least) of shutting the bars at 4pm. 4 hours was long enough for everyone, I think, even though some would maybe not admit it. We didn’t see anyone who was in a very messy state, but I think closing them one hour later and there would have been quite a few.

All in all, a grand day out.

It finally happened! A sunny, warm, relatively windless day. And on a weekend day too! Yippee! Summer might have arrived at last. Which, considering it’s really only the first week of official summer time isn’t too bad!

So we had to make the most of it. A big walk (ok, so it wasn’t that big) around our local area, looking at all the pretty flowers that have sprung up. We followed that up with a BBQ in the local park. Vege sausages (hmm) and baby squid stuffed with feta and chorizo for me, and feta and peppers for Bec. Very posh!

Only thing that would have made it better would have been to get rid of the 14 yr olds drinking their alcopops nearby…

Today was the first day that I tried out my Egyptian Turkish coffee maker thingee. Yum, yum! All a bit involved, but with the help of the guide from here, it all went relatively smoothly. But yes, I did make a bit of a mess….

YUM! Friday night down Brick Lane for a good ol’ curry with friends.

Always a fun experience running the gauntlet of the hard sell boys all trying to entice you into their particular establishment. “Free pompadoms!” “First drink free!” “25% off your food!”…

Hard to know when you’ve got the best deal you could, but it’s all so cheap anyway that it really doesn’t matter. We ended up with the first drink free and 25% off the food…. But then there were only 4 of us. The more of you there are, the harder you can bargain!

It is one of the experiences that make London, London, though.

Well, it was quiz night down at one of the local pubs (The Ship and Whale) where we just happened to be for a friend’s birthday.

We got third!!

Yeah, ok, so there were only 4 teams, but you know….. At least the birthday girl got a Spitfire towel as a prize/birthday prezzie!

Time for a trip through the Guinness book of records and the top 40 for the last few decades before we go back! But I think we may have to sometime. All good fun.

Good food too!

Yum, yum, yum!

We made paneer kababs for tea last night from the latest Olive magazine.

Put 250gms of paneer cheese cut up into decent chunks, half a red pepper and half a green pepper cut into squares, and some red onion cut into squares in a big bowl. Add a good dollop of olive oil, a clove of crushed garlic, tsp of grated ginger, tsp garam masala, tsp dried chilli flakes, 2tsp ground coriander, a dash of lemon juice, and some fresh coriander. Mix well and cover and stand in the fridge for half an hour.

Thread it all on some wooden skewers that have been soaking in water for half an hour, and then grill, turning now and then for about 8-10 minutes unitl they’re golden.

All good. I reckon they’d be really good on a barbie too.

Heat the oven to the standard 180 degrees (160 fan).

Mix 150g self raising flour, 50g ground almonds, 100g roughly chopped dark chocolate, and 200g caster sugar together. Mix up 175ml milk, 50g melted butter, and an egg. Add the liquid to the dry stuff. Spoon into 6 ramekins.

Mix 150g of dark muscovado sugar, and 3tbsp cocoa powder. Gradually stir in 300mls of boiling water. Spoon this over the spounge mixture.

Bake the puddings for 20 minutes. Lower the temp to 170 (150) degrees. and cook for another 10 minutes until the spounge feels firm.

Enjoy!

(source: Olive magazine)