Bloking in the Kitchen

Cooking in Ōtautahi Christchurch

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Chicken, chorizo, capsicum, and chickpeas. With paprika, pepper, and parsley. Yes, I am quite serious :)

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"What are you cooking?"

"I have no idea."

And it is true, I have no idea what this is called, or if its even a thing: chicken, potato, mushrooms, chickpeas, and broccoli. Who knows?

In my defence, I managed to not overcook the broccoli.

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Pork meatballs, which I braised in tangy paprika sauce. With rice and cucumber.

I bake my meatballs in an iron skillet in the oven, instead of frying them on the stove. Basically for 10 minutes, turn them over, and then 10 minutes more. In this case I poured over the sauce after the fist 10 minutes.

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Another oven-baked chicken dish. This time we marinated the chicken overnight in gochujang, and basted it with a mix of soy sauce, vinegar, and syrup, just before it came out of the oven.

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Chicken and mushrooms in Marsala wine. Comfort food.

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Chicken, cashews, and broccoli, served with rice.

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We braised beef cheeks and chopped carrots in pork stock, for two hours, and served it with rice and green peas.

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Oven-roasted Spanish chicken, on a bed of grilled tomato and onion. With all the favourite spices (paprika , cumin, coriander, cinnamon) and chilli oil.

Generation Z approved, even.

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As planned, we used the leftover roasted pork to make fried rice.

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We managed to find pork butt. I marinated it in 5 spice powder, soy sauce, and oyster sauce, and roasted it in the oven. We had half of it with rice and cucumber last night. Maybe the other half will go into fried rice, tomorrow evening?

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I was making pancakes. And then this happened.

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Although she's the chief baker, and I'm the chief cook, my wife likes to surprise me. Like with this ham and potato and apple and green peas dish, from her camp food cookbook. Not that we were camping out, but she didn't let that stop her :)

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Goulash. And that is about all there is to say about it.

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Sometimes I spend days planning a dish, and sometimes I just throw whatever into the pan.

This was one of those whatever dishes: chicken, capsicum, shallot, noodles, and sauce. And chilli oil, grated carrot, and spring onion.

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Meatballs, and nice big ones this time.

I baked them in a skillet in the oven, made the sauce separately, and then added the cooked meatballs to the sauce.

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Egg, on beans that was slowly cooked in leftover enchilada sauce, on a sourdough pancake, with cottage cheese, a dusting of paprika, a drizzle of salsa verde, and enough chilli oil to make me nervous.

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We got hold of some cocao beans a while ago, and decided to make something nice.

The first step was to roast the beans. After about 25 minutes in our oven, at 125°C, the husks (shells) were britlle enough to break open with my thumbnail. It took 40 minutes to dehusk the lot. The roasted beans smelled wonderful, it had this deep, intensely chocolate aroma.

The next step was to grind the beans, with sugar and a little cinnamon, into coarse cocoa powder. It had an amazing, intense taste, unlike any chocolate I've ever tasted before.

I used a baine marie to heat the cocoa powder, turning it into a kind of grainy chocolate paste, which we could then press into silicone moulds.

So now we have three homemade Mexican-style 75% dark chocolate disks, which we'll use to make hot chocolate :)