Cook

Recipes and cooking from a lifestyle block in Te Hiku/Far North of Aotearoa-New Zealand. Everything here started in the garden, the orchard, or someone's very old recipe book.

Savoury

The ways we enjoy eating our garden produce, including garlic, leeks, carrots, peanuts, and at least one steak cooked in a pile of steaming compost.

Boiled peanuts

Hands-down the tastiest and easiest way to eat your home-grown peanut crop.

A bowl of cucumber and red onion quick pickle

Gran Shirley's quick pickle

An easy-to-prepare vegetable accompaniment for summer meals from the summer garden.

Aglio e olio with green garlic

The simplest and most satisfying thing to do with fresh green garlic. Every garlic grower should know this one.

Garlic and rosemary salt

Home-grown garlic salt with rosemary. One of the best ways to store and use a garlic harvest.

Cooking in compost

A big compost pile generates serious heat. Enough to cook a steak. Yes, really.

Garlic bread

A simple garlic and herb bread recipe that can be frozen to save future-you some time.

Marilyn's Cheesy Leeks

Mum’s cheese sauce recipe, designed to make leeks irresistible. Works on most vegetables, if I’m honest.

Glazed Thyme Carrots

Carrots and thyme are found in many gardens. This simple glaze makes them shine.

Sweet

Cakes, slices, and classic puddings from our orchard and garden. Some of these recipes are older than anyone can remember.

Coconut lemon slice (new and improved)

One of my Gran’s best recipes. Now tastier, lower in sugar, and higher in protein.

Two slices of banana bread - one smothered in butter - on a plate.

Banana loaf

A reliable, delicious way to deal with an arm of quickly-ripening bananas. Freezes well too.

Gran Shirley's Coconut Slice

A classic slice from Gran Shirley’s recipe book. Simple, reliable, and always popular.

Sponge-top pudding

A comforting baked pudding that uses whatever fruit is in season. Simple enough for a weeknight.

Apple crumble

The best use for an apple harvest, in my opinion. A simple, reliable crumble that never disappoints.

Nana Retter's fruit cake - fully iced with a piece cut out.

Making Nana Retter's Fruit Cake

Last Christmas I joined a long line of women who have made this cake. My great grandmother’s recipe, finally made.

Gran Shirley's Sally Lunn

Gran Shirley’s answer to a potato glut turns out to be delicious. Worth making even without the glut.

Citrus meringue pie

A light, deceptively simple dessert that works with lemons, limes, or whatever citrus is looking good right now.

Preservation

Practical preservation from our lifestyle block. Making the harvest last with smoking, canning, pickling, curing, and dehydrating.

Green banana flour

An experiment in making a prodigious banana harvest last longer. More useful than expected, with some caveats

Paprika fruit on a charcoal barbeque with smoke drifting over them.

Smoking paprika

A bumper paprika crop means it’s time to make one of my best decisions so far and smoke it.

A slice of wholegrain toast smothered in peanut butter.

Home-grown peanut butter

Three years of growing peanuts came down to this. Home-grown, home-made peanut butter. Was it worth it?

Cauliflower and pineapple pickle with a head of cauliflower and some shallots.

Gran Shirley's Cauliflower and Pineapple Pickle

Years in the making. Literally, because growing the cauliflower took that long. Gran Shirley’s pickle was worth the wait.

A glass of lemonade, a bottle and can of syrup, and a lemon.

Canning lemonade syrup

When life gives you too many lemons, can the lemonade for a sunnier day. Preserves a citrus glut for months.

Eating water-glassed eggs

Preserving eggs in lime water when the flock slows down. A traditional method that actually works.

Makin' bacon

When life gives you a pig, you make bacon. A straightforward home-curing process from shot to bacon buttie.