I hope everyone had a great Christmas. We have had a nice break and are back to work feeling all fresh. New Years menu this year;

New Years Eve Dinner menu 2011

Salmon tartar and vodka cured gravedlax, served with lime scented tomato gazpacho.

Salad caprese with caper and raisin puree, fresh basil and sherry dressing.
Wine recommendation Kina Beach Rose '10

Smoked rabbit and mushroom terrine, shot of game broth and pear and date chutney.
Wine recommendation Kina Beach Chardonnay '08

Strawberry vanilla and champagne sorbet.

Either
Fillet of venison wrapped in prosciutto, kumara and sage crumble, and mushroom mousaka.
Wine recommendation Kina Beach Pinot Noir '08
or
Baked snapper fillet (catch permitting) warm smoked eel and potato salad, creme fraiche froth and crayfish jus.
Wine recommendation Kina Beach Sauvignon Blanc '11

Iced lemon and basil gratin, with summer fruit salsa and saffron syrup

Hazelnut gallette, macerated cherries and bitter chocolate mousse
Recommendation Lustau Pedro Ximenez San Emelio Sherry

Santa's Special delivery

'Tis that time of year again, and today is about making Gingerbread Houses. This is something of a tradition for my fiancé Katie, and it's becoming something I look forward to helping with each Christmas - more-so now that we've been able to source pure icing sugar. That's the suspicious looking delivery in the photo, pure uncut icing sugar. The issue with regular icing sugar is that it'd got 5% starch (tapioca usually), which is to keep the icing soft. This can be good for biscuits and cakes but for 'gluing' together gingerbread  houses it's just not strong enough.

The pure icing sugar is mixed with egg white and lemon juice to make a paste which will dry hastily when exposed to air. Use sandwich bags to keep the icing air-tight until you're ready to construct.

Ginger Bread

200g of butter
100g of Dark Brown sugar
125ml of Golden syrup or Molasses

450g of Self raising Flour
1tsp of ground ginger
1tsp of ground cinnamon
half tsp of ground cloves

Cream butter and brown sugar until smooth and light them thoroughly mix through the Golden syrup. A good cake mixer will make light work of this. Sift dry ingredients into a large bowl and add to the wet mixure in thirds, mixing thoroughly. You will probably have to mix the last third of the dry ingredients by hand. Add a few tablespoons of water if needed Wrap dough in glad wrap and refrigerate for 90 mins. Cut into the shapes for your GB House design and bake for 10 -15 mins at 180c, section sizes will dictate you cooking times. Cool well on a rack before assembling.

I'll post some photo's of our completed houses later this week.

Wet days.

What a lot of rain we had over the last few days.

It washed away the chance of us putting up the gate last Sunday, so we can start on our garden.

We picked the first of our pea shoots tonight, they we amazing.So fresh!

We re-shot the sugar cured salmon pictures, with Scotties new camera and took some shots of sorbets.

Here is the recipe for one of them.

Lemon and Thyme Sorbet

INGREDIENTS

1.4 lt Water

500g Castor Sugar

100g Liquid Glucose

300g Lemon Juice (freshly squeezed)

8 sprigs Thyme

In a large pan mix the water, sugar, and liquid glucose.

Bring the mix to the boil, and simmer for around 5 minutes.

Add the lemon juice and thyme stalks( Pizza thyme is best for this recipe)

Cover the pan with a lid or cling film and turn off the heat.

Allow the thyme to infuse without boiling, like making tea

Leave to cool, and churn in an icecream machine.

Happy Birthday!

Mint Dining Room passed a milestone on the 1st of December, 2 years since it all began.
Thanks to everyone that has dined with us over that time.

Katie baked a cake and it was delicious. Those lucky enough to be here on the night got to try some.

The pictures that started the whole idea.

So a lot of hard work has been done on this book up until now. We have loads of pictures, a few stories, and a lot of recipes to show for it.

We are heading into the busy season not only for our restaurant, but for Scotty, who is soon to be wed.

So apologies if the posts have been less frequent than they could have been.

While writing a post yesterday it occurred to me that the first pictures we took weren't even on the blog. So I have decided to put them up.

Bit of background, Katie and I asked Scotty to help us with a professional entry into the New Zealand Hospitality Awards Of Excellence.

(We needed to defend our title of serving the best Lamb dish in New Zealand.)

We worked well together, tasted some wine, and had an idea......... (Turned out to be this blog.)

Here are the original pictures.

Mint Dining Room