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

Another week further into it.

What a week it's been. We went all the way up the Wangapeka......too far. We cruised through the Motueka Valley, down Neudorf road over the hill past Woolston Estate to Kina Beach Vineyard. Then through Mapua, to McCashins Brewery (a quick impromptu tasting Later) we then cruised back home.

It was a fun day, we drove through downed trees, off road, and then we met an angry river! Im sure Scotty will put some pictures of our adventure up soon, and you can see the fun we had.

Until then try to make these cookies.

They are my favourite, just the right blend of Chewy and Crunchy.

American Choc Chip Cookies

2 1/4 cup Plain Flour

1 tsp Bicarb Soda

1 tsp Salt

1 cup Soft Unsalted Butter

3/4 cup Granulated Sugar

3/4 cup Brown Sugar

1 tsp Vanilla

2 Eggs

2 cup Chocolate Pistoles

1 cup Chopped Nuts (I use hazelnuts, and walnuts Uncle Joes in Marlborough do an excellent hazelnut meal which is great for baking.)

Sieve the flour baking soda, salt and flour.

In a separate bowl, cream butter and sugar.

Add vanilla, then the eggs one at a time.

Add the sieved flour mixture, chocolate and nuts.

Mix until it just forms a dough.

Over mixing will make the biscuits too firm.

Roll into a sausage, and cool in the fridge. Cut the bisciuts into discs about a centimetre thick. Bake at 160 degrees for 9-11 minutes.

They will feel slightly soft in the middle and begin to brown on the edges.

Don't over bake them or they will loose their chewy texture.

I always eat at least one while they are still hot.

The next big thing. Location shoots.

So today we had a productive shoot, we chatted and decided to head out next Monday into the wilderness!

Well kind of, we are doing a wirl-wind tour of some local producers.

Starting at Wangapeka Dairy we will shoot our way to Mapua where we will meet Monica Mead, aka Braugal to discuss things hop related.

So if anyone has any suggestions as to where we need to visit along the way we are all ears!

Please leave comments if you have any suggestions.

We will try to visit as many places as we can.

blur of a week

What a challenge we had last week, but even after Airline blunders, missing lamb and savoy shortages, we made it!

So no trophy this year, but we had a great trip to Christchurch, and caught up with family, and enjoyed the awards.

Came back, and nearly was bumped off our flight......the one I needed to be on to cook the dinner for the NZ food writers guild. But after a bit of protesting, threatening to sue and the threat of me litterally exploding in the middle of the airport, I flew back on time.

Katie and wee Brodie had to wait for another flight.

The dinner went very well. Big thanks to Bill and the team at the Rutherford for their help,

and Wangapeka Prime Lamb for finding the missing lamb(Through no fault of their own, or mine), and Lamb and Beef New Zealand for sponsoring the dinner( and asking me to cook it!).

And now we get to enjoy the first normal week in some time.

Aaaaaah

So back into book writing mode.

Mean as Beans

A week of catching up last week and more of the same this week as business gets busy, but first some very helpful comments to address... thanks to all who contributed, some great idea's and also some suggestions which we'd considered already but helps validate our vision of the project.

Someone asked about what we cooked at home - so far most of what we've shown here in the blog has been Grant's highly refined gastronomy; I, on the other hand lean towards something a lot more rustic and hearty.

Rustic and hearty I say? Nothing could be more so than baked beans - I owe much of this recipe to a chef buddy Matty. He'd use cheffy ingredients like pancetta and not use the canned goods I have below, But my version is simpler, faster and a third of the price to make, fulfilling one of the requirements of my food stylings - thrifty.

Scotty's Mean-as Beans

a glug of Olive oil
tsp of cumin seeds
1/2 tsp of fennel seeds (optional)

- get these started in a large frying pan on a medium-low heat, just sizzling and toasting

While that's doing it's thing dice up the following ingredients - not too finely, nice chunks.
150g of smokey bacon (I use Pestals, if you go to their butchery in Stoke you can buy bacon ends which are cheap-as, a little too smoky for some dishes -but perfect here and also a less fatty cut)
1 red onion
2-4 garlic cloves
1 green capsican


- raise the heat of the pan to medium-hot and add the bacon first to get some colour on it, shortly followed by everything else. Toss contents of pan around keeping what you can off the floor, bench and cooktop.

While that does it's thing get out
a 440g can of chopped tomatoes
1 tbsp of tomato paste
a good sprinkle of dried oregano


- add to the pan, stir through and turn down to a simmer. I will often dice up some fresh tomato and add this as well, don't worry about skin and seeds - rustic styles here. The three types of tomato bring different elements to the pallet, richness, sweetness, acidity and freshness.

Drain and wash
a 440g can of cannellini beans


- add to the pan and heat through

At this point I add some roughly chopped herbs. Usually basil or flat leaved parsley, but sometimes a shred some fresh spinach from the garden. You could add chilli earlier in the process but I just throw a dollop of Kaitaia Fire in it and a good amount of salt and pepper - stir through and serve up.