I absolutely love the smell of spice shops. Whether it be mounds of brightly coloured powder in barrels at the market, or in pretty acrylic boxes like Gewurzhaus that I’ve recently discovered in Sydney.
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I’ve always been fascinated by cocktails and iced teas, probably because the delicate mixing of flavours to me is like alchemy, and that promise of absolute gold at the end of you get it right.
Well this summer, T2 has come up with fruity iced tea mixes, ready for your teapot and a bit of hot water.
In the T2 Cool Sorts box ($22), you get 5 flavours to try: Banana Riot, Juicy Ginger, Mango Twister, Melon Head and Peaches and Cream.
I really bought the whole box because of the mango – it’s sweet without being too cloying, and refreshingly light and fruity, exactly what you want an iced tea to be. The peach brought similarly refreshing notes, but with less sweetness straight out of the box.
The rest of the tea though, were a bit average for me. The melon did truly tasted like honeydew, and since I’m a bit more of a rock melon sorta gal, it wasn’t quite my thing. The banana had really nice caramel notes, but wasn’t as refreshing as I wanted my iced teas in summer to be.
And the ginger. It may be because I grew up in a culture that likes our flavour strong, but I barely got a hint of ginger, and then not that much else unfortunately. If I feel like ginger, I think I’d stick to my Apple and Ginger Green Tea.
But that being said, I’m still quite happy with my purchase. It gave me a chance to get some ideas and try some new stuff. And that mango, oh that mango!!
Each pack roughly 10 cups, so it’s enough to keep me hydrated for say, a week?
Shame that you can’t get the pack of mango by itself, but you take what you can get, hey?
A glut of grapefruit seems to be more than I thought it was – I’d made Grapefruit Marmalade, Jam Drops, and still I had some remaining.
So what else do you do with delicious citrus? Maybe get a little tarty!
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I get inspired by the strangest things, sometimes. This time it comes in a bottled condiment, called Yuzeful, which I found at the condiments table (every restaurant should have a condiments table) at Chanoma Cafe in the city. It tasted like a funky delicious Japanese Tabasco.
And in my kitchen, that means a new recipe!
In trying to make a cuban sandwich the other week, I dropped by my local butcher to buy some pork shoulder. While I was there, I noticed that they had chicken hearts on special, so naturally, I had to get myself half a kilo’s worth.
Naturally.
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So we all know that I have this habit of buying interesting ingredients before I know what I’m going to do with them – squid ink being one of them – and now I’ve done it again.
I saw a tub of tarama at a Greek supermarket – salted cod roe – and I just couldn’t keep my hands off it.
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With barbecue season fast coming round the corner – those winter days will melt away soon!! – I thought it would be a nice way to finish up Barbecue Week with a Barbecue Recipe Roundup. Forget the same ol’ marinades and stodgy potato salads that turn up at every family barbecue, why not try these ideas for some inspiration?
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This particular marinade came from a hodge podge of influences. I had picked up a basic chermoula recipe from a chef I had worked with – coriander, garlic, paprika – and started adding my own variations based on ingredients that I’ve had at home. The result might not be the most authentic Chermoula, but it certainly has become a family favourite!
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I think I have food ADD. I love food, but I crave the variety. Maybe it’s from growing up in an Asian culture – once you have dinners that involve a smorgasbord of different platters from which you can pick, you’ll never truly go back to single plate dining.
But I digress.
Ever since the Beak and Sons launch I attended the other week, I had sausages sitting in my fridge, and really, we all know I don’t just eat them straight if I had a choice. =)
Inspired by one of the canapés we had that night, I decided scotch eggs were in order.
A basic red sauce is so versatile. Just tweaking aromatics and spices can turn it into a sauce from almost any culture. And it’s not only a culinary chameleon, it’s also freezer friendly!
So when I had a tub of red sauce defrosting in my fridge, I just knew that I had to do something different with it – I had already made lasagne and spaghetti bolognese, so what about meatballs?
Given that we had been eating a lot of pasta, I knew that I didn’t want to have meatballs over more pasta. So, inspired by the smells coming from the local bakery, we decided that meatball subs were in order!