One of the things I was most looking forward to about visiting New Zealand was the wine. We arranged to stay overnight at a small vineyard in Martinborough where we could relax and really enjoy some of New Zealand’s finest. After driving down from Lake Taupo we pulled up alongside Gladstone Vineyard on a sunny afternoon, just in time for a tasting! Continue reading “Gladstone Vineyard”
Category: Food and drink
Posts about food, drink, recipes and resaurants
New Zealand – Beer
In the couple of weeks we spent in New Zealand we managed to visit most corners of the North Island and one thing stood out to me with regards to the beer down there. Good beer is everywhere! Surprisingly every bar and restaurant we visited had its taps dominated by New Zealand brews and not big multi-national brands (although Guinness was widely available in many bars as well). Continue reading “New Zealand – Beer”
Tolbooth Restaurant, Stonehaven
We were given a voucher for Stonehaven’s Tolbooth restaurant at Christmas and have waited for a sunny weekend all summer to use it. Our thinking is that it would be a shame to waste the trip to Stoney without being able to sit outside afterwords having a few speciality beers from The Marine. Well, summer came and went with barely a glimmer of sunshine on a free Saturday to get us over the hill so we decided to just book a table and hope for the best.
The restaurant lives right on the harbour in the upstairs of the old tolbooth jailhouse. Every seaside town needs to have a good seafood restaurant sitting right on the pier. Certainly every town with a fishing heritage like Stonehaven’s deserves one. Continue reading “Tolbooth Restaurant, Stonehaven”
Chocolate Eclairs
More baking! This post was inspired by an invitation to a new baking club in Aberdeen. It’s an invitation I sadly couldn’t take up as I’m too caught up in bits and pieces for my wedding but it put the idea into my head to bake something sweet for the weekend.
I think everyone’s got fond memories of chocolate eclairs filled with cream don’t they? The soft choux pastry filled with rich cream that goes everywhere when you bite into it. Topped with delicious chocolate. Yum. I consulted my pastry bible – Michelle Roux’s Pastry and found a couple of recipes for choux pastry and eclairs. I won’t post the full recipes here as they’re straight out of the book. In future I’m just going to post recipes that I feel are my own or I’ve jumbled together from enough sources to make them my own. Continue reading “Chocolate Eclairs”
Strawberry Souffle
I’ve probably mentioned before that I’m not much of a baker. Nor do I spend much time making desserts (although I spend a fair bit of time eating them). So it was with some trepidation I decided to chance my arm at that famously tricky creation – the soufflé. Continue reading “Strawberry Souffle”
Mince and Skirlie 