u/lilxyz

Pizza night tonight 🍕

We went to a friend's for BBQ on Sun and they had leftover fresh homemade pizza doughs from their kid's birthday party earlier, so luckily we got to take some home.

We chucked on random stuff from the fridge lol but the highlight was a block of Tasty cheddar aged in vacuum sealed bag for 2 years (and 2 months). It came out to a more pronounced Tasty flavour that is nuttier & earthy, more melt-y, and crumblier typical of an aged cheddar.

First 2 pics are the same pizza with salami, and the last pic is with pork belly (first pizza we made for the night so we improved after that in term of dough rolling & baking). All featured homemade pizza sauce, charred cabbage, and a generous amount of 🧀

Menus link: https://heartofthecity.co.nz/restaurant-month/all-menus

This year they have even made a PDF file!

Drop below what you are most excited/likely to try?

Restaurant Month happens annually for the whole month of August in the city centre (CBD) where participating restaurants put out special set-price menus for the event. Make sure to read the small prints (T&C's) to know when the set menu is eligible etc

So great to be a part of another successful AucklandEats Eating Party!!! 22 of us showed up on a cold night at Rumi in Parnell for a Persian feast - we almost took over the whole restaurant again!

For the main, our table of 6 shared:

• 2x Mezza Platter plus extra bread, it came with: tomato dip (mirza ghasemi), eggplant dip (kashk bademjan), and Persian frittata (kuku sabzi).
• The 👑 King Platter - this really is a feast & everything was delish! It comes with chicken nibbles, grilled lamb chop (shishlick), lamb kebab (koobideh), saffron chicken kebab (joojeh), lamb shank, half young chicken confit in butter (akbar joojeh), and two rice: fava bean & dill rice (baghali polo) and barberry rice (zereshk polo). It also came with 3 sauces for the various meats: a sweet pomegranate glaze/sauce for the half chicken, a spicy pomegranate sauce (So delicious!!) for the nibbles, and a thin oily gravy for the lamb. (Tip - bring own metal straw to suck out the marrow from the shank... #hahanotseriousbutreally)
• Fesenjoon with chicken - this is a stew of pomegranate and walnut simmered in Persian spices, served with saffron rice. This is surprisingly super yummy and tangy, and feels very luxurious from the walnut paste base.

For drinks: a jug of Persian Doogh - it's a tangy savoury yoghurt drink with mint and salt. Opinions are split on this - I personally liked it and thought it went well with washing down the meat feast, whilst others found it too fermented for their liking.

For desserts - we got the two baklavas on offer (original and chocolate), the Persian saffron ice cream, the pomegranate ice cream, and the chai (which is rose tea). The chocolate baklava was so delicious, and I loved the saffron ice cream with pistachio bits, whilst others enjoyed the refreshing pomegranate ice cream.

Table of 4 next to me also got The King Platter and loved it too!

After dinner, some of us went to the classic Chocolate Boutique for a hot choccy and decided we should continue the meaty theme for the next Eating Party at Kikas - RSVP open now! 🇧🇷

WFH on Thursday and mum messaged me about picking up salmon sashimi she just bought & cut up in the morning (which was delivered to the fishmonger overnight). Then she managed to make a whole meal by the time I go to pick up before lunch.

I like making little hand rolls (or tiny tacos) with seaweed sheet cut up into strips.

Salmon sashimi, tamago (Japanese rolled egg omelet), kale salad, miso soup with tofu, pork belly and the leftover salmon skin, roasted seaweed, avocado, wasabi, soy sauce.

Technically "nzmumcook" but still home cooking which I think u/LionSuper8293 would agree 😋

I saw Seafood Boil from Frankies was recommended in another post here, so we stopped over on our way back home from South. It's located in Broadway Food Company, which is a cool place with The Beer Spot providing the drinks alongside around 8 eateries.

Seafood Boil: $38, 6 prawns, 6 mussels, 2 half crabs, 4 potatoes, 1 corn cob; great for sharing between two. Garlicky broth but not too overpowering. Hits the spot for a mid-arvo stop.

They have a lot of seafood choices, the menu in the photo is only 1 of the pages.

My friend wanted to do a KBBQ night at her house because winter. I was originally going to make a fun kimchi gochujang focaccia, but no one was covering dessert. Then I remembered I had some delicious brown sugar cinnamon hotteok at No. 1 Pancake (Albany) earlier this year. So I switched plans and made this instead, based on Maangchi's recipe.

Surprisingly, hotteok shared a lot of similarities with focaccia - yeasty dough, two rises, with filling added in the middle instead of on top.

Modifications to Maangchi's recipe:

· Made 10 instead of 8 / · Used more walnut filling (about 2:1 sugar to walnut, with a mix of ground walnut and chunkier chopped walnuts) / · Cooking time based on doneness rather than following the recipe's timing.

It was super yummy, and the middle was slightly less molten lava compared to the one from No. 1, thanks to the extra walnuts. Now I'm already thinking about what other flavors to try next time!

Photos include cooking up one to tasts first before making the rest and our KBBQ table (not including my Japanese friend's moreish Japanese potato salad cos she was late and the host's fish caught last weekend being smoked outside).