Beef pot roast with rosemary, apricots and jalapeños

This recipe came out of a housemate and me meditating over a bottle of vinegar that I had gotten for christmas from another housemate. It was a white wine vinegar infused with apricots, rosemary and red chilies. So here goes:

You need about 1.2kg of stewing beef, I usually use round steak in Ireland. Find a big pot and inject some of the above mentioned vinegar into the meat. I have since ceased this practice, because I a) ran out of vinegar and b) found that marinating overnight yielded the same if not better results. Deseed 3 red (important that they are red) jalapeños and quarter them and put them into the pot. Also, add a 500g bag of dried apricots - do get the good californian ones, it makes a diference. Finally, add 2 or 3 solid sprigs of rosemary and 1l of plain dry chardonnay as well as a bit of white wine vinegar.

Marinate over night.

Next morning, take the meat out of the marinade, put the marinade aside by means of pouring it into a different pot and seal your roast all round in the pot. Pour your marinade back in and cook as a pot roast until it reaches the fall-apart stage. Remove the meat, add salt to taste and some cream, fish out the rosemary sprigs and needles.

Meanwhile ...

Put parboiled rice, salt and a bit of olive oil into a saucepan and roast the rice without stirring till the bottom layer is nice and brown. Add double the volume of the rice in water and let simmer.

Serve forth, the apricots are your vegetable side.

Wine with this should be a traditional fat Australian or similar chardonnay that has undergone lactic acid fermentation and has seen an oak barrel from the inside.

Ard Bia and Nimmo's

This day we had an early dinner at Ard Bia and Nimmo's, Spanish Arch, Long Walk, Galway, Ireland (http://www.ardbia.com/restaurant.html). We were lucky to be early; that was the only reason they could find us a table. This is a crowded restaurant, for good reasons, and booking is recommended. Outside, you can admire all the awards they've collected over the years.

The bread was the first indication of what was to come: three different kinds, all of them delicious but the cinnamon bread was astounding. We rapidly consumed it all. Bernhard had a starter, as usual, and choose the day's special, chili squid rings on salad. The leaves were crisp and tasty, herbs rather than lettuce, with lots of fennel, and the squid just the right level of hot.

The main course was another day's special, tuna with tabbouleh, for Bernhard and, since I had decided, based on the bread, that I could trust this place to have a good cook, polenta cake with smoked Gubeen cheese, creamy mushroom, spinach & tarragon sauce. The tuna was rare, as it should be, and the tabbouleh flavourful, just as it should be. My polenta cake was creamy, fluffy, and resting in a sauce that mixed justt he right amount of flavours: none of the one-flavour-too-many which is so common right now for reasons which escape me. The mushroom and spinach dominated, with the tarragon nicely understated (tarragon in food, like in your garden, tends to take over if not kept within bounds).

We were too full for dessert. This is a lamentable fate.

Daniel Schuster, Waipara, New Zealand

Hilda and I were driving down towards Christchurch on our honeymoon when I spotted a sign saying Winery and pointing up a little road to our left. So we went up there and started tasting wines. The person doing the tasting was a lady of indiscriminate age somewhere in her 20s or early 30s. The vineyard was Daniel Schuster.

The wines were done in the traditional order, first white then red from plain to complex.

An unremarkable chardonnay was followed by a riesling. Being German and having tried kiwi rieslings at a wine tasting in Dublin I didn't expect much, but this was lovely! A nice light and fruity wine that seemed dry to me but supposedly has 10g/l of sugar. I never tasted it. Hilda and I agreed that this was a wine that could have been made in Germany and bought a bottle that is still sitting at home. The lady looked very confused at our enthusiasm.

After this auspicious start we tried 3 pinot noirs in order. The plainest one was an honest red that was unpretentious and achieved what it set out to do. This would be a nice wine for a pasta lunch, if you were local. The other two were a lot more expensive, with the top one costing 90 Nz$! And I totally failed to get the point of them. Thin bland wines that had been oaked in a desperate attempt to give them volume, as Hilda pointed out later "houses on stilts". The lady serving must have seen the look of disbelief on my face because she said "now you see why Dan is called the 'godfather of pinot noir'?". Hmm, a godfather is a crimelord, right? So one could be forgiven for thinking that he is the head of the racket that commits crimes against this lovely grape. He was one of the pioneers of pushing the grape further south to my knowledge.

So if you are in New Zealand and want some nice riesling, seek out Dan Schuster. Just stay away from his pinot noir!

Kai in the City

This was the night we ate at the Maori restaurant Kai in the City, 21 Majoribanks St, Wellington, New Zealand. We shared a seafood platter, and added dessert - chocolate pudding for me.

The first question that struck us when we started on the tiny cups of delicious chowder that sat in the middle of the platter was, Why aren't people queuing in the street and beating down the doors? How come you can get a table here without even booking - lucky for us, but incomprehensible.

This was seafood cooked with respect for natural flavour and a delicate touch. The chowder was perfectly balanced in flavour, the dishes interesting and varied, and we suddenly understood why people rave about the green-lipped mussels. The oysters were the best we'd ever had - and considering that we both love oysters, this is indeed saying something. In NZ, oysters are shucked at once and either frozen or placed in brine, which made us wonder what they're like fresh.

My chocolate pudding was accompanied with a jam of pepperbush berries, which doesn't sound tempting but turned out to be a perfect tart counterpoint to the chocolate. Pepperberry jam is what blackberry jam wants to be when it grows up, and we clearly need to find some way to grow our own pepperberry bushes.

If in Wellington, make sure to visit this place. Try the meat platter - we plan on having that next time.