Some assorted musings

This has been a busy week with a variety of interesting food-related things happening, and I've not taken photos of much of them!

We had a lovely supper at Ake Ake Winery and restaurant on saturday night. The restaurant is managed and catered by Chris and Jude, good friends of ours, so I'm bound to be biased, but the meal was excellent! I had a really good seafood chowder; light and very tasty, and then a braised lamb shank with Kumera mash and plenty of gravy, and panna cotta and biscotti to finish. Ake Ake make some good wines and their own 2009 Chambourcin  went down very well indeed! LW had a filo-parcelled camembert as her starter, then baked salmon and polenta, and finished with the panna cotta. There were 15 of us, for a 40th birthday party, and everyone enjoyed themselves, as far as I could tell.

(photo courtesy of the restaurant)

Yesterday afternoon, whilst I was dozing and watching TV, there was a brief lull in the torrential rain we'd been having, and LW spied a bunny in the orchard. Like a cross between Elmer Fudd and Rambo, I slipped out of the house and carefully closed in on the little furry blighter. It ran off, but, as they are wont to do, it stopped to see if I was still there. And I was, and then it wasn't. I won't go into the gory details, (unless requested), but skinning, gutting and butchering a rabbit is a very straightforward procedure. It's now jointed, blanched and in the freezer, waiting to be joined by a couple more before I make a casserole or curry!

(photo courtesy of the rabbit)

We've a glut of limes from one particular tree at the moment, so I thought I should preserve some, Moroccan style. So I did. I didn't think that 25 limes would fit in one big jar. But they did. And I didn't think that the salt used to preserve them would leach out so much juice that it would cover them. But it did. I'm going to do a load more of these with other citrus, as the season progresses. 

citrussy, salty deliciousness.