Uncategorized Recipes
Potato Salad
Potato salad is on every New Zealand Christmas table and beside every barbecue from Labour Weekend to Easter, and most of it is disappointing in the same way: the potatoes taste of nothing and the dressing sits on the outside.
Glazed Christmas Ham
The Christmas ham is the least stressful thing on the table, because it arrives already cooked. You are not cooking a ham. You are warming it through and putting a glaze on it, and the entire job is about ninety minutes of oven time you can do the day before.
Pizza Dough
Homemade pizza is usually let down by the base — pale, bready, and more like a scone than a pizza. Three things fix that, and none of them costs anything: the right flour, enough water, and an oven hotter than you think is sensible. Makes four 30 cm bases.
Waffles
Most homemade waffles are pancakes with a pattern on them. They come out of the iron looking right and they’ve gone soft and floppy by the time the second batch is done. Crisp waffles are a different batter and one piece of technique, and neither is difficult.
Weet-Bix Slice
Every Kiwi household has a version of this slice, and every version is slightly wrong according to someone’s mother.
Yorkshire Puddings
Yorkshire puddings are flour, eggs, milk and salt. There is nothing in the ingredient list that can go wrong, which means every failure is a technique failure — and there are only three techniques that matter. Makes 12. About 40 minutes, plus resting time for the batter.
Fried Rice
Fried rice is a fifteen-minute dish that exists to use up leftovers, and there is exactly one non-negotiable rule. Get it right and you have separate, slightly chewy, well-coated grains.
Overnight Oats
Overnight oats are five minutes of work the night before and nothing at all in the morning, which is the entire appeal. They’re also easy to get wrong in a way that puts people off for good — too much liquid and you get soup, too little and you get cement.
Nachos
Nachos fail in a very specific way: the top layer is perfect, the bottom is a pale soggy raft of chips with nothing on them, and the middle is somewhere between. That’s a construction problem, not a recipe problem. Serves 4 as a main, 6 as a shared plate. Thirty minutes.
Focaccia
Focaccia looks like it should be difficult and it is the opposite — no kneading, one bowl, and a dough so wet you couldn’t knead it if you wanted to. What it needs is time, and almost all of that is unattended. Serves 8 generously.