Pineapple & Mango (But Mostly Pineapple) Chutney

Chutney: no self-respecting Indian meal would be without a generous dollop of the stuff. For those not in the know, a chutney is a combination of fruit and veg, slow cooked in vinegar with sugar and spices, and then stored for a long period of time to intensify its flavour. Chutney, in all its many and varied forms, is but one of the many gifts the fine people of the Indian subcontinent have bestowed upon the world. Taking its place alongside Buddhism, call centres, using rocks down at the river to do your laundry, chess, and the largest film industry on the planet, chutney is indeed a bright star, doing its motherland proud. All this, and tasty, too.

Churros & Hot Chocolate

It's cold and miserable outside, and you're tucked up in front of the fire reading a juicy bodice-ripper/watching Jersey Shore. Suddenly, you get the urge...

Feeling better after peeing, you decide that what you want right now is a hot drink. But not just any old hot drink. And a snack would be good, too. A thick, Spanish-style hot chocolate and some piping hot cinnamon sugar-coated churros would be just about perfect, you think to yourself. Keen? Then read on...

Brining & Marinating Olives

Olives to me are a reminder of summer flavours and warmer climes. Bite into an olive and straight away you're transported to the warm waters of the Aegean, the dry hills of Greece. You could almost imagine lying under an olive tree, watching angry centaurs hurl amphorae of wine at British film crews, in town to record crap like "How to Turn a Goat Pen into Your Mediterranean Holiday Home!" for the Lifestyle Channel. Such is the evocative power of the olive!

Their meaty, salty flavour has made them popular around the world, and here in New Zealand, the drier parts of our countryside play host to sizable tracts of land devoted to their production. Olives are a familiar sight on the shelves of our supermarkets, deli's, and community markets; it beggars belief to think that it wasn't so long ago that they were considered, in this country anyway, quite a rarity.

Prickly Pear & Cactus Figs

The surprise I felt at discovering large numbers of wild cacti growing near Napier was akin to finding a pair of knickers in one's car glovebox. Questions sprang immediately to mind: how did they get there? How long have they been there? Will I get a rash if I touch them?

On the face of it, Hawke's Bay wouldn't seem like the kind of place to expect to find cacti. It can however get quite dry, and the plants do seem quite localised, growing in abundance near the beach at Bayview, a small coastal village ten minutes north of Napier. Upon paying a visit, they made for quite an impressive sight. What particularly interested me was the fact that they seemed to be covered in what looked like fruit.

Happy Hanukkah!

Meet Dan and Gwen. Dan is a local lad; Waipawa born and raised, he's the former owner of a ferocious looking beard, is very well travelled, and in the course of his journeys, met Gwen. Gwen is an American (from Seattle), Jewish and has seen more of this great planet than compatriot Sarah Palin is ever likely to. We were talking at work one day about December and Christmas, when she mentioned that the season for her is experienced a little differently than your average kiwi.