Lamb, olive, lemon and potato pie

This recipe was created on our cooking day in Dunedin. I couldn’t come up with a lamb recipe to save myself. And I was nervous. After seeing the lamb hung up in Mike’s shed and breaking it down I wanted to give this animal some respect. There is no way you can go through that process and want to cook and serve a mediocre meal.

Earl grey bread & butter pudding

This is the first recipe I have posted in which tea features as an ingredient, and by no means will it be the last.  When last year I posted my recipe for Chai, I also introduced my passion for loose leaf tea.  This passion is such that I see tea having the potential to be [...]

Naan bread

Soft, chewy naan bread is the perfect accompaniment to any curry – try serving these up alongside the Lamb Korma I posted earlier in the week, or with Emma’s Chicken Cashew Curry. I’ve had good results both frying these off in a heavy-based pan on the stove top and by baking in a very hot [...]

Vanilla creme brulee

The reason I settled on this dessert to complement my lamb recipe was because someone had made it for me a week prior. I forgot how a simple vanilla crème brulee can completely blow your socks off and selfishly I wanted to revel in that taste again.

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Apple and blackcurrant pie

I wanted to cook a dessert I could imagine farmer’s wives cooking during the winter to feed their hard working husbands and hungry, growing children. Although, growing up in suburbia my knowledge of farm meals is lacking. I talked to my workmate Nicola who grew up on a farm in Timaru and got some inspiration of foods synonymous with rural NZ.

Breadsticks with aioli

Baking is one of my favourite winter pastimes.  What I may currently be lacking in vitamin D, I fully intend to make up for with homemade treats (safe in the knowledge that I don’t need to go near a swimsuit for some months yet).  With the oven on the kitchen is warm, and the smell [...]

Seeded bread rolls

I have recently developed a sort of fascination for bread.  Several things about it pique my interest, not the least of which is eating it hot out of the oven generously smeared with salted butter.

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Gruyere and black pepper bread

I started making this bread as “baguette de tradition Français” – although by adapting the recipe I removed some of the details that make a baguette a baguette. I made the bread-making process a little simpler and although I have given specific resting times in the method, you don’t have to follow these exactly – you can always leave it to rest longer if you are busy with something else.

Schiacciata con l’uva

This office is full of passionate people – car enthusiasts, extreme mountain bikers, hunter/gatherers, rock-climbers, artists, musicians – but one passion most of us have in common is for good food. Simon, one of our senior engineers, has taken this passion further than most – travelling to Italy, Australia and around New Zealand indulging in [...]

Sultana lover’s sultana cake

If Florentines are airs and graces, then Sultana cake is deception and trickery!  Its name, so hopelessly dull and uninspiring, precedes its awkward, speckled exterior to make for a cake which, were first impressions always true, would easily be overlooked.  The truth however is that sultana cake is quite the antithesis.  Zesty orange and lemon

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Riesling syrup cake

We tasted many wines on our team trip into Central Otago.  While the region is best known for its (delicious) pinot noirs, we tasted a couple of delightfully syrupy, aromatic rieslings along the way as well.  They proved the perfect inspiration (along with the stunning scenery) for this syrup-drenched cake.

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Florentines

I have read conflicting stories which suggest that Florentines were, as the name suggests, first made in Florence, and others which recount a tale whereby their invention took place in the kitchen of King Louis XIV’s to present to a party of Italian guests to his palace at Versailles.

Stone fruit tarte tatin

French food ranges from haute cuisine to very rustic dishes.  The soufflé I posted earlier in the week requires a gentle hand and close attention to the clock.  Tarte tatin is a lot more forgiving.  In fact, the legend goes that this classic French dish was created entirely by mistake when Stéphanie Tatin accidentally put [...]

Blue cheese soufflé

This month we are cooking dishes from places that could be a home away from home.  In many cultures, food is a way of making guests feel welcome; I just know that in a place where food is so intrinsically linked with national identity I will fit right in.  Although I have never been to [...]

Irish soda bread

My mother is Irish. She grew up in sleepy little Limerick, made famous by the story Angela’s Ashes. As children she always regaled my sister and I with stories from home and of our family that we were yet to meet. When I was six she decided to whisk us off to Ireland to meet [...]

Chocolate, pistachio and hazelnut biscotti

Biscotti are twice baked (once as a loaf and then a second time as slices) to make for one incredibly crunchy sweet cookie that just begs to be dunked into hot coffee or tea. The absence of any butter or oils in the mixture means you can definitely have more than one.

Raspberry brownie

Should you be on the hunt for the ultimate brownie, there is little doubt that your search will reveal a plethora of recipes all vying for the attention of the inspired cook.  What makes this particular recipe stand out from the bunch however is the addition of raspberries, which, like little red jewels, provide a [...]

Layered coconut and lime cake

I am never that sure about coconut. Maybe it’s because my sister was allergic to it growing up and it was never a household staple, whatever the reason I tend to veer away from it. This recipe intrigued me though, whether it was the extraordinary height of it or the dazzling white of the icing, [...]

Nectarine coconut pound cake

The original cookbook tells of pound cakes relying on a thorough creaming or beating of the butter and sugar in order to get them to rise. When I read this I had instant appreciation for my electric beater. Due to the lack of raising agent, this cake’s consistency is dense and ballsy though the coconut [...]

Easter loaf

The names of our holidays have a built-in memory all their own. In English, the word Easter preserves the name of a pagan goddess, hinting at the pre-Christian roots of all the eggy fertility symbolism. In Hungarian, the word for Easter—Húsvét (pronounced ‘HOOSH-veight’)—encapsulates the centrality of food to this religious holiday, serving as further proof [...]

Tropical eton mess

This is another of Sarah’s beautiful recipes.  Serve it up over Easter weekend and your guests will love you!
Named after the school of Eton, this is usually a delicious mash-up of yummy meringue, berries and cream.  I have added an extra twist by making it tropical, and if made 20 minutes in advance, the flavours [...]

Easter doughnuts

While I know some of us may find it hard to comprehend (on some level I struggle to believe this myself!), not everyone is a chocolate fiend.  And while I am all about Easter being a celebration of chocolate in all its wondrous incarnations, there is room on my table (and in my belly) for [...]

Orange blossom marshmallow

This recipe comes to us from Sarah, one of the founders of this blog who sadly no longer works here at Fisher & Paykel. Sarah is a fantastic cook and in her spare time makes and sells beautiful handmade chocolates. Read Sarah’s thoughts on her recipe below:

Carob truffles

These truffles are completely chocolate free, using the much underrated and underused carob. When I started my quest for an interesting carob recipe, my boyfriend screwed his face up in disgust. After a childhood of carob treats due to an eccentric mother who had a passion for looking after her

Chai spiced honey cake

This recipe is out of one of my favourite recipe books, A Neoclassic View of Plated Desserts, a whole book devoted to completely amazing and decadent desserts. I cooked my final for my chef training out of this book and over the years have been slowly meandering my way through it.

Hot cross buns

Inspired to cook a particular dish, I like to consult multiple recipes, mixing and matching ingredients and methods until I arrive at my own version of the recipe in question.  This recipe for Hot Cross Buns is no exception.  It is based on one that was given to me by Simone, a friend and fellow [...]

Tahini balls

I will be the first to admit that this recipe caused a bit of a stir! It evoked some strong reactions from our willing testers, the majority of whom, thinking they were being offered chocolate truffles, were taken by surprise, discovering their intense sesame flavour and nutty texture. Testers’ opinions were very much

Chocolate caramel slice

This caramel slice is the kind of food to show appreciation or apologise, it will help win votes, help someone get well and will create more office smiles when made and brought into work.

Savoury muffins

These muffins are from our Fisher & Paykel Cookbook. They are studded with pinenuts and olives and flavoured with fresh herbs, and when you bite into them gooey mozzarella cheese oozes from their centre.

Valentines day shortbread

Happy Valentine’s Day readers! Each year, February 14th creates its fair share of controversy; there are the believers and the non-believers and there are the gift receivers and the non-receivers. I can understand those that don’t agree with this tradition, those that make the stand that every day should be

Versatile Quiche

Here is another one of Karen’s delicious recipes – this time for a simple quiche. Her suggestion: Double this recipe, bake it in a rectangular tin (approx 20cm x 25cm), serve half for dinner and freeze the rest in one-person-sized portions to pick up as you run out the door in the morning.

Spice cookies

These cookies have a delicious spicy flavour and are fabulous dunked in a steaming hot coffee—plus they have the added bonus of being gluten and dairy-free. Bake a little longer for crispy cookies, or take them out a couple of minutes earlier for softer, chewy treats.

Bagels

I’ve always wanted to try making bagels; the thought that you have to boil them before baking always fascinated me. When the theme for this month’s blogging came up as lunch ideas, I decided ‘why not’ and went online to find me a recipe.

Orange and almond slice

Zesty and beautifully textured, this slice is not for the faint-hearted as it contains a whole pulped orange, pith, zest and all!  What I find most appealing about this slice recipe is that it is quick and easy to make and contains only wholefoods as ingredients.  I often make it on a Sunday afternoon, cutting [...]

Onion tart with goats’ cheese and thyme

As promised, here is Karen’s recipe for onion and goats’ cheese tarts made with her Balsamic onion marmalade:
“Ready-made pastry and stored balsamic onion marmalade make these impressive tarts very quick and easy. Spoon the onion mixture into baked pastry cases and melt tangy goats’ cheese on top.”

Chicken stock and chicken pot pies

Whenever I cook sauces and soups I always kick myself that I don’t have fresh stock. The closest thing from the local supermarket is Gregg’s ‘real stock’, which I’m sorry I don’t think quite compares.

Stollen

This recipe comes to us from Karen, a former colleague and a great baker. Currently she is somewhere in the UK enjoying a white Christmas and catching up with family, but last Christmas she made this delicious fruit bread for the office and we are now all BIG fans!

An ode to ham – Part Two: Leftover ham torta

This recipe is similar to one that we cooked for our Design Sponge feature a few months ago, although for this feature we used all fresh ingredients: grilled eggplant and zucchini, prosciutto, tomato and anchovy sauce, parmesan and basil.

Panforte

Writing my Christmas posts has prompted me to think about what it is that makes Christmas so special for me.  I am not at all religious, nor am I much of a traditionalist, however every Christmas Eve I slip into the back of the local church just as midnight mass begins.  There is something about [...]

Baileys custard-filled profiteroles

Profiteroles are definitely something that have crept into my Christmas food traditions. Chocolate-dipped and custard-filled, the mere sight of them fills me with Yule tidings. I hope this association travels into my two-year-old son as the years go by.

Truffles

These truffle recipes come to us from Sophie (a.k.a. Fabulous Sophie (because she is)), our marketing guru Sydney-side.  When I first started at Fisher & Paykel, Sophie was based down here in Dunedin, and she always brought a little ray of sunshine (and glamour) into the office.  I have fond memories of these truffles made [...]

Poppy seed bread pudding (Mákos guba)

And here is Balint’s second recipe…
“Pronounced “MAH-kosh GOO-bah”, this no-fuss Christmas dessert combines simplicity with Hungarians’ love of consuming poppy seeds in quantities that would be considered bordering on the illegal in some other countries…

Tomato and rocket tarts

As a designer I am sensitive to aesthetics, to the way in which the objects and things around me look and feel.  Whether I am designing a product or serving dinner to my flatmates, the way things look are important to me.  Without consciously thinking about it, these tomato tarts became little canvases.  Their colours [...]

Kerstkransjes (Dutch Christmas cookies)

Annie is an industrial designer down here in Dunedin.  She has been with the team for a couple of years now, bringing to the group her wicked sense of humour and (when we are very lucky) some delicious Dutch treats.  In another life Annie ran a bar, and worked in catering, so she is more [...]

Almond drops

The 1st December marks a very special day in Auckland’s Christmas calendar.  On this auspicious evening every year just as dusk turns to dark in one of our central city streets, a row of houses light up with the spirit of Christmas.  Draped in curtains of Christmas lights these houses are transformed and it is [...]

Spring frangipane tart

As I have said in an earlier post, always try to use seasonal produce.  I hate the thought of people travelling all over the place, trying to find an ingredient for a recipe and  ending up either paying 10 times the price they would have had it been in season or getting fed up looking and cooking [...]

Lynne Pope’s bread

I have a cookbook, the blank kind in which you write recipes you’ve stumbled upon which are too good to pass by.  My cookbook is old, its cover is beginning to come loose and its spine is cracked and in need of repair.  Fingerprints track their way through its browning pages, hinting at the recipes [...]

Torta extra vergine

Like me, my Mum has an old exercise book in which she writes, in her beautiful calligraphic script, the recipes she finds which are too good to pass by.  It has a brightly striped cover and ruled pages which are covered in black ink and spatterings of olive oil and cake batter which, like little [...]

Ginger loaf

This deliciously dense, spicy ginger loaf recipe was given to us by Jon who is our personal IT go-to-guy, or so we like to think.  Like Pete, Jon also makes great coffee and somehow or other, every morning without fail, I am lucky to be on the receiving end of one of his delicious coffees.  [...]

Margherita and mediterranean pizzas

Pizza is an easy throw together meal that can feed the masses or make a feast for one. When considering what to cook for office favourites one of our customer interface engineers piped in with pizza and everyone in the blog team gave a resounding yes.

Chewy chocolate chunk cookies

These really are outrageously good cookies. Crispy on the outside, chewy and gooey in the centre, full of chocolate chunks and general buttery goodness. Maybe not something to be tucking into everyday, but if you are going to treat yourself, why not make it worth it?

Focaccia with olives, rosemary and lemon

This recipe was originally developed for one of our premium built-in ovens and has become something of a classic down here in Dunedin.  I think half the office would have it in their repertoires!  I have been known to work my way through a whole one myself over a Sunday afternoon lounging around reading the [...]

Espresso fudge

Coffee is the life blood of product development in Dunedin. So much so that certain members of the office partake in a coffee bean pool so that they can enjoy true espresso from an espresso machine without the bite four cups of it would normally inflict on one’s wallet.

Lemon and yoghurt cake

This recipe is from Laura-Daisy who looks after refrigeration performance in Product Development. Laura is an accomplished rower and to look at her, you wouldn’t think a sugar-laden treat has ever passed her lips. But on the contrary, she loves to bake and workmates birthdays see her bringing in her

Chocolate & courgette cake

I have been at Fisher & Paykel for over 2 years now.  I am one of seven industrial designers here in the studio in Auckland, and one of just two females.  Simone is my female counterpart and the only designer to contribute a recipe to this month’s theme, Office Favourites (the boys were nothing short [...]

Chocolate self saucing pudding

Chocolate self saucing pudding is synonymous with the Kiwi Sunday roast. Easily pre-prepared and banged into the oven as the roast comes out, I imagine it’s kept many a farmer happy after a hard day’s yakka.

Traditional Kiwi pavlova

Pavlova is the ultimate Kiwi classic. It is synonymous with the Saturday barbie, covered in kiwifruit and usually over-whipped cream, plonked surreptitiously on the bench until mass amounts of beer and sausage have been consumed and the greedy hoards come looking to satisfy their sweet tooth.

Passionfruit lamingtons

I have made over the humble lamington in this simple recipe.  Once more, I am publishing ‘small food’ and for that you inevitably want maximum flavour.  In my opinion, sponge cake doesn’t quite cut it so I have made a light blondie-brownie as the base.  The catering company I worked for gave me the idea [...]

Chocolate dipped hokey pokey

The thought of homemade Hokey Pokey for me conjures up memories of science class where, armed with Bunsen burners, brown sugar, sticky golden syrup and baking soda, a class full of excited 14 year olds experience the wonder of chemistry in the kitchen. And what better way to end

Spiced banana cakes with hot caramel sauce

For me, the perfect banana cake need not involve chocolate. I feel it needs something more gentle, more loving, more saucy to tenderly wrap it in dreamy deliciousness. Enter hot caramel sauce. Roasting the bananas before using them in these little cakes also lends a delicious caramel flavour—it brings out the natural sweetness in the [...]

Chocolate, cranberry and cinnamon biscuits

I’ll be the first to admit that I have developed an annoying habit.  I blame it on my Mum.  Her health conscious ways have rubbed off on me, spawning little habits and behaviours such as the one in question.  This particular habit sees me performing cosmetic surgery of sorts on recipes whose sugar and fat [...]

Non traditional vacherin

A traditional Vacherin dessert is created by layering meringue disks with crème Chantilly. It gets its name from a cow’s milk cheese made during the cold winter months in France and Switzerland; the colour and shape of vacherin cheese compare to that of this dessert. In this non-traditional vacherin

Chilli chocolate brownies

After falling in love with chilli dark chocolate, I thought what better way to warm up a gloomy winter Tuesday than to make some chilli chocolate brownies for morning tea? Well, the warming effect was certainly intense! My first attempt at these sent a few of the more fragile members of staff running for the [...]

Vanilla panna cotta with coconut macaroons

This combination of smooth, creamy panna cotta and crunchy, slightly chewy macaroon is really rather luscious! You can either serve the panna cotta atop the macaroon (as shown in the photos), or on the side with a little fresh fruit or berries.

Green tea creme brulee with burnt orange

Crème brulee is one of my favourite desserts, it is the smoothest richest custard and the crunchy caramel sugar topping adds that extra something that tips it over the edge to ultimate deliciousness, definitely a decadent dessert for a celebratory feast.

Cupcakes

I am such a huge cupcake fan – something about the shape, the decoration, the miniature-ness of them is just so appealing. This basic cupcake batter not only makes great vanilla cakes, but is also a great base that can be made into lots of different treats.

Parkin

This recipe was written by a former colleague of ours Karen O’Neill. Karen has moved on from Fisher & Paykel after six years as the product evaluator for cooking products. Her knowledge and experience were invaluable—we certainly learnt a lot sharing the cooking lab with Karen, and her English plumb and laugh are sorely missed [...]

Little lemon meringue tarts

I love making small or bite sized morsels. Whether they be presented lined orderly on a clean white platter for a cocktail party or piled high on a tiered cake stand for a baby shower, smaller foods are more likely to be sampled.

Orange chocolate cake

This recipe is one which is close to my heart. It forms part of one of my earliest and fondest memories. I was 5 and my two younger brothers, Tim and Nick, were packed into the backseat of the family car heading south on holiday with Mum. Having just started school, I [...]