Waikato Foodbasket

Better butter

Writing about butter is close to the top of my list of interesting things to do. After eating butter. It has always surprised me that the Waikato doesn’t have a premium iconic butter product. Our beautiful grass-fed dairy cows produce so much milk and cream, but up...

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Buckwheat breakfast

My favourite winter breakfast is hot buckwheat porridge. With a spoonful of home-made Caspian Sea yoghurt, a dash of Sweetree honey and a sprinkle of Trade Aid cinnamon, it’s warming and sustaining. For the purposes of the Waikato Foodbasket, the locally produced...

The fruits of winter

Last weekend my friend Jane texted: “Let’s go and pick persimmons!” So on a sunny Saturday afternoon we drove out to the persimmon orchard at Matangi and collected some huge bags of gorgeous orange fruit. It was by far the easiest and most rewarding "pick your own"...

A lot of shallots

Shallots look like small, misshapen onions, or huge, bronze coloured garlic cloves. The Cato’s Potatoes stall at the farmers’ market sells them at this time of the year. These interesting members of the onion family can be easily turned into wonderful cold-weather...

Madhur’s potatoes

Last weekend my husband Matthew made his favourite spicy Indian potato dish to take to a potluck dinner for the World Voices singing group. It was very popular and people requested the recipe. The potatoes are cooked with whole spices and coconut oil, which gives a...

Land of chestnuts

This time of year the Waikato is full of delicious chestnuts, falling off the trees, waiting to be eaten. How great is that! When David Klinac of the New Zealand Chestnut Council contacted me recently, I jumped at the chance to find out more about the local chestnut...

Happy hot cross bun day

There are very few sacred foods in my British-Anglican backstory, and one is hot cross buns. In the Waikato we’re lucky to have two makers of superb hot cross buns: Celtic Kitchen and Volare. Dorothy, my proper English grandmother, would have approved of both. Above:...