Here's one I made earlier

Okay, so I didn't necessarily do this one, but I work with the barista who did. And I drank it.

Also I ate the rugala (pastry wrapped round crushed apricots and dusted with icing sugar, made in the kitchen at the back) on the plate.

As for my coffee-making progress... well, there's more to steaming milk than meets the untrained eye. So rather than waste the annual output of a cow, I've been practicing with water and washing-up liquid.

Why? Believe it or not, cold water in a jug with a squirt of washing-up liquid behaves in a similar way to milk - it steams and froths to the same texture.

And once it's steamed to the correct texture (more foamy for a cappuccino, less so for a latté) and the temperature's around the 70ºC mark, then there's the all important pour. A flat white just wants a thin covering of foam to keep the coffee in the cup, a latté a finger's worth and the foam in a cappuccino should top out at around a third of a cup.

Only the professionals make it look easy. Here's one of them - David.

When he's not making coffees look as good as they taste he's equally adept at piling washing up in the sink for me.

Coffee al fresco

I've invested in a new coffee machine!

I found it lying in wet grass down the road from where I live.

It's all part of the big recycling campaign launched by Auckland council.

Everyone's been digging out their unwanted belongings and putting them up for grabs in the street.

I didn't even have to go out of my way to hunt down anything in particular but still managed to walk past plenty of interesting stuff on my usual route to and from the city.

If you'd had the time and patience for a good rummage, you'd have been rewarded with some nice finds.

And probably a few not so nice ones, too.

I bet this BBQ's been to some good parties though.

Okay, so the coffee machine has seen better days. And most of them were probably some years ago.

But you never know... it might turn out to be the best free investment I've ever carried home.

Though I still haven't dared plug it in yet. And as for cleaning it... well, let's just say I haven't yet attempted that either.

As you can see.

So whilst I still can't make a decent coffee at home, at least I still have an excuse to while away the hours drinking them in cafes.

Though after a certain time of day, usually around 3 o'clock, I now move on from coffee to hot chocolate. And I've found a pretty good one at Ben's.

This one wasn't done for the camera either - they always look like this. The texture is amazing, like smooth, fluffy pillows that melt over your tongue.

You're not sure where your mouth ends and the drink begins.

And this is what they look like a few minutes later.

Cake in a carpark

Sometimes the greatest finds present themselves in the most unexpected places.

Though maybe that's what a great find is.

Here I am, in a carpark community called Northcote, with 20 minutes to kill before the next bus back over the bridge to Auckland. What to do?

Without much thought I wander into a Chinese bakery called Classic Bakehouse to have a look at the rows of cakes. Just a look. One that catches my eye is called butter bread and it's bright yellow, shiny on top and springy to the touch even through the cellophane. Looks to me like brioche. It's only $1.60 for 2 pieces joined together. Okay then. Oh and a flat white on the side thanks very much, I'll be sitting over here.

The butter bread/brioche is as soft as a kitten, as light as a feather and pulls apart into doughy strands with therapeutic ease. Like candyfloss without the stickiness, you could probably tease it out from one side of the shop to the other. I must have set off some kind of culinary-chemical reaction causing it to disintegrate as, before I know it - poof! - it's gone. I'm bewildered, too - and by the nice taste in my mouth.

The flat white - made on a tiny coffee machine (no photos allowed) and at only $2.50 probably one of the cheapest in Auckland - turns out to be up there with one of the best I've had. And I've already had a couple just this morning.

Chef's special to go

A bag of chips on the way home is all well and good but sometimes that carby grease doesn't quite hit the spot.

So on Saturday night I was lucky enough to experience the all-new throw-together Venison Bap.

I can't claim to have invented the VB - it was created by chef Lennie of Vinnies after a Saturday night shift threw up an unlikely array of leftovers in her fridge. And so the VB was born. Slices of seared venison and Tomme de Savoie cheese, pickled red onion and baby coriander, stuffed into a homemade roll baked earlier that day (naturally).

Mine survived the bus trip home. And it was worth the wait, as it turns out that the best thing you can have with a VB is a glass of Valpolicella.

Though if you're out of venison, a Mousetrap, an Afghan and a cuppa should just about hit the spot.

Warm up in the Fridge

It was a blustery Autumn day in Auckland so I took myself off to The Fridge to warm up. It's the biggest walk-in fridge I've ever been in - Gordon Ramsay wouldn't know what to do with himself in it - but its not flash and fancy, it's homely and Smeg-like. This Fridge is a cafe in Kingsland, a western suburb of Auckland.

To save time, I took the train. Well, I say to save time, but really it was a sociological urban experiment in train travel - my virgin voyage by train to circum-navigate the volcano that is Auckland and its suburbs. Cheaper than the bus at $1.40 a go, there's no traffic lights every 10 metres and you can pay at your seat. What's not to like?

Another question - have you ever done a three-point turn in a train? I did one today - I wasn't driving, of course, I'd left that to the driver, but this is what happened: first stop (of supposedly three) was Newmarket, where we paused to collect a teenage goth then, quite unexpectedly, reversed out of the station and back the way we'd come.

Oh, so the joke's on me, I grimly realised, I see - I'm on Auckland's outdoor equivalent of the Waterloo & City line in London, no wonder it's so cheap. But, not more than 50 metres of back-crawling down the track, we screech up for no apparent reason, in a weedy plot where the tracks criss-crossed like no one's business (certainly not mine).

Then someone, somewhere, maybe in India, flicked a switch and we slowly started moving, this time forwards. What, back into Newmarket to pick up the goth's mate? But no! Ah-haha, we fork off in a westerly direction with the wind, bypassing Newmarket and off to Kingsland. Thereby an elegant three-point turn was completed and we were on our way.

I'd heard about The Fridge's famous pies and by the time I finally arrived I was in need of more than a Traditional Mince ($5). However, it was a good warm-up act, quite literally. Its pastry was golden and flakey and the mince within moist and sticky - and, curiously, not greasy - mixed perhaps with onions, I was told. Though no one was sure on this detail - only that quality mince is used, all pies are baked in the Fridge and are really pretty good.

And good it was, though one finds with pies that every bite is generally the same. Unless you separate the pastry from the filling, that is, and eat each alternately, then you would be correct in saying that every mouthful is different to the previous. But who'd even think of doing that?

Something not many people know about pies and calories is that they're best rounded up to the nearest 500, so after my pie, I ordered a homemade Afghan - you know the ones - and it arrived extra-specially topped with chocolate frosting and half a walnut. Crunchy through and through thanks to its invisible ingredient - cornflakes.

Lovely, though the flat white was a bit heavy handed in the milk frothing department, lots of air and bubbles, though probably good to wind a baby. Not that I had one to hand, mind you. Give me a pie any day though.

Mice on toast

The other day someone at work asked me if I knew what a mousetrap was.

Why sure, I said, it's what you catch dem pesky mice in.

It turned out he was speaking in an edible context.

A mousetrap, to a Kiwi, is vegemite and grilled cheese on toast.

The idea being that the mouse is lured onto the hot savoury slice by the prospect of scoffing the cheese. But then the vegemite takes a hold on its tiny paws like a sea of superglue.

The mouse either perishes on the spot or is hit over the head with a hammer once the kettle's boiled.

Just as I was assembling that theory, my informant popped one under the grill - a mousetrap, not a mouse. Indeed, there were no mice to hand - that we knew of at least - but I was grateful for the illustration.

While I devoured the mousetrap (grated Gruyere, since you ask) I tried to imagine what it would be like being stuck to a giant piece of hot toast that stunk of vegemite.

So I certainly shan't be needing these that my landlord left outside my door.

It would seem that people in Auckland have mousetraps on the brain. A one-trap mind, you might say.

Happy New Year Auckland

It's the end of the Chinese New Year celebrations and in Auckland that means just one thing - its famous Lantern Festival.

Princes Street is transformed into a long strip of tents housing make-shift kitchens. Smiley faces and deft hands whip up sizzling food at top speed.

Everyone's either cooking or eating and the air is thick with wafting smells. It's all very interesting.


Fish is on everyone's menus.

There's curried fish balls in pots, lemongrass fish skewers on grills, rows of gigantic breaded prawns and fish lollipops on sticks.

I spy a bright green drink in plastic cups - I'm told it's made from basil seeds soaked in lime juice and water until they become soft and jelly-like.

I'm still waiting for someone to tell me what it tasted like.







Even if you're not hungry, there's still plenty to look at.

A larger-than-life multi-coloured zoo sits perfectly still.

It's a good place for people-watching too

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