Room with a view of Hanover's town green

What a culture shock to leave hip and happening colourful San Francisco, fly to Boston and bus three hours north to the township of Hanover, New Hampshire, home of ivy league Dartmouth College, founded 1769. The streets were spotless. Everyone was well dressed. There was an air of wealth and wisdom. The town green looked like the set from Back to the Future. It was flanked by grand university buildings that looked like facades (but the...

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Chez Panisse - climb the stairs to food heaven

Now that our US tour has come to an end, I can say without a doubt, that nothing surpassed our dining experience at Chez Panisse in Berkeley, San Francisco.

Owner and organic/slow food guru, Alice Waters, first saw a MAU performance in Venice in 2003 and has been a supporter ever since. Eight years later, we perform in her town and she graciously invited us to lunch at her famous cafe and restaurant, founded in 1971. When the ni...

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Spring blossoms in Union Square

What a joy to spend eight days in SF and NOT have a bad meal! First lunch off the plane was at friends Nick and Sabrina’s place in the Castro for homemade lentils and tortillas with all the trimmings – fresh avo, salsa, rice, chutney. It replenished our stomachs and our souls. Then Nick whipped up a Trader Joe’s brownie batch and even used vegan buttery sticks – moist and chocolatey.

Nick and the ingredients of his bodacious brownies

We...

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A recipe from A Treasury of NZ Baking, this one by Ray McVinnie. If you love sweetness, cardamom, and plums, you can't go wrong...

Ingredients:
125 g butter
125 g caster sugar
1 tsp ground cardamom seeds
1 egg
1 tsp baking powder
300 g flour
8 large plums, stoned, sliced
extra caster sugar
icing sugar to serve

First cream the butter and sugar with electric hand – held mixer or food processor to get pale mixture. Add egg and beat it well. Add the baking powder and flour and process it to ...

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Downtown Los Angeles skyline around Pershing Square

Here is my first food report from the US while on tour with the dance group MAU. Nothing fancy, just miscellaneous observations on what I find as I travel across this great state…

In a nutshell, I had a week of very uninspiring food in Downtown LA. Broadway was the place of glamorous stars and movie premieres during the 1920s to the 50s but now it’s a wide treeless street of faded glory. It’s a primarily Hispanic area...

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Welcome to Bake Club, Christoph, our second male baker! Christoph is from Germany and has been an intern at The Aucklander. He wrote a story about Bake Club in an upcoming issue. The pic shows the two remaining muffins (Christoph and his flatmate and ate 4 of them straightaway out of the hot tin ^^).

Christoph used the recipe from www.food.com, but modified it a bit.
Ingredients (for 12 serves):
1 orange, seeds removed, with peel
1/4 cup orange juice
1/2 cup coconut milk
1 egg
1/2 cup butter
...
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