All posts filed under: Cooking & Eating

Kasspotzn – Crafting Cheese dumplings Austrian Style

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Rumour had it that there’s a “Spätzlesieb” in town! Apparently one of the Austrian (from Vorarlberg to be exact) instructors took his cooking equipment around the world and as soon as we heard about it we wanted it. (For the non German speakers – that’s a piece of metal used to make dumplings). It took 12 eggs, 1 kg of flour and “A Schluck Milch” (a bit of milk) to craft the dough which is then pressed through the “Spätzlesieb’s” holes into boiling water in a pot below and cooked like pasta. Once the tiny dumplings are cooked they can be used for delicious dishes, traditionally including lots of melted cheese and fried onions. When I read this again it sounds terribly confusing so if you can’t imagine it, here are some images: First Spätzle dinner took place at my friend Kathi’s place and was delicious. Even the Austrian Spätzlesieb owner came and found them tasty. Goes without saying the Kiwi visitors loved them! Dessert was Apfelstrudel with vanilla sauce….. yum!

A must for Pay Day Dinners: Francesca’s Italian Kitchen

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Pay Days are (obviously) special days of the season but this one was incredibly tasty as we treated ourselves with delicious food from my favourite place in Wanaka. What started off with just a couple of us ski instructors deciding to go for dinner together soon turned into a major organizational nightmare – mostly for chief dinner organiser Sanna O. But she – as she always does with dinners – completely mastered the task and andfound a huge table for seventeen starving ski instructors, loaded with Italian goodness â la Polenta Fries, pizza and desserts to die for.

Russ doing roast and Steve having cream (with a slice of cake)

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The season has barely started and Sanna and me already managed to invite ourselves to Russ’ place for dinner…. easy! Sanna: We should do a dinner anytime soon? Russ? Russ: Ahem….Okay…. Sanna: Mhm, Roast would be great! Russ: Roast it is. Sanna: I’ll bring the wine! Me: And I’ll make a cake! Russ: ….. Sanna: Thursday night? Russ: …. Thursday night. Sanna: Seven o’clock. Russ: …. Sanna: Deal. If you know Russ you also know he likes talking. But there wasn’t much talking needed, it happened so quick that he had no chance. So Thursday came – and because we thought Wine & Cake wasn’t enough to bring along we also brought housemates Steve, Veina & Mikko, Russ invited his landlord and Nico and although it was on rather short notice it was a great night… I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves. And even though it looks like Dinner consisted of cake only, there was roast before that! Followed by a lesson how to make proper stock and Sanna taking the pot home on her lap. Thanks, Russ for …

Last night in Bangkok

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I admit: I have not been a huge fan of Bangkok – until last night. I came to see a completely different side of this city, no longer dirty and loud but rather stylish and trendy – thanks to my friend Bob, a Kiwi who has lived in Bangkok for years now and knows all the hip spaces and places. Bob wanted to show me all the hidden gems of Sukhumvit’s Soi 11, a trendy side street of Sukhumvit’s main road – and oh, the places we’ve seen! We started with a drink at Cheap Charlie’s where my personal highlight was a sign telling that they were now offering a toilet – for ladies only and kindly asking for “no shit, only pee”. Next stop was a lovely garden restaurant with live music where almost at the end of my Thailand trip I finally got to taste some delicious fish cake and chicken in banana leaves. We headed on to another garden bar where a Thai interpreted traditional western christmas carols the Thai jazz way …

When the penis won’t go into big noodle (which means don’t add peanuts to the big noodle dish)

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When in Chiang Mai learn to cook Thai style – that was on top of my bucket list for Thailand and we probably found the perfect and most hilarious place to do so: The Organic Thai Farm Cooking School, a couple of kilometers outside of Chiang Mai with their own veggie garden. We started the day on a local market, learning about different kinds of rice, sauces, vegetables and other ingredients. Once we arrived at the farm we took our taste-buds to the garden where we were allowed to eat from every plant, fruit, herb – often with interesting facial expressions. We had all chosen the dishes we wanted to learn in advance and having all the ingredients prepared on our cooking stations it was easy to dish them up into tasty curries, pad thais and coconut milk soup. I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves: It was still our little group of funny Upper Austrians so the laughing kept naturally going all day but the real highlight was our fantastic cooking teacher Embee. Apart …

The story of how I got glandular fever in New Zealand

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After a good night (and day) of sleep I’ve gathered all my superpowers for a long post – so here’s the story: August has an incredibly busy month up at Cardrona Alpine Resort where I work. Busy to an extent that probably nobody really expected so our team was slightly short on instructors. Sooner or later everybody had to sacrifice their days off and while everybody was clever enough to make good use of their rare days off by just sleeping all day or getting fit again I decided to put even more training and activities in. So it happened that I went on a three-day Teaching Kids Certification Course at Coronet Peak (one of the ski fields in Queenstown), met up with friends, went on road trips or had the fabulous idea of volunteering at the Winter Games. Plus, my sore tooth was giving me a hard time and sucked all my good powers out of me. Looking back now it seems so obvious that this couldn’t have gone alright in the long run …

International Dinner at our house

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Following our payday dinners and lots of food talk during our lunch breaks we recently came up with the idea of having an international dinner at our house – where everybody had to bring a culinary delight from their country. And I have to admit that I am amazed by the cooking skills of my fellow ski instructors: The Americans brought Mac & Cheese plus Apple pie for dessert, Slovakia was present with Herula (a delicious potato-based dish), Slivovitz (similar to Schnaps) & Apfelstrudel (Plagiarism!), the Italian girls brought Pizza, Jo from New Zealand made a delicious bread loaf filled with onion dip, Argentina provided delicious Tarta de Atùn, Nicola – the Austrian-English colleague – brought berry pie, Sanna from Sweden made delicious Köttbullar med brunsås and Kanelbullar for dessert (one of my favourites) and Austria was represented by Apfelstrudel & Radler. Oh, and we really appreciated the effort from the English girls – by bringing along a can of baked beans, crackers and shortbread from the UK. Breakfast today consisted of leftovers – but …

Payday Dinner with the ski instructor girls

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It all started when our lovely Italian colleagues Manuela & Selina were looking for the best pizza in town. They asked me if I wanted to join them in their quest and test Francesca’s – a local pizzeria in Wanaka. Eventually more and more girls joined in and we ended up being fourteen female ski instructors from six countries. We had a lush dinner, enjoyed good talks, the occasional glass of wine, drinks at the bar next door after that and some of us finished the night at a local house party. We agreed that it was well deserved and that we should treat ourselves more often – from now we will repeat our girls dinner fortnightly, always after payday. Next time: Japanese! PS: Did you notice how all the blondes sit on one side of the table and all the brunettes on the other side? Coincidence, I promise! We were not aware of it…