2022 Recipes

    

Term 4 2022- Rooms 18, 19, and 20

Week 1: Fakalofa atu!  We loved celebrating Niuean language week with some delicious Niuean food.  We made takihi, roasted timala, which is pronounced tSee-MA-la and is the same vegetable we call kumara here in New Zealand, greens in coconut cream, and coconut bread!  It all tasted amazing, and we had a lot of fun cracking open the coconut and grating coconut for the coconut bread.  

Week 2: Happy diwali!  To celebrate Diwali, we enjoyed an Indian feast.  Did you know that paneer, a type of Indian cheese, is quite easy to make?  We made paneer for our palak paneer- it was so yummy.  The broccoli with besan subzi and corn flour roti were very tasty side dishes.  For dessert we loved the coconut ladoo!

Week 3: We grew a successful crop of beetroot in our gardens, so we made a Russian and Eastern European beetroot soup that is famous around the world called borscht!  Borscht is a bright red soup because of the beetroot and tomato, but it's full of vegetables!  It also contains potatoes, carrots, cabbage, onion, and garlic, and is delicious!  We dipped rye and caraway muffins into the soup, and on the side enjoyed a Russian cabbage salad.  The dessert was amazing too- syrniki (pronounced seer-nee-kee), which are cottage cheese pancakes, topped with fruit compote.  

Week 4: We love broad beans!  They are really fun to pop out of the pod, and some of them are really big!  They tasted delicious in baked falafel with fresh broad beans and broad bean hummus (if you don't have time to soak chickpeas here's a recipe for falafel using canned chickpeas).  We made pita bread and ate it stuffed with the falafel, broad bean hummus, salad of the imagination.  Yummy!  For dessert we had a creamy Middle Eastern milk pudding topped with strawberry sauce, fresh kiwifruit, and edible flower petals.  

Week 5: What a great day!  We made sushi with vegetables from our garden- beetroot, carrots, and greens- yum!  The miso and vegetable soup we enjoyed alongside the soup was also amazingly tasty.  For dessert, we ate dorayaki (Japanese pancakes) with kiwifruit jam.

Week 6: We all loved the Mexican menu today.  We used a tortilla press to make corn tortillas with a special flour called masa harina.  We made tacos by topping the tortillas with Mexican spiced beans with vegetables and avocado and broad bean dip.  Delicious!  Then, we got to dessert, which was just as delicous as the tacos- chocolate, cinnamon, and chilli cake!  

Week 7: Today we enjoyed Irish food: colcannon (super creamy mashed potatoes with cabbage and leeks), roasted carrots with butter and herbs, Irish soda bread with handmade butter, and Irish apple cake.  Everyone thought the food was amazingly delicious.  

Term 3 2022- Rooms 16, 21, and 22

Week 1: Kia orana, it's Cook Islands language week!  We enjoyed some delicious Cook Islands inspired food.  The roasted Island vegetables of taro, kumara, and potato were very yummy, which we ate with rukau- traditionally taro leaves cooked with coconut cream but we used silverbeet leaves from our garden instead.  We also loved the "no ika" mata, a vegetarian spin on ika mata or Cook Islands style raw fish.  The flavours were very fresh and zesty!   For dessert we thought the banana poke topped with coconut cream was a very tasty treat.     

Week 2: Our menu today featured some great ingredients from our country, Aotearoa.  Kumara and waiporoporo potatoes were delicious in the hua whenua soup, which we topped with kawakawa and puha pesto.  We dipped brown soda bread with oats into the soup- yum!  For dessert the secret ingredient was kawakawa and lemon syrup which made a crunchy and delicious topping on little lemon cakes.  

Week 4: Do you know what yacon is?  It's a South American vegetable that we have been harvesting by the kilo in our school garden!  It tastes a little bit like an apple, a little bit like a carrot, and it looks like a big brown kumara on the outside.  It is crunchy, delicious, and sweet raw.  We celebrated yacon with a South American menu of arepas using a specialised cornmeal flour from South America which Sarah bought at Farro.  We topped the arepas with an Ecuadorian bean stew made with yacon and silverbeet and a delicious yacon and kale aji verde (green hot sauce).  Dessert was an upside down apple and yacon cake!

Week 5: Dumplings are eaten in many countries around the world, and today we made Chinese dumplings!  We hand made dumpling wrappers, a vegetable filling, and then we formed and panfried the dumplings.  We also had a tasty stir fried broccoli, yacon, and greens from our garden which we ate with rice.  For dessert we had 5-spice apple cakes.  

Week 6: Today we cooked some food from India!  We enjoyed palak gobi, which is spinach and cauliflower curry (though we added some broccoli and yacon too!), which we ate with roti and rice.  On the side we had a crunchy and tangy carrot salad, and the little carrot cakes we had for dessert were very tasty too.  

Week 7: Malo e leilei!  What a great day for Tongan food during Tongan language week!  The sapasui was very tasty, and did you know that green bananas can be cooked and eaten like a vegetable? We drank a refreshing grated fruit juice called otai, and for dessert we had Tongan banana pancakes!

Week 8: Kia ora!  It's Te Wiki o te Reo Maori and we celebrated with some of our unique Aotearoa ingredients.  Everyone loved the kumara salad with upland cress, the cornbread muffins with handmade kawakawa butter, and pikelets with huakiwi (kiwifruit) and āporo (apple) compote.  

Week 9: Today we made Filipino food, and it was very delicious.  We had a vegetarian version of kaldereta (made with lentils), pumpkin adobo, rice, and for dessert we enjoyed turon, which are banana spring rolls.  

Week 10: At the end of each term we make pizza!  We rolled out the pizza dough for two kinds of pizza: a green pizza and a cheese pizza with vegetables.  Along with our pizza we enjoyed a salad of the imagination and an upside down rhubarb and apple cake.  He tino reka te kai!

Term 2 2022- Rooms 6, 7, & 8

Week 1: Today we celebrated some uniquely Aotearoa ingredients- kumara and kawakawa.  We used kumara leaves and kawakawa leaves to make a very tasty pesto, which we put on homemade soda bread.  We also had roasted kumara salad with silverbeet.  It was especially delicious because of the kawakawa and lemon juice in the dressing alongside the sweetness of the kumara.  For dessert we enjoyed mini apple cakes.  

Week 2: We took a culinary trip to the Middle East today and ate pita bread stuffed with falafel (if you're making it at home and don't have time to soak dried chickpeas use this recipe instead), carrot and tahini dip, and salad of the imagination.  Have you ever eaten olive oil in a dessert?  We had apple and olive oil cakes.  Everything was extremely delicious!

Week 3: Today we enjoyed a curry from South Asia, called saag aloo (saag means any leafy green vegetable and aloo means potato).  The saag aloo was delicious eaten with handmade roti and carrot raita salad.  For dessert we really loved the cardamom spiced pear upside down cake.  

Week 4: It's starting to get colder and we warmed up with some delicious beetroot soup.  Borscht is often eaten in Ukraine and other countries in Eastern Europe.  We ate the borscht with rye and caraway muffins and a side of cabbage salad of the imagination.  For dessert we enjoyed apple crumble!  Yum.  

Week 5: We used some of our potato harvest to make Italian gnocchi, which are soft potato and flour dumplings.  We topped the gnocchi with tasty garlicky greens, and for dessert we enjoyed Italian apple cakes.  

Week 6: Last week was Samoan Language Week and to celebrate, we made Samoan food.  A favourite was a vegetarian version of sapasui, or chop suey.  We also loved the kumara in coconut cream, and panipopo (coconut buns) were a sweet dessert!  

Week 7:  Today we enjoyed a medley of South East Asian foods.  From Malaysia, pumpkin rendang- the spices in the sauce were very delicious.  We tried some Vietnamese street food- crispy rice pancakes with silverbeet and sunchokes (sometimes called jerusalem artichokes), with a tasty dipping sauce.  For dessert we had a creamy and coconutty Thai black rice pudding with Owairaka summer strawberries (Mrs. Cramer saved them in the freezer for us).  The food was all so colourful and delectable!

Term 1 2022- Rooms 17, 23, 24, and 25

Week 1:  Tacos! Handmade corn tortillas topped with Owairaka garden-grown beans cooked with silverbeet, carrot, and spices, topped with a fresh and crunchy corn and tomato salsa.  Yum!

If you want to make these at home, note that the corn tortillas are made with a special Mexican style corn flour called masa harina.  Tio Pablo Masa Harina can be purchased at most supermarkets and specialty food stores, or online.  

Week 2: Thai green curry!  We made our curry paste from scratch, which is lots of fun and very delicious.  If you don't have time or don't have the ingredients at home, you can use a store bought curry paste to make a green curry.  We sliced and chopped lots of vegetables to make an Owairaka green curry, which we served over rice.  We harvested capsicum, carrots, and lots of silverbeet from the garden for our green curry.  For dessert, we enjoyed a black rice pudding topped with strawberries!  The strawberries were from our garden too; Mrs. Cramer picked them as they ripened, washed and quartered them, and froze them for us to use!  Thanks Mrs. Cramer, and thanks to Josh and the other students who helped her!

Week 3: Today we made Greek briami (a very tasty dish of roasted potatoes, capsicum, eggplant, tomatoes, eggplant, and zucchini) along with pita bread and summer plum cakes.

Week 4: We made Vietnamese food today.  The crispy rice pancakes were delicious with lots of vegetables and a tasty dipping sauce.  On the side we had a zesty carrot salad, and for dessert we had a fruit salad with coconut milk sauce.  

Week 5: We loved the Japanese food we made today.  There was plenty of vegetable sushi, and we enjoyed the ginger flavour in both the garden vegetable salad with miso and ginger and the dorayaki with fruit and ginger filling.  

Week 6: We celebrated the amazingly warm autumn weather with Pacific Island food.  We ate vegetable sapasui, silverbeet greens in coconut cream with boiled green bananas, and for dessert we had refreshing otai with freshly grated coconut.

Week 7: Wow- what a delicious Pakistani curry we ate today.  We enjoyed the eggplant and pumpkin curry with roti, a flatbread eaten in Pakistan, India, and Sri Lanka.  For dessert we had a cardamom and cinnamon spiced caramelised pear cake.  Yum!  

Week 8: Today we enjoyed southern Chinese style fried rice and stir fried greens.  For dessert we made a Chinese 5 spice blend made up of star anise, cinnamon, fennel seeds, cloves, and Sichuan peppercorns to spice up our apple cakes!

Week 9&10:  Pizza!  Here's our pizza dough recipe, top with whatever you like best!