2024 Recipes

Term 4 2024: Rooms 10, 11, 12

Week 1: Fakaalofa lahi atu!  We started out the term with a delicious menu from the island of Niue, as we celebrated Niuean language week.  We enjoyed takihi, greens in coconut cream, roasted timala (kumara) and garden vegetables, and coconut cake.  Yum!

Week 2: This week we made Irish food, which was very tasty and full of vegetables from our garden.  We used freshly harvested potatoes, cabbages, and leeks to make colcannon, which are Irish mashed potatoes.  Then, we used the whole beetroot plant to make two dishes- beetroot tops and warm beetroot with cream and herbs.  And if that wasn't delicious enough, we loved finishing the meal with Irish apple cake. 

Dairy and egg free versions: Dairy free colcannon, dairy free warm beetroot with cream and herbs, and dairy/egg free Irish apple cake.

Week 3: One of our volunteers helping us cook this term is from Germany, and she shared some of her favourite German recipes with us this week!  We made Kartoffelpuffer (German potato pancakes), which we ate with yogurt and herb sauce, braised garden vegetables, and for dessert we had Kaiserschmarrn (German scrambled pancakes) with rhubarb sauce.  All the food was very tasty.  (And here's a dairy free, egg free version of Kaiserschmarrn if you need it).  

Week 4: Today we celebrated the Diwali holiday with some very deliciously spiced Indian food.  We enjoyed aloo saag gobi (potato, spinach, and cauliflower curry), beetroot raita, and roti.  For dessert everyone loved the coconut ladoo.  

Week 5: We had some very yummy Chinese food today, with spring vegetable fried rice, cong you bing 葱油饼 (Chinese scallion pancakes), stir fried greens with rice, and gān shǔ táng shuǐ 蕃薯糖水 (sweet potato with ginger and red dates dessert soup).

Term 3 2024: Rooms 23, 24, 25

Week 1: What a great start to the term!  We made food from South Asia- Aloo gobi (cauliflower and potato curry), with roti, rice, and cardamom spiced carrot cakes.  We loved the food and ate every last bit!  

Week 2: We made the most of the huge cauliflowers we grew in our garden this year with a menu from Europe: creamy cauliflower cheese, warm French lentil salad with garden vegetables (cauliflower, silverbeet, and fresh peas from our garden) and an apple, pear, and kiwifruit crumble.  Yum!

Week 3: Kia orana!  For Cook Islands language week we made some very delicious Cook Islands food.  The beetroot growing in our garden was perfect in the pink potato salad.  We also loved the creamy rukau that we ate alongside roasted kumara.  And for dessert, zesty and sweet pineapple pie!  

Week 4: Today we made Arabic food from the Middle East- a group of countries between Africa and Europe to the West, and Asia to the East.  The food was so tasty!  We ate a rice and vegetable dish called makloubeh, (traditionally this dish also has meat in it, we made a vegetarian version)- the spices made the dish especially delicious!  On the side we made a salad of the imagination and added a little bit of tahini to the dressing to give it a Middle Eastern flavour.  For dessert, we loved the sticky, sweet crunchiness of baklava.   

Week 5: Mālō 'e tau lava!  This week we really enjoyed the Tongan food we made.  We loved the sapasui with boiled green bananas and kapisi (cabbage) in coconut cream.  And, the dessert of otai with green apple and pineapple was juicy, sweet, and delicious!

Week 6: We made Korean gimbap 김밥 today, and it sure was tasty!  Gim means seaweed, and bap means rice.  In Korea, the gimbap can be filled with lots of different ingredients.  We used roasted kumara, and carrots and silverbeet cooked in sesame oil.  We also loved the roasted pumpkin with bulgolgi-style sauce, and the sweet potato and sesame cakes with a crunchy sweet sesame topping.

Week 7: We loved eating Ethiopian main dishes with injera today.  The spiced lentil stew, misir wat, with our own version of the spice blend berebere, was very tasty, and so was the vegetable stew, atakilt wat.  The injera was sour and soft, and tasted delicious with the stews.  For dessert we had the Somalian crepe called malaawah with stewed apple and lemon honey syrup.

Week 8: What a delicious Chinese meal we enjoyed today!  The hand cut noodles with stir fried garden vegetables were very popular, along with the crispy but soft 葱油饼 (pronounced cong you bing) scallion pancakes.  For dessert, we had spiced apple cakes- did you know that apples originated in Asia, right next to China?

Week 9: This week we celebrated Aotearoa as part of Te Wiki o te Reo Māori.  Our main dish was a delicious kumara and silverbeet salad with karengo and ti kouka dressing.  We also had mashed rīwai (potato) scones with kawakawa and herb butter, and for dessert we enjoyed the kumara roroi.  

Week 10: It's time for our end of the term pizza!  This week we're having a pizza party made from handmade pizza dough, our famous Owairaka pizza toppings, a salad of the imagination, and mini chocolate beetroot cakes.  Yum!

Term 2 2024: Rooms 19, 20, 21

Week 1: We started out the term with a delicious menu from our own country, Aotearoa.  The hua whenua soup was very flavourful and delicious alongside kawakawa pinwheel scones with homemade butter.  For dessert we had a very tasty apple, plum, and feijoa crumble!

Week 2: This week we enjoyed the flavours of Mexico, with bean and vegetable tacos made with handmade tortillas, and topped with green salsa.  For dessert we loved the sweet rice drink horchata!  

Week 3: We had a lot of fun making the food for our Chinese menu this week!  And the food was so tasty!  The dumplings with handmade dumpling wrappers, Owairaka dumpling filling, and panfried dumplings with dipping sauce.  On the side we had rice with stir fried vegetables and ginger-scallion sauce, and for dessert: 5-spice apple cakes.

Week 5: This week we celebrated Samoan language week with an amazing Samoan feast!  We loved the Owairaka vegetable sapasui, which we ate alongside talo and palusami.  For dessert we had sweet, sticky, coconut-y panipopo!

Week 6: This week we made food from the country Azerbaijan.  We all loved the food very much! We ate vegetarian kebabs with handmade sauce on lavash bread, and for dessert we enjoyed baklava.

Week7: We had a lot of requests for Tongan food this term and we really loved this week's food!  In Tonga, lu is often made with corned beef or lamb, but we made a vegetarian version this week with pumpkin (hina) and other vegetables.  Alongside the lu hina, we ate green bananas, Tongan banana pancakes, and green apple otai.  

Week 8: This week we made food from kitchen specialist Sarah's home country, the United States.  We made veggie burgers with handmade burger buns, tomato sauce, and garden greens, along with oven baked fries and lemon cake.  Yummy!

Week 9: This week we celebrated Matariki with some delicious kai from our own country, Aotearoa (New Zealand).   Last week we harvested a lot of kumara, and we roasted in the oven to make an extremely tasty kumara salad with silverbeet.  The parāoa parai (fry bread) we made and enjoyed with kawakawa butter was fluffy and delicious.  For dessert we loved the Matariki stars fruit cobbler.  

Term 1 2024: Rooms 16 &17

Week 2: We celebrated Waitangi Day with a menu from Aotearoa featuring some traditional ingredients like kumara, kawakawa, and karengo seaweed.  We enjoyed kumara and zucchini fritters with kawakawa and herb yogurt dip, along with a fresh tomato salad with karengo seaweed dressing.  Our dessert of kānga waru was very delicious!

Week 3: Happy Lunar New Year!  Our Chinese menu was very tasty.  We enjoyed dumplings (you can use store bought wrappers, or make your own wrappers- using wheat flour or gluten free flours).  We also loved the crunchy cucumber salad, and for dessert we enjoyed the flavour of sweet red bean soup.  

Week 4: This week we imagined we were enjoying blue skies and the sea breeze off the Mediterranean Sea in Greece.  We ate a lot of yummy food today- briami (a roasted potato and vegetable dish), tomato fritters with taztziki sauce, and milopita- Greek apple cake.  

Week 5: This week we enjoyed food from France and Belgium, two countries in Western Europe.  We loved the Belgian mashed potatoes called stoemp (pronounced stoomp) along with warm French lentils with garden vegetables.  For dessert we at lots of crispy Belgian style waffles with apple and plum compote.  

Week 6:  Today we used a lot of the potatoes we recently harvested to make saag aloo for our Indian menu.  We loved eating with our hands, using tasty handmade kuttu ki roti to spoon up the deliciously spiced potatoes and greens, topped with a herb raita.  The carrot and coconut halwa was deliciously creamy and sweet.  

Week 7: Today we made gnocchi with fresh tomato sauce as part of our Italian menu.  Delizioso!  The Italian green beans with garden vegetables was a tasty side dish and we ate every last crumb of our dessert- plum cake!  

Summer

Just before school started back, all of the teachers at Ōwairaka District School had a fun Garden to Table kitchen session making tacos.  For the tacos, we made tortillas, Mexican spiced beans with carrots and silverbeet, sauteed vegetables, guacamole, and even hot sauce!   On the side we had a delicious summer corn and tomato salad and for dessert we enjoyed zucchini (courgette) cake.