The Aristologist, Napier (2026)

05/06/2026

Taiwanese “sausage”, rice. Beardsley.
The most ridiculously tasty Asian sausage comes out of Taiwan. Pork, garlic, sugar, rice wine, more sugar, more garlic and five spice. I’ve never found it in NZ supermarkets but was lucky enough to try some made by a work colleague’s father. I tried making it once, - apart from stuffing everything into casings it has to be dried. In the open Wellington air it attracted flies, so I had to buy a fan - another after the one I’d thrown away after making Peking duck. It was laborious but delicious.
Without casings this was simply a Taiwanese log - rolled, vacuum sealed and sous vide before frying. It was still delicious but it lacked the density of the original or the pop of the casing. If you ever see it - try it - sweet, chewy, garlicky - quite special.

26/05/2026

Lest we forget

26/05/2026

NWA - no wankers allowed - dinner - theme Italy. Hosted, pondered on, cooked, disgorged and poured by and with the help of a predinner Negroni of perfect proportion made by daughter India.
Lusciously dripping gorgonzola dolce and Bruschetta - pepper, cannellini and sage, introduced the evening followed by a ravishingly creamy mushroom risotto.
Then as white wines changed into red a delicious chicken cacciatore with roast potato, carrots and salata.
For dessert an encore of thousands - a home made pistachio, and a cherry gelato, morphing into orange and honey biscotti and a gorgeous Italian Apple cake.
The wines were no less generous - 8 in all - through and - the images tell the story, some lovely mineral citrus whites, Pinot Grigio, an intriguing appassimento white Bacollo, and a red appassimento which I forgot to photograph, a Poderi Cellario Dolcetto I ran out of image spaces for, Barbera and primitivos to gorge upon and a 1985 dessert wine - Castello di Monsanto La Chimera - the perfect partner to the apple cake.
Like the wine, the raucous conversation was primitivo, at its most elegant, sore muscles from laughing well into the hazy evening, before a sober driver ride home. One of the best - but I say that every time!

Thank you Rebecca and Ollie - proud parents of NZ’s best Rosé.

22/05/2026

I’ve never posted about tea. It is, however, the one culinary ritual of pedantry that I subscribe to. Every morning for more decades than most have been alive.
☕️
I have certain rules: others do too - and theirs will differ, I know. But for what it’s worth here are mine:
1. Never, ever, use a tea bag, unless there is nothing else. They were invented to make money from the swept up dust of tea factories. They explode with microplastics and they occupy 95% of supermarket shelving in the tea section. They give a dreadful cup of tea and they force you to add milk at the end of brewing which has dire consequences.
1b. Flavoured teas are for the most part dire, insipid and only useful in a madochistic sense when dieting or trying to be “healthy” - they have no place first thing in the morning.
2. Always use loose leaf.
3. For the first cup of the morning it should come from Assam - nowhere else. Not Sri Lanka / Ceylon.
4. After much trial I make a blend of 50% Namdang, 25% Mangalam and 25% Orangajuli.
5 I buy them from T-Leaf, mail order from Wellington. Mix them up in a big basin and keep in tins.
6. If desperate we will buy a standard loose leaf English Breakfast - but that is rare.
7. Heat the teapot and cups with hot tap water. Wait while the water in the kettle boils. Pour out the water from the teapot, fill with boiling water, wait two minutes then pour this into the cups.
8. For two cups use two big teaspoons (hence the name). Add fresh boiling water and wait 5 minutes. Use a timer. No less! If you like it weak just add boiling water to your cup to dilute.
8. The cups must have mass to stay hot - I prefer thick mugs, heated as noted with boiling water.
9. I like 20% of the volume as trim or skinny milk - full cream milk is nauseating.
10. There is no 10.

22/05/2026

Rows aligned to the (almost) midwinter sunrise. Cabernet Sauvignon still green, but carmenere turning a beautiful red. Second image shows carmenere on two rootstocks - right on 101-14 and left 106-8, senescence and shutting down for winter on the 101-14, still some carbs moving around and photosynthesis on the 106-8 : be interesting to see what effect all this will have on grape ripening times - when they are allowed to have kids - maybe the odd one next year.

13/05/2026

Crispy chicken wings, cabbage in black vinegar, rice: Dalva Douro Branco, 2022.
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A friend for lunch gave me an opportunity to work on two recipes.
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Wings, tips removed and frozen for future stock. Marinated in a coarse puree made in the blender from a medium onion, ginger, garlic, mirin, soy, fish sauce, black vinegar, chili sauce, sesame oil and a little Kashmiri chilli. After an hour the runny liquid drained off leaving the wings with the coarser bits attached. Dredged in rice flour and after another 15 mins into air frier at 180C for 15min. Oil-tossed, halved, brussel sprouts added and continued in frier at 200C for another 12min. Then wings painted with the runny liquid, that had been reduced with honey to a glaze (note the oven extract-free cooking in image - Ernie was disinterested). 2 more minutes in frier - sprinkled with toasted sesame seeds and plated.
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Cabbage chopped coarsely and fried in peanut oil with garlic, ginger, Szechuan peppercorns and chopped chilli. After maybe 3 minutes plated and drizzled with black vinegar, chilli crisp and sesame oil.
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Rice as per usual.
And yes looks as good as it tasted.
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Dalva Douro Branco, 2022, Portugal. A white blend of viosinho, malvasia fina and codega. A petite floral-citrus young girl, quite elegant in an unassuming way - not memorable, but pleasant, and chatty enough company for crisp wings and cabbage.

A non-cooking section in the library. MR James and Lovecraft can’t be beaten.

12/05/2026

Potato, pork, pepper, paprika and egg. Crab apple crumble. Villa Maria Braided Gravels Albariño. 2022.
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Cold night and I felt like something vaguely Spanish to go with the Albariño. Chopped egg on fried potato with other toppings is a currently fashionable concept so I made this up around that.
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Pork belly cut into 2cm cubes and tossed in smoked paprika, Kashmiri chilli, a slurp of sherry vinegar and another one of olive oil. Left for 30min while -
3 thickly (5mm) Sliced potatoes oiled and layered into air frier, 180C for 12mins.
Placed the pork belly skin side up on the potatoes and kept cooking for 20mins. Meanwhile -
Chopped a red pepper into little squares and covered with a mixture of red wine, sherry vinegar, miso paste, honey, sweet paprika and soy. Boiled and reduced until pepper nearly cooked and sauce glaze-like. Added to the potato / pork after brushing the pork with the glaze. Cooked another 5 mins.
Fried egg on top - B’s plate I chopped - it looked a mess - deserved after her comment about the books. I kept mine whole. Very delicious and definitely basis for further experimentation.
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Jack Humm crabs halved, cored and placed on a bed of streusel “topping.” Ie not under. A little more topping around the apples and a dusting of white sugar on top. 180F 20min. Sharply delicious. Unfortunately I wanted ice cream with it but the freezer was devoid.
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Villa Maria Braided Gravels Albariño 2022
Lemon yellow, dry, assertively acidic with a vein of intense citrus, 🍋‍🟩 and mineral - a bit teenage brash, long lasting, stands out from the rest of the class - worked well with the richness of the pork. Don’t expect subtlety.

10/05/2026

Moving into the new house meant moving books into the new house. Because the old house had built in shelving, I had to put up more Lundia shelves, which now span several rooms. I had given 14 large boxes away to a local book dealer but had still underestimated the shelving need.
The word for it is bibliomania.

The “library” now resembles a classic old bookshop - terrifying for those with claustrophobia, and difficult for those in need of ozempic. Although the smell of old books are not to some folks taste, I love it. I can’t imagine a day when odour-free digital libraries are the norm. My library only lacks a grumpy old chap behind a book-laden table drinking cold stewed tea - simply because I couldn’t fit a table in.

Although for the most part enjoyable, my main irritation was calculating the shelf spacing height according to the size of books. Book designers who thought it fashionable to print in landscape format or, over-size were cursed repeatedly. Marco, Ducasse, Heston!! I found the best way to deal with these was to have a narrow shelf of horizontal books in the middle of the rest.

Old NZ cookbooks (pre1950) are in boxes, according to date and genre, but classification of the rest is a bit hit or miss, mainly because I never knew what the next box would have in it. Invariably the French section was full before another box of French books was opened, which then required Italian to move over etc etc. Should old English cookbooks be housed alongside new English books, alongside histories of English food? I did that for India but can’t decide with England and France.

With slight exasperation B turned to me after she had helped with a single box, and asked “What is the purpose of so many books?” After thinking about this for 24hours I came to the conclusion that people could be classified into those who knew the answer and those who do not.

I have 20 boxes still to open.

09/05/2026

Gnocchi and tomato; Black Barn Merlot, Malbec, Cabernet Sauvignon, 2014.
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While still limited to an air frier and an induction hob set up outside the kitchen window - the extract system from is still to arrive (at least it’s now in the country) - I wanted to use up some lovely tomatoes gifted by Linda .
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4 tomatoes (large - very large) halved and placed on floor of air frier - drizzled with olive oil, scattered with chopped garlic, salt, pepper, red wine vinegar and a little brown sugar. 180C for 20mins.
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Meanwhile potato gnocchi (shop bought 🫣) pan fried to give a little colour, then added the tomatoes and their delicious juices and a few basil leaves. A little espelette pepper added for heat. Simmered a couple of minutes. Plated, Parmesan, more basil. Devoured with relish. No added liquid (other than the vinegar).
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Black Barn 2014 Merlot, Malbec, Cabernet. Bought at a vineyard tasting when we first looked at moving to the Hawkes Bay. Has held up beautifully, the rim shows its years but the youthful fruit has mellowed into a lovely complex Bordeauxesque red, nicely balanced, just the right amount of acidity and superb with the gnocchi. Very pleased with the little darling.
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To be honest my choice of wine (fortuitously) was born of absolute laziness - I looked around the red section for a screw cap - I couldn’t be fa**ed getting out a corkscrew!
Do other people do that?

06/05/2026

Orange glazed pork on Szechuan cabbage with black vinegar.: Domaine La Bastide Chardonnay.
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I have been obsessed with cabbage and black vinegar for some time. A visit to China many years ago was highlighted by the combination - amplified by red chillies - such that it became for me the quintessential Chinese dish - worthy of salivation and worth seeking out. I have no idea how they had made it but here was an attempt.
🌞Chopped Chinese Chinese cabbage, sautéed in peanut oil, chilli, ginger and garlic anointed, when wilted, with black vinegar, mirin, soy and brown sugar. The black vinegar was the last, if a precious bottle gifted to me by the wonderful couple who ran the Beijing restaurant in Newtown Wellington (where I had my retirement dinner as well as umpteen parent and kids birthdays).
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Pork fillet, flattened and coated in a slurry of mirin, soy and cornflour. Then fried, and glazed in mirin, soy, rice vinegar, orange juice and zest, and cornflour.
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La Bastide, an extraordinarily interesting French chardonnay, certainly not a Chablis - quite different to any other I’ve tasted - almost guava tropical, lovely balance and not a hint of oak - it was delicious with the assertive Asian flavours - I hardly know how to describe it / highly recommended for folk who are interested in Chardonnay beyond the mundane crap that usually gets served up ! Secured at
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All in all a delicious dinner - still don’t have an extract above the stove, so cooking either in air frier, or induction hob by the open window. The dogs salivate quietly outside while I cook - then badger us for leftovers afterwards. Actually Beardsley, the cat, is worse - he will eat anything - a creature after my own heart!

The Aristologist

05/06/2026

26/05/2026

26/05/2026

22/05/2026

22/05/2026

13/05/2026

12/05/2026

10/05/2026

09/05/2026

06/05/2026

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