The executive chef of Dine by Peter Gordon at Sky City answers your cuisine questions.
If the fish are co-operating this summer, we'd like to smoke some of the surplus catch, but don't have a smoker. We'd read that you could do it Chinese-style in a wok on the barbeque. Do you have some suggestions for the sorts of things we could marinate the fish in first, and what sorts of leaves/herbs we could throw on the smoker?
- Sean, Point Chev
Marinate in something a little sweet (brown sugar, honey, maple syrup), salty (soy or sea salt), aromatic (ground star anise, ginger, garlic, kawakawa) and smoke over a mixture of tea leaves, uncooked rice (makes it a little nutty) and untreated wood chips.
Can you suggest some additions to butter that we can use on our sweetcorn? We tried chilli and that was a great combination, so we'd like to play with some more.
- Margaret Williams
Grated lime zest and juice, grated ginger and garlic, smoked paprika, cream cheese mixed with any of the above.
All the new potatoes in our garden are ready to dig at once and we're trying to think up different ways of using them - salads, gratin, mashed. What is one of your favourite uses of potatoes?
- Sam Withers
Soup - diced and mashed in the same pot with lots of garlic, spinach, cream and parmesan cheese. Even better if you add some raw oysters towards the end then puree to a creamy texture.
