We ran the numbers and according to our social media and website data, these are the recipes you’d most like to devour…
Instagram: Potato and Kūmara Salad with Herby Lemon Mayo and Pancetta
The traditional potato salad is a staple side dish around the world, and with good reason, but it is also very vanilla. Think of this recipe as the sequel – bigger, bolder and with all new characters. When we put it in front of our followers, they were all too eager to embrace the change. Potato salad, you’ve just met your match.
Facebook: Baked Prawns with Lemon and Feta
I know first-hand how good this dish is, so I wasn’t the least bit surprised when it started to take off on our social media channels. Several of our followers mentioned that they had made it multiple times after they came across it in our 100th issue. I’ve heard of second helpings – but of the entire dish? Now that’s what you call a crowd-pleaser!
eDM: Chicken, Leek and Thyme Pie
This pie continues to be one of our readers’ all-time favourite recipes. It is essentially comfort in a golden pastry shell. When the news broke that we were reverting to the red traffic light system, we put an arm around our readers’ shoulders in the form of comfort food recipes. And the one they found most comforting of all was our Chicken, Leek and Thyme Pie.
TAG, YOU’RE IT!
There’s a new way to share and access dish content: simply tag any dishes you’ve cooked or dishy things you’re sharing with #FromDishIssue102 (of course, if you’re sharing something out of 95, you’ll tag 95, not 102). Tell us what you’re loving, what you’re cooking and which recipes are your favourites – we love hearing from you and seeing what you’re up to!
LOCAL PRODUCERS
Augustines of Central
Meet the boutique Central Otago fruit preserver making apricots and plums sing. By Maddie Ballard
While working at Wānaka restaurant White House in 2012, chef Gus Hayden saw sprayfree, tree-ripened apricots advertised in the local trade flyer and bought a few kilos to bottle for friends.
They went down better than expected.
“This lady’s apricots were grown on really old trees off an old back block of Jackson Orchards, so the flavour was just fantastic,” Gus remembers. “Everyone seemed pretty stoked with them, so the following year, I went back and bought everything she had.” Thus, Augustines of Central, a boutique preserver bottling Central Otago fruit, was born.
It began as a small-scale operation, with Gus making just 500 Agee litre jars of apricots in riesling syrup to sell at Florence’s Food Store in Wānaka. Eight and a half years later, he’s still a one-man operation – although friends roll up their sleeves and get stuck in at the height of the season – but Gus is now bottling “at least ten times” the amount of fruit he started with.
His range has also grown, featuring everything from apricot jam and quince paste to savoury chutneys and rhubarb and strawberry jam over the years, but there are
