good honest books

One of the many satisfying elements of running a business like Nikau is discovering the talents and creative outlets that exist within your staff.
Georgia is one of those staff members who over the past few months has been producing these beautiful hand crafted and bound notebooks.
I have become a frequent user of my smaller notebook and have delighted friends and family with presents of the larger books.
They are for sale at the cafe.

a courtyard garden.

 We have for sometime thought it would be a good idea to 'green' the courtyard.
 With this in mind we talked to Veronica Alkema from Vero Design about our ideas to introduce a courtyard garden.
 We were keen on a modular approach allowing for some movement of the planters and also allowing us to replace harvested or tired plants with new, lush seasonal plantings. To this end she came up with the concept of three large plastic planters in each unit that can be removed and replaced with another tub .

 Steve King Builders and his crafty boys built these sweet planter boxes on wheels . Macrocarpa was chosen for its aging quality and removable slated seats were added so they could double as extra seating

 We now have close to two dozen plastic planters filled with all sorts of seedlings sitting in a sunny sheltered spot away from the courtyard. Red Opal basil, Rainbow light beets, Little gem lettuces and Rocket are just some of the plants biding their time before they are introduced to the courtyard.

 We can't be too far from harvesting our first crop from the garden, some good looking white cos lettuce.
Look out for them and future produce on the menu.

Looking through Kalya's lens

Kalya has been a member of the Nikau family for quite some time now.
 She has a keen eye and here are some of her images taken in the last month.

Summer hours

Here are our hours between Christmas and New Year.

Rocco rollo....

Kelda secured this sweet little cavatelli machine whilst in San Fransisco early this month.
On the menu with pork sausage, radicchio and cream these little parcels of extruded pasta are proving quite scrummy.
As well as the cavatelli winch she bought a chitarra tagliapasta which translates as guitar and is not too dissimilar in appearances. Also in her carry on luggage an electric version of the home pasta machines we have been using at the cafe which will hopefully make Rocco's job a tad easier.

TV dinner

Sage fried eggs with radicchio, pancetta and jerusalem artichoke salad

Just in case you saw the show and wanted to make the whole recipe! And just in case you don't want to make it, we'll have it on the menu for the week.

First, make the radicchio salad.

Per person:

2 T diced pancetta

2-3 jerusalem artichokes

Olive oil

A good handful of radicchio leaves

Sherry vinegar

Salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 200 degrees

Scrub the jerusalem artichokes. If the skin is tender you don’t need to peel them. Slice thinly and place in a single layer on a tray. Drizzle with a bit of olive oil and season. Roast until the artichokes are crisp. As they have a high sugar content rotate the tray and mix the artichokes so they crisp evenly.

Tear the radicchio into a bowl.

Put the pancetta into a dry pan and cook over a low heat so the fat is rendered and the pancetta crisps up. Tip in a splash of sherry vinegar and swirl the pan. Quickly tip the contents of the pan into the radicchio. Add the jerusalem artichokes and toss the salad. Taste the salad to check the pancetta-vinegar-salt balance. Place on a plate ready for the eggs

Tender fragrant eggs…

Per person:

2 eggs

1 ½ tablespoons salted butter

10 large sage leaves

salt and pepper

Preheat grill or oven

Put a small nonstick pan on a low to medium heat and add butter and sage straight away. Slowly cook until the sage has slightly lightened in colour and is crisp, but the butter hasn’t browned. Carefully crack in eggs and use a spoon to baste the eggs with a bit of butter. Season with salt and pepper. Place under grill or in oven for two minutes basting at least once. The eggs are ready when the whites are set, but the yolks are still runny. Slide the eggs onto the salad. Serve with fresh bread

Balmy Street - Mission, San Francisco

Whilst wandering down 24th street on our way to get a scoop of Humphry Slocombe ice cream we were drawn to this little lane way.
200 metres long and not a bare fence pale in sight it was a charming back street gallery of joyous colour and political murals.

As for the ice cream shop around the corner we were confronted by a queue about fourty deep.
This seemed to be a relatively normal occurrence to have the line snaking out the shop and around the corner.
With flavours ranging from sweet summer corn, eight ball stout, pink grapefruit+tarragon or kumquat poppy seed it was quite the scene.
What we didn't realise was that when you got to the front of the queue having waited for twenty odd minutes, everyone then proceeded to ask for tastes of different flavours.
Try before you buy.
No wonder the wait took so long but this seemed a natural enough process to all in line so who were we to complain.
For the record we had scoops of carrot, coconut, malted vanilla and honey thyme.