It's all about New Zealand.

Braised Lamb Shanks

Found this recipe on Recipe Zaar and want to try it out. The most delicious lamb shanks I’ve had at Scuttlebutt – Ale House at Byron’s in Otaki so far. Now I’m curious if this recipe can touch. So here we go:

3½ hours | 20 min prep | 4 serves

Ingredients

2 tablespoons cumin seeds
3 tablespoons coriander seeds
1 teaspoon salt
4 lamb shanks (about 250g each)
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 onion, finely chopped
1 carrot, finely chopped
2 stalks celery, trimmed and finely chopped
4 garlic cloves, peeled and sliced
400 g tomatoes, drained and roughly chopped
200 ml dry red wine
200 ml port wine
1 liter beef stock

Directions

Preheat oven to 160°C. Using a morter and pestle, roughly crush the cumin and coriander seeds until fragrant. Add salt and mix well. Sprinkle over the lamb shanks and press on to coat. In a large deep heavy based, oven proof dish, heat the oil over medium heat and brown the shanks well. Remove and set aside.

Place the onion, carrot and celery in the same dish and saute over medium heat until soft. Add the garlic, tomatoes and stir. Pour in the wine and port, stir then add the beef stock. Bring to the boil then turn off the heat.

Return the lamb to the pan, cover with aluminium foil and place in the oven for 3 hours or until the meat almost falls off the bone. Remove from the oven and lift out the shanks. Set aside and keep warm. Skim as much fat as you can off the surface of the cooking liquid and return to the stove top over medium heat to simmer and reduce to a slightly syrupy consistency.

Serve with mashed potatoes or polenta.

2nd Jan 2009 Leave a comment filed under Culture Tags food recipes

Finally,

I have some time left to write what I’ve been doing during the last days. As every year in december, both long standing clients and new clients have loads of jobs for us and it’s all urgent. Well, we are freelancers and we don’t complain about it :-)

In addition to this, I updated my WordPress icon set which is now part of fabulous WordPress 2.7 Coltrane. You’ll see the icons when you change the dashboard colour profile from grey to blue in Users->Your Profile. For German readers, there’s a nice manual how to include the blue icon set into the grey dashboard. Danke, Gerd!

My WordPress 2.7 Coltrane icon set

At the moment I’m busy with a print brochure for a dental laboratory. And when I’m ready with all the icon and print stuff (will be Tuesday), I start baking 3 cakes as we have some guests in the period of Christmas Day and Boxing Day. Apple cake with cinnamon and cheese cake.

18th Dez 2008 Leave a comment filed under Uncathegorized Tags icons job

Immigration & Settlement DVD

“Go New Zealand is a 2 disc DVD set that provides all the need-to-know information about moving to & living in New Zealand. Created by New Zealand immigrants, Melanie & Brian Radke, Go New Zealand is 120 minutes of high quality video about New Zealand, visas, healthcare, employment, banking, housing, education, what to do for fun & more.

Get valuable information straight from Immigration New Zealand, Inland Revenue & other New Zealand experts. Hear from immigrants from all over the world, who have already made the move, talking about their experiences: bringing a pet, finding a job, settling in and more. Go New Zealand offers an audio visual experience of what it’s really like to move to and live in New Zealand.”

Yes. I am curious about it.

28th Nov 2008 Leave a comment filed under Immigration Tags movies

My WordPress Icons

Exceptionally, it’s not about New Zealand but about the new WordPress icons.

My WordPress 2.7 icon set

WordPress is the fabulous open source software which this blog is based on. The development team made a call for icon designers who were interested in creating icons for the new WordPress 2.7 version. After a prequalification, there were 5 designers remaining - including me.

There was a community voting on the 5 icon sets and mine is 2nd winner. It’s great, my icons will be incorporated into the blue WordPress 2.7 design! Congrats to Ben, who designed a beautiful set which will be incorporated into the standard design. Read all about the icons, the voting and the designers here.

Thanks to those of you who voted, and thanks for all the congratulations. The WordPress community is absolutely gorgeous.

17th Nov 2008 4 Comments filed under Uncathegorized Tags icons

Airports and Amphetamines

New Zealand has 121 airports and is a significant consumer of amphetamines. Those and other astounding facts about Aotearoa in the CIA World Factbook.

12th Nov 2008 Leave a comment filed under Uncathegorized