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We’re often full of  advice about places to go for a feed, because as Madonna said, everyone should experience eating out, but sometimes some of us do like to stay at home and cook. So, harking back to the time when we challenged y’all to come up with the most Wellingtonian of all cocktails (back in 2006, when we were still on Blogspot and I can’t find the damn link), we challenged ourselves to take amazing ingredients from the region and celebrate them by make them even more representative of Wellington.

Delicious lime syrup for soda First up, something to drink! Obviously Wairarapa wine would be too easy (though naturally we’re drinking it while we write this. Margrain gets mad love for their wine descriptions – see this rosé for an example). Instead we’re going to go with a Gimlet. The standard version of this is one part Rose’s lime cordial and two parts gin shaken on ice. Instead of Rose’s though, we’re going to use delicious Six Barrel Soda lime syrup, because it tastes much fresher and more like actual limes. And then we’re going to use Lighthouse Gin from Cape Palliser in the Wairarapa, with its bloody great citrus taste. Of course, the ultimate step in making it into a really Wellington cocktail? We’ll garnish it with a cocktail umbrella that’s been blown inside out.

Then we’re going to need some canapés. Let’s see, Wellington is a town full of (apparently boring) public servants, and if there’s one thing public servants love, it’s endless morning teas with plates of sausage rolls. Excellent, let’s go with that. But we’ll make the sausage rolls ourselves, with delicious pork & fennel sausages made by Harringtons in Miramar (you’ll want to empty the sausage meat out of their casings before rolling them up in some good puff pastry. Don’t make your own, noone in Wellington has time for that). We’ll serve these up with some of Ruth Pretty’s tomato chili jam, because she has to have something to do now that the Dom Post has axed her column (and yet somehow kept Burton on…)

Along with the sausage rolls, let’s also have Devils on Horseback, so we’ll wrap prunes in Beehive bacon (made in Carterton) then grill them, because you know how those wrinkled up old men in the Beehive also give you the shits (Badoom chish).

On that note, for the main course, we’re going to have to eat something to contribute to Wellington’s most noteable feature, the wind, aren’t we? So some beans or cabbage maybe? Oooh, definitely some cavalo nero then. It’s like uber-trendy kale, but as black as the clothes that everyone stereotypically wears. Let’s fry that in garlic and olive oil and eat it on the side, like  polyamorous Aro Valleyians.

A Beef Wellington would be the real obvious thing to do for a main course, except that we’ve already had pastry with the sausage rolls. Instead, let’s have a frittata maybe, because while you can’t beat Wellington on a good day, you definitely can beat some eggs. Whisk them by hand and you’ll have as strong wrists as us PC gone mad wankers here in the ‘ista. Add some Zany Zeus feta or serve their haloumi on the side so your dinner can be as cheesy as the puns on your favourite website about Wellington, and plenty of herbs to recreate the feeling of the One Love concerts in Hataitai in days gone by.

For dessert, we’re going to make hot chocolate. You’ll need milk (from a cow, or whatever other kind strikes your fancy, you wacky Wellington liberals with your lactose intolerances, etc, etc) and either some Whittakers dark chocolate (made in Porirua) or the amazing chocolate discs that La Boca Loca sell. Heat the milk slowly and melt the chocolate in. You might want to add a splash of the Smoke & Oakum gunpowder rum too, if you can handle a little chilli and a lot of intensity. Or maybe more than a splash (taste as you go, this stuff is STRONG). The single most important thing about this hot chocolate is that when you drink it, you not only give yourself a milk moustache, but also a milk beard too, because otherwise how will you fit in amongst all the hipstered beardos?

Alright, those are our ideas for a very Wellington meal. Now hit us with yours.