This post is sponsored by Cuisine magazine. Thanks! Go buy a sub­scrip­tion. 

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.