School lovin’

Last week was the local primary school’s annual fundraising carnival. As my god-daughter goes there I got involved and helped organise the silent auction. Which involved lots of cold calling local businesses to beg goods and services that we could auction off in an old-school version of TradeMe / eBay. Basically people write their name and bid on a piece of paper and the highest bid at the end of the auction wins. I’m happy to say we had the most successful one yet and the silent auction raised nearly double what it did last year. Which is a relief as it really was a labour of love…and about 3 weeks of full time labour at that!

However, that of course is unrelated to a cooking blog. So what did we cook?

Well for the bake sale, Nana Jenny made my mini banana muffins decorated with cornflowers. Whereas I contributed a super sized batch of Joyous’ Famous (round these parts) Mint Yoghurt Mayo.

The wifey originally whipped up this recipe for one of my birthday garden soirées, to dip little smoked fish fritters and vegie crudités in. It is so simple and delicious that it’s become a staple dip around here.

For the School Carnival we made it to go in the Lamb Baps, and it also went well with the incredible fresh Snapper burgers and on the prawn skewers. We are lucky that our school is located opposite one of NZ’s best fisheries so they donated loads of fresh fish to be auctioned and sold.

It’s a little similar to the mayo we used I the Smoked Fish Potato Salad, but with less ingredients so it’s quicker. Plus it has an altogether different taste. I’m including it here after one of the parents from the school requested the recipe.

Joyous’ Famous Mint Yoghurt Mayo

Pour into a mixing bowl about 1/2 C decent mayonnaise e.g. Best Foods or Heinz & add approximately 3/4 C of unsweetened yoghurt (thick & Greek is best).

Mix together with a few good squeezes of lemon or lime juice.

Add approximately 2 tablespoons of finely sliced fresh mint.

Plus a generous pinch or two of flaky sea salt and a few grinds of black pepper.

Stir and add more lemon, salt or mint to taste. It should have a good tang from the yoghurt and citrus.

Chill and serve.

Awesome recipe illustration courtesy of my gorgeous and talented 5 year old god-daughter. (Which was created for the small cost of $1.)