Charmian Smith

 Flavours of home is a series of recipes from around the world cooked by people at home in Otago. They are accompanied by a video on the ODT website. This week Lek Findlater, from Thailand, cooks Panang chicken curry.

Young wines sometimes take a while to reveal their charms, as several of these pinot noirs did.

It's rare to find an enjoyable pinot noir under $20 but this tasting turned up two from Nelson, as well as one expensive top notch one that needs another year or two and one that's more of a slick marketing exercise and is priced accordingly.

Barrel fermentation, ageing the developing wine on lees (the spent yeast cells), and sometimes a malolactic fermentation can bring nutty, buttery flavours to the original chardonnay fruit flavours that can range through citrus, peach and melon to tropical. Done well, all this makes for delicious chardonnay.

"Gluten-free" is the latest buzz word in food fads, but for some people it is essential advice, writes Charmian Smith.

When faced with a shelf of shrink-wrapped cheeses in the supermarket, how do you know which to buy? Charmian Smith returns from judging with advice about how to select a good cheese.

Bread was once the staff of life. Charmian Smith looks at a familiar staple and ponders its future.

It's a treat to sip botrytised sweet wine after a meal instead of dessert. These golden gems, made from grapes affected by noble rot are delicious and unctuously sweet, but the best are balanced by a lively, non-cloying finish. They aren't cheap but they are so intense a small glass is quite enough.

Ali Rashidinejad, from Iran, shows how to make ash reshteh, a thick bean, spinach and noodle soup.

Many of us love tasting wine, evaluating the flavour and structure of wines from different regions, vineyards or vintages, but few people realise the same can be done with coffees and teas.

Young reds of any variety can be raw and edgy but most will soften and mellow with a year or so's bottle age. The best will continue to develop and change for many years rewarding those with cellars (and restraint) with complex, velvety wines.

Good chardonnay will develop and improve over a year or more, and some producers hold back their wine to release when it's drinking well. That doesn't always mean it won't continue to develop with further age.

Many Central Otago winemakers produce second labels, wines that are less complex or concentrated than their more expensive flagship wines, but which are usually more charming and approachable when young, while the more expensive wines often take a few months of bottle age to come together.

Sometimes riesling can be almost masochistic with a steely shaft of acidity that continues through the finish. You need a morsel of cheese or something to counteract the crisp after taste.

Erika Wolf, from New York, shows how to stuff, dress and roast a turkey for Thanksgiving.

Hawkes Bay reds generally have ripe, generous fruit and firm but not too grippy tannins.

Charmian Smith reviews a selection of recently published cookbooks.

Bubblies are for all occasions - fruity, slightly sweet ones for barbecues or summer lunches,more serious methode traditionelles for savouring by themselves or with food.