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Beef and mushroom pot pie...food for the gods

Well, Friday night's beef and mushroom pie, which we made on Sunday night, was a real winner!

This supper reminds me of those dishes one finds in remote places on travels that send the taste buds on a whole new exciting experience. On my very first travels overseas I had lambple pie in a centuries old pub somewhere in the Cotswolds in England. Lamb and apple pie! Oh what succulent and delectable warmth on the tongue. Heart warming stuff that makes you feel as if you are at home, even though it tastes nothing like what you normally would get at home. One day I am going to try and make it.

I can imagine having found this beef and mushroom pot pie travelling between Colesburg and Graaff Reinet on a sleety, cold day on the way to the Grahamstown Festival. We would be freezing, yearning for warm sustenance. The Karroo would lay desolate beneath us, clouded in the snowy atmosphere. We would see an isolated hotel as we descend into the plains, neon light flashing Hotel, Hotel, Hotel, weakly through the milky air. Just one road sign with an arrow pointing west off the main road, onto a gravel roadlet, barely wide enough for a John Deere. Yearning for coffee, we would dash from the parking lot, inhabited by only our car and bang desperately on the front door of the hotel, shut against the elements and stuck by frost so that it cannot be opened from the outside. Our cries are heard by the manager who comes to the door and opens it. A tall man with ruddy cheeks and a beaming smile, clad in a thick home spun and home knitted merino wool cabled jersey, khaki shorts, knee high socks, with comb and Grasshoppers. There is a miserable parrot on his shoulders, puffed up against the cold, screeching “Welkom hier by onse plek” over and over again until you want to order it roasted with cranberry sauce.

The delectable smells from the kitchen draw us in like helpless moths to a candle. We find a table as close to the ineffectual fire as possible. Feebly burning against the enormous coldness of the vast yet uninhabited dining room. The moer koffie is delivered in thick porcelain cups with tiny ears and chipped saucers and we ask for lunch. The beef and mushroom pot pies arrive. But surely this is lamb country? Vir seker ja, maar ons boer met wol!

The pie is made by taking 500g of cubed beef and tossing it in flour. The bits are browned and sealed in a smidgeon of olive oil in a pan. A chunkily sliced onion is added, with a heaped teaspoon of crushed garlic. Make up a cup of a mixture of red wine and beef stock to taste. Can be all red wine if you like, whose watching? Add two tablespoons of Worstershire sauce and toss the liquid into the pan. Take a punnet of button mushrooms and wash them. Yes, wash them, the theory of not washing mushrooms is gross. I do not want peat and all sorts of stuff in my supper thank you. Half the big mushrooms and leave the small ones whole and toss them into the pan too. Allow this meaty, mushroomy stew to stew for about forty minutes, or until you are happy with the tenderness of the beef. You can use tenderised steak instead if you like. Once cooked, aliquot servings into ovenproof bowls, slap on a lid of some ready made puff pastry, egg it to make it shiny and gold in the oven, and bake for about twenty minutes at 180 degrees. Food for the gods I tell you.

The one issue I have with the Food Ideas plan is that I don’t think they have given much thought to the seasons. A couple of weeks ago I was meant to use naartjies. Where on earth do you get them now? I used a mineola instead. These exquisite pot pies would be a ten out of ten for a mid winters meal, but we are frying at this time of the year.

Savoury pancakes a la pretentious

I fear that sometimes the cooks who invent recipes for magazines get so desperate for new ideas that they become impractical and present old staples in ridiculously unworkable ways. Last nights supper was savoury mince pancakes…a la pretentious. Instead of simply rolling up pancakes with a good savoury mince filling and a coating of nice sauce, they decided to get fancy and make a pancake stack. So we did too. Pancakes are layered with savoury mince one on top of the other and then the stack is cut in wedges like a cake. The picture in the book looks very attractive, but I don’t know how they were able to get such a clean slice with all the bits still in the stack. When you cut it the mince falls all over the place, and when you eat it, it falls apart. We served a wedge each with a simple green salad but both son and I decided that the same food served the good old fashioned pancake way would be a much better way to go next time.

Thursday night, Thursday Night, we reach the deadline on Thursday night...

..for our edification, and pure delight... Irene comes to dinner on Thursday night!

Remember the good old days of Springbok radio? I remember sitting at the supper table some evenings having to be quiet of the news was being read at the same time. And how we would linger at the table to listen to "The Mind of Tracy Dark" or "The Avengers."

But getting back to cooking. Irene goes to choir practice around the corner from us on Thursdays, so it makes absolute sense that she has supper with us.

So last night we had honey and sesame chicken. This is a fantasmogorical picnic meal. Chicken fillets are cut into biggish chunks that are dusted in corn flour and then lightly fried in our Family Frying Pan. Once beautifully browned, a little honey is oozed over to make the chicken bits sticky and then the sesame seeds are added to coat them. They are left aside to cool down for a little while and the juices also do their thing during this time. They form part of a delicious salad when added to lettuce, red and yellow peppers, rosa tomatoes and a handful of roasted cashew nuts...we like cashews. The picture shows Irene caught just before we said Grace off better than the dish...but I thought it would be nice to have a different kind of picture for a change. Have a marvelous weekend!

My day started crumbling yesterday just about from the time I woke up! The building I work in most of time got flooded out after a massive storm the night before and I got my sandals messed up getting through it all and had to wear my hideous lab shoes for the rest of the day. The the patients at the hospital where I do some research work went on the rampage because they don't like their food, so I could not get all the work done there that I had planned! By 12:30 I was in bed because it felt as if my cranium was about to divorce itself from the rest of my body! It was one of THOSE days.

Son and I have decided to take pot luck on days when the Food Ideas menu has fresh fish on it because we have such a problem finding good fish. So this is what he woke me up to at about 6:30. Bangers and mash...cordon bleu!

He made creamy mash potato with loads of delectable whole grain mustard in it. Tasted wicked! He topped a pile of this mash with fried onions onto which he placed two bangers. He steamed carrot coins for conscience food. Which mother on this earth woke up from a migrain to such style and taste? JUST ME I BET! I am so lucky!

Shrove Tuesday and Durban pancakes

Eggs, dairy products and sugar are usually given up during Lent and Shrove Tuesday (Fat Tuesday) often involves a pancake feast in order to get rid of stashes of these ingredients. And yesterday was Shrove Tuesday, so we had Durban pancakes - rotis - again! They are so good who can blame us.

For the filling we roasted butternut, cherry tomatoes, olives, red and white onions, garlic, origanum and cashew nuts in a tiny bit of olive oil and then added some fruity sweet chilli sauce. The rotis were DIVINE!

So what am I giving up for Lent. When it comes to food, there is no way I can give up eggs, dairy products or sugar. I can't give up chocolate because I have to make a chocolate tart for Tiara club next month. I cannot give up coffee because I need the caffeine. I have already given up sugar in my tea and coffee. Nah! I think I will stick with my pantry and not sacrifice anything there. Sooo, what else can I give up? Maybe some TV time to make a blanket for the winter blanket drive that will start soon. Yes, I think thats what I'll do!

Kofta moftas

There is a delightful advert on TV at the moment where this gogo looks at her pale raw chicken in the roasting pan and says “This chicken needs spice!” She finds some and says, “This spice is nice but I want more nicer!”

Well that holds true for last night’s kofta recipe. Just the name ‘kofta’ gets the taste buds anticipating full flavours, both tantalizing the tongue as well as the exhalation flavour centres. But this recipe fails by about 50% in the flavour department. There is no seasoning listed in the recipe at all. Only onions and some lemon zest are included to help the mutton flavours. Nee Skattie, whoever put this recipe together was having a bad day. They are just bland meatballs in a different shape. I would add garlic and some rosemary, or some other Middle Eastern spices like cloves.

Another lesson learnt and experience gained though, so no waste. We served the koftas with a chunky salad and delicious potato wedges roasted in a smidgeon of olive oil and salt and pepper. Salad bits were chunky so that we could dip them into the tsatsiki sauce we made from scratch. If I ever make koftas again, I will trawl the web for a better recipe. So as far as points go…no more than 3 out of 10!

Incidentally, Son had the left over smoked chicken risotto the next day. He had it cold and said that it was the best chicken salad ever! The flavours came out on parade apparently, even though the dish was cold. So the instructions are to make lots next time so that there is enough for cold leftovers the next day!

Love is like penicillin...good for most, lethal for some of us!

If you have not seen the “Valentines Day” movie and still intend to, then don’t read further.

It was only my second ever Valentines Day on my own since I was a first year student a very long time ago. But there was NO WAY that being alone was going to rob me of the joy of Valentines Day this time, so I took myself off to the movies to see … you got it… Valentines Day! And it felt like I was watching my own biography, made glamorous and less unbelievable by Hollywood.

I got engaged on Valentines Day to husband number 2. But unlike the hero of the movie, who proposes to his lady love on Valentines Day, I was not spared actually getting married to the wrong person. He turned me into a serial divorcee! Over a decade prior to that, husband number one admitted to me on Valentines Day that he was having an affair! Nice one! He was the Doctor guy who sends flowers to two ladies, his wife and his girlfriend. I was the doctor’s wife (for real), but unlike in the movie where she leaves with dignity, I chose to forgive and forget and stick around, giving him the time to secretly start a family with his girlfriend. Hollywood would think that is just too crass and far fetched to put into the movies.

Another character that would have been in my biography but Hollywood would have thought of as far too unreal, was the in-between-the-marriages guy. This was an un-married man (his only virtue), who kept at least three women thinking they were THE ONE! Talk about juggling…this guy was the expert! I would imagine Brad Pitt playing this role, similar to the one he played in “Burn after Reading”, running between three different florists getting flowers sent, getting completely confused with the names and addresses, and then spending Valentines on his own anyway because it would be too awkward to set up something with either all three at different times, or just one, the favourite. But they are all loved equally…no favourite…what the heck, go and play tennis with the buddies instead!

But all this stuff has not turned me into a total love cynic. For two reasons: Firstly, my parents are about to celebrate their fiftieth wedding anniversary, analogous to the Shirley McClean marriage in the movie. For both my folks it was their first marriage, they were barely in their twenties when they married, and they have lived their lives as a single unit all that time, with its ups and downs. And they are still in love. My mom always buys my dad special little things whenever we go on shopping trips, like an exotic nougat, or special Turkish Delight. And he has said to me on a couple of occasions in the last few years that he would not know how to live without her. With this example, I have to believe that real committed love really does happen for some people.

And I believe and hope in it, especially for Son and Boet; my second reason for not becoming a bitter old love-cynical divorcee. They deserve to have a lifelong, enriching and growing partnership, and I think they know what to do to maintain good relationships. Already Boet has found his life partner I think. They are like two halves of a whole and I can see them getting old together, still laughing at each others jokes and showing affection all the time. Son is still a bit young to have found someone with the “forever” stamp on, but he commented to me the other day that he understood that men and women have different roles in running a home but he saw the cooking in the household to be a shared responsibility. A real man of the times and the lady who gets his heart will be very lucky!

I am surrounded by lots of loving relationships amongst my friends too. My cousin Bron has her HTB (husband to be), and our Dear Kiwi friend Shaz cannot stop talking about how in love she is with her man. My old friends Yvette and Bev from a book club we had when we all still lived in Boksburg are also still devoted wives and completely in love with their hubbies. And my BFF (best friend forever), Madelie, is an award winning romance writer who in her acceptance speech when she won an ATKV Veertjie, admitted that all the heroes in her stories are modelled on her husband!

Clearly love is out there and it makes people happy. I believe it is better to be in love with, and be loved by the right person than to be alone. But loving the wrong person is a disaster; hundreds of times worse than being alone. And being closer to fifty than I am to forty, I realise that if one is a serial wrong-choice-maker, then stay away from making the choices. Too little lifetime left to make another wrong choice. As sure as death and taxes are, is the certainty that I will never get married again. I am allergic to marriage. Like penicillin is good for most people, but not for everyone. It can also kill!

The character from the movie I identify with mostly is the one played by Julia Roberts. The soldier mom who travels halfway around the world to be with her little boy for Valentines Day! I sooooo know how she felt when she put her arms around him and loved him unconditionally! I am just luckier, I have two such Valentines!

I was so filled with smile by this movie that I went home and baked a special batch of my version of millionaire’s shortbread for my Valentines. I put on a belly dancing CD my dear friend Tracey has lent me and while twirling my ample hips around the kitchen, pretending to turn in a light bulb with my right hand and pat and imaginary dog with my left hand, I immersed myself in the love centre of our home…the kitchen!

Add to a big brick of butter that is chopped up, two cups of icing sugar and four cups of sifted flour and then put your hands in and remember that you are doing this for love…get to a nice dough (it takes risotto-type patience) and your hands will be wonderfully soft from all the butter – silver lining. Make little goonie size balls (remember the size of the big marbles?) and put them on a baking tray, allowing enough room between them to spread during baking. I found discs of dark chocolate at the Bake-a-ton shop nearby, so I pressed a disc onto the top of each ball, flattening it out a little. They are baked at 180 deg for 12 minutes. And this recipe makes a lot…enough to spread the love beyond my two Valentines! It made a whole tin and an improvised Valentines Cookie Jar full.

Veronica Valentine and Smoked chicken Risotto

While I was cooking the Arborio rice last night I decided that risotto is a hobby on its own, and not one I am enthused by. It demands your undivided attention over a hot stove for 40 minutes and let me tell you, that’s not fun in Durban right now. We had about four months of overcast weather and then the clouds disappeared last week and we have been cooking! I stood over the pot like a witch, bubbling and toiling and troubling away, trying to see a silver lining…like the steam must be good for my skin…thinking to myself that I now have an entire bag of Arborio rice that is too expensive to neglect in the grocery cupboard, so I will have to sweat some more in the near future! AAARGH!

But like Justme said, it’s worth it!

Onions were fried in a saucepan (one day I will get a Green one) and when glistening, a generous lump of crushed garlic was added. I used red onions for colour. The rice was tossed on top and hot chicken stock was slowly added, a bit at a time, forever! It’s a bit like making mayonnaise, only it takes much longer and is a much hotter process. When nearly cooked, sliced smoked chicken breast and some par-steamed green beans were added and the whole lot was cooked for about a minute. The actual recipe called for sugarsnap peas, but they make Son’s skin crawl for some reason. What a tasty one pot meal! It was served with shavings of parmesan. Definitely a recipe worth repeating – but in winter when you don’t mind so much sweating over a hot stove.

For Valentines Weekend/Day I am going to make my Dear Friend Veronica’s chocolate fridge tart. Its one of those cannot fail jobs like the pineapple one I made last weekend. You make the crust with a packet of Romany creams and butter. Place that in one of those rectangular pyrex roasting dishes. Once the base is made, place in the fridge. I am going to try and make two smaller ones, ’cos I cannot eat one big one all by myself. I will have to give some away. Son and Boet are going to the Midlands for the weekend to swim the Midmar.

Then…

Heat one cup of milk in a saucepan until it is just beyond warm…don’t let it boil. Then add a medium bag of pink and white marshmallows and let them melt into the milk. Add 200g of chocolate, all broken up. Last time I made this tart, I used milk chocolate and it was good but very sweet. I asked Veronica what she thought of using dark chocolate and she said it might be too bitter. This weekend I am going to use 100g of milk chocolate and 100g of dark chocolate and see what happens.

And then…

Whip up one tub of cream and fold into the milk/marshmallow/chocolate mixture! When you have a smooth and uniform mixture, pour over the already cooled biscuit base and then decorate with crumbed flaky, or sugared rose petals and halved strawberries if you want to be more romantic!

Here’s wishing you all plenty warm fuzzy romantic moments this weekend!

Love y’all

C.

Supper all wrapped up

Last night's supper was such a breeze I almost feel guilty! We were meant to make salami and mozzarella wraps...we did, but with our own ideas, not entirely those of the recipe provided. We took roti (much nicer than tortilla wraps) and spread them thinly with sweet chilli sauce (instead of salsa which I could not find...what's new). We placed three slices of salami down the centre of the roti, grated some mozzarella over the top, added some slivers of dill gherkins, wrapped the roti over...and voila! Supper all wrapped up!

I guess a healthier version would include cooked ham instead of salami, and more veges like lettuce and tomato. Pineapple would go nicely with ham and some cottage cheese instead of mozzarella! Or flaked peppered mackerel with Bulgarian yoghurt dressing. Or chicken may with celery and apple. Or tuna mayo with onion and apple. Endless ideas. This one should go down in the book as a good Saturday night supper!

Tonight I am going to attempt my first risotto! I am already quacking in my boots. The stuff costs the same as the GDP of a small country, so I don't want to waste!

And this little piggy got all sauced up! ...and my double standards

Up until now, I have always cooked pork chops whole: Either with cream and rosemary, or tomato sauce and chutney, or crumbed. But last night, my Oracle of Culinary Wisdom, Food Ideas, instructed the meat to be sliced off the bone and cut into strips.

Son sautéed half a red onion in a smidgeon of olive oil in our Family Frying Pan until it was translucent. The pork strips from two pork chops were added and tossed about until they were golden brown. A handful of soft Turkish dried apricots were added and then the sauce was put in. I did not go out and buy Sweet and Spicy sauce as the recipe directed, I decided to make my own. I took about 125 ml of ready made sweet and sour sauce, added a gianormous heaped tablespoon of apricot jam and then chilli powder slowly to taste, until it was just tasty but not yet blazing. The meat was cooked in this sticky goo for about a minute. Reverse gasp! It was sooo lekker. We served this superb, sticky, fruity, meaty muddle alongside basmati rice and steamed green beans and butternut. Beans got their butter cladding and the butternut got its mixed spice dusting. All in all, a supper that scored a secure nine! Never can a dish score ten because there is a chance that it could be improved sometime in the future.

I have a solid set of double standards in the kitchen. While I measure some things meticulously, there are other times when I am not so precise about things. This reminds me of a dear friend of mine in Holland, Maaike. Whenever I have been over to Enschede, Maaike has invited me over either to cook bobotie for her family, or to taste her delectable European fusion cooking. I will one day write about her Dutch version of Boeuf bourginon. The first time I made bobotie in her home, I took a recipe along to leave with her so that she could make the real South African dish on her own some day. In Holland they actually have box bobotie, %$&^*, like our Knorr box lasagnes! I ask you? I have been told that the bobotie I make tastes nothing like the doos bobotie. Of course it wouldn’t, mine is real!

Anyhoo, I was cooking merrily away, pretending to be a famous TV chef, demonstrating with broad gestures and confident singing tones, cooking from the heart, liberating unquantified amounts of herbs and spices into the saucepan, when it was pointed out that I was not measuring much, and how on earth was my hostess going to be able to replicate the dish? Deflated only momentarily by reality, I picked myself up, dusted my ego off and announced “There’s no need to be scientific about everything!” To this day, I am reminded with a mischievous smile by Maaike that “There’s no need to be scientific about everything.” A saying her family apparently uses quite liberally now! You gotta love your friends. A toast to Maaike, her hubbie Gert, and her two young ones, Mienke and Riekhold!

Green beans and eggs...Welcome Dr Seuss

It’s as if Dr Seuss was invited to dinner last night. We had eggs and green beans!

As we work our way through the Food Ideas 260 Suppers, I am still impressed by how much we are learning and broadening our repertoire, as well as culinary imagination. Who would ever have thought of putting boiled eggs and green beans on the same plate? For dinner!

We prepared the warm salad scheduled for last night, but we made a couple of changes to accommodate for ingredients we could not find…again. The baby tomatoes on the shelves in the shop were over the hill so we used segmented ordinary small tomatoes. I forgot to buy baby potatoes, so we did without the carbs. Had ice cream afterwards to make up for that dietary omission. And then I used frying steak instead of porterhouse steak.

The supper was a simple tossing together of olive oil and garlic marinated steak cut into strips after grilling, egg and tomato segments, calamata olives and finally steamed green beans that I dressed with some melted butter as soon as they were cooked. Salt and pepper were all that were required as finishing spice. A simple and delicious supper created in two wags of a Jack Russell’s tail.

However next time I make this dish I will make some improvements. I will use a nice thick sirloin or rump steak that we will be able to cook so that it is still pink inside. I would not forget the baby potatoes, or I would make some robust well seasoned potato wedges to add to the salad. And then I would also serve the salad with tsatsiki sauce on the side.

On Sunday, my Dear Friend Irene waited outside church for me. I came around the corner of the church at speed after skipping through the side door to avoid the queue to shake hands with the Reverend and there she was waiting in the parking lot; her cheerful, wide smile suspended between her rosy cheeks, topped by her sincere, glinting eyes. She is one of the most beautiful people I know. She was hailing me across the cars saying she wanted to catch me before she went off to get blood blisters on her fingers from washing the communion glasses in a windowless room during our current heat wave. She and another colleague/friend of ours had been out shopping together on Saturday and her browsing through the cookery books brought her upon a delightful little recipe book that she said had my name written all over it!

And it’s exquisite! It’s a gem of about 18 cm square with 80 pages of authentic South African recipes. It’s called The South African Illustrated Cookbook, by Lehla Eldridge. Lehla is from the UK and spent some time in South Africa acting and tasting our food before settling in Cape Town. She is clearly passionate about South Africa and has expressed her passion in this little cookbook by illustrating it in the most delightful watercolours. Her images include the Johannesburg skyline, the Bijou cinema in Observatory, Hout Bay Harbour, the Durban city hall, a portrait of Tannie Evita, the Owl House, and the shop front of Wellingtons in Darling Street in Cape Town. Have you ever been to that shop? It is an experience. It goes from one street through to the next, bisecting a city block, and is only about 3 m wide. And they stock everything! I bought a packet of stale Sunrise toffees there once, I like them stale, and ate them all walking from there to the Iziko Museum.

There are South African Yiddish recipes, Cape Malay recipes, Indian recipes, Xhosa and Zulu recipes, Portuguese, English and recipes of Dutch origin. A melting pot of our South African culinary cultures. But the one I am going to try first, is Tannie Evitas boboti. I am a bit of a boboti fundi myself, but I have never seen a boboti recipe with tea in its list of ingredients.

Thanks Irene for the hours of delight you have given me in this little book! You are a mensch!

Pineapple fridge tart...from gym

A lot of culinary happenings happened in our home this weekend, but the only one I have time to write about is the pineapple fridge tart which Son made for dessert on Saturday evening. Boet and his gorgeous girlfriend were down for the weekend, so I wanted to make a special supper, with a dessert that did not include chocolate for a change. I wafted around the blogs looking for something suitable and found a cheesecake, but when I went to gym after work on Friday, my cousin Bron told me about her mom's never fail fridge tart. Now have you ever tried to get a recipe into your head while throwing your body around during a heat wave? Well this is how it went.

Bron on one machine, me on the next (we do a circuit).

First Bron tells me nothing can go wrong with the recipe, which sells me immediately.

Bron: The crust is made with tennis biscuits and melted butter.

Colleen: OK.

Both: Move to the next station.

Bron: Mix a tub of cream with a tin of condensed milk.

Both: Move to the next station. This is a slow process, because Bron has to gasp out the recipes between squats and kicks. Bron: Add a tin of crushed pineapple.

Colleen: OK. (moment of silence) To what?

Both: Gasp. Wheeze. Sweat. Move to the next station.

Bron: To the cream and condensed milk mixture.

Colleen: OK.

Bron: Then add a packet of lemon jelly made up to 250 ml of hot water.

Both: Move to the next station.

Bron: Add jelly to mixture along with some lemon juice to help curdling.

Colleen: OK.

Both: Move to the next station.

Bron: This is awful. Why do we do this?

Both: Move to the next station.

Colleen: Because we know if we don't (wheeze, gasp) the other one of us will put up a fuss. And its good for us (wheeze gasp).

Bron: Ja, ok. (wheeze, gasp)

Both: Finish the circuit feeling very virtuous.

Colleen: Ok, so what do I have to buy to make this tart?

Bron: (She is younger and smaller than me, so she has to be tolerant and patronising). Coll, there are 6 ingredients. Remember the lemon jelly and lemon juice. Then the milky things; cream and condensed milk. And its a pineapple fridge tart so you need a tin of pineapple and the tennis biscuits for the crust.

Colleen: Now that's a cognitive exercise I can relate to!

So I stop off at Spar, in my gym clothes which includes a T-shirt from the Treatment Action Campaign that says HIV POSITIVE, and get all the ingredients, counting all six on the fingers Bronwen had used. Back at the car the car guard stops me and tells me to show my T-shirt to our President because he 'does not know.' I am delighted that car guards in SA are more responsible than our President!

I get home and run a soaking bath to rid myself of the pressures of the week and prepare for a night out with the girls again. Son calls through the bathroom door that the ingredients in the shopping bag are clearly for Saturdays dessert. I say yes. He asks, "what do do with the tennis biscuits?". I explain that the food processor and a lump pf butter are involved. I hear the whizzing of the food processor. Next he asks, "What do I do with the rest?" I explain. I get out of the bath and dessert for Saturday is done and in the fridge.

I am the luckiest Mom in the world! And the tart was scrumptious served with fresh strawberries and a dusting of Nesquick for beauty sake. Sorry no pics. Too much kuiering and not enough thinking about the blog readers.

Friends for supper...so it has to be PERFECT!

Last night Son and I merged two of this week’s dishes from our Ideas book into one meal. We cooked the spicy chicken as well as the bacon, Mozeralla and avo salad, and invited my Dear Friend, Irene, to join us.

I needed to get some avos and some Mozzarella balls for the salad. On Sunday I had found perfect avos at Checkers in Rossburgh, which we bought for the chilli con carne supper on Monday and other things. But those left over are definitely past their best now. And do you think there are anymore anywhere now? I searched Woollies, Everfresh, Spar and the same Checkers and there are either none on the shelves, or they are ready to eat last week or after the World Cup celebrations. Nothing, nada, zilch that could be used on the day. Also, to add to my dilemma, I had seen Mozzarella balls at Everfresh early in the week and made a mental note to get them there. And guess what…yesterday there were none on the shelves. Nor at any of the other shops. Had I bought them then there would be no guarantee that we would have had any left. So we had to get creative. We use what little edible avo we had left from our stock of past-their-best ones, spooning out only the good bits from the shells, and used feta balls instead of Mozzarella balls.

The salad is decadent and NOT for slimmers. So extra gym circuits required. Combine crispy bacon bits, halved rosa tomatoes, avocado and plenty of green pimento stuffed olives. Drench with a dressing made from equal parts of olive oil, honey and whole grain mustard. Serve on the plates and top with feta cheese balls. If you are able to get mozzarella balls, these can be added to the salad before the drenching because they are firm enough to withstand tossing. The feta balls are too creamy and will disintegrate, so rather place them decoratively and gently on top of the already dressed salad.

The chicken thighs were basted in a suspension made from olive oil, cumin, ginger, ground coriander and chopped chillies and then gently fried in the FPP along with segments of Minneola. The basting is dark, so the chicken gets a Cajun look to it, as do the Minneola segments. We served the chicken and Minneola sergments beside a tower of basmati rice and garnished with fresh parsley from the garden.

AND THEN! Irene and I had bought some scrumptious tough bread rolls at Everfresh earlier in the day which we used to clean the plates! So I guess you know what the score was. I asked Son and Irene for some adjectives I could use in this write up, and they conspired against me telling me to use the online thesaurus. They spoke in terms of mmmms and reverse gasps! Both the salad and the citrusy spicy chicken got a thumbs up!

Cashew nut salad and larney leftovers

With the reshuffling of the menu this week, we were meant to have roast vegetables on couscous for supper tonight. Bleuch! As an accompaniment to a nice roast, or sticky lamb chops, this dish would have been more enthusiastically received. But as vegetarian meals go....nah!

Chef son planned on going to the 20/20 cricket with friends, so time in the kitchen was not aplenty. So I offered to take the leftover pasta sauce from last night to a friend whom I knew had leftover roast chicken, and offered to merge our leftovers. As far as 'ideas' and 'oh dears' go, this clearly was a good idea. We took the chicken breasts and shredded them and added the pasta sauce with more milk to thin it down and voila! A new twist on chicken a la king. But we served it on spaghetti rather than rice...why go by the rules!

But the highlight of the meal was the cashew nut salad Son tossed together. He created a marvelous symphony of textures, flavours and colours. But alas, my photographic skills do not do the dish justice. I will try again when we make the salad a next time. He cut red and yellow peppers, tomatoes, avocado and cucumber into small bits, smaller than the usual salad chunk size. Baby spinach was ribboned and all the veggies tossed together. And then...the magic ingredient! Half a cup or a little more of cashew nuts! A drizzling of the usual extra virgin olive oil and balsamic vinegar finished the salad off just nicely.

I served the salad on the dinner plates and knew there was quite a bit left over that could be taken to work for lunch today. But, I was told with a wry smile that there was a rat in the kitchen that really enjoyed cashew nut salad! Tha's a raaat in that kitchen, what aaam I ganna do?

Salami...mushrooms...penne...mmmmmm!

We had the fresh ingredients for Friday’s scheduled meal in the fridge, so we decided to shuffle the menu for the week and instead of spicy chicken tonight, we had mushroom and salami pasta. A dish Son has said kills us three times over ’cos it contains milk, cheese and salami!

We love salami and its close cousin cabanosi! It is one of the most flavoursome meats you can get. I tried to remember a line from Ugly Betty tonight where she describes some pseudo-food from an absurdly pretentious eatery in some awfully ostentatious hotel. I thought it befitting for salami because it was so extreme, but alas! I can’t remember it. May watch the re-runs late Saturday night to catch it again.

Salami and cabanosi have never been endorsed by the heart foundation. Son and I were out shopping at a deli a year or so ago and while we were waiting to be served at the cold meats counter he commented that the cabanosi looked good. I looked at it and salivated but said “Yes it does, but if we ate it our arteries would resemble it.” He cringed and said after that I had really spoiled salami and cabanosi for him forever. We laughed about it for a long time, and never buy it, even though we still drool over it.

Then a couple of months ago I was in the same shop when a woman approached me and told me that she remembered that incident. She and her husband were standing close by and heard Son and I talking about the cabanosi. She said her husband started seeing his arteries too, clad within by fatty globules, and has given up fatty foods since. I felt honoured that Son and I had the opportunity to have a positive effect on someone’s health, albeit completely unwittingly. Makes me also wonder how often we have just as unwittingly been bad examples too; like when kiddies have watched us do things like cross roads against the light, even though there were no oncoming cars.

Anyhoo, we are on a mission and follow our recipe book religiously, so we absolutely HAD to buy salami today. Son cooked supper on his own tonight while I went and threw myself at some gym machinery in an effort to feel better about eating. He prepared white sauce from scratch (I would have hauled out Ina Paarman’s). He sautéed mushrooms and garlic until tender and added the white sauce and a man size handful of grated cheddar. This was stirred until the cheese had melted and then the salami which was cut up into thin strips, and baby spinach (that vegetable of the conscience – neither adding nor detracting from the flavour of the dish, but there for good health) were added and the sauce removed from the heat. This most luscious and delicious of sauces was then used to drown a bowl of penne.

Son scored the dish at a comfortable 9, but said we can only make it twice a year for health reasons! I gotta love him! Keeps me on the straight and narrow.

Chilli con carne, past and present, and there will be a future!

One of the great adventures from rys-vleis-en-aartappels that my Granny undertook from her enthusiastic delving into the Your Family magazine of the seventies, was the making of chilli con carne. I remember us being invited to dinner for the great tasting. It all seemed so exotic. A whole new culinary and gastronomic escapade. I cannot remember if it was the novelty of the dish or its flavour, but the family were delighted with it. It became one of Granny’s staples. Bron and I talked about it over coffee after gym last night and laughed at how it evolved of the years as Granny became more adventurous with her cooking, to a point where no Mexican would recognise it. I think that there was a time that raisins were added? The worst form was curry mince with a tin of baked beans added: I think this was her lazy Saturday night version. It goes to show how we as cooks can lose sight at times of what a dish ought to be as opposed to how we think we can improve it. We all do it. Sometimes a dish doesn’t need to be improved. It’s good in its original form.

Our menu tonight from our Ideas special issue journey had chilli con carne sketched upon it. With a colourful big hat dotting the i’s. The recipe is very clever. It includes colourful vegetables, including translucent onions, red kidney beans, yellow peppers, red and green chillies, and avocado coloured avocado! Son took the lead in preparation tonight and when I got home from gym he had all the ingredients prepped. The chillies had been cut in rings across with all the seeds inside. I tried to very gently suggest that others should be cut lengthways and de-pipped before chopping in order to ensure edibility, but still being a teenager, he HAD to say that he liked them they way he had already cut them. I could already seem myself with lines of earwax melting out of my ears from the chilli heat. But I was wrong. I must have bought the right kind of chillies because the meal was just hot enough that it could be identified as chilli con carne, but not so hot that it caused a conflagration of the mouth and throat.

We live in Durban, so we added a taste of Durban to our supper…rotis instead of nachos or taco shells. I bought the rotis at my favourite little spice shop in Davenport centre. It’s not as fancy and does not have as big a range as Gorima’s or other bigger Indian culinary shops, but the chap who runs it is passionate about his spices and always gives me great advice and translates the ingredients name from Tamil of Hindi into English. There is a copy of Indian Delights there just waiting for me to buy it. He told me a bit about its history, and I HAVE to have one. A dear friend of mine from work, Ayesha, also a food lover, is going to lend me her copy for now. It is a proud piece of South African Indian history that I may make a project of next year.

The mix of veg and mince is not weighed towards the meat entirely, which makes this a healthy meal for my very health conscious Son. He scored the meal at a wholesome 8. I can see it becoming one of his favourites. I just have to warn him about modifications!

Ancestors and two PS's

My cousin Bron invited me to have supper with her husband-to-be on Friday evening. This is an opportunity and a privilege. An opportunity to have someone cook for me for a change and a privilege because Bron comes from a long line of excellent cooks, all of whom I have loved dearly.

Bron never knew our great grandmother and I only have very scanty memories of a meeting with her when I was about four years old. But so many people in our family have spoken with supreme admiration of her, and of her skills in the kitchen. Even though I did not really know her personally, from these stories I know there would have been much love shared between us. My father tells of how she would measure ingredients on a coin and would know recipes in her soul. How she preserved food and made meagre supplies seem more than adequate and even luxurious during the harsh war years when there were rations. She was of Huguenot stock and went to Johannesburg after growing up in Graaff Reinet. She had a very limited formal education, as was the norm for most girls of that time, but acquired emotional intelligence, knowledge and wisdom through her life; beyond that which many people, men and women, who have had the opportunity to get a formal tertiary education, have today. Until age cruelly began to remove her faculties, she read the newspaper from cover to cover every day and always had an opinion to share.

Bron and I have very different memories of our grandmother. Born and bred in Johannesburg, she was a woman of the twenty first century born too early. I was the eldest of five grandchildren, so I think I got preferential treatment maybe, because I adored Granny and she never had a cross word for me. She was stern at times, but never punishing. Bron remembers her being plainly horrid at times. Almost all my childhood memories of Granny involve cooking. She loved it. She could happily spend all day in the kitchen preparing and cleaning. She always cooked a main meal for lunch, even when she and my Grampa worked in their Estate Agency. She would get up at sparrows, do all the prep, and then ask the domestic to turn the oven on at a certain time. At lunch time, Granny and Grampa would come home to a warm meal; meat and three veg which would have included something yellow/orange, green and white.

I remember when she bought the first issue of Your Family magazine in the seventies. It was such an event because there were all the new and more fashionable things to cook. She was in her element. She bought and kept every issue until she retired to the old age home. I remember in particular her first chilli con carne…will tell you more about that tomorrow when I make it for supper from the Ideas recipe. It was such an event because it seemed so exotic compared to all the rys-vleis-en-artappels she had been used to cooking for decades.

Granny enjoyed cooking huge meals for when we were all together. There were times, usually holidays, when both my family and Bron’s (my father and her mother were brother and sister) were together at Granny and Grampa’s and all eleven of us would squeeze around the dining room table for meals. Our shoulders were almost perpendicular to the table to accomplish this, but we managed. These would be epic events, with the table always set properly and with lovingly prepared food heaped onto our plates. And talk! Three generations, all talking. We were so very lucky and we did not realise it. We took it for granted.

Granny would prepare well in advance for these holiday times. She would bake up a storm weeks ahead of time and make ginger beer, pineapple beer and lemon cordial for us to drink when the adults had their spots. She drank cane and water and Grampa drank whiskey or brandy. Can’t remember what the other adults drank, but it was a lot more than normal.

The morning would start with porridge, followed by eggs done some way or other with bacon or kippers or haddock and finished off with percolated coffee from her stove top Corningware coffee percolator. Then at ten in the morning, her baked goodies would come out. These could be Boston bread which she made in a modified baking powder tin, short bread, raisin bread, soetkoekies or scones which she made with bake mix (note to self - have to write about that one day). Then the first plane would fly over by twelve and spots were served before lunch at one. There was always pudding after lunch. By three in the afternoon, whatever baked goods that were not presented in the morning were brought out and served with tea. By five the sun would be over the yardarm and spots were served again. At seven, we would all be around the table again for toast. Sometimes Granny would bake bread for this meal too. Grampa always led us in a three course supper. We would have toast with fish paste for the fish course. Then toast with Bovril for the main. And for desert; toast with jam, usually made by Granny from her own fruit trees. He would ask ’shlootikokul?’ after every meal. A word he made up which meant ’are you full as tics yet? ’ We would have such goormaag by now from the pineapple or ginger beer and over eating, but nothing ever stopped us!

The only thing Bron and I really despised during these times, was that because we were both the eldest child from our families, we were all too often thought of as the only ones responsible enough to be trusted with drying dishes! It started when we were about six and carried on until forever, and the younger siblings still never got to do it! And boy, did we spend time in that kitchen drying dishes. Eventually the dish cloths would be soaked and needed to be hung outside to dry from so much drying! And Granny insisted that dishes needed to be washed, dried and packed away before we could sit down. Today I think there might be a name for this kind of disorder.

Brons mother was my godmother as well as aunt. She too was no slouch in the kitchen. Being a more modern woman, she found new recipes and those that worked she kept. One dish she always made was a tuna noodle bake. I still have the recipe she wrote out for me and when I make it, I feel her near. For my dad’s 60^th birthday, she went up to Jo’burg and cooked up a storm of chicken breyani and other things for an enormous family gathering at my home. She cooked for big functions all the time because she was plainly damn good at it.

I remember how she and Granny had taught Bron how to crumb butter into flour perfectly by the time she was five. I guess this was the sowing of the seeds of Brons skills as a cook. Ever since I can remember, Bron has been more than merely competent in the kitchen, and like our great grandmother, has recipes imprinted on her soul. For example, she can make a crumble with anything in no time without a printed recipe in sight. But my favourite that she makes often, and she laughs at people who tell her it’s divine, is roast chicken. She shuns compliments saying she just tosses it in oven and lets the heat do the rest. She doesn’t take credit for all the preparation of the chicken, the choice of what she puts in the cavity, the judging of just the right amount of time required in the oven to get the chicken perfectly cooked and succulent. Her husband-to-be has said that her cooking is sublime, and there is little I can add to that.

For regular readers, you will remember that I did not quite get my wish a fortnight ago before the sea decided to cool us down after our dear Kiwi friend, Shaz, expressed her wish. Some people have asked what my wish would have been, and I really had not formed one in my mind yet. I think I do have a wish now. If I could have a wish, I would wish that Betty Brunette, Flo Thackwray, Denise Price, Bronwen Hanes, my mom, Michelle Thackwray and I could all sit around my dining room table for a day, all at the age of 43, eat cupcakes and pasta and drink copious amounts of moerkoffie, and swap kitchen tips and recipes, and mostly, that love only women in one family can share.

PS

I was alone at home on Saturday night, so I boiled up a small pot of spaghetti just the way I was taught by Lola Dunstan, an Italian lady of immense passion. I doused it with the rest of the bottle of Woollies olive pasta sauce from the chicken dish we made last week, and that was my supper.

As I have been reminiscing about food and my family, I remembered my earliest memory of eating spaghetti. For my fourth birthday, Granny and Grampa took me to the Eastern Cape to meet family. We stayed at the Hydro Baths Hotel in Aliwal North for a night or so. My Grampa had been a life saver at the pools there in his youth and he took me there for a swim. Anyway, I remember the dinner gong going very musically and we went into the diningroom. After some time a plate of spaghetti Bolognese was placed under my nose…literally under my nose. I was out of a high chair, but adult chairs in the dining room did not fit. Granny excused herself for some reason or other and left me with Grampa. And he showed me how to eat spaghetti because I was really battling with it. He showed me how to get the end of the strand in my mouth and the suck like blazers until it was all in. I mastered this in a flash and thought I was so clever. I was even going to try two strands at a time next, and maybe build up to a whole bunch of them!

The look of horror on Grannys face when she returned and saw me with Bolognese everywhere over mine, I still remember as a picture in my confusion. She was clearly annoyed, and I did not understand why. She cut up my spaghetti and gave me a spoon and did not look at Grampa. I think I remember her clucking and hissing and gritting her teeth. I was back to square one. I could not eat the spaghetti. I was so confused. The patriarch of the family showed me how to do something and I did it well after his loving tutelage. Only to have the carpet swept from underneath me by the matriarch of the family who clearly was not impressed when she should have quite encouraging and proud. When the penny dropped almost two decades later, Grampa and I had a good giggle.

PS

Have oven, will bake. We fitted the oven glass into the oven door in a flash on Friday evening and today we put the oven to the test. Jac baked some packet chocolate muffins. I always like to add a personal touch to short cut things like packet muffins and suggested we should melt chocolate and drizzle it over the muffins to be decorative. His reply, “Ja, we have to die of something.” I baked oats crunchies. A favourite with coffee for breakfast.

Tonight Son braaied for us. We braaied boerie and a Texan steak…enough for six people, but the reason we braaied was so that we would have leftovers. The steak was cut up into small pieces and frozen. Later the pieces will be cut into strips and used in frittatas or pitas for varsity lunches. The extra boerie will be used next weekend to make that marvellous boerie with a difference recipe from ….