But I have realised that in Durban I have to become bilingual when it comes to herbs and spices. I could not find coriander at the fresh herbs, but the dhania looked familiar, so I stuck my nose into it and yes... it is coriander! I had a similar experience the other day when I went into an Indian spice shop to get some cumin I am going to need to make hummus next week. I could not find it. When I asked the shop assistant where it was, she took me to the jeera! This is going to be FUN!
One of the problems with buying ingredients like fresh herbs ahead of time is that they are likely to go limp before we can use them. Also there is no way we will use a whole bunch of coriander between the two of us within a week. So I traipsed off to the nursery section at the hardware store and bought basil, coriander and rocket seedlings to plant in our little veggie patch. If we are able to keep the plants alive, we should have as much herb stuff as we need whenever we need it. Oh I feel so Nigella at the thought!
But the really big adventure for Saturday came when Son and I bought a Family Frying Pan. Bryce Courtney wrote a collection of short stories that his wife's grandmother used to tell called the Family Frying Pan. She collected these stories as payment for cooking meals off the land as she and a group of Jewish refugees made their way out of Russia as refugees early in the twentieth century. She had taken the frying pan off the stove after finding the family that had employed her slaughtered throughout their home. She took the coat off the body of the lady of the house, put it on and then threw the pan over her back as she bolted from the house to avoid the same fate. Her fellow kitchen servants had also been murdered, the fate she escaped because she was out picking mushrooms I think at the time of the attack. When she died at very old age, a round scar was found on her back where the pan had burnt her as she ran off with it.
The book is lying on my coffee table at the moment and Son asked if I was reading it again. I said that it was returned by a friend I had lent it to but it is a very good read that I recommend for him. You know what he said? He told me he had read it when he was in primary school. That I made him read some pretty heavy stuff when he was small! In no way have I ever MADE either of my sons do anything! I said, "I suppose one day you will say that your mother made you cook every recipe in a particular recipe book for every weekday of the year?" His response .. a wry smile and a YES!
So it is appropriate that our new purchase will be called the Family Frying Pan. It has to be specially named too because it is as costly a purchase as most people-who-have-no-debt's monthly investments!
We have a Bauer casserole that is flattish and has doubled as a good frying pan too occasionally. The problem with Bauer though is that it cannot be heated up very high, you have to use it at medium heat, which is no real good when you want to sear something. So off we went to Boardmans in search of something a professional chef would use. Jamie Oliver's pots are exquisite with a red dot indicator in the middle that tells you when the pan is hot enough. But they are more costly than Le Creusette (the Ferrari of cooking wear... Oh I do dream that maybe one day... and I am not a brand snob!). Also they have a rubber piece under the ergonomically designed handle that feels really nice in the hand, but I cannot see that you could put the pan in the oven if you wanted to brown something off from the top.
We found the T-Fal range with the red dot indicator like Jamie's stuff and settled on that. But then we saw them! The marketing was perfectly directed at us! The Green Pan! Light and dark grey but GREEN. An ecologically friendly pan. I ask you with anxiety mounting within my conscience, how have all my previously used pans not been environmentally friendly?
Apparently ... other non-stick technologies contain chemicals that when heated to over 260 deg C release a 'multitude of toxic chemicals.' As a critical scientist I really do have to question this. Surely after the first heating of the pan, molecules that are not tightly bound to the pan through adhesive latent energy (is there such a thing?) will gain enough kinetic energy through the heat to remove themselves from the pan and all others will stay stuck forever? So if there is a release of chemicals it will be a once off occurrence. If this were so, then manufacturers could carry out the first heating themselves in a controlled environment to remove toxic chemicals at source. Just a thought. And I am not a physicist, so I am prepared to bow my head in deference to those who know better. Just wish I knew if the info was from the scientists who developed the pan or from the companies marketing department. The word 'constainability' has been quoined by them to emphasise convenience and sustainability. Puh-leeeze, when you have to alter a millennium old language to describe your product to the world then you may just be clutching at straws.
Anyhoo...the ecologically aware marketing does not end there. All packaging materials are made from recycled products and I think the aluminium that forms the base of the pan is also recycled. But its not the greeny marketing that sold the pan to us. It was the fact that this pan was the only one that had in its marketing paraphernalia the statement that it could withstand very high heat, and that's what we want. Last night Son tried the pan out for the first time. I did the prep of the pan, washing it by hand and then coating it with a thin layer of olive oil and then he dried fried smoked turkey in it. His comment - 'this is a top, top, top pan'.
So we are delighted with our new Family Frying Pan. I washed it again lovingly, dried it with care and put it to bed in the pot drawer after swaddling it in its own protective dish cloth.
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