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!