Is meat loaf man-loaf? Ask Billy Joel.

Meatloaf reminds me of Billy Joel. On one of the rare occasions that I managed to see Oprah, his young wife, Katie, was interviewed about her marriage of course (it was one of those celebrity absurdities of the last decade) and her new cookery book ‘The Comfort Table’. She demonstrated how to make her family recipe meatloaf saying "I like to call meat loaf 'man loaf' because it's every man's favorite dish. (Excuse me, I am feeling nauseous) My husband loves when I make meat loaf, (I actually think he loved when she made many other things too) and it makes the best leftovers. We love it the next day on white bread with mayonnaise.(was she trying to bump him off early?)" It takes more than meatloaf to keep a marriage together honey. Especially one where there is a 32 year age difference. What were they thinking? They are divorced!

My oven glass has eventually been delivered so I won’t be ovenless for much longer. Can’t wait to get the baking stuff out again this weekend. But last night I was still ovenless. So I asked a friend if he minded if I went and cooked at his place and he could keep the leftovers. It was surprisingly easy to twist his arm!

But the meatloaf recipe I followed from the Ideas issue lacked what my dear friend Irene would call the “WOW’ factor. Granted, I could not find the pickled peppers that the recipe called for; maybe they would have made the difference. I did not know they really existed. I thought they were only things that Peter Piper picked a peck of and then lost. So I substituted with red pepper. There was still something missing. I am spoilt now with fresh herbs, so to me the 2tsp of dried sweet basil was insufficient and a poor substitute for the real thing. Katie Joel’s recipe has many more ingredients in it, and I think they are the secret to turning non-wow meatloaf into man-loaf. These are garlic, bay leaves, fresh parsley and thyme, Worcestershire sauce, tomato sauce, salt and pepper.

But the wow-less meatloaf was not a complete disaster. I served it on basmati rice with oodles of instant gravy, and conscience clearing nuked gem squash with brassicas and carrots in the hollow. No pictures unfortunately. I felt it would have been too geeky to ask my host if I could photograph the plates.

Love and Chicken

There are so many sounds people make when they express there joy (or not) over a flavour. But to write them is difficult. Some sounds of delight cannot be well represented by any combinations of the 26 letters of our alphabet. Take for example “mmmmmmm”. It uses only one consonant, but in this written form tells you nothing really. There are a myriad of ways that this consecutive string of m`s is vocalised. It can have an element of surprise in it, where the start of the verbalisation is high pitched and then drops. It can be expressed seductively, where the pitch is low, increases and then drops off slowly again. And it can express mere adequacy; starts high, drops and then rises again. It can also be used for irony when you do not really want to tell the truth; monotone! You have to hear it in person to get its meaning.

There is one other sound that I have heard when good food is served that is impossible to express in vowels and consonants, but I will try and describe it. It’s a gasp in reverse. It’s a sudden sound made through the throat and nose on exhalation. Try it… see if it sounds like a sound you would make if you had just tasted something mouth watering.

I love that sound. It means that the food is appreciated and enjoyed…as it should always be. I have undergone a philosophy change regarding food and its preparation over the last couple of weeks. Up until this year, I viewed food as nutrition. Cooking was a necessary task to make sure the family was healthy and content and because it had to be a regular task, it may as well have been done with love. But now I am beginning to see the preparation of food as an art…as a blending of flavours and textures to bring about enjoyment. An art motivated by love. A whole new experience.

Tonight’s menu required the good old faithful skinless chicken filet. The filets were sliced with care and marinated in fresh lime juice for 15 minutes. They were gently fried; almost dry again, just a tiny dollop of olive oil in the Family Frying Pan. Once cooked, they were set aside. Time for the juices to re-mingle and settle themselves to maintain the succulence of the meat. Chicken stock was poured into the pan along with half a bottle of Woolies olive pasta sauce and the zest from the lime that was juiced for the marinade. A couple of generous handfuls of baby spinach was wilted in this delectable fluid. Cooked risoni was added and the juicy chicken bits put in last to finish of the dish…all in one pan.

The lime flavour stays with the chicken even though the risoni takes up the pasta sauces olive flavour. The baby spinach is tender but I think it is included only for colour and nutritive purposes…to clear the conscience of guilt feelings for neglecting vegetables. Again, a good healthy meal with negligible fat content and no salt, scored by Son this time as a firm 9, and a reverse gasp! Its one I would make again, but I think I would like to add some red to it…like finely chopped de-pipped mild chillies or peppadews. Just to make it look prettier.

Tonight’s dish was yet another one that would have fallen outside my gastronomic repertoire before now. I would never have served fish with noodles. Fish with chips of course, or fish curry with rice, or fisherman’s pie with mashed potatoes (my version of a seafood cottage-like pie), but never with noodles. For no good reason other than I have never thought of it.

I am a bit of a food exclusivist, with prejudices I foster to make me sound like I know what I am talking about as a foodie, when I really am a mere modernist culinary short cut taker with only about five good dishes to my personal gamut of recipes. One of the “exclusive” fetishes I have is buying fresh fish when I want fish and never frozen fish which is wrapped in blue plastic and then boxed. But I live in Durban. A seaside city with a dearth of fresh fish shops. There is also a scarcity of fresh fish counters in the supermarkets. And my closest supermarkets have no fish counter at all, just fridges full of individually-wrapped-in-blue-plastic-wrap, frozen, boxed fish. And tonight’s menu called for fish. I am in a spin at work at the moment so don’t have time to go on a search for good fish. So the standards had to drop and I walked into my local Spar to buy a box of individually-wrapped-in-blue-plastic-wrap fish. You know that awful feeling you get when you feel you are letting yourself down? Like you have succumbed to a bad habit when you have had it under control for so long? If I was a dog I would have walked out of the Spar with my tail between my legs.

However, not one to slap myself on the wrists for too long…

The filets were cut up into bite size pieces, coated with egg and then rolled in flour. The bits are almost dry fried, with only a trace of olive oil in the Family Frying Pan. They are served on a bed of Chinese noodles that has fried red and yellow peppers worked through with sweet and sour sauce. A truly tasty combination of ingredients. Son scored the dish at a worthy eight, stating how healthy it is being relatively fat and oil free.

I would however, next time I cook fish this way, add some spice for fish to the flour the fish pieces are dredged in to add some more flavour. What can I say? I am a flavour junky and think that frozen fish is tasteless.

The Family Frying Pan does fritata

I am not sure what I am more excited about. The frittata, my first ever and it worked like a bomb, or the way our darling Family Frying Pan dealt with it!

Eggs for supper have never had an appeal for me. There are some things that you eat only at certain times of the day. Like eggs. They are for breakfast and only make lunch if they are in sandwiches. And yoghurt! What is it with people who eat yoghurt for dessert after dinner? You might as well have Jungle oats or Pronutro for supper! And what about those who have steak or boerewors for breakfast? I guess that can be classified as more decadent and eccentric than bizarre, and therefore more acceptable, but only on special occasions. But yoghurt and eggs are for BREAKFAST!

However, tonight the menu had frittata emblazoned upon it as an almost solo player. I have seen Jamie and Nigella whip them up with savoir faire on TV, but have never been moved to make it for dinner. Potato wedges are cooked for a few minutes in the Family Frying Pan with a mere smidgeon of oil. The wedges are removed when just cooked and then onion and garlic are fried up. I used red onion because I thought the final dish might look a little pallid. Once the onions and garlic are soft, the potatoes are returned to the pan and eight (8, agt…a lot) beaten eggs (I added a good dose of MSG too cos eggs need legs for flavour) are poured over the veggies and cooked on the stove. Once the base is sort of solid, a generous handful of grated cheddar is liberated over the top, and I added some cayenne pepper for more colour and to enhance the cheesiness of the dish. Then the Pan is placed under the grill to cook the top and melt the cheese into it.

Under normal circumstances I would be sweating now with anxiety, wondering how to get the frittata out of the pan so that it could be served with some semblance of elegance. I would have visions of scratching pans as slices were lifted out with egg lifters, sides collapsing and an attack of Tyretts coming on. But our newest family member, the Family Frying Pan (have I mentioned how much I love this pan?) showed us just how it is done. Holding the handle in my right hand, I tipped the pan gently and watched as the eggy mass slipped out in perfect shape onto the serving plate. No loosening required anywhere. The frittata looked perfect, and the pan looked clean. What culinary gorgeousness! I am enraptured by the perfection. Oh how I have been moved to over expression!

The frittata was tasty and Son and Boet enjoyed along with a simple green salad. It’s an uncomplicated dish but gives huge returns in flavour. I would add some fresh herbs next time like basil or rosemary. Maybe some green peppers or red pepadews. Possible some freshly grated parmesan into the egg before it is added to the pan and then lose the cheddar…losing calories and not flavour. How about chopped olives? Baby marrows? Ok, now I am getting carried away, but you get the point. The basic frittata is a blank canvas on which to work. It is scrumptious and quick and easy to throw together and makes a perfect Saturday evening at home dinner, served with a fresh salad and maybe warm bread rolls! Yum!

Tiara club and hummous

I have to tell two separate stories to make our Friday culinary experience meaningful.

Tiara club

On Friday night we had Tiara Club at my home. Tiara club started in October 2008. I was newish in Durban having just moved down from Pietermaritzburg and the only Durbanite I knew was my cousin Bron. In Pietermaritzburg and Durban you are a foreigner if you did not go to a high school in the province. And you don’t make it in the social circles unless you went to certain high schools. When you meet someone for the first time, one of the questions posed in the conversation is “Which school did you go to?”, and depending on your answer you will either be friends for life or discarded as a nobody up front. Thank the Pope Boet and Son went to Michaelhouse, so they are ok, but me? I only went to Germiston High School. When the conversation about schools suddenly dead ends with me because I am not an old girl of one of the more prestigious KZN schools, I ask how many Nobel Laureates come from their school. The answer is “none” unless they come from Durban Boys (Aaron Klug), and then I tell the story of Sydney Brenner, a Germiston High School old boy who won the 2003 Nobel for Science. That usually gets me into the social circle, if I want to be there. But usually I don’t care! I am snobbish when it comes to snobs. Snobs don’t hack it for me and I coldly reject them as superficial nobodies up front.

Anyway, I was still writing up my PhD and had no time really to find a social circle of friends when I met my dear friend Michelle, who was a fellow carer of feral cats on our campus. She too was feeling like an outsider in the city, so we decided to have a group of Durban women whom we knew come together for supper one evening so that we could get some girl talk going. In October 2008, my cousin Bron and her neighbour (our dear Kiwi friend Shaz) Michelle, Brigitte (an artist friend I was communicating with online after I bought a couple of paintings from her) and I met for supper at the Keg at the Pav. And since then we have met every month.

The group has grown since then. Michelle introduced our dear Irish Friend Tracey who decided our group needed a name because when we spoke of our group we did not have a tag. We are really a book club that doesn’t share books. So she suggested Tiara club and that stuck. Last October we celebrated our first year of existence by going out to dinner wearing tiaras. Many people, particularly women, asked what we were about in the restaurant, and so many said they would like to do the same thing. And we encourage it. It is liberating and above all FUN. It is girls behaving well, intelligently and badly, depending on what the mood of the moment is. We have another two members who have joined more recently, Irene and Carrin, who have formed an important part of our girly fellowship.

Sometimes we go out to a restaurant together, and sometimes we meet at one of our homes. On Friday we met at my home. I like relaxed evenings and I also want to be part of the party and not have to worry too much about being a perfect hostess. So I decided on a meze type table that we could all eat on slowly as we shared the recent events of our lives, which usually have us in paralytic fits of laughter. Bron brought me some Karroo olives which she bought on her road trip, Irene brought mini pita breads, Tracey brought some dolmades, stuffed pepadews and falafel and I made a chilli and lime babaganoush from a recipe I found on the web, and hummus, the element of the next story I will tell.

Hummous and MDFFK

I have often made hummous because the Boys and I love it so much. It can be a sophisticated component of a meze platter, an obliging dip for chips and other more healthy things, or a humble spread ontoast for a quick snack. It is very healthy as long as you don’t overdo it because it is laden with calories. I have usually just whizzed up a tin of rinsed chickpeas with garlic, olive oil and lemon juice and its always worked. In my fridge it lasts less than 24 hours, only because it is eaten quickly, but it can stay in the fridge for a couple of days, maturing in flavour as the time passes.

While I was overseas last year I met a delightful lady from Kuwait who shared her hummous recipe with me. I will refer to her as MDFFK, (my Dear friend from Kuwait). She shared an office with me in Holland where she is completing her PhD studies. She is a devout Muslim lady who is devoted to her family and who also loves cooking and preparing wonderful repasts as an expression of her adoration for them.

She shared with me the emotions her Kuwait community went through during the Iraqi invasion of the early nineties. This war started on my birthday, so I knew what was happening from press reports that we got here and had my own narrow mental pictures of the goings on there. Its not nice sharing your birthday with other anniversaries that should rather be forgotten. But MDFFK told me of another side to this war. She told of how she woke up in the early hours of the morning to see soldiers in her street. She spoke with the soldiers asking them why they had invaded. They told her they had come to liberate the people of Kuwait – a people who were very content with the way things were at the time. She told of the individual soldier’s ignorance of the reality of the situation and how they had been misinformed in Iraq in order to get them to go into the country. She also told of how unprepared the soldiers were, that they were likely to have been newly recruited with limited training at the time. She told of the camaraderie amongst the people of Kuwait during these trying times. How they would meet on the streets after dark and plan ways to frustrate the Iraqi offensive by removing road signs and giving poor directions when asked. She tells of how she misses that part of that time.

The relationship with the soldiers was also not always adverse. They showed compassion when they could. One Friday morning when she was out an Iraqi soldier told her not to allow any of the men from her family to go to prayers that day. Being a women, her instruction would not be followed in her home, but luckily her father was not well that day and did not go to prayers anyway. Iraqi forces rounded up thousands of Iraqi men from mosques that Friday and took them to Iraq. Four hundred of those men have never been heard of again. Men who were husbands, fathers, brothers. Gone with no way of finding out what happened to them.

We had a Thanksgiving Dinner whilst we were in Holland and everyone brought along a dish that was typical of their home country. I made bobotie and MDFFK brought along hummous to die for. It was delectable and she very kindly shared her recipe with me. She used all the ingredients I usually use in different proportions, but added tahina and cumin powder. It is ntsa! I made this new hummous for Tiara club and they thoroughly enjoyed it. The boys had the leftovers on toast for breakfast on Saturday. Both Son and Boet said it was the best hummous they have ever tasted. Boet said he would give it a 9 because he might still taste a better one in his lifetime, though he doubts it

My favourite two piece and spuds!

I thought of spoiling the boys with their favourite supper, three cheese MacCheese, but they had other ideas. I was informed that sausages and mash were on the menu and that I was to bring home the potatoes.

I have a thing about potatoes. I love them. Not only because they are a perfect blank canvas on which to place just about anything else delectable, but they can be good and tasty in their own right. However, they must be treated with respect. In my opinion, noble potatoes deserve to be selected individually off the shelf and used straight away so that they are able to give their best flavour. No bags of mixed quality for me (ok, not so much Woollies tatties, but I have another THING about Woollies foods that I will regale another time) that end up making eyes at me a few days later from the veggie rack. I am lucky enough to have a Spar two blocks away from work which is en route to home which is another four blocks on, so I can get reasonably fresh stuff everyday. Or I can go to the corner Woollies near gym on the days I go there. So a veggie rack is actually obsolete in my kitchen. A luxury I truly enjoy.

But back to potatoes. Potatoes are an international food, and in each country there are some variations in their cooking. In Holland I have been served stew and boiled potatoes. I always manage to fuss enough with my serviette, or chat away as others start serving themselves meals presented in a way I am unfamiliar with, so that I can see what they do before I make an absolute eejit of myself. The boiled potatoes were placed in the centre of the plate, everyone then crushed them a bit with their forks and then spooned gravy rich stew over the top. Delish! I was served Limburg Zuurvleis, a traditional Southern Dutch stew, in a lovely boutique restaurant on Rijnstraat in Amsterdam on thick potato wedges, a variation on the way the stew was served in my hostesses home previously. Also YUM. In Sweden I was introduced to mashed potato their way. Potatoes are boiled and then pushed through what is now known in my home as my favourite two piece. Blog problems at the moment so I cannot post a pic but go to www.wakefield.gov.uk/.../TheHome/foodprep.htm to see what I am talking about. My hostess squished the potato through the masher onto the plates and all we added was salt an pepper. The texture was light and airy and I fell in love with her masher. The next week in between lectures in Linkoping I dashed off to a kitchen supplies shop and spent the GDP of a small African country on one of these for myself. And carried it all the way home, only to find them in Boardmans a few months later.

I use this handy little machine every time I mash potatoes and the mash is guarenteed to be creamy. Other potato mashers, no matter how fancy they look, are a waste of time. Depending on the meal, this basic potato cream can then be supplemented with all sorts of stuff. I have added tinned white beans, garlic, parmesan, a host of different herbs to compliment the rest of the dinner, but almost always milk and butter. Last night we added fresh rosemary and olive oil instead of milk and butter and had it with chicken sausages and steamed veggies. Sometimes the simplest foods are the most delightful.


PS - the best potatoes I have ever tasted were grown in the Lamberts Bay area.

Chicken mince EVENTUALLY, and an evil deed!

Today I did something really evil!

But I can justify it.

I have a fear of shop bought chicken mince after Mondays experience and many people have told me that this is a general chicken problem. Now I have bought chicken fillets every week just about for years and never had any issues with them, and never yet opened a packet that smelt as badly as the mince did on Monday. I accept therefore that my reaction is a little over the top. At our local Spar this evening, I saw the chicken mince in the fridge and decided to give it a pass. Also, I need 500 g of mince and the packets only came in amounts between 300 and 400 g. So what I did was bought two skinless DD (yes, double d size) chicken breasts that together came to nearly 500 g. And then I wizzed them through the food processor for half a minute and that was that! Fresh chicken mince.

But the evil thing I did… I selected the packet of chicken breasts that I wanted and then made a hole in the package and put my nose in it, after half an inhalation…just in case. And this is how I can justify it. I knew I would definitely buy the packet if it smelt ok…so I would buy the damaged package goods. If it smelt awful, I would call the manager and admit to what I had done and get him to check all the other packages in the fridge. No harm done to anyone, and I get good chicken.

The chicken rissoles are made just like good old fashioned frikadels, but with lots of lemon and coriander in them. Fresh breadcrumbs, onion, egg, chicken mince, lemon juice and coriander are mixed together in a bowl, balls are made and rolled in flour and then after about half an hour in the fridge, they are fried in a smidgeon of oil in the Family Frying Pan…have I mentioned recently just how much I love that pan?

These were served at two separate dinners. The boys had them drizzled with sweet and sour sauce and with toasted pita bread and Greek salad. I took some over to a friend, but I had no more salad left, so cheated a little. On the way over I stopped at the Chinese take-away and bought vegetable chow mein. Mmmm. These little lemony chicken numbers are a winner, scoring a good eight from the boys, and picking up a compliment I cannot quite remember from my friend!