Cook sister!

The best pasta sauce in the world... ever!

I am a great believer in the oral storytelling tradition.  As a child who reached schoolgoing age before television arrived on our shores, I grew up with stories - either those read to me by my mom before an afternoon nap, or told to us by my dad when he used to bath me and my brother.  Even our play was often one long elaborate role-play based on some story we had heard, made up or suitably embellished.  Luckily, by the time TV did arrive, this tradition was so ingrained in us that we continued to play the same sort of games, just incorporating the new ideas we had learned from the few TV shows we had in those days. 

So it's not surprising to find that as I grow older, I remain a fan of the oral tradition.  There are few things that make me feel more at peace with the world than a raucous re-telling of some hackneyed story of past escapades together with either Paul or Bronwyn - usually with each of us finishing the other's sentences and playing alternately the straight man or the comic relief.  The story of the disastrous dinner table delivery mid-meal.  The account of visiting Crazy Steve at his peculiar house in Oshkosh, Wisconsin.  The story of the camping trip on Robberg and foraging for water.  The tale of the "serpent" in the Chilean outhouse.  Or Paul's cataclysmic housewarming party when he forgot where he lived.  Scarily, I could carry on! 

The point is that after the first couple of re-tellings, the story it is no longer really about the imparting of information - everybody in the room has heard the story a dozen times, and most of us were there when it happened.  It's more about creating and then reinforcing a bond between people and harks back to our ancestors sitting huddled around a fire after a hard day's hunting, recounting tales of the Big Woolly Mammoth That Got Away. 

When I was living in South Africa and Nick was over here in London, I had the good fortune of living two doors away from my dear friend Bronwyn.  We slipped easily into a routine (including Monday night supper club and Whose Line is it Anyway!) and for 18 months, Bron and her boyfriend and I were inseperable.  One Friday night we decided to go to dinner at an Italian place that had recently opened in our suburb, and about which our friends had been raving.  Little did we know that the evening was about to sail effortlessly into our oral tradition! 

We had booked at table at 20h00, and when we got there, we were told to wait as the table was not ready.  This is usually mildly annoying, but it was particularly so in a restaurant that has no bar or waiting area to speak of!  We kind of had to loiter between tables of other diners who looked us suspiciously up and down while we eyed up their food.  Not an auspicious start.   But eventually we were led to a table.  A smoking table.  Which we had specifically asked not to get.  But hey, easy mistake to make, so we called over the waiter and explained the situation.  After some hemming and hawing, we were led to a non-smoking table in the next room.  A table laid with nothing other than a tablecloth, that (by the look of it) had also been used by the previous diners.  But hey - it's a neighbourhood bistro, so we didn't complain.  Next, a flustered waiter appeared and gave us a wine list and menu before bustling off in search of cutlery.  This then seemed to occupy him so fully that he neglected to return to take our order. 

So we snagged another waiter, who seemed amazed that we had not been served yet and took our order.  Result!  Within a few minutes, we had a bottle of wine on the table.  Unopened.  And without glasses.  Erm, well, yes.  By this time we were starting to see the absurdity of the situation and were giggling our way through what was proving to be an evening of inexplicable service.  Eventually our original waiter returned to take out food order, so we seized the chance and asked him nicely to open our wine for us.  Which he did... and then walked off, leaving us glasslessly staring at our bottle of wine.  We then got even more demanding and called over another waiter to suggest that he might bring us some glasses - and the look he gave us indicated that we had in a few short minutes acquired a reputation as "the difficut table"!  But after scanning the table in confusion for a minute or two, he had to agree that we had nothing to drink out of except the bottle.  So off he went... and minutes later our waiter returned with two glasses!  By this time the three of us were falling about in hopeless hysterics - it was a textbook Fawlty Towers meal.

So when we ordered our meal, we were already expecting the worst - or at least some new and unforeseen weirdness.  But what arrived was, quite simply, gorgeous.  Bron's other half had a piece of beef fillet that had been done to medium-rare, melt-in-the mouth perfection; Bron had a pasta dish that I now can't recall but that she loved.  And I got the most delicious pasta sauce that I had ever tasted.  Smoky bacon, earthy chicken livers and a creamy sherry sauce; it was utter perfection and I ate as slowly as I could before mopping up the last morsel of this wonderful sauce.  I swooned.  Bron swooned when she had a taste.  And every time we recounted our eclectic experiences that evening to friends later, we referred to that magical pasta sauce as "The best pasta sauce in the world".

I hope you have enjoyed sitting around my campfire, and I hope you love this sauce as much as I do.

CHICKEN LIVER, BACON AND SHERRY SAUCE
(serves 4)

Ingredients

250g pack of chicken livers
6-8 rashers of smoked bacon
1 medium onion, finely chopped
2 cloves of garlic, crushed
1 Tbsp of plain flour
100ml milk
125ml cream
a generous glug of medium cream sherry
1/2 tsp dried sage
1/2 tsp dried oregano
salt and pepper to taste
pasta of the shape you prefer - enough for 4 people

Method

Boil the pasta in salted water according to package instructions, until al dente.

Chop the onion and crush the garlic.  Heat a little EVOO in a large pan and sautee the onion and garlic until the onion starts to soften.  Meanwhile, chop the bacon rashers into 1cm strips (or you can buy pre-chopped bacon bits) and add to the pan.  Fry until cooked. 

Using a slotted spoon, remove the onions, garlic and bacon from the pan and keep warm, but reserve the cooking fat.  Add the chicken livers to the pan (you may want to chop each liver into 3-4 smaller pieces).  Cook until just done but still pink in the middle - watch them carefully as there is nothing worse than an overcooked rubbery chicken liver! 

Add the onions and bacon back to the pan, remove from heat and stir in the flour to absorb the cooking fat (use more flour if you have a lot of fat).  Stir in the milk, making sure you get rid of any floury lumps, then add the cream and sherry and return the pan to the heat, stirring continuously to keep the sauce smooth (add more milk/cream as needed).  Season with sage, oregano, black pepper and salt as desired.

Drain the cooked pasta and return it to its pot, then add the sauce to the pot and stir through. Serve in heated bowls, garnished with chives. 

OPTIONAL:  you can also add chopped mushrooms when you cook the bacon; and you could spice things up by adding paprika or some dried chile flakes when you cook the livers. 

This post is my submission to this month's Waiter, There's Something in My... event hosted by Andrew.  The theme this month is sauces and you have until the end of 31 July to get your entires in!

And hey, looky here! Andreea from On Food and Wine got so carried away that she made my sauce the very next day!  Very flattering - thanks Andreea :)

Pasta with gingered prawns, mange tout and sake

My husband is a man of simple tastes - when it comes to food, that is.  (When it comes to women his tastes are downright complicated and impossible, as he often reminds me ;-)) Give him a choice of what he wants for dinner and nine times out of ten he will ask for pasta. 

Now when he says pasta, he refers to a very specific combination of ingredients that he always puts together when I am out for dinner:  pasta (boiled without salt because he always forgets), sauteed onions, a tin of chopped tomatoes, nearly-raw chopped garlic (because he always forgets to put them in early with the onions), all liberally doused with Tabasco.  When I walk through the door, I can always smell what he's been up to because the entire house smells like a pot of gently sweating onions being stirred with a dirty garlic crusher.  Tasty.  The end result is surprisingly OK though (bar the litre of Tabasco), but not something I would ever make for myself.

No, my tastes usually run to the more exotic and less healthy.  Paola's pasta primavera, gooey with mascarpone; a creamy timmed salmon and tomato sauce; chicken, sun-dried tomato and mustard cream sauce; or my favourite bacon, chicken liver and tomato cream sauce.  Notice a cream theme here?!  But every once in a while, I come across a pasta sauce that is relatively low fat, but still tasty enough to hold my attention.  One of those is a wonderful aubergine and anchovy sauce, and the other is the dish you see pictured above.

I love prawns.  Tiny shrimps, big king prawns, giant LM prawns - bring 'em on!  I love their firm texture and sweet flesh; I love their pink colour; and I love their versatility.  So when I see an easy prawn dish, I sit up and take notice, and when that dish also involves sake, I get out the pots and pans and start cooking.  This particular recipe is adapted slightly from my trusty Australian Women's Weekly Pasta cookbook and is probably the least creamy pasta sauce that I have made in a long time.  It's also one of those recipes that you can play around with:  if you don't have sake, you can substitute vodka; or swap the original sugar snap peas for mange tout; or use cooked, shelled prawns to speed things up.  Because of it's un-creaminess, I'm submitting it as my entry into this month's Heart of the Matter event hosted by the lovely and talented Ilva, with a theme of waterlife.  Yes, I know that the sticking point here is that the sauce contains butter... but here's how I see it:

• I got away with using considerably less butter than they suggested - probably closer to 70g, and divided by 4 that means less than 20g of butter per person;
• once you've tasted it, you will see that it's worth foregoing fat for the rest of the day and using up your fat allocation on this dish; or
• you could substitute margarine for the butter, provided you understand that the taste will be affected.  Just make sure it's soft margarine without nasty trans fats.

And how does it taste?  Marvellous.  I love the textures - the crunchy peas, the meaty, sweet prawns, the decadence of butter and the sake to counter-act the richness.  It's also very pretty and takes all of 10 minutes to put together. 

And the house smells a lot better than with Nick's pasta ;-)

GINGERED PRAWN, MANGE TOUT AND SAKE PASTA (serves 4)

Ingredients

750g uncooked medium prawns (or 500g frozen cooked prawns)
2 stems fresh lemon grass, finely chopped
1 tsp ground coriander
2 tsp ground ginger
200g sugar snaps or mange tout
500g pasta
2 tsp peanut oil

For the sauce:
1 tsp cornflour
2.5 Tbsp water
1/3 cup sake or vodka
2 Tbsp lemon juice
1 tsp grated fresh ginger
70g butter (or margarine - see above)

Method

If you are using uncooked prawns, shell and devein them, but leave the tails intact.  If using frozen prawns, defrost thoroughly and blot with paper towels to remove as muich moisture as possible. 

Combine the prawns, lemon grass, coriander and ginger in a bowl.  Cover and refrigerate for an hour or two.

Cook the pasta according to the package instructions and steam the peas till just tender.  (You may want to cut them in half as I did, to make eating easier.)

To make the butter sauce, combine the cornflour (which you have already blended with the water), sake, lemon juice and grated ginger in a small saucepan.  Stir continuously until the sauce boils and thickens.  Remove from the heat and stir in the butter/marge until it is melted.  Keep warm.

Heat the oil a wok or large frying pan.  Add the prawn mixture and stir-fry until the prawns are cooked (or heated, in the case of frozen prawns) through.  Add the peas, pasta and butter sauce and heat through, mixing thoroughly.  Serve immediately.

Tagged by Foodblogga!

I love a good meme, I do.  So I was intrigued, while catching up on a bit of blog reading last week, to find that the lovely Susan from Foodblogga had tagged me for meme with no name - but which might as well be called Five Things because most of the questions consist of lists of 5 things.  And seeing as I can never resist making a list, here goes my attempt at the meme.  Thanks Susan!

What were you doing 10 years ago?
I was lecturing contract law to non-legal students and loving it.  I was also still living at home and spending all my time with my dear friend Paul - we planned to get married if I hit 30 and had not met anybody, in a big ABBA-themed wedding.  Little did I know that I was about 8 months away from meeting my husband.  Life's funny like that.

Five snacks you enjoy:
* POTATO CRISPS!  My most terrible vice...
* Hummus and vegetable crudites
* Oatcakes with mature cheddar cheese
* Biltong
* Really flaky, buttery, cheesy cheese straws


Five songs you know all the lyrics to:
[I am known amongst my friends for my capacity to remember song lyrics so this is just a small selection...]
* American Tune (Simon & Garfunkel)
* A New England (Billy Bragg)
* Moon over Bourbon Street (Sting)
* Go West (Pet Shop Boys/Village People)
* Somebody (Depeche Mode)

Five things you would do if you were a millionaire:
*  Buy a house on Robberg Beach in Plett, then buy all the land from The Sanctuary to the Robberg Nature Reserve, demolish all the houses built in the last 10 years and let the natural vegetation grow back
*  Have houses in various locations and duplicate all my clothes/shoes etc in each so I'd never have to travel with more than a clutch bag
*  Fund research into a cure for polycystic kidney disease, which killed my mom and from which my brother suffers
*  Never fly economy class again!!!
*  Quit my day job and blog full-time

Five bad habits:
* Procrastination
* Losing my temper too quickly
* Holding a grudge
* Expecting the worst
* Permanently running 10 minutes behind schedule

Five things you like doing:
* Lying in the sun and reading a book
* Walking on sandy beaches - Robberg Beach in particular
* Spending time with my brother and his family, including my two most adorable nephews
* Travelling to faraway places
* Waking up in the middle of the night and hearing rain on the roof

Five things you would never wear again:
* Lycra gym shorts
* Pink tracksuit bottoms and turquoise slacks (I am not kidding...)
* Black lipstick - probably not a good look, whatever I thought in 1988...
* Miniskirts
* Uncomfortable shoes

Five favorite toys:
* Atari - definitely a Space Invaders girl
* Rubik's cube!  Really!
* Trivial pursuit
* Jigsaws - the really giant ones
* My digital camera (a bit of a cheat here as this is in the present tense while the rest are past...)

Thanks Susan - that was loads of fun :P  As for tagging other people, I know we're all busy, so although I've picked 5 people below, please don't feel obliged in any way to do the meme unless you feel ad inspired as I did.

Ronell - My French Kitchen
Carolyn - Field to Feast
Ash - Stitched in Holland
Charlotte - Charlotte's Web
Kit - Food and Family

Broad bean crostini and cocktails - for one!

Regular readers of this blog will know that I have been moaning rather regularly about the weather of late.  I mean, it's late July already and it feels as if we are still waiting for summer to get underway!  It's all too depressing.  In fact, the only warm days I remember recently were the Henley Regatta weekend earlier this month and, miraculously, last Friday and Saturday.  It's not often weekends and good weather coincide...

I was planning on Nick and I spending some time trying to wrest order from the chaos that is our home and maybe do something nice for dinner... and then on Friday he announced that he was in fact off to a touch rugby tournament all day on Saturday.  Harumph.  OK, so I could have soldiered on like a martyr, doing all the chores while he kicked odd-shaped balls around, but that simply would not be my style ;-)  Instead, I threw open the garden door, pottered around with my plants a bit and then spread the picnic rug on the grass and lay down with my book (the rather wonderful Hearts in Atlantis - Stephen King at his most poignant and least gory best).  Utter contentment.  Lunch was a hastily thrown-together tuna salad, also enjoyed al fresco as I could not tear myself away from my garden. 

As the sun sank and the weather grew cooler I headed inside and heard from Nick that he  was probably eating with the touch rugby boys, so I was free to make what I wanted for dinner.  It took about 3 seconds of deliberation to decide that this would definitely feature the bag of broad beans in the fridge!  Aaaah, broad beans.  Can there be a vegetable that I've fallen more in love with over the past couple of years?  So seasonal and so perfectly packaged by nature and so damn delicious.  There are few things I loke more than sitting ou the back step looking out over the garden, glass of wine by my side, and podding broad beans on a summer evening.  Yes, it's time consuming but so worth it.

Usually I would make something along the lines of the Spanish dish of broad beans and jamon Iberico drizzled with olive oil, but somehow tonight seemed the right time for something girly and different - after all, how often do I get to enjoy an evening totally free of TV, cooking girly food, sipping girly cocktails and listening to my decidedly un-girly new favourite CDs (Arcade Fire's Neon Bible and My Chemical Romance's The Black Parade)?  So I settled on canapes and cocktails for dinner.  You only live once.

For the crostini, I decided on a broad bean spread, laced with a little chunk of leftover feta cheese in the fridge and garnished with slivers of pecorino.  And for the cocktails, I was in a quandry.  On the one hand, I was keen to celebrate summer the traditional English way with a Pimms.  But then again, I had glugged down litres of the stuff at the Henley Regatta the previous week and maybe it was time for a change.  So instead I plumped for another of my summer favourites:  my version of the kir royale.  A proper kir royale consists of creme de cassis and champagne, but my version contains cava and cherry liqueur (don't bother with any sort of expensive bubbly unless you have money to burn and people to seriously impress).  As an added twist, I placed half a fresh cherry, liberally soaked in cherry liqueur, in the bottom of the flute.  Oh yes.  The cherry drifts gently up and down in the glass all night, trailing a comet's tail of bubbles behind it.  Too lovely! 

As for the crostini, they were delicious with a fresh, summery taste.  I made the broad bean paste quite coarse with chunks of whole bean still apparent, but if you wanted a smoother paste you could use a food procssor. You could then easily use it as a dip.  The feta was good for binding the mix together but has quite a strong taste of its own.  Next time I might consider replacing it with finely grated pecorino or parmesan, and garnishing with a crisp of jamon Iberico.  I also thought the toasted bread crostini were a bit too... bready.  Possibly toasted squares of pita bread might work better?  I see some happy experimentation coming up, for as long as the broad bean season lasts!

BROAD BEAN CROSTINI (serves 2 if served as canapes)

Ingredients (lots of guesswork here - be creative till it tastes right to you!)

8-10 slices of baguette, sliced diagonally in thin slices
500g unshelled broad beans (fava beans)
1 large clove of garlic, crushed
about 30g feta cheese
1-2 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
lemon juice
freshly ground black pepper
salt to taste
Pecorino or parmesan shavings to garnish

Method

Slice your baguette into thin slices (1cm), lay the slices on a baking sheet and brush with olive oil.  Toast under a medium grill, turning once, until browned.

Pod the beans and boil in water for about 5 minutes.  Cool them with cold water, then peel the greyish outer skin from each bean to reveal the bright green beans inside. 

Crush the beans with a potato masher for a rustic texture or puree in a food processor if you want a smooth paste.  Add the crumbled feta cheese, garlic, olive oil and a splash of lemon juice and mash some more.  (I also reserved a couple of the teensiest beans for garnishing.) Add black pepper and salt to taste.

Spoon the bean mixture onto the toasted bread slices and top each with a shaving of pecorino or parmesan cheese and a teensy broad bean.  If you have not added much salt yet and you thing the paste is too bland, sprinkle with fleur de sel before serving.

Serve with cocktails!

COOKSISTER "KIR ROYALE"

Ingredients

Cava (or any cheap bubbly)
Cherry liqueur (or any red berry liqueur, really)
Half a fresh cherry per glass

Method

Place a half cherry in the bottom of each champagne flute.  Pour a tot of cherry liqueur over it and leave to stand for 10 minutes or so (longer if practical).  Top up each glass with bubbly and serve immediately.

This post is being submitted as my entry for this month's Blog Party - the wonderful monthly event hosted by the lovely Stephanie in which I've participated far too infrequently! 

Been there, run that

Well, I did it last year, I said I was going to do it this year, and now it's done!  Yes folks, the Cancer Research UK's 5km Race for Life 2007 has been and gone and I (person voted Least Likely Ever to Run a Race in high school) have completed it for the second year running.  And I can still walk unassisted ;-)

I just wanted to let you know how it went and to thank each and every one who sponsored us VERY MUCH for your generosity. Between us we have raised over £1000 for cancer research! I'm gobsmacked! And if anybody was waiting to see if we actually completed the race before they donated, or if you were so amused by the pics of sweaty, make-upless me & Lisa that you want to donate more (!), it's not too late. The sponsorship page is still open until the end of next week - so get those credit and dedit cards out! Any amount, however small will do...

As I mentioned, more and more people in my life have been affected by cancer over the past few years, most notably my half-sister who died from a particularly virulent brain tumour in 2003, and my beautiful friend Christelle who lost the battle against cervical cancer a week before Christmas 2005.  She was not yet 30.  And this year, my beloved sister-in law Paola's sister Gail was diagnosed with breast cancer and is now undergoing chemotherapy after a mastectomy in May.  So when the Race for Life 2007 dates started being advertised, I didn't think twice about signing up.  But hey, why suffer alone, so I also enlisted three friends of mine to run with me:  Olwen, Lisa and Iliana (whose husband Adam had surgery for skin cancer in 2005). 

In the end, only three of our team members raced (Iliana's doctor banned her from running in the last week before the race) and the weather running up to race day was hugely unpromising, with rain predicted for the day itself.  Drat - too late to pull out now!!  But the day dawned dry, if a little grey and humid at the start) and at 10h00 Lisa, Olwen and I showed up, all bright-eyed and bushy tailed, at Blackheath to race.  There were an amazing 7000 women running in our race alone and this was only one of dozens such races throughout the country taking place all through summer!  To start off there was a bit of an aerobics warm-up co-ordinated from the stage (just enough to make you wonder how you survived the endless aerobics of the 80s, being yelled at by a thin woman in a leotard to a thumping disco beat) and then at 10h30 we were herded into two groups - the runners and the walkers. Bravely, given the amount of serious training I had managed to fit in this year, we headed for the runners section which set off first.

Don't get me wrong - when I say run, it's more of a slow jog because there are just too many people to run properly, but this suited us very well!!  Olwen had a couple of other friends running and, after running with us initially, streaked off with them and finished in just under 35 minutes.  Lisa Baird and I took

things at a more leisurely pace and jogged along together.  One of the best things about the race for me is that you run along and read other women's backsigns.  These are signs that you get together with your race number in your competitor's pack and that each competitor can customise with text and pictures to say who they are running for.  And when you run as slowly as we did you have a lot of time to read them all!  Some were terribly poignant - there was one girl in front of us who was running "for my friend Brigitte, who passed away on 7 July 2007" which was really sobering. On our backsigns, Lisa and I had Gail (see the last picture):  I had threatened to make her famous and I was as good as my word ;-)  

The race venue was quite different to the Maidstone park where I raced last year: last year was hilly and this year was flat (good); but last year had lots of trees and shade and this year had none (bad, because when the sun came out the clammy humidity soared).  Probably because of the flatness, I managed to run more of the course and walk less than last year - I really only walked the km between the 3 and 4km marks because I had stitch and was getting hot and grumpy!  And even then, Lisa was astonished to see that I can walk fast enough to keep up with people who are jogging!   But overall it went very well and Lisa and I finished in 40 minutes - a little hot and sweaty as you can see from the "after" pic, but very pleased with ourselves.  After a few minutes of resting on our laurels, we dilligently did our stretches and then went off to find Olwen and her friends. From there, we made our weary way home to a long hot bath, the Sunday papers and a lazy afternoon after a job well done. 

And from there, we made a beeline for The Railway pub in Blackheath village for a celebratory Sunday lunch (well, food had to feature somewhere in this post, didn't it?!) and a few gin & tonics.  If you are in the Blackheath vicinity on a Sunday, you can do worse than the Railway.  It is a cool and relaxed space which never felt particularly crowded and it has a small but nice  menu on Sundays, including the Sunday roast which had led Olwen to recommend the place.  Service was astonishingly fast and efficient, and within 10 minutes of ordering the whole table of 6 had their food.  I had chosen beer-battered fish with chips and mushy peas while Nick had gone for the roast (as had almost everyone else at the table!).  The fish was seaspray-fresh and the batter delightfully crispy and not oily.  The chips were fat, homemade and nicely seasoned, and even the mushy peas (still a cultural mystery to me) were tasty.  The Sunday roasts, however, took the cake.  Generous slices of lamb, fragrant mint sauce, lashings of vegetables and a huge chunk of Yorkshire pudding.  It was all I could do to keep my fork out of Nick's plate!  I would love to go back, particularly to try their lamb burger which is, sadly, not available on Sundays. 

And Gail - if you're reading this, I hope that we brought a smile to your face.

For a few more pictures, check out my Flickr album of the race day.

 

Waiter, there's something in my... sauce!

Ooooh, who's getting saucy then?  I do believe it's WTSIM co-founder Andrew over at SpittoonExtra. 

Yes folks, your favourite monthly food blogging event is back - and what a great "sauce" of joy it is to you all, no doubt.  Waiter, there's something in my... was born at the start of this year and continues to go from strength to strength, with such diverse themes as stews, pies, Easter, bread, stuffed fruit/veg and filled dumplings.  Together with Andrew and Johanna, my original idea was to keep the themes broad, allowing for people to interpret them as they wish - seasonally, regionally, childhood favourites - whatever takes your fancy as long as you adhere to the host's rules.

Your charming host this month is... Andrew and he has decreed the theme to be sauces. Couldn't really get broader than that, could you!?  The only little requirement that he has is NO GRAVY (I take this to mean nothing made from the liquid remaining after you have cooked a roast? Andrew??).  That aside, he has left you as much leeway as you could wish for.  Rekindle childhood memories with applesauce.  Come over all haute cuisine with a beurre blanc.  Take us on an ethnic journey with your grandma's salsa verde, or your auntie's sweet and sour sauce, or your godfather's mango chutney.  Or go for the popular hits like green peppercorn sauce, cheese sauce, chocolate sauce or butterscotch sauce.

Really - the world is your oyster (wiht maybe a dash of Tabasco sauce?!).

Andrew has all the details of how to enter over on his announcement post.  The only thing to bear in mind is that he has us working to a tight schedule:  entries have to be in by 25 July.  So best you find some sauce of inspiration (ho ho!) and get going. 

Nasturtium leaf salad

Astonishingly, it seems that the teeniest little bit of summer has finally arrived in the UK!  I mean, we have had two weekends in a row of reasonable weather (well, not raining, that is...) and I have finally had a chance to spend some time in my sadly neglected garden.  I must say that despite the neglect, it's looking pretty OK.  The last of my profusion of poppies are still hanging on; the geraniums are blooming for all they're worth and the alyssum is making clouds of sweet-smelling flowers.  But most importantly, my favourite harbinger of summer has arrived:  the nasturtiums.

I have loved nasturtiums ever since my mom introduced me to them as a child (although I knew them by their Afrikaans name of kappertjies then).  They were easy to grow, fairly hard to kill and produced loads of flowers over a long period.  Plus there was the added bonus that their leaves looked almost exactly like the lily pads I had seen in my illustrated Beatrix Potter books and with a drop of dew in their centre, I could almost imagine them featuring in her wonderful tales.  I remember always being on the lookout for interesting colours: the ones with petals that shaded from red in the centre to yellow at the edges were my favourites and tended to grow lke weeds in Plett, on the slopes below the old Lookout hotel.  I would always make sure to get some seeds to take home and try and grow them in our garden, to my mom's amusement.  When I arrived in the UK and saw nasturtium seeds for sale at the nursery, I immediately snapped them up and planted some - just having the plants in the garden made it feel a little more like home.  And this year, to my surprise, I discovered two thriving nasturtium plants that had sown themselves in the little corner by the garden gate, where nothing grows except weeds. So you could say that I now have wild nasturtiums growing in my garden...

I certainly had never thought of eating them until I started reading more widely about food and discoverd that a) capers are in fact NOT pickled nasturtium seeds, as we had always been told as children!) and b) both the flowers and leaves are edible, with a pleasant peppery tang.  They were brought to Europe in the 16th century from the jungles of Central America and in fact, their peppery tang is where nasturtiums for their name from:  an amalgamation of the Latin word for nose (nasus) and twister (tortus).  I have nibbled on them a few times since discovering their culinary possibilties and since they taste very much like rocket to me, I though they would be ideal in a salad.  And although I know the flowers are edible too, it just seems too much of a pity to pick them when I so love seeing their cheerful orange faces when I look out of the window. 

So you'll have to make do with wild nasturtium leaf salad!

NASTURTIUM LEAF SALAD (serves 2)

Ingredients

Cos lettuce, washed and torn
Cherry tomatoes, halved
2 sticks celery, sliced
5cm of a cucumber, thinly sliced
spring onions, chopped
a handful of fresh nasturtium leaves
1 Tbsp capers (optional)

Method

Toss the salad ingredients together and dress with a lemony vinagrette dressing.  Delicious with pizza.

This post is my atrociously late submission for Bron's great Wildfood event.  This month's theme was Wild Weeds - check out her fantastic roundup!

Yauatcha

Mmmm, dim sum. 

I was a late arrival at the dim sum party.  Where I grew up, lovely as though it was, the culinary scene was not what you might call cutting edge. Sure, Port Elizabeth has always had a large and thriving Chinese community, but the Chinese food that you will find all over South Africa is a rather hybridised affair.  We definitely favour the meat component over vegetables, we ADORE giant crispy fried portions of pork with a dipping sauce that's more sweet than sour (preferably with pinapple chunks...) and we have invented our own dish of "Shanghai steak" featuring strips of beef, mushrooms and (inexplicably) peas.  Apparently no such dish is known in China - think of it as our chicken tikka masala ;-) In any event, sushi did not hit our fair city until early this century, and I think we're still waiting for dim sum...

Here in London, of course, it's a different story.  Dim sum abounds and I have been to at least three dedicated dim sum places recently.  But in the end, all London dim sum roads must lead to Yauatcha, which is where I headed recently in the delightful company of Johanna, Jenni, Anne, Xochitl and Anne's mum Ingrid.  Alan Yau is a man who needs little introduction.  This Hong Kong-born restauranteur is the founder of the phenomenally successful Wagamama chain of Asian eateries (the first branch opened in London in 1992 but now there are branches in 11 countries) and the father of the venerable Hakkasan, the first Chinese restaurant in the UK to receive a Michelin star.  Yauatcha is Yau's all-day dim sum and tea emporium, opened in 2004, and has its own Michelin star - you notice this when you call to make a reservation and they inform you curtly that you can only have a 90 minute slot in which to eat your meal.  Can I just mention how much I loathe and despise this practice?!  But if you want to wrap your tongue around the gorgeous dim sum, you just have to pretend that they are in fact doing you a huge favour by allowing you to visit, and deal with it.  Such is life in London.

At the appointed hour, I arrived to find Jenni, Anne and Ingrid waiting outside.  Well, actually a good hour before the appointed hour - we were in serious need of cocktails.  Since Xochitl had raved about the cocktails, we thought it only sensible to try and have pre-dinner drinks at the restaurant and so we stepped inside to run the gauntlet of The Staff.  I have seriously never seen a restaurant with as many staff as Yauatcha.  They were absolutely everywhere, and yet nobody seemed particularly in the mood to smile - we got the kind of haughty "can-I-help-you-while-I-look-you-critically-up-and-down" greeting that seems to be standard at high-end London restaurants.  I asked whether we could have drinks in the nearly-empty upstairs tea room before dinner, but that was apparently booked for early dinner guests in 15 minutes time.  So I asked whether we could sit at our table instead which was pronounced possible.  I also took the precaution of informing them that the fact we were having cocktails at the table in no way meant we were leaving before our 20h00-21h30 time slot was over, which was agreed to after some hesitation.

And so down the stairs we went.  On the plus side, our table was tucked into a corner (the table diagonally in front of you as you come down the stairs) which made conversation easy even with rising noise levels  On the downside, we were in the awkward little passage behind the staircase and cut off from the gorgeously sexy main dining area with its low lighting, twinkly ceiling and beautiful aquarium.  Bah humbug - next time I'll know better.  Almost as soon as we sat down, a waiter was on hand with menus, removing what he thought to be an extra place setting (despite our telling him we were still expecting Johanna) and asking for drinks orders.  There is an extensive tea menu - black, white, green or blue teas, as well as a section of tea-based cocktails.  I went for the yellow concoction on the left (name sadly not recorded) which was about as un-serious a drink as you could hope for - looks like juice, tastes like juice and kicks like a mule, with a pretty flower to round it off.  Woo hoo!  But it was Ingrid had the most beautiful cocktail by far.  On Xochitl's recommendation she had the cocktail pictured on the right which contained crushed red grapes and looked for all the world like a glass full of rose petals.  Too beautiful.

Before the drinks had even arrived, the waiter was asking what we wanted to eat - clearly word hadn't filtered down to him that we had not yet started our 90 minute time slot!  And then, to his consternation, a few minutes later we were joined by Xochitl and Steve which produced another flurry of rearranged place settings, no matter how much we told him they were only coming for a drink.  And when Johanna arrived and Xochitl and Steve left, he seemed to be at his wits' end with us! 

Given that the clock was now ticking on our 90 minutes, we didn't waste any time getting our orders in.  The dim sum menu is extensive and mostly well-priced at between £3 and £7 for 3-4.  There is also a selection of more substantial dishes for bigger appetites, and a selection of downright silly dishes for those with more money than sense (Peking duck with Beluga caviar at £140.  Hah!). We ordered 14 types of dim sum, making sure everybody got to choose a couple of dishes and taste some of everything.  I had neither the foresight nor the inclination to take notes, so I'll give you a very brief run-down.  Luckily I had pictures - sneakily taken when the waiter was not looking (more on that later). The dim sum was served in steamer baskets or on the most gorgeous pale jade crockery that just begged to be taken home.  Luckily I never came here as a student with a roomy handbag...

Pictured on the left is the one thing I insisted we order two baskets of - char siu pork buns. Could I love anythng more than I love these buns?  Don't think so.  These were perfect examples, with the skin of the impossibly fluffy white dough staying dry enough not to be sticky, the perfect ratio of pork to bun, and a filling that was spot on in terms of the sweet/salt balance.  Perfection.  Pictured on the right is something that Xochitl suggested we try - the gai cheung fun.  These slippery rice noodles wrapped around prawns and fresh spring vegetables had sounded a bit strange on paper, but in fact they were delicious - the noodles were slippery but had enough chew to hold their filling and the contents were fresh and delicious. Sadly not pictured was the super-delicious ostrich dumpling - yes, you read correctly:  ostrich.  These arrived looking like innocent steamed dumplings in their steamer.  It was only when you bit into them that you realised how extraordinary their filling is.  Chunks of the tenderest ostrich (how did they get it so tender?) spiked with black pepper that added a wonderful zing.  I had insisted that we order these, despite some dubious looks from my companions, but one taste was a