Cook sister!

Slow-roast tomato and zucchini pasta

So... you buy a ton of tomatoes.  You spend a day or so roasting them veeeeeeery slowly in your oven.  Then you bottle them in olive oil.  But then comes the hard part:  what to do with them?  Of course, the easy option is simply to eat them out of the jar when nobody is looking (be careful not to dribble oil on your clothes in the process as this is a dead giveaway as to what you've been up to...)

Another option is pizzas (but more of that later) and yet another option is to eat it with some of the rather yummy pasta you brought back from Rome and that's too good to smother in a creamy sauce.  Although I am usually first in the queue when it comes to creamy pasta sauces, there are some nights when I actually feel a vague twinge of guilt about all the calories I've consumed and I do my best to come up with a non-creamy pasta sauce that's still tantalizing.

Which is how this dish came about.  It's healthy, it's full of lovely robust flavours, it's colourful - and it it takes all of 10 minutes to prepare. 

What more could you want from a dish?

SLOW-ROASTED TOMATO AND ZUCCHINI PASTA (serves 2)

Ingredients

Enough pasta for 2
1 large garlic clove, crushed
1 large zucchini
about a dozen slow-roast tomatoes
about a dozen pitted black olives (optional)
extra virgin olive oil
1 tsp dried basil
1 tsp dried thyme
salt and pepper
Parmesan shavings

Method

Prepare the pasta according to the package instructions.

Wash and slice the zucchini lengthwise into 0.5cm thinck slices, then cut each slice into 2 cm pieces.  Heat a little olive oil in a heavy-bottomed frying pan, add the zucchini pieces and sautee on high until the edges of the slices have begun to blacken slightly.  Turn the pieces over and repeat on the other side.  Then add about 2 Tbsp more oil and, the herbs, the garlic (and olives, if using) and turn the heat down to medium.  Allow to cook for a few more minutes until soft enough for your liking, adding the tomatoes near the end just to heat through. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Drain the pasta and return to the pot, then add the tomato and zucchini together with the olive oil to the pasta.  Stir to mix and serve immediately, topped with shavings of Parmesan cheese.

This dish is my submission to the Vegetarian Awareness Month event being hosted by Margot of Coffee and Vanilla.

Waiter, there's something in my... triple ginger layer cake

I am not a baker.

Or at the very least, I am to baking what Hunter S. Thompson was to journalism.

All my baking escapades seem to involve the wrong ingredients due to crazy last-minute substitutions, incorrect or inadequate equipment (I mean, does every home really need a palette knife??) and a laissez faire attitude to the following of precise instructions.  For these reasons I have convinced myself that I am not and will never be a baker.  I can be persuaded to bake scones, cookies or muffins - but cakes?  Forget it!

Aaaah, but there was a time when I did bake cakes.  Well, sort of.  ** BIG EMBARRASSING CONFESSION ALERT! **  When I was at university, for some reason at some celebration with friends, the task of baking a cake fell to me.  In all likelihood, some bloke I was interested in mentioned how much he loved chocolate cake, and I went straight to the first supermarket I coudl find to buy the ingredients.  As you do.  But seeing as the cake was merely a means to an end, I didn't start with flour, icing sugar, cocoa and all the fiddly stuff.  Oh no - I headed for the cake mixes.  Moir's moist chocolate cake mix, as I recall, which was endearingly referred to as "Moira's cake mix" by my best friend's Croatian mom. By nightfall I had two square chocolate cakes, which I sandwiched with a tin of Caramel Treat (South Africa's version of dulce du leche) and iced with my mom's trusty chocolate frosting recipe.  Thus armed, I set off into the night in my little Ford Escort (called Morten, after the lead singer of A-ha, of course) to a party on campus and at the appropriate moment, I told the birthday boy in question that I had a surprise for him, so about half a dozen of us trooped off to my car in the parking lot where I presented him with the cake.  This went down so well that the baking of chocolate cakes became my party trick for the rest of my university career, but always chocolate - never any other flavour, never any other icing. 

And never any actual ingredients, always cake mix.  Cringe.

And even scarier - that's the last time I baked a cake (OK, so I did make a cheesecake this year... with ingredient substitutions.  Which didn't set properly because I followed the instructions only half way.  See what I mean?!).  So you can imagine my feelings of dread when Andrew announced this months' theme for Waiter, There's Something in My... Cakes.  And not just any cakes - layer cakes.  And seeing as I co-founded the event, I couldn't very well chicken out, could I?  Damn.

And so I put it off and put it off and put it off... until finally this weekend I could put it off no more.  Saturday was a write-off as I spent most of the day enjoying a bloody fantastic meal in the excellent company of Johanna and Xochitl at Petersham Nurseries, so when Sunday dawned I had to find a recipe - fast!  In the end, I chose something suitably Autumnal from the great list of layer cake recipes at Epicurious... and unsurprisingly, there were ingredient substitutions and equipment issues.  No golden brown sugar?  How about dark brown?  Don't have 2 cake tins? OK, use a pyrex bowl instead.  Bloody hell - how am I supposed to measure solid butter in cups?  Oh, let's guesstimate we need roughly 250 grams... You get the picture.

But to my utter amazement, as the recipe progressed, things just seemed to turn out right!  And the end product reminded me of a recipe for bar cookies that my mom used to make and for which I have lost the recipe - but now I have a recipe I can adapt. This memory is the reason for my addition of cherries to garnish the cake - my mom's cookies contained both glace cherries and crystallised ginger.  In fact, if I make this cake again, I may add some chopped cherries to the batter too.  A word of warning - if you don't love ginger, this is probably not the recipe for you as there is ginger in the batter, the icing and the garnish.  And it is a robust, gingerbready kind of cake, not a fluffy sponge, so if you're looking for feather-light, look elsewhere.  Other than that, you should love it - I know my husband and colleagues do...

TRIPLE GINGER LAYER CAKE

Ingredients

FOR THE CAKE:
Non-stick spray (or I used plain old butter)
3 cups cake flour, sifted
1 cup finely chopped crystallised ginger
2 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp ground cinnnamon
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
3/4 cup unsalted butter at room temperature (I used 190g)
3/4 cup packed golden brown sugar
2 large eggs
1 cup plus 2 Tbsp buttermilk

FOR THE FROSTING:
500g cream cheese at room temperature
1/2 cup unsalted butter at room temperature (I used 125g)
3/4 cup packed golden brown sugar
2/3 cup icing sugar
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground ginger
1/4 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup minced crystallised ginger
3-4 glace cherries, chopped (optional)

Method

FOR THE CAKE:
Pre-heat the oven to 180C.  Spray with the non-stick spray (or grease with butter) two 8-inch round cake pans with 2-inch high sides and line the bottoms with parchment. 

Mix the flour, crystallised ginger, ground ginger, cinnamon, baking soda and salt in a medium mixing bowl.  Using an electric mixer, beat the butter and sugar in a large bowl until light and fluffy.  Add eggs one at a time, beating until well blended after each addition.  Mix in the dry ingredients alternately with the buttermilk in 3 roughly equal additions, scraping the sides of the bowl often.  Beat just until batter is smooth.

Pour batter equally into the prepared cake tins and bake until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean - 30-40 minutes. Cool the cakes in their tins on a rack for 10 minutes.  Run a small knife around the sides of the pan to loosen cakes, then turn out onto racks and cool completely.  Peel off parchment.

FOR FROSTING:
Using electric mixer, beat the cream cheese and butter together in a large bowl until fluffy.  Add brown suger, icing sugar, cinnamon, ground ginger and vanilla.  Beat until well blended.  Mix in 1/4 cup of the minced crystallised ginger.

Place one cake layer on a platter.  If, like mine, the top of your cake is domed, this will be problematic when you come to add the second layer, so fix it.  Place one hand firmly on top of the cake.  Using a bread knife, carefully slice the domed top off the cake so that the top is smooth. 

Spread about 1 cup of the frosting over the (now flat!) top of the first layer.  Place second layer on the first.  Spread remaining frosting over the top and sides of the cake.  You may need extra frosting where the two layers meet to disguise the join and give your cake smooth sides.  Decorate top of cake with the remainder of the ginger and cherries.

Cover with cake dome (or, in my case, an upturned mixing bowl...) and refrigerate.  Let stand at room temperature for 2 hrs before serving.

WTSIM - only 2 days to get that cake baked...

Not to rush you or anything - in fact, far from it.  I haven't even made my own contribution yet!  But I thought a gentle reminder was in order that the deadline for this month's Waiter, there's something in my... event is this Sunday, 28 October. 

The event is being hosted by my co-conspirator Andrew over at SpitoonExtra and he has chosen layer cakes as the theme - head on over to his blog to see how to enter.  If, like me, you are an infrequent baker and stuck for inspiration or recipes, do yourself a favour and take a peek at what's available in this department over at Epicurious.  If you can't find a layer cake you like amongst those, you're just being picky ;-)

Now my mouth is watering, waiting for the round-up...  Hope to see you there!

Roast figs with balsamic vinegar and pine nuts

Aaaah, figs.  We are bang in the middle of their lamentably short season at the moment and I don't seem to be able to walk past them without buying a few.

My mom used to rave about them - they had a tree in their garden when she was growing up in Pretoria and she would go all misty-eyed when describing how she would climb the tree and eat the warm, sun-ripened fruit.  But for some reason, you almost never saw fresh figs in the shops when I was growing up - maybe because they are so eminently perishable?  My mom bought dried figs but these didn't appeal.  Too hard, too gritty, tooth-achingly sweet. And a rather unattractive shade of brown! It seemed you had to have a tree in your back yard to enjoy this particular pleasure!   

Truth be told, we did in fact have a fig tree in our garden: a wild fig tree that seeded itself in some mysterious way in the steep rockery near the bedrooms.  We didn't know what it was until it reached an age when it could produce its first crop of figs, but when it produced clusters of fruit its identity became apparent.  However, my parents were of the school of thought that anything you pick from a tree is fatally poisonous (my father also categorises biltong and yoghurt in this category...), and therefore we never did try to eat any of these figs, or even try to make jam with them.  This did mean that we provided an annual bonanza for the birds and, unexpectedly, a number of fruit bats that made nightly raids while the fruit lasted. 

I have a very clear memory of waking in the middle of the night when I was still living at home, and my panic-o-meter going from 0-100 in a split second.  There was a scratching sound at the glass sliding door of the conservatory that separated my and my brother's bedrooms from the garden.  I tiptoed out of bed and to my bedroom door - where I found my brother in a similar state of consternation at his bedroom door.  Slowly we crept into the conservatory - but there was no intruder to be seen.  Gradually my eyes adjusted to the dark and I followed the sounds to the ground just outside the glass wall.  There I saw a fruit bat, rat-like but with huge and beautifully delicate wings, who had gorged on figs and then stunned himself by flying into the glass of the conservatory window!  He was in the process of trying to pull himself upright and what we had heard was the scrabbling of his (substantial!) claws on the glass window.  Panic over, we stood there for a while looking out and realised that Bat Boy was not alone - there were four or five fruit bats swooping silently through the branches of the neighbouring seringa tree in the mooonlight, making smash-and-grab attacks on the ripe, heavy fruit.  It was a magical sight, like a little bit of wild Africa sneaking into suburbia.

The fig is an interesting culinary enigma - you'd think the purple orbs were the fruit of the common fig tree (Ficus Carica), but you'd be wrong.  What we regard as the fruit is actually the flower of the fig tree or, more correctly, multiple flowers forming a false fruit: a specialized structure called a syconium. This is a nearly-closed receptacle with many small flowers arranged on the inner surface, which means that the actual flowers of the fig are unseen unless the fig is cut open. The syconium has the fig's classic bulbous shape with a small opening (the ostiole) at the end opposite the stem that allows access by pollinators. The flowers are pollinated by very small wasps that crawl through the opening in search of a suitable place to lay their eggs. Figs come in two sexes:  caprifigs (which are hermaphrodite, pollinated by wasps and regarded as inedible) and females (which produce edible figs).  Don't worry too much about ingesng wasp eggs though - because the female trees' female flower part is too long for the wasp to successfully lay her eggs in them, the wasps pollinate these flowers without leaving their eggs behind! Figs are among the oldest cultivated crops and were already well-known in Roman times, and nine fossilized figs dating to about 9400-9200 BC were found in the early Neolithic village Gilgal I in the Jordan Valley.

In any event, it is safe to say that the pleasures of fresh figs were largely lost to me until I moved to London.  But now, I'm making up for lost time ;-)  It seems I can hardly walk past a packet of figs without buying a couple and telling myself I'll decide what to make with them later.  Which is why I had some in the fridge the other night when I had been inspired by Cherrapeno's beautiful fig dessert.  I made it with a couple of tweaks of my own and can't recommend in highly enough in terms of simple pleasures and yummy contrasts:  hot, cold; sweet, sour; and soft, crisp. Marvellous.

ROASTED FIGS WITH BALSAMIC VINEGAR AND PINE NUTS (serves 2)

Ingredients
4-6 fresh figs (depending on size)
balsamic vinegar (or caramelized verjuice syrup)
a handful of pine nuts
ice cream or mascarpone to serve

Method
Wash and dry the figs. Slice a cross into the top of each one, being careful to cut almost to the bottom, but not right through - the fig must still be held together by the base.

Place the figs in an ovenproof dish and drizzle each one with about a tablespoon of good balsamic vinegar.  I mixed my balsamico with some wonderful caramelized verjuice syrup, but if you can't get your hands on this, stick with the balsamico.

Pop the figs in the oven and bake uncovered at 180C until they start to soften and lose their shape - about 15 minutes.

In the meanwhile, toss a good handful of pine nuts into a no-stick frying pan over moderate heat.  Watch them like a hawk, stirring frequently, as they catch very easily.  Wait until they start to brown slightly and then remove from the heat and reserve. 

When the figs are done, transfer them to plates, drizzle with the cooking liquid and sprinkle with pine nuts.  Serve with mascarpone (I only had vanilla ice cream on hand and that was OK, but mascarpone would have been better).

I am submitting this post to my friend Pille who is hosting this week's edition of Weekend Herb Blogging.  You have until Sunday to get your entries in so what are you waiting for!

We are the champions

To the 15 men who carried the hopes and dreams of 48 million people on their shoulders last night and did not drop them, all I can say is THANK YOU – and you deserve it.

You had me on the edge of my seat all through the match and you had me in tears when you received the trophy and hugged President Mbeki one by one as you filed past, victorious.

On Friday (according to my colleagues), we were overconfident.

Today, we are the world champions.

And tonight I raise my glass and have a proudly South African springbokkie in your honour.

BOKKE BOKKE BOKKE!

The Famous Four meme

An age ago I was tagged for this meme by the lovely Niamh of Eat Like a Girl - and today I finally got round to completing it - hurrah!  So sit, back, relax and enjoy.

4 jobs I’ve held

1.  Criminal advocate After I left university I practised as a criminal advocate (barrister).  It was in the dying days of the apartheid regime and we still imposed the death penalty.  One of the things you do as a junior advocate starting out is to conduct pro deo defences - where the state pays you to defend indigent accused persons facing capital charges, so that's how I came to defend 14 murderers in court over the course of 18 months.  Let me just say that a maximum security prison is not a place where you want to spend large chunks of your working life... And for those of you conteplating a career in law, let me assure you that it's nothing like the movies would lead you to believe!

3.  Lecturer Having had enough of the heady world of criminals and court orderlies, I took up lecturing contract law to non-legal students for 8 happy years.  Possibly the best job in the world - if you need variety in yuor life, just try lecturing 18 year olds!  If anybody needs a law lecturer just e-mail me.

2.  Secretary When we came to the UK, it was with the intention of having a 9 month working holiday, no more, so I was only looking at temporary jobs.  The easiest field to find work in was secretarial and luckily I had a good agency who sent me off to a job at a Large Soft-Drink Company.  It was an hour commute either way for me, I worked for at least three different sets of bosses while I was there, everything seemed on the verge of chaos all the time... but I was flown Business Class across the Atlantic for 2 days to deliver a passport.  So you could say there were perks :)

4.  Knowledge management Since 2002 I have been in some sort of knowledge management role with 2 different firms.  Don't know what KM is?  Click here.  It's the way of the future...

4 places I’ve lived

Tricky, this one, because I have only ever lived in 2 cities!!  So forgive me if I stretch the definition a little...

1.  Port Elizabeth (at home with my parents) Man, I loved living at home.  How else would you explain the fact that I was only shoe-horned out at the ripe old age of 29??  Our house overlooked a valley, had a pool, lots of little sunny spots where I could lie and read in the afternoons, and enough space that nobody got underfoot.  Plus my laundry and the cooking was done.  Thanks mom!!

2.  Port Elizabeth (in my apartment next door to my best friend) So I finally left home and bought a little apartment (in a "townhouse complex", for all you fellow Saffers) of my own.  And within minutes, Nick had moved in with me.  When I came back from my overseas jaunt (see job 2 above) I returned here and found to my joy that my best friend had bought the flat literally one door away from me.  Fate works in mysterious ways.  I still miss that apartment and our Monday night supper club.

3.  London (on a friend's lounge floor)  When we arrived in London in 2000, all we had was a suitcase each, some money to tide us over till we could get jobs, and the promise of temporary accommodation with our friend John.  We had expected to be sleeping on the lounge floor.  What we had not expected was that another couple would also be sleeping on the lounge floor - John's sister and her husband - and that the girlfriend of John's housemate would regularly be staying over - meaning seven of us sharing one tiny bathroom.  Nice.  It's amazing we're all still friends!!

4.  London (our little rented house in the Docklands)  In June 2000 we moved out of John's house and into our current house - and that's where we have been ever since! Most people living in London move on a regular basis, but then you get me and my limpet-like propensity for staying put. I love our area & our lovely neighbour with her adorable cats & our garden, and until we win the lottery and can afford a triplex apartment with a sea view, this is where I plan to stay ;-)

4 places I’ve holidayed

1.  Chihuahua, Mexico We went there in Oct 2005 for our friends Adam and Iliana's wedding and loved it.  I was intrigued how people would comment when we said where we were going "oh, so you're going to the REAL Mexico" - as opposed to Cancun I guess.  The bus ride from El Paso was exactly as you'd imagine, with people boarding the bus to sell unidentifiable foods in plastic packets every time the bus stopped, and men dozing in their seats under their white Stetson hats.  The people we met were the warmest and friendliest I have ever encountered and the whole city had a strangely familiar feel to it - rather like a smaller South African city with modest ambitions.  Fantastic food and the best tequilas I have ever tasted.

2.  Mauritius When I was a student my dad had the "brilliant" idea of taking a cruise to Mauritius for Christmas - on the ill-fated Achille Lauro (dubbed the Ship of Hell by my brother and me)!  I can safely say that the cruise cured me of ocean cruises for life.  My brother and I spent almost the entire trip being sea-sick and too hot and as a result we re-christened my dad The Grinch Who Stole Christmas.  But we did end up in Mauritius which was absolutely fantastic.  The people are amongst the friendliest in the world, the beaches are paradise and a trip into the interior from the coast is like entering another world. Highly recommended for luxury by the sea.

3.  Dubai Yes, it's kind of tacky and exremely environmentally unsustainable, but there is something utterly appealing about Dubai.  I went with my friend Paul in 2005 and was prepared for the skyscrapers, the shopping malls and the gold souk.  What I was not prepared for was the beauty of the desert, the heady scents of the spice souk and the mad exotic hive of activity surrounding Dubai Creek in Deira, the older part of town.  It's one of the crazier culture clashes I've experienced and totally alluring.

4.  Granada, Spain  I went with my two best friends and we rented a house in the Albaicin (the old Muslim quarter) with a roof terrace overlooking the Alhambra.  We walked the narrow streets and shopped in the bazaars by day, rested in our cool garden while the call to prayer sounded from the mosque, watched the sun setting over the Alhambra from the square outside St Nicholas' church, drank sangria in tiny squares at night and then sat on our terrace watching the moon rise over the Alhambra at night.  It was as close to perfection as any holiday can come.

4 favourite foods

1.  Pizza Either paper-thin the Roman way, or chunky like in the south.  I don't care - as long as the ingredients are good and I get it piping hot out of the oven.  Heaven.

2.  Foie gras My little vice.  It turns any meal into an ethereal treat.

3.  Broad beans In any form really - just lots of them please!

4.  Tacos al pastor - little tortillas wrapped around barbecued pork and pineapple with a spicy sauce.  It's reason enough to go to Mexico!

4 places I'd rather be

Port Elizabeth with my wonderful brother & his family, getting ready to watch SA win the Rugby World Cup tomorrow ;-)

Plettenberg Bay having dinner at Cornuti al Mare and looking forward to a long walk on Robberg Beach tomorrow morning

Granada, having dinner at a restaurant near St Nicholas church overlooking the Alhambra (do you see a theme here?!)

Having dinner with my mom who passed away four years ago today.  Mamma, I still miss you as much as I did that first night.

I can't think of four people to tag who have not yet been tagged at the moment - but I reserve the right to add tags later this weekend. If, however, you want to do this meme, please consider this your tag and get writing!

Don pedros for dessert!

So who the heck is Don Pedro anyway?

Well, he might be:

* a prince of Aragon in the Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare

* an American actor

* a former governor of Guatemala

* a Filipino politician

* a Latin-American restaurant in New York

* a dam

All very impressive, but to me, Don Pedro will only ever mean one thing:  one of my favourite South African desserts. 

I say South African, but truth be told, its name and its regular appearance on Argentine menus suggests that this is a South American import.  How an Argentine boozy ice cream cocktail came to our shores is anybody's guess, but its here to stay on every menu south of the Limpopo (and probably a few north of it as well!).  Here in London, it is unknown (outside of a handful of South African and Argentine restaurants) and it is surprising how often after a meal I feel like one but can't find it on the menu. The great thing is that it tastes like a cocktail, looks like a dessert and doesn't fill you up too much.  What's not to like?

I guess you could describe it as a grown-up milkshake, consisting as it does of cream, ice-cream and booze, and the classic booze to use is whisky.  However, in South Africa you can customise it according to what your favourite liqueur happens to be.  Just like when you order a steak you will be asked to choose between chips, rice or baked potato, when you order a Don Pedro you will be asked whether you want it with whisky, Kahlua, Amarula or other more adventurous options like creme de menthe or tequila.  Although mine is served with a restrained glace cherry, you can also have them with grated chocolate or whipped cream topping, just in case you feel the need to up your calorie intake...

Here's the simple version - enjoy!

DON PEDRO (per serving)

2-3 scoops good vanilla ice cream
25 ml whisky (or alcohol of choice)
50ml cream
a glace cherry to garnish
grated chocolate to garnish (optional)

Blend the ice cream, cream and whisky in a blender.  Pour into champagne flutes and garnish with cherries or grated chocolate, as you prefer.

Cheers!

Sun-dried tomato, basil and mozzarella chicken

Right after I finish my first self-help book Clear your freezer - fix your life! I am planning to start a sequel called For the Love of Leftovers. 

You heard it here first ;-)

Seriously, what's not to love?  Leftovers have inspired me to create dishes like boerewors and butternut risotto or fennel and sausage risotto, they have provided the filling for many a lunch sandwich, and formed the basis for almost every omelette and fritata I have ever made!  And sometimes, they inspire even more ambitious dishes... like this one.

We had braaied and as side dishes we had sweet potatoes and a caprese salad.  So when I got home from work the following day, I found a couple of stray sweet potatoes in the vegetable rack and basil and mozarella in the fridge, all of which needed eating in the not-too-distant future.  What to make?  In the end I plumped for the no-mess, no-fuss option that would see everything cooked in the oven so that I could close the door, pour myself a glass of wine, chat to Nick and not think about supper until the delicious smells came wafting under the kitchen door.  Perfect! 

The sweet potatoes were sliced into batons, tossed in olive oil, sprinkled with rosemary and oven-roasted with their skins on, while the chicken breasts were flattened, stuffed, tin-foiled and baked alongside the sweet potatoes.  The end result was absolutely delicious without being too rich - and I didn' t have to spend half the evening slaving over a hot stove.  Hurrah!

Come to think of it, maybe that second book should be RSS - Really Simple Suppers ;-)

MOZARELLA, SUN-DRIED TOMATO AND BASIL CHICKEN BREASTS (serves 2)

Ingredients

2 large boneless, skinless chicken breasts
2 Tbsp mayonnaise or cream cheese
6-8 sun-dried tomatoes (I use Merchant Gourmet - but you could also use home-made slow-roasted tomatoes)
about half a ball of mozzarella
a handful of fresh basil leaves
salt and pepper to taste

Method

Cover a chopping board with clingfilm.  Butterfly each chicken breast and place in the centre of the chopping board. Cover with another layer of clingfilm and pound with a mallet (or the base of a chutney bottle if your life is like mine...) until it is about 0.5 cm thick.  Remove the top layer of clingfilm.

Spread each fillet with a tablespoon of mayonnaise or cream cheese.  On top of that, place a slice of mozzarella,  3-4 tomatoes (cut into strips) and 3-4 basil leaves.  Sprinkle with salt and pepper as required, roll up the chicken breast carefully and secure with a toothpick.  Repeat with the other breast.

Place the chicken fillets in an ovenproof dish.  Top each one with 3-4 basil leaves and enough mozzarella to cover the leaves.  Cover with tinfoil and bake at 180C for 40 minutes or until the chicken is done. Remove the foil and bake for a further 5-10 minutes to get the cheese to brown slightly.

Serve with roasted sweet potato chips and a green salad. Remember to remove the toothpicks before serving :)

I am submitting this post to the lovely Kalyn who is hosting the gala 2-year anniversary extravaganza edition of Weekend Herb Blogging.  Happy birthday WHB!

Honey tasting with the UK food bloggers

Being a food blogger makes you rather thick-skinned.  You get used to the worried looks when you tell people you're a blogger.  You get used to the reactions that range from puzzlement to disdain to outright banning from waiters in fancy restaurants when you whip out your camera.  And you get used to your friends' sniggers when you say you are attending a butter/salt/honey/rice tasting this afternoon and can't make their BBQ.  Although food bloggers see these as perfectly normal and even exciting events, the rest of the population just looks on with bemusement.  Vive la difference!

So our happy band of bloggers, oblivious to the rest of the world's curious stares, got together at Chez Cooksister a couple of weeks ago for a honey tasting.  We had been planning this for, oh, about a year.  Things just kept getting in the way!  In fact, when Pille visited before the summer, we were so sure the honey tasting was iminent that she actually brought us some Estonian honey to taste.  Little did she knows that the wheels of progress can sometimes grind very sowly.  Bt at least they do grind, which is how I recently found myself at my sunny dining table surrounded by 6 other people (Johanna, Inge, Bill, Jenni, Andrew and Sarah, our "food blog groupie") finally ready to taste some honey!

A quick word on honey before we begin.  Honey is created when bees collect plant nectar from flowers and mix it with enzymes from their own bodies.  To convert the nectar into honey, bees drop their load of nectar into the cells of a honeycomb and fan it with their wings to evaporate moisture and reduce it to the sticky substance we know and love. The colour and flavour of honey is influenced by many factors, including the location of the hive, the types of flowers visited, and climatic conditions, meaning that almost endless variations on a sweet theme are possible.  Honey is also one of the oldest foods and was common in ancient Egypt as well as being mentioned in the Bible and Qur'an.  It also almost never spoils:  an edible jar of honey was found in an Egyptian Pharo's tomb.  Honey also contains vitamins and antioxidants, but is fat, cholesterol and sodium free.  Lately, new research into its antibacterial and anti-fungal properties have made honey very popolar in health stores - particularly manuka honey.   

So how does one taste honey?  Well, it's not exactly a wine tasting with long-established conventions and routines, is it!  So we kind of had to feel our way.  Although I did think about blind tasting all the honeys by decanting them into numbered bowls, I quickly abandoned this idea as faaaaaar too much washing up ;-)  My first thought was to use wooden lollipop sticks for dipping into the jars, but in the end it turned out ot be more practical to buy a hundred plastic teaspoons so that everyone could have a fresh teaspoon for each tasting.  Less sticky, dripping mess too ;-)  To clear the palate between honeys we had lots of water and warm crumpets cut into strips, which worked beautifully.  And especially for the truffled honey, I had a chunk of pecorino cheese which makes the perfect partner. 

The other problem we encountered was the appropriate lexicon for tasting.  With wine, it's easy - woody, fruity, minerally, jammy etc - we'v all heard them and it's relatively simple to apply them to wines.  But like our butter tasting where we struggled to describe the samples as anything other than "creamy", honey requires you to come up with a new lexicon, and hopefully something more interesting than "sweet"!  Plus there is the additional element of texture which is not really a significant factor in wine tasting.  We ended up with a broad distinction between floral and herbaceous flavours, although there were some interesting notes on scent.  "Cat's pee".  "Wet leather".  "I'm telling you, it does smell of camels!".  Wish we'd recorded the conversation...!

And of course, man cannot live by honey alone.  Once the formalities of the tasting were over, we quickly switched to afternoon tea mode and indulged in all manner of sweet and savoury treats:

   

From left to right we have Jenni's mini-cakes with raisins; Andrew's cheese and onion flowerpot bread (bought steaming from the oven!); and my cheese olives.

And from left to right we have Bill's palmiers (home-made!!), Inge's cheesy poppyseed muffins (served with a lovely chunk of chevre from Wiltshire), and Johanna's fig, Brie and Parma ham piegata sandwiches. For an album of these and a couple more pictures, have a look at my Flickr set of the day.  And below, you will find my tasting notes. 

My only regret is that I did not take down more complete notes as to the maker of each honey - maybe I will ask around the other attendees and update with more info as I get it.  We had a ball and I can highly recommend trying something like this with a few friends - you'll be surprised at the wide variation in taste! 

And even more surprised to learn that your friends know what camels and wet leather smell like...

CRYSTALLISED