Cook sister!

Mushroom soup - it all started with a duck

Ain’t life just like that sometimes?? The very last night of NaBloPoMo and TONIGHT I develop IT troubles. It started with problems with the internet browser and after reopening Internet Explorer a few times I though I would re-start the machine to see if that sorted it out. Only… when I restarted it, Windows refused to boot up fully. Great. So here I am in the dead of night in Windows safe mode, trying to get one last lousy post done. So forgive my brevity!

Cast your mind back to Spring – time of buds and shoots, nodding daffodils, carpets of crocuses and… my birthday! This year I opted for lunch with Johanna on the Big Day and a quiet lunch a deux with Nick the following day. We had one of my favourite treats: roast duck (I believe it may even have been another Nigel Slater recipe which I'll have to share with you sometime soon).  A lovely afternoon was had by all, eating the perfectly crisped roast duck and sipping the sublime Graham Beck Cuvee 2000 sparkling wine, carefully brought back all the way from South Africa.

And after all the plates had been licked and the last drop of champagne drained, all that remained were the dishes to be done and one picked-clean duck carcass.  I couldn't just throw it away, so into the pot it went together with enough water to cover it, a roughly chopped carrot, onion and stick of celery; a bay leaf; and some peppercorns.  An hour or two of slow boiling, a quick pour through the strainer, and voila!  Duck stock!  While cleaning out the freezer the other day, Nick came across a container full of what looked like particularly unappetising brown liquid which he was regarding with distaste just as I was wondering what to make for dinner.  The duck stock that came in from the cold, so to speak.  I defrosted it and the smell for some reason brought to mind the autumnal flavour of mushrooms.  A peek into the fridge revealed a punnet of chestnut mushrooms - hurrah!  And so was born my very first duck-and-mushroom soup, with a splash of truffle oil.  The duck stock is the perfect base for this, although I'm sure that chcicken stock would be just fine.

I'll resist the temptation to start this recipe with "first, kill your duck".

MUSHROOM SOUP (serves 4)

Ingredients

1 punnet chestnut or button mushrooms

1 medium onion, finely chopped
1 small clove of garlilc, crushed

1 Tbsp thyme
1 Tbsp butter

1 Tbsp plain flour

2 cups duck or chicken stock
1.5 cups milk

1/2 cup cream

salt & pepper

truffle oil to serve

parsley to garnish

Method

Sautee the chopped onions and garlic in a little olive oil until they are translucent - do not caramelise.  Add the mushrooms and thyme and cook briefly until the mushrooms are soft.  Add the butter and once it is melted, stir in the flour to make a paste

Add the chicken stock gradually, stirring carefully to prevent lumps.  Add the milk and stir.  Remove from the heat and give it a whirl with an immersion blender to get a really smooth consistency.  Stir in the cream and return to the heat to heat through.  Add salt and pepper to taste.

Serve garnished with parsley leaves and a few drops of truffle oil.

NOTES:  This is dead easy to make and the truffle oil adds a touch of luxury, but is by no means essential.  Something about the flavour of the duck stock works with the mushrooms and thyme as if they were made for one another.  A match made in heaven!

I'm submitting this post as my entry to this week's Weekend Herb Blogging, kindly hosted by event founder Kalyn's Kitchen this week. - send your entries to her today at kalynskitchen (at) comcast (dot) net.

Menu for Hope IV - spotlight on Lesotho

I'm sure you have all heard of the wonderful Menu for Hope event that is the brainchild of Pim and takes place once a year around Christmas. For those of you who aren't familiar with it, the campaign involves food bloggers (and others) from around the world each donating something to be raffled off on-line for charity. This can be as simple as a cookbook or as elaborate as a foodie tour of a world-class city. It can be something you will lovingly make yourself (e.g. jams or framed photographs) or it can be something you have persuaded somebody else to donate (e.g. dinner at a smart restaurant) - see last year's campaign to get an idea of what I'm talking about. Once the raffle starts, members of the public can visit your site to read about your raffle items and then place a bid by going to Pim's site. And at the end of the campaign, winners are chosen using a software application, after which the regional hosts will tell people the good news of what they have won.

Surely this raises a lot of money, I hear you say? Oh yes - just over $60,000 last year! And what happens to the money? Well, like last year, the money will be going to the UN World Food Programme (WFP) and this year's campaign is going to be particularly exciting. This is because the WFP has allowed us to earmark the funds to a specific program. We am thrilled to announce that we have chosen a school feeding program in the mountain kingdom of Lesotho - which is situated bang in the middle of South Africa!

Currently, the WFP's school feeding programme provides a daily nutritious meal to nearly 150,000 school kids in Lesotho , many of them orphans. After five years of drought, it is estimated that disease and malnutrition in Lesotho claim the lives of one in 12 children before they reach the age of five. Chronic and persistent vulnerability prevails in Lesotho . The kingdom is confronting the triple threat of increasing chronic poverty, rising HIV/AIDS rates and weakened government capacity. This threat takes a heavy toll on the households of the rural poor in Lesotho , who are faced with a limited number of coping strategies to respond to the intensifying hazard. 56% of the population live on less then $2 per day.  Think  about that. That's less than a pound.

During the campaign, we are going to have the kids photo-blogging from the school grounds to bring their stories closer to us and our donors. Also, the WFP have been pushing what they call the Local Procurement program: instead of buying surplus food in the US and shipping it to Africa to feed the kids they are now buying maize and other produce from the local farmers, thereby putting funds back into the local economy.

Why am I telling you all this? Well, because I (together with Johanna) have been asked to host the UK region's Menu for Hope campaign 2007.  I am hoping that as many of you as possible will be able to take part and provide something to raffle off. Having donated something last year, I can honestly say that it is not a huge amount of work. All you need to do is come up with a prize to donate, put up an enthusiastic post about it on your blog and then remember to mention it as often as possible while the campaign is running. And if you have no blog, no problem!  Let me know what you want to donate and I will host it on my site.  You will also be responsible for getting the prize to the winner. Not really that hard at all, plus your blog should get some extra exposure and traffic during the campaign and the kids in Lesotho can look forward to more food. It's a win-win situation. So please put on your thinking caps and try to come up with something we can raffle.

When coming up with a prize, do bear in mind that your bidders (and the winner) may come from anywhere in the world, so don't plan to raffle off anything that won't travel well, anything perishable or anything terribly heavy or bulky. You could also specify that your prize must be claimed in the city where you live if it is e.g. a foodie tour, or cooking a meal for the winner. It doesn't necessarily have to be foodie (last year we had a couple of iPods up for grabs!), but do try and come up with something that is valuable or unique enough for people to want to bid on. Remember that your target market is YOUR blog readers, even if there are only 20 of them.

And when you come up with any ideas for what you want to raffle (no limits to how many prizes you can put up for raffle), please do let me know ASAP . Once we have approved your prize we will add you to the official prize list and let you know so that you can start promoting the campaign on your blog.

The campaign runs from 10 December to 21 December, so we don't have a load of time to get the prize list sorted out. So if you want to take part (or you have friends or acquaintances who want to donate something) please contact me as soon as possible.

Let's see if we can beat last year's total!

Spicy slow-roast lamb - or why I love Nigel Slater

Some of you may have been wondering where the leftover roast lamb came from that I used to make very-un-traditional lamb Stroganoff last week.  Well, wonder no more.

This is not the first time I have waxed lyrical about Nigel Slater on this blog.  I'm sure I recall saying somewhere that if the house were on fire and I could only save one cookbook, it would be his Kitchen Diaries, and I stand by that choice. 

So why do I love him so much?  Let me count the ways. 

Because he tends to be self-deprecating rather than other chefs and food writers who tend to be stridently self-promoting.

Because the photographs of food in his Kitchen Diaries represent food that is actually going to be eaten, not raw chicken crisped with a blowtorch and sprayed with glycerin by food stylists.

Because his diaries are the perfect format to follow and apreciate the ebb and flow of seasonal eating without making a big issue out of it.

Because his recipes are unfussy and look achievable - no granitas or foams or towers - yet richly flavoured and satisfying.

Because nothing of his that I have ever made has turned out badly. 

So yes, you could say I'm a fan... and this dish only confirms my belief in the man.  When the weekend is cold and rainy and you have friends coming over for lunch, what can be more satisying than a leg of lamb, rubbed with spices and left to cook long and slow, till the meat falls off the bones at the mere touch of a fork? Served on cunningly clever chickpea mash with paprika (recipe to follow in a future post) with honey glazed cumin carrots, it simply does not get better than this.

SLOW-ROAST LAMB

Ingredients

a leg of lamb (about 2.3 kg)
1 large onion, roughly chopped
a few sprigs of fresh roesmary
2 cloves of garlic
1 Tbs sea salt flakes
a pinch of sweet paprika
1 Tbs cumin seeds
2 Tbs thyme leaves
2 Tbs olive oil
a thick slice of butter

Method

Pre-heat the oven to 160C and start making the spice rub.  Peel the garlic cloves and lightly crush them together with the salt using a pestle and mortar. Add the paprika, cumin seeds and thyme leaves.  Gradually add the oil so as to end up with a thickish paste.  Melt the butter in a small pan and stir into the spce paste.

Put the lamb in a casserole dish or roasting tin and rub it all over with the spice paste.  I don't mind getting my hands dirty but if you are squeamish you can use the back of a spoon.  make a few holes in the flesh with a skewer and insert sprigs of rosemary.  Scatter the chopped onion around the meat and put the roasting tin in the oven for 35 minutes uncovered. 

Pour in 250ml water and baste the meat with the liquid, then continue roasting for a further three hours, basting the meat every hour with the juices that have collected in the bottom of the pan. 

After 3 hours, remove the pan from the oven and pour off the top layer of oil that has collected, leaving the cloudy, herby sediment.  Cover the pan with a lid ans set aside for ten minutes to rest.  Carve the lamb and serve with chickpea mash, spooning the pan juices over both as you go. 

NOTES:  The addition of the onions and the rosemary are mine.  If you want to leave anything out, leave out the rosemary.  The flavour of the onion is indispensible in my opinion.  The vaguely Middle-Eastern flavour of the spice rub is just sublime with the lamb, cooking to a crispy crust on the outside while the meat turns soft as butter during that long slow cooking process.  A keeper.

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

Do you know the feeling when you know something is part of your heritage and you know you should like it... but you just don't?  Like my father growing up in the Afrikaner heartland of the Orange Free State province, but not liking braais.  Or a Scotsman who can't stand haggis.  Or me, growing up in an Afrikaner household in South Africa and not really caring for melktert. 

And I have to say, I could have picked something easier to avoid.

Melktert (literally "milk tart") is one of those baked items (like koeksusters) that you really struggle to get away from in South Africa.  Every school cake sale featured milk tarts, every home industry bakery is full of them, and everybody's mom/sister/aunty/gran had their own secret recipe.  But when a friend of my mom's would come round for tea and say she had brough milk tart, my heart would sink.  I wanted coconut tart, apple tart, fridge tart - just something with some taste!  You see, milk tart is basically a baked custard tart and I've never been a fan of custard - just too bland for me.  So my relationship with milk tart was kind of doomed from the start.

Melktert is one of the dishes that we inherited from the Dutch settlers who colonised the Cape in the 1600s.  I had initially wondered whether melktert was not borrowed from the Portuguese who were the first Europeans to land at the Cape and continue to be a thriving community in South Africa, because the Portuguese pastel de nata is very similar to a mini melktert. But greater minds than mine seem to disagree and insist that the melktert we still eat today is inherited from the Mediaeval Dutch cuisine. 

The first mention of a similar dish in Dutch cuisine is in fact in the first cookbook published in Dutch by Thomas Van der Noot in 1510.  Apparently, the Mediaeval diet in Europe was heavily influenced by religious restrictions.  The church stipulated that feast days should alternate with fast days and so in most of Europe Wednesdays, Fridays and sometimes Saturdays (as well as days such as Lent and Advent) were fast days.  On fast days, meat and animal products like milk, cheese and eggs were not allowed.  To comply with these rules but still manage to have dessert, a porridge would be made on feast days consisting of almond milk, oil, cake flour, rice flour, ginger and cinnamon.  Later, when the fast day rules were relaxed, milk and eggs were substituted for the almond milk (almond essence was added to compensate for the loss of flavour).  Van der Noot apparently also included a "modern" recipe for melktert which included extra eggs and very little flour, bringing it almost entirely in line with the recipe we know today.

The one I never liked.

But then something happened.  On my visit to Johannesburg earlier this year, I got together with friends for a braai and Bronwyn volunteered to bring a milk tart.  She stressed that she would not be slaving over a hot stove making it, but did mention that she had found a shop that does excellent milk tarts.  Hmmm.  Unconvinced.  So after dinner, the milk tart was brought out and I cut myself a small piece, not exactly filled with hope.  But... what's this?  Firstly, the custard filling was actually wobbly, like a pannacotta, rather than like the foam mattress-texture that I recall from my youth.  And the crust wasn't the stodgy shortcrust I remembered, but puff pastry!  And far from being a disappointment, the taste merely confirmed what my eyes had already told me - a delicate wobbly custard filling in a featherlight crust with a generous dusting of cinnamon.  Perfect!  And so I began a thaw in my attitude towards milk tart.

Given this month's saucy WTSIM theme of topless tarts, I really had no other option than to try my hand at milk tart to see if I could recreate milk tart as-the-universe-originally-intended.  The traditional flavouring is cinnamon, but I figured if we were infusing the milk, we might as well make things a bit more interesting and add some cardamom.  And besides - who hasn't yearned to spice up a staid family dessert into a sexy topless tart?!

 

MELKTERT (serves 8)

Ingredients

about 200g of ready rolled puff pastry
1.5 cups milk
1 tsp butter
a pinch of salt
1 cinnamon stick
1 green cardamom pod
1 tsp custard powder
1.5 tsp cournflour (cornstarch)
1.5 tsp cake flour
1 Tbsp cold milk
1/4 cup sugar
2 eggs, separated
1/4 tsp almond essence (optional)
sugar mixed with a little ground cinnamon

Method

Pre-heat the oven to 200C.  Line a 20cm diameter fluted pie dish with the puff pastry, leaving the edges raggedy and hanging over the edge of the dish.

Bring the milk to a slow boil in a medium saucepan, then add the butter, salt, cinnamon stick and cardamom pod.

Combine the custard powder, cornflour and cake flour.  Add the cold milk and make a paste.  Stir a little of the hot milk into the paste to thin it, then stir the custard paste into the hot milk in the saucepan.  Make sure there are no lumps in the paste - and don't panic too much if there are some lumps in the saucepan once you've added the custard - just make sure you stir vigorously and continuously to get them to dissolve.  Add 2 Tbsp of the sugar and stir continuously.  (I cheated a little and whisked the custard with a wire whisk to keep it smooth!)  When the custard thickens, remove it from the heat and discard the cinnamon and cardamom.

Beat the egg whites until stiff, then beat in the remaining sugar gradually and set aside.  Beat the yolks slightly and then add about 2 Tbsp of the warm custard mix to the yolks and mix well.

Stir the yolk mix into the custard saucepan and add the almond essence (if using).  Gently fold in the egg whites.

Pour into the prepared pie dish, sprinkle with cinnamon sugar and bake at 200C for 10 minutes.  Then turn the heat down to 175C and bake for a further 10-15 mins, until puffed up and golden.

Allow to cool on a wire rack and serve in slices with coffee.

NOTES:  After much thought and some reading, I decided that the milk tart I had in Johannesburg was probably made by baking the pastry shell blind, making the custard in a separate put, and then scooping the thickened custard into the shell - no baking.  But seeing as I could not find a recipe for this method and I'm not confident of my custard-making skills, I opted for the recipe above which was adapted from a couple I found on RecipZaar. 

What attracted me to it was the whipped egg-whites - no way could it be stodgy with all that egg white in it - and I was right.  It's not a difficult recipe at all, but takes a bit of time as each constituent part needs to be worked on - and it does dirty a lot of bowls/pots!  The addition of the cardamom was an inspiration, even if I say so myself, and I will definitely be repeating this as the taste is marvellous.  I also loved the taste of the custard before I added the eggs.  The flavour of the spices came through very strongly, and I would happily make flavoured custard like this to have with fruit desserts in future. 

The finished product not only looked lovely and puffed up in the oven like a souffle (see below!), but retained that lovely eggy wobbliness even after it had sunk down to normal proportions.  It is light and very moreish and deliciously spiced.  Definitely a keeper!

NaBloPoMo, WTSIM, the best laid plans - and some gratuitous chile pics

So there I was at the end of October, contemplating signing up for NaBloPoMo, thinking how hard can it really be to post every day for a month - a measly little month?!?

Hah.

Well, to be honest, it's not that hard.  Provided you aren't trying to a) hold down a job; b) get some sleep every night; c) see your husband while awake at least once a day; d) go away for a weekend; or e) have a social life.  All of which I'm afraid to say I have attempted during November.  The plan towards the end of the month was to present you with a series of posts about my trip to the south of France a couple a years ago (drafted but never edited or posted), so as to take some pressure off me and free me up to make and post my WTSIM entry tonight.  And even if this had not come to pass (which it didn't), it would probably still have been OK if I hadn't been hosting WTSIM this month (for all you topless tarts out there!).  Or if I hadn't spent the past two days in Gascony with friends, eating duck/goose in various forms and drinking my own body weight in excellent French wine.   Ah well, 20/20 hindsight. 

The bottom line is that I did, and now I am feeling a little frayed at the edges as far as my blogging responsibilities are concerned.  My tart is, as yet, unmade - mea culpa.  But instead of burning the midnight oil yet again and dozing off at the office tomorrow, I have decided to confess my shortcomings to you all and get some sleep instead. 

To everyone who has sent entries for WTSIM (deadline today but I'm prepared to accept entries until mine goes up) - thank you, and apologies for no having responded to your e-mails yet.  I am 99% sure I have all your entries and I will be working my way through them and responding to your e-mails during the course of this week.  Don't panic - we will find and include your entry if it is lost in space at the moment! 

In the meanwhile, and just so that you don't say this was just a filler post, I present you with a series of rather delightful photos of habanero chiles that I snapped recently at Queen's Market, our closest market.  For some reason, they were the only thing I photographed that day, although there is a lot more to see at the market; from fresh fruit and vegetables, to Halaal butchers, to fishmongers to... a hairdresser that advertised cuts, blow-drys and the like... alongside a sign in the window that said "smoked fish always available".

Clearly some people are better at multi-tasking than I am.

Proudly South African verjuice

One of the things that I like most about travelling is that I get to shop for exotic ingredients on every trip.  Sometimes I do my research so as to make sure I come back with whatever product the area that I am visiting is best known for.  Other times I just wander around the shops until something catches my eye - and that's precisely how I came into possession of a bottle of caramelised verjuice syrup.  I remembered reading something recently about verjuice, so I picked up the bottle and brought it back to the UK with me.  And there it sat on my shelf until a month or two later when I finally opened and used it.  One taste was all it took to convince me I had something special in my possession.

The name verjuice comes from the old French vertjus - literally green juice. It was traditionally made in wine growing countries by pressing the unripe, green grapes thinned from bunches early in the growing season to make the remaining grapes stronger. The green grapes were crushed and then either yeast was added (to aid a gentle fermentation) or salt was added (to limit fermentation). Either way, the lack of sugar in the unripe fruit put a damper on any potential fermentation so it’s a very mildly fermented product, acidic but with less bitterness that vinegar. The fermented version could be kept for a reasonably long time, while the unfermented version had a fresher taste but a shorter shelf life. Where grapes were not available, crab apples were commonly used, although any acidic fruit would work.

Traditionally, verjuice was used as an acidulator, particularly (since the 18th century) in the making of mustard. It is said that the replacement of vinegar with verjuice in the making of Dijon mustard is the secret behind its smoother and less tangy taste compared to English mustard. But sadly, verjuice fell from favour during the early 19th century. Crusaders returning to Europe brought lemons from the Middle East and just like that, a far easier source of acidic juice was found. Which meant that verjuice’s time in the spotlight was over. Until the late 20th century, that is, when Australian Maggie Beer spearheaded a revival of verjuice.

So what does this have to do with South Africa? We are one of a select group of countries where commercial production of verjuice has once again started on a small scale. Instrumental in all this are the multi-talented Janice Botha and Diane Heynes and their Verjuice Company. Janice worked for many years in film production before following a dream and designing, building and opening a restaurant at Scarborough (near Cape Town). Her interest in verjuice was piqued after receiving Maggie Beer’s recipe book as a gift and the seed that was to grow into The Verjuice Company was sown.

The first commercially-available vintage was the 2002 vintage made from Pinotage grapes and it sold out completely. And from there, demand for the rather lovely onion-skin coloured liquid has grown exponentially. It is available through many Woolworths stores, as well as delis and speciality shops throughout the country. I discovered it when I bought a bottle of their caramelised verjuice syrup at the lovely Dessie’s in Port Elizabeth, which bottle has since been put to good use drizzled liberally over my prosciutto-wrapped grilled nectarines.

So why use verjuice when lemon juice and vinegar? The main and best reason is simple: whereas vinegar and lemon juice will clash with the taste of whatever wine you are serving with the meal, verjuice is far more closely related in taste to the wine and will compliment the wine to a far greater degree.  Here in London, verjuice is still seen as a pretty exotic ingredient, so it’s nice to know South Africa is on the culinary cutting edge!

If you have a bottle of verjuice but are at a loss as to how to use it, here are some ideas:

- instead of vinegar or lemon juice in salad dressings;

- instead of white wine or brandy when deglazing pans;

- poaching fresh fruit or reconstituting dried fruit;

- drizzle over grilled fish or barbecued baby octopus;

- cutting the richness of sauces or meat dishes, especially with pork;

- instead of balsamic vinegar when caramelising onions;

- heavily reduced as a topping for ice cream (or be lazy and buy the caramelised syrup!); or

- in the preparation of mustards.

Couldn't-be-easier butternut squash bake

One of the many things that sets the South Africans apart from the British is our deep affection for pumpkins and other squashes.  I do wonder whether it's a climate-related issue, as gourds generally like a dry climate. Maybe this is why we share our love of gourds with our American cousins. Either way, butternut squashes and their ilk are still approached with some trepidation in the kitchen by many of my English friends, whereas in my kitchen they are old friends and trusty standbys. 

And in South Africa I defy you to find a restaurant that does not regularly have as its vegetable choices mashed butternut and creamed spinach ;-)

But I digress.  Another culinary quirk that sets us apart from the Brits (and this one is shared by nobody, as far as I can tell housewives of the American midwest, apparently... see the comments!) is our reliance on packets of brown onion soup powder.  I don't think there was ever a time that my mother's kitchen ran out of this multi-purpose wonder ingredient, and I know for a fact that she was not alone.  If you asked a friend's mother for her recipe for a particularly delicious savoury dish, 7 times out of 10 the recipe would start with "well, you take a packet of brown onion soup...".  It is the secret ingredient in stews, potato bakes and various vegetable dishes - like the one I will share with you below.

This recipe is one of my most tried and tested ones and even if your guests profess not to like butternut squash, this is the recipe most likely to convert them. 

Try it and see!

BUTTERNUT SQUASH BAKE (serves 6 as a side dish)

Ingredients

1 medium-large butternut squash
250ml cream (single or double)
1 packet dried brown onion soup
1 cup fresh breadcrumbs (optional)

Method

Lightly grease a large, shallow ovenproof dish and pre-heat the oven to 190C.

It's up to you whether or not to peel the squash.  The cooking is so long and slow that even if you leave it unpeeled, the skin gets to be soft enough to eat.  If you plan to leave it unpeeled, though, do give it a thorough scrub.  Slice the squash into 1cm thick rounds, scooping out the seeds.  Slice each round in half.

Start by placing a layer of squash slices on the bottom of the greased dish.  Pour over some of the cream and then sprinkle liberally with the brown onion soup.  Repeat, making layers of squash, cream and soup until all ingredients are used up.   

If you want a crispy crust, cover the top with the breadcrumbs.  Cover the dish with aluminium foil and bake in the pre-heated oven for 60-90 minutes or until the squash is meltingly soft.  Remove the foil about halfway through and turn on the grill for the final few minutes if you want a browned and crispy top.

If life gives you leftover roast lamb, make lamb Stroganoff!

One of the great things about winter is that all of a sudden I have develop a craving for heary stews and chunky roast joints of meat.  Somehow, these just don't seem to be appropriate in the summer, but as soon as the weather turns chillier they take on a whole new appeal.

Apart from their general deliciousness, there is also the ease-of-cooking aspect, because in both cases the long and slow cooking time means that I get to pop something in the oven, go upstairs, take a bath, have a glass of wine, check e-mails and all of a sudden dinner is ready!  Like magic.

Last week, one of the more comforting meals we had was Nigel Slater's wonderful slow-roast lamb on chickpea mash (soon to be blogged!).  This meant that for most of the week, there has been a giant lamb bone with the last of the meat clinging to it sitting in my fridge, daring me to make something with it.  Now if it were summer, I would probably have been making lamb and chutney sandwiches for work every day, but seeing as it's pretty chilly out there, I've been gorging on soups from EAT instead.  Because we are going away this weekend, though, my mind has recently become more sharply attuned to what's in the fridge and how I can use it up.  Hmm, let's see... leftover roast lamb, half a punnet of chestnut mushrooms, some cream...  Bingo!  Lamb Stroganoff!

Of course, the classic dish is beef Stroganoff (traditionalists, avert your eyes!), a recipe usually accepted to have Russian origins and containing beef, sour cream and mushrooms.  It seems that there was a 19th century Russian noble called Count Pavel Stroganoff who was something of a gourmet and a bon viveur.  The name of the dish is generally attributed to him allegedly because either he or his chef came up with the recipe.  But since a recipe by this name appeared in Elena Molokhovets's classic Russian cookbook in 1861, well before his reputation as a gourmet had developed, it seems more likely that the recipe had been in the Stroganoff family for years and became well-known through Pavel's entertaining. (Incidentally, the 1861 version calls for beef cubes, rather than strips, cooked with bouillon and mustard - no onions and no mushrooms.)

Seeing as I chucked tradition out of the window when I started cutting up the cooked lamb instead of raw beef (!), I guess I have some leeway as to the ingredients, but I tried to stick to the meat-cream-mushroom formula.  And it turned out pretty damn well, even if I say so myself. NOTE - as I was making this up as I went, quantities may not be exact.  Increase or decrease as you see fit.

LEFTOVER LAMB STROGANOFF (serves 2-3)

Ingredients

Leftover roast lamb - about 2 cups, cubed  (or 400g raw lamb, cubed)
12 (approx) chestnut mushrooms
1 medium onion
1 clove garlic
100ml cream
25g butter
2 Tbsp flour
a splash of sherry
1/4 tsp paprika
1/2 tsp dried rosemary
1 cup lamb stock
salt & pepper to taste

Method

Cube the lamb, crush the garlic and slice the onions and mushrooms.  Heat the butter in a heavy-bottomed frying pan and sautee together the onions, garlic and lamb.  If the lamb is cooked like mine, sautee the onions and garlic until the onions are translucent and beginng to brown, then add the lamb to heat through.  Add the mushrooms at the very end - they need minimal cooking.

Once the mushrooms, onions, lamb and garlic are done, remove from the pan with a slotted spoon and keep warm.  Stir the flour into the pan juices, stirring to pick up any bits sticking to the bottom of the pan.  Cook for a minute or two, then add a splash of sherry (optional), followed by the stock.  Mix well and remove from heat before adding the cream, stirring all the time to prevent lumps.  Return to heat and stir to get a smooth cauce. (If the sauce is too thick, add a little milk to thin it.)

Stir the lamb, onion and mushroom mix into the sauce, heat through and serve on a bed of creamy mashed potatoes.  And, in my case, with gem squash on the side! (see first pic) 

Vivat Bacchus

I recently attended a San Lorenzo tasting dinner at Osteria Dell’Arancio and had the good fortune of sitting next to the charming and extremely well-travelled restaurant critic Andy Hayler.  We discussed all sorts of things but, unsurprisingly, the conversation kept returning to food.  Andy mentioned that despite the huge population of South Africans in London, there did not appear to be a single good South African restaurant in town.  Sure, you have the Spur out in Staines that’s fine for a fix of steak, but let’s face it – even in South Africa it’s not exactly high-end dining.  Then there’s Chakalaka in Putney where neither of us has been, but which (judging by the menu) is going for a crowd-pleasing greatest hits mix of South African favourites – and good for them because we do have some particularly yummy traditional dishes. Milk tart, tomato bredie lamb shank, pumpkin fritters, oxtail potjie… All fine and well.  But where (asked Andy) were the smart South African restaurants?

Well, after my recent trip there, I can now confidently direct Andy to Vivat Bacchus if he is in search of a sophisticated dining experience featuring modern cuisine with a South African twist.  Oh yes, and a huge selection  of excellent South African wines (no, not Kumala).   Vivat Bacchus is the brainchild of Gerrie Knoetze and Neleen Strauss, a South African-born sommelier who decided to open the restaurant after 20 years in the wine trade.  The restaurant prides itself on its huge cellar of South African wines, part of which can be seen through the windows as you approach the restaurant entrance.  Chef Robert Staegemann changes the menu every 4-6 weeks to keep it seasonal but his famous roast haunch of springbok is always available. 

Pretty much everyone that I spoke to on the phone as well as the front of house staff are South African, so you get the full effect of proper South African hospitality right from the start of your visit.  We made the mistake first of going round to the wine bar entrance – a large and attractive room serving a limited menu as well as an excellent value daily set