Cook sister!

Claudette's roasted potato salad

Living in a foreign country far from your family and friends has its ups and downs. For me, the upsides of London have included the incredible travel opportunities, the opportunity to start a blog (which I doubt I would have done had I stayed home), the eclectic mix of people I have met, and the excitement of living in a truly world-class city.  Of course, the downsides are that you miss things:  the weather, your family, birthdays, weddings, your favourite beaches, your favourite childhood foods, and your friends. 

To a large extent, you just have to take the rough with the smooth, remind yourself that you didn’t come to England for the weather (!!), and make a point of going home regularly with your own body weight in gifts for the family stowed in your suitcase.  But there are some ways of making it seem that your friends aren’t that far away.  For some, that may mean having photos of them dotted around the house, but for me it means regularly making a recipe that I associate with a specific friend. In this way, I can’t make warm avocado soup without thinking of my late friend Peter Roberts; Christmas mince pies without thinking of Andréa; Mexican chicken without thinking of Alison; butternut soup without thinking of Paul – or scones without thinking of Mamma. And I always relish the prospect of collecting a new recipe from a friend because I know that when homesickness bites I will be able to make the dish and think of the friend in question who suddenly does not feel that far away at all.

I have known Claudette for the better part of fourteen years, having first met her in Port Elizabeth when she was sharing a flat with Paola and Catherine. I remember later visiting her in Cape Town and having a fab dinner on the tiny balcony of her flat perched above Sea Point and was thrilled when both she and Catherine arrived in London.  As Claudette is a chef, she and I always seem to have loads to talk about and I remember some very lively dinners at the flat in Blackheath discussing exotic ingredients and cooking techniques. But all good things must come to an end and she is now back in Johannesburg – which means that I always have an excuse to stop over on my way to Port Elizabeth and invariably food is involved. On my most recent stopover, we decided to let the boys do the work and braai, while she and I each made a salad. My contribution was carpaccio of courgettes, and Claudette’s was a potato salad originally born out of the inventive use of leftover roast new potatoes but now a firm favourite in its own right. It’s so delicious, though, that there is no way I could wait for leftovers to present themselves and I’m willing to bet you’ll feel the same way once you’ve tasted it!

I used baby potatoes cut in half for this, but you can also use larger potatoes cut into appropriately-sized chunks. The great news is that you don’t have to peel them, so all the vitamins stay put.

ROASTED POTATO SALAD (serves 2)

Ingredients

About 10 baby potatoes (or 2 large waxy potatoes)

1 clove garlic, minced

Olive oil

Rosemary

Salt

2 spring onions, chopped

a handful of fresh dill, chopped

2 generous Tbsp crème fraiche

2 generous Tpsb mayonnaise

Salt & black pepper to taste

Method

If you have plenty of time:  cut the baby potatoes in half (or if using larger potatoes, cut them into bite-sized chunks).  Toss them in olive oil together with the garlic and arrange in a single layer in an oven-proof dish.  Sprinkle with rosemary and roast at 200C until the edges of the potatoes are brown and crispy.  Stir the potatoes up after about 15 minutes so that they brown evenly.  Cooking time should be about half an hour, but use your judgement.

If you are pushed for time:  cut the potatoes as described above.  Place in a microwave-proof dish and cover.  Cook on high for about 6 minutes until the potatoes have softened but are not yet done.  Drain any water from the dish.  Heat a couple of tablespoons of olive oil in a heavy fraying pan.  Add the potatoes, garlic and rosemary and fry on medium heat until the potatoes have golden brown edges.  Watch the pan and stir – you don’t want blackened potatoes! 

Drain the potatoes on paper towels and allow to cool slightly, then transfer to a salad bowl.  Add the chopped spring onions, crème fraiche and mayonnaise and mix well.  Add salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste and serve slightly warm.

This post is my entry for this month's edition of Waiter There's Something in My...  Our charming host is Andrew and he has selected salads as the theme.  There are still a couple of days left to get your entry to him by the end of February so make a start on those seasonal salads! 

Three pepper and mushroom fritata

Much as I love being on holiday, one of the downsides is that you get back home and there is nothing of any use in the fridge.  I got the habit from my mom to plan meals in the run-up to a family holiday in such a way that by the day we left there were tumbleweeds blowing around the fridge.  OK, I may not always manage that degree of success - there are usually a couple of things lurking - but still, when we got back fom skiing after Christmas we were both hungry and tired and not in the mood for grocery shopping. 

A quick inventory of the fridge revealed 4 eggs 2 bell peppers and some vintage mushrooms - so my mind turned immediately to fritata, one of my standby "let's use up those leftovers" dishes.  Here is the quick, easy and delicious result.

Paprika is made from dried and ground chile pepper capsicum annuum, which originated in southern Mexico and were brought to Europe by Columbus.  They soon migrated to Hungary which is today the country most traditionally asociated with paprika. The Szeged and Kalocsa regions of Hungary are the most well-known producers of sweet paprika. The Paprika Museum makes its home in Kalocsa, and the city celebrates its famous spice with the Paprika Festival each year in October.  I find the taste to be more subtle than some other chiles, and I particularly like the flavour that the smoked version gives.  Delicious!

THREE PEPPER FRITATA (serves 2)

Ingredients

4 eggs
half a red bell pepper, chopped into little cubes
half a green bell pepper, chopped into cubes
a handful of mushrooms, sliced
half an onion, diced
smoked paprika
milk
butter
salt and pepper

Method

Chop and slice the vegetables as described.  Beat the eggs together with about 50ml of milk and season with salt, pepper and a pinch of smoked paprika.  Add the chopped vegetables and mix well.

Pre-heat the grill in your over. Heat a knob of butter in your favourite omelette pan and when it is bubbling, pour in the egg mix.  Leave witout stirring until it bubbles and is beginning to turn brown at the edges.  Remove the pan from the heat and pop under the grill for a minute or two until the top is just set (make sure your pan is designed for this - no plastic handles or non-stick coatings!).

Serve with a fresh green salad.

I'm submitting this post as my entry to this week's Weekend Herb Blogging, kindly hosted by Erin at Skinny Gourmet.

On holiday!

Nope, you guessed - I am not currently in England!  I am in fact on my way to the beach where I'm pictured above, in Plettenberg Bay.

On the way I will stop in here - my hometown of Port Elizabeth:

And best of all, I get to hang out with these two handsome hunks - meet my nephews:

So please forgive me if posts are few and far between until early next month.  I will, at best, have sporadic internet access but will try to leave you a few things to read while I'm gone. 

In the meantime, please do go and listen to my interview (together with Andrew) on the BBC's Five Live podcast (yes - now you can hear me, see me AND read me!).  And please please don't forget to nominate me in the 2008 South African Blog Awards!

Agostinelli Barbera from Fairview - a short and sweet review

I love a challenge, I do. 

I was thrilled back in the summer when Andrew of Spittoon alerted me to a challenge to do a visual tasting note of a wine - and when I saw him over the weekend he presented me with a new challenge.  Andrew is hosting Wine Blogging Wednesday this month and it's been ages and ages since I last played along.  But when I heard the theme I could not resist:  describe a wine in 7 words.

The only slight catch was that it should be an Italian red, and I had none in my cellar - plus we are off on holiday soon and I am avoiding going shopping for food and drink we don't need.  Damn!  But then I devised a sneaky way to get round the Italian requirement...

At a food and wine matching dinner at the Frontline Club over the weekend (more on that in the next post), we had a bottle from one of the South African vineyards I most enjoy visiting:  Fairview.

If you ever go to the Cape, please don't miss this great place - I've written about it before and I think my enthusiasm for it shows.  Not only do they grow all kinds of interesting grapes not commonly seen as single-cultivar bottlings in South Africa, but they also amuse me endlessly with their cheeky EU-annoying names like Goats do Roam and Goat Roti.  These would be insufferably twee if you did not know that they also have a large herd of goats which they use to make a fantastic range of cheeses.  But I digress.  The Agostinelli label consists of three Fairview wines all made with Italian grapes, so I figured I could almost describe it as an italian red...  Andrew seems a forgiving chap ;-)

Isn't it a funny thing, your palate?  You can train it to like certain things.  You can train it to be able to tell good from bad, despite your personal tastes.  But the tastes you grow up with will have a hold on you for the rest of your life.  Yes, homemade mayonnaise is just heavenly - but the taste of Hellmann's is always going to be my gold-standard for mayo and take me right back to my childhood.  Because for many years I thought when you looked up mayonnaise in the dictionary, there would be a picture of Hellmann's beside it ;-)  You see what I mean.  And for me, the wines I like are always going to influenced to some extent by my New World palate.  I like big reds.  I like whites with up-front fruit.  Yes, I can appreciate the art of and write considered tasting notes on an austere Chablis or a restrained Bordeaux, but when it comes to what makes me sip, sit back and go aaaaaaah, give me big, bold New World wines any day.  Even with Old World wines, I seek out the big bold ones - Gigondas, Rioja. 

You can take a girl out of Africa, but you can't take Africa out of the girl.

As I said, I tasted this over the weekend at the Frontline Club and some of our companions really hated this wine.  Overblown, over-extracted, too alcoholic, too in your face etc etc.  But to me, it was the essence of the Cape Winelands' dry, hot summers and the intense purply-black of sun-warmed grapes they produce.  In one word? Fabulous.  In seven words?

"Cicadas, baked earth, warm purple juice - bottled"

Nominations now open for the 2008 South African Blog Awards

With the ongoing Hollywood scriptwriters' strike already having caused the cancellation of the Golden Globes and the Oscars in the balance, you can't bank on these Johnny-foreigner awards ceremonies to provide entertainment any more.  No, far better to rely on local colour for your adrenaline-packed envelope openings.  And what could be more adrenaline-filled and testosterone-fuelled that the South African Blog Awards? Yup, it's time once again for the mutual ego-stroking that is the awards process.  Hey, nobody's going to stroke yours if you can't even be bothered to stroke it yourself!   

And there's something for all tastes to stroke.  The quality and diversity of South African blogs continues to improve year after year.  Despite "load shedding" (read "disasterous unnanounced power cuts due to general incompetence and shortsightedness of Eskom"), it appears the South African blogging community is not only surviving but thriving.  And what better way to cheer yourselves while waiting for the power to come back on than to check out some excellent local blogging talent.  Just make sure your laptop is charged up...

Apart from my own beloved Cooksister!, here is a selection of other possible nominees for your perusal before you plunge headlong into the nominations process.  (Alternatively check the rather del.icio.us list of SA blogs, the Technorati list or the Blogflux list):

Apparently Nothing

Aquila Online

Charlotte's Web

Cherryflava

Commentary

Constitutionally Speaking (for constitutional law geeks like me!)

The Cru

The Fishbowl

Food & Family

Gluten-free South Africa

KitschnZinc

Marita Says

My French Kitchen

Port Elizabeth Daily Photo

SA Rocks

Stormhoek Wines

Vanielje Kitchen

YBlog

Once you've had a browse and decided who you like, head on over to the  2008 SA Blogh Awards site, read the small print and get nominating.  In short, the important rules are:

• Only ONE nomination per person is allowed, so do give some thought to your nominations. Send a second sheet and your first will be cancelled.
• You MUST nominate at least three different blogs (so not just Cooksister three times!) - see helpful list above.
• You will need to provide the URL of each nomination and a reason for your nomination.
• You MUST provide a name and valid e-mail address in order to nominate.   

Nominations are open until Friday 22 February 2008, after which the 10 blogs with the most nominations in each category (taking into account their relevance to the category in which they  have been nominated) will go through to the finals.  Final voting will be open to the public from Monday 3 March 2008 till midnight Friday 14 March 2008.  During the final voting stage, you will be able to cast your vote on the 2008 Awards website and a panel of bloggers and "celebrity judges" will also judge the nominated blogs in each category.  Their and your votes will be tallied and the top blogs resulting from this in each category will be announced as winners on 3 April.

May the best blogs win :)

Aunt Dulcie's tomato and marmalade soup

If you read this blog with any regularity, you will have noticed that I seem to go around collecting recipes from all my family and friends - and you'd be spot-on!  Yes, it's all fine and well to buy beautifully illustrated cookbooks and dream of making truffle foams served in espresso cups or pomegranate granitas, but the reality of my life is that this is probably not going to happen.  I used to beat myself up about this - kind of "how can I be a proper food blogger if I don't even own a creme brulee torch and could no recognise a sourdough starter if it snuggled up to me on the sofa on evening?". 

But then I made myself a grilled cheese sandwich and decided to stop beating myself up.

For me, food and recipes are all about the backstory.  Whose recipe is this?  How did they come by it?  When did I first have it?  What memories does it hold for me?  Food is about sustaining ourselves, but it's also about the social aspect of eating, the oral histories passed down within families, and the shared memories that bind friends and lovers together.  So when I invite you to read about another of my adopted recipes, I'm actually asking you to pull up a chair at my family's table and, for a little while, become one of us. 

If you were to give Aunt Dulcie her proper title, she would be Nick's great-aunt Dulcie, but that's rather too much of a mouthful!  Dulcie is now in her 80s and lives in my home town of Port Elizabeth.  She went to a Swiss finishing school, has survived two husbands and, despite a hip replacement, is still remarkable well and active.  She sends wonderful long letters and invariably the last paragraph begins with "Gosh - it's now ten past four in the morning!  Where has the night gone?".  More than once I have called her upon arriving in PE, only to have her be terribly short with me on the phone.  But then she calls back in an hour or two full of apologies - it was her bridge afternoon and I called in the middle of a rubber!  And although she is resolutely modest about her cooking abilities, she regularly has a huge Christmas party for her neighbours and does all the catering herself. 

Whenever I visit, she always has me and my dad round for dinner.  It's a proper affair with folded napkins, warm rolls and three courses.  And although she always apologises in advance for the plainness of the food, I always come away having requested the recipe for something I tasted that night.  Her Romany Cream and apricot dessert is legendary, to the point that every time she invites us my dad asks hopefully "will she be making THAT pudding?".  But that's for another time.  Today's recipe from Aunt dulcie was something I recently served as a starter at a lunch party. 

Tomatoes originated in South America and have at various times in history been regarded as purely ornamental plants, aphrodisiacs - and poisonous!  There is a story, probably apocryphal, of one Colonel Robert Gibbon Johnson (1771-1850) who, as legend has it, introduced the tomato to Salem County, New Jersey. Colonel Johnson's physician, Dr. James Van Meter, supposedly warned that:

"The foolish colonel will foam and froth at the mouth and double over with appendicitis. All that oxalic acid, in one dose, and you're dead. If the Wolf Peach [tomato] is too ripe and warmed by the sun, he'll be exposing himself to brain fever. Should he, by some unlikely chance, survive, I must warn him that the skin...will stick to his stomach and cause cancer."

But despite this dire warning, Johnson told the cheering spectators that he planned to eat the entire basket and survive. The story goes that thousands of eager spectators turned out to watch Johnson die after eating the poisonous fruits, and were shocked when he lived.

In actual fact, the good Colonel had eaten one of nature's best sources of Vitamin C - one tomato contains about half the daily recommended allowance.  They're also good sources of Vitamin A, potassium and iron.

Pull up a chair and grab a bowl. 

AUNT DULCIE'S TOMATO & MARMALADE SOUP (serves 6 as a starter)

Ingredients

2 tins of chopped tomatoes
6 large fresh ripe tomatoes
2 tsp dried marjoram
2 tsp dried basil
Worcestershire sauce
salt and freshly milled black pepepr
6 Tbsp chunky marmalade

Method

Scald the ripe tomatoes in boiling water, then peel them.  Dice and place in a large soup pot.  Add the tins of chopped tomatoes and heat through until bubbling. 

Use an immersion blender to reduce any large chunks, but leave the soup rustic rather than a smooth puree.  Add a splash of Worcestershire sauce and salt and pepper to taste.  If the soup is too thick for your taste, thin with a little water.

Warm the marmalade in the microwave and spoon a tablespoon into the bottom of each bowl.  Ladle the soup on top and then stir lightly.  Garnish with parsley if desired and serve with warm, crusty bread.

I'm submitting this post as my entry to this week's Weekend Herb Blogging, kindly hosted by Ulrike at Kuechenlatein. Check out her excellent round-up!

Oil & Vinegar, Johannesburg

One of the things I love most about going home to South Africa for holidays is the little surprises the country is always ready to spring on me.  Like the cloud of ethereal white butterflies that had invaded Johannesburg when I arrived there a couple of summers ago; or the astonishing Irene Dairy on the way to Pretoria; or the ridiculously hip Melrose Arch Hotel (which felt like an Ian Schrager creation at the tip of Africa), or the appearance of whole new chains of eateries since my departure (like the now-ubiquitous Cafe Nescafe coffee shops). 

Since my friends know me all too well, every time I roll into town, they make a point of taking me to the latest restaurant or specialist foodie store they've discovered.  That's how, about 18 months ago, I ended up at Tapenade, a shop in Johannesburg's Cresta shopping centre specialising in all things olive-related.  I was impressed that such a shop even existed - after all, when I left SA, buying extra virgin olive oil was seen as a somewhat outre choice!!  And I have to say there was much to like about the shop: a good selection of both local and imported olive oils, lots of olive pastes, olive jams, olives and loads of funky little serving dishes.  But when it came to service, my hopes were dashed.  Maybe I came on the wrong day and the girl working there was a casual - I'd like to think so, because clearly somebody involved in the store has a passion for olives.  Sadly, my sales assistant was not that somebody! 

I asked whether I could taste some of the oils and she directed me to two bottles that happened to be open for tasting that day.  What if these weren't the ones I was looking for - could I taste a specific oil?  No.  (Maybe I looked like a chancer, out for free tastes of expensive olive oils - who knows.) OK, in that case, can you tell me a little more about the flavours of some of the local oils.  If I wanted a mild olive oil, like the ones from Provence, what would you recommend? [look of blind panic flashes across sales assistant's face].  Erm.... this one won an award... Enough said.  So I went for what I knew - Morgenster oil and a little jar of their olive tapenade (spectacular on steamed green beans!).  And I left with the feeling that the shop suffers from the same problem as the South African restaurant industry - although the people behind the scenes are passionate and talented, the staff dealing with the public are seldom knowledgeable or trained enough to transmit this to the customer.  Still, I hope I struck Tapenade on a bad day and that had I come a wekk earlier or a month later, things might have been different.

So on a more recent visit to Johannesburg, I was a little hesitant to visit a shop with a similar concept - a niche retailer of top quality olive oils and vinegars from around the world.  Undeterred, my friends took me to Oil & Vinegar (in Hyde Park shopping centre), and on the surface it is very much the same concept - all things olive related, some interesting vinegars and some funky crockery.  But step a little further inside and you will see what sets this store apart:  everything is available for tasting!

At the front of the store there was an array of spice mixes made to be blended with olive oil to make dips, all ready mixed and available to taste.  (The mustard-coloured NOMU pesto mix in the middle was one of the winners of the Eat In awards last year and is just about the nicest thing that can happen to a breadstick.) The friendly and knowledgeable shop assistant then invited us to come and see the tasting area at the back of the store and there before us lay a veritable smorgasbord of extra virgin olive oils:  Italian, French, Spanish, South African, flavoured... you name it.  And on the other half of the tasting table were the vinegars, including aged and flavoured vinegars and balsamic vinegars from around the world.  We tasted to our hearts' content and I don't think we had any question that stumped the sales assistant.  I finally got to try some of the award-winning South African oils that have hit the headlines - Morgenster, Waterfall River (currently holder of the Best Extra Virgin Olive Oil trophy in South Africa) and Tokara (sold as The Olive Shed), and discovered that the Rickety Bridge Winery does a fine line of balsamic vinegar, a delightful citrus salad splash, and an absolutely addictive smoked balsamic reduction.  We did notice that some of the oils & vinegars were poured straight from the bottle for tasting (see the bottles in the background of the picture) while the rest were in little labeled bowls. How, I asked, could we buy the stuff in the bowls?  And that's when I realised the beautifully backlit ovoid glass containers mounted on the wall behind us were not just for decoration.  You taste, select your oil or vinegar and then select a glass bottle from about 4 different sizes available.  Each product is priced by volume and you can then buy 200ml, 500ml, or whatever other bottle sizes are available.  Clever!

Having made my selection, the bottle was carefully filled, stoppered and sealed before being packed in bubble-wrap for the long trip back to London.  Despite the vagaries of the baggage handlers, it arrived unscathed with not a drop spilled! And of course, I could not leave without a little squeezy bottle of the Rickety Bridge smoked balsamic syrup, or the lovely Waterfall River olive oil.  Our extended stay at the tasting table and my enthusiastic photographic exploits around the store had by this time attracted the attention of the store's owner, the charming Richard Johnson.  I explained about being a blogger, not some sort of industrial espionage agent, and we had a long chat about food, food blogs and how he came to these sunny African shores.  A more passionate and articulate store owner would be hard to find and I also heartily congratulated him on his excellent and knowledgeable staff before departing with my liquid booty.

So next time you find yourself at a loose end in Johannesburg, you could do a lot worse than popping into Oil & Vinegar for half an hour and discovering a whole new world of taste, in the company of people who really know their stuff and are keen to share thier knowledge.

Oil & Vinegar
Shop LM54
4th level, Hyde Park Shopping Centre
Cnr. 6th Street & Jan Smuts Ave
Johannesburg
South Africa
Phone: +27 11 325 5052
Fax: +27 11 447 6042

Roasted root vegetable soup

Every now and again, the stories pop up in the tabloids.  The image of the Virgin Mary on a grilled cheese sandwich or in a piece of watermelon.  The image of Mother Theresa on a cinnamon bun.  The image of Jesus on a tortilla.

I tend to do a bit of eye-rolling and turn the page, never thinking that I'd one day be caught up in an unexplained sighting of my own.

You see, with the weather being cold and grey, my natural instinct is to make soup and lots of it.  Our Sunday night routine when I was a child invariably included soup and I have seen no reason to discontinue the trend here in London:  Sunday night is soup night. 

I have never cared much for soup from a can or a packet.  The latter might be OK for a quick warm snack, but it's not really a meal.  And besides, I want to know what's going into my soup!  So you'd think if I made it myself, this should present no problems. 

I decided on roasting the vegetables before turning them into soup for two reasons:

1.  Roasting them imparts far more flavour than steaming or boiling.

2.  Roasting means the vegetables absorb no moisture during the cooking, meaning that the flavours are not diluted.

And once they were roasted, it was quick and easy to mash them and add stock and milk until I reached the consistency I wanted. The taste was fabulous - all the sweetness of the sweet potatoes, carrots and onions balanced by the earthy Jerusalem artichokes.  Marvellous on a wintry evening. A quick drizzle of cream to garnish and we're good to go.

But wait - what's that?  An image of a seahorse has mysteriously appeared in my 100% vegetable soup!  I double check my ingredient list but nope, no seahorse there. Cue spooky Twilight Zone music.

So I guess there's nothing for me to do but call the tabloids, publish my amazing story and then wait for the tour busses full of curious tourists to show up on my doorstep.

ROASTED ROOT VEGETABLE SOUP (serves 2-3)

Ingredients

1 large potato
2 sweet potatoes
2 Jerusalem artichokes
3 large carrots
1 large onion
extra-virgin olive oil
1 Tbsp dried rosemary
1 Tbsp dried thyme
2 cups vegetable stock
1 cup milk
salt and freshly milled black pepper
cream to garnish

Method

Pre-heat the oven to 200C. 

Peel the Jerusalem artichokes and the onion, and thoroughly scrub the other vegetables.  Chop them all into rough chunks.

Toss them all in olive oil, rosemary and thyme and arrange in a large shallow dish in a single layer.  Roasted them at 200C for an hour.

Transfer the vegetables to a large pot and mashed with a potato masher.  Add 2 cups of vegetable stock and a cup of milk and mix well.  (You can vary the amount of liquid, depending on how thick/runny/creamy you want your soup). 

Use an immersion blender to puree the soup untilk smooth, then return the pot to the stove to heat through.  Season to taste and serve with a swirl of cream.

PS - no seahorses were harmed in the making of this soup :)

 

I'm submitting this post as my entry to this week's Weekend Herb Blogging, kindly hosted by Claudia at Fool for Food.