Cook sister!

Runner bean soup

This just in:  London experiences a whole day of summer over the weekend!  A whole day! 

I will freely admit that I was almost hyperventilating with excitement when the sun broke through the clouds yesterday and within minutes I was out there in the garden in the company of my bikini and a book.  There's a lot you can learn from idling away your morning in a sunny garden.  You can hear what your neighbours are planning to make for lunch.  You can see which tomato plant has the most tomatoes on it.  You can watch how the bumblebees rummage around the butternut flowers until they are completely fuzzy with neon yellow pollen, and then fly drunkenly off.  You can see where in the shrubbery the neighbour's cat has made himself a little shady hidey-hole where he lies, invisible to the world but able to watch everything.

Who needs TV??

You can also see the first red leaves on our tree.  Clearly, it's not fooled by this too-little-too-late attempt by the weather to make us think we are actually having a summer this year.  It knows that this sunny day is but a blip on the weather's generally downward trajectory, and that we'd better make hay while the sun shines.

True to form, today has been grey and drizzly all day.  Not cold, but certainly no bikinis.  In fact, today is far more of a soup kinda day which suits me because (as I mentioned in a previous post) soup on a Sunday night is a tradition in our house, and it's that easier to keep up the tradition if the weather is cooler! So today I've been pottering around the house (while Nick went to watch the cricket) and boiling up a pot of chicken stock in preparation for dinner. 

Sunday night is also the night I call my dad, and every week we enquire as to what is on the dinner menu.  It's become something of a standing joke because we always (or 99% of the time) know that the other one will say - soup! Despite living thousands of miles apart, both of us still stick to the tradition that my mom initiated decades ago, and it's comforting in its small way.  Of course, while I'm boiling a chicken carcass to make homemade stock, he's popping a Woolworths (read Marks & Spencer) soup in the microwave.  But for a man in his mid 80's, who didn't really do the grocery shopping or cooking in the 35 years he was married to my mom, I'd say even that is fairly enterprising :) You go, dad! 

I, on the other hand, have a fridge full of British runner beans, so I thought soup might be a good way to use up a few.  I like the fact that the soup has more texture than most, even after using the blender, presumably because of the inherent stringiness of the beans.  I like mine really peppery, but I think a touch of nutmeg might also work well with this.

RUNNER BEAN SOUP (serves 2-4)

Ingredients:

2 Tbsp butter
about 500g runner beans (you can remove the "string" if you like but I didn't)
1 large onion
1 large carrot
700ml vegetable stock
salt and pepper to taste

Method:

Slice the runner beans into thin slices.  You can remove any stringy bits, but I didn't bother - rustic is good!  Chop the onion and carrot.

Heat the butter in a large saucepan and gently fry the beans, onion and carrot until the vegetables are beginning to soften and the carrot is translucent but not browned.  Add the stock, bring to the boil and then simmer covered for about 30 minutes, until the vegetables are soft.

Puree in a blender (or use your wand blender like I did). Season to taste with salt and pepper and serve with a hunk of crusty bread.

Saturday Snapshots #1

 

Inge's cat, peering suspiciously at us from behind the herb pots, August 2008

This photo is the first in a series called Saturday Snapshots which I hope to make a weekly feature.  I find that I have loads of beautiful non-food photos that I'd like to share with you but never get the chance, so in the tradition of my friends Ilva (who regularly posts her gorgeous and inspiring non-food photos) and Kalyn (who recently started a Friday Night Photo feature to improve her photography), I have started Saturday Snapshots.  Think of it as something beautiful to look at every week over your Saturday morning coffee :)

This is part of a series of non-food photographs that will be published every Saturday on CookSister. Click here for a full list of photographs featured.  If you like this or any other photo featured in Saturday Snapshots, why not buy it as a greeting card or print in my RedBubble store?

Nectarine and coriander leaf salsa with seared tuna steaks

It may not be particularly summery in London, but if you read as many blogs as often as I do, then you will start to experience summer vicariously through all the lovely summery dishes that people like Susan, Kalyn and David, Pille and Anne have been posting.  Clearly in some parts of the world it has been hot - just not here - so I'm enjoying it vicariously.

A sort of summer by proxy, if you will.

The summery delights that have tempted me the most include watermelon recipes, 101 uses for blueberries, and... salsas.  It seems everybody's doing it this summer. 

And eventually I could take it no more.  Must.  Have.  Salsa.

And not any old salsa - a fruit salsa was what I was after.  And what I usually crave with a fruity salsa is a tuna steak, just barely seared.  When Nick went shopping last weekend, I asked him to get tuna steaks.  He came home with... two whole sea bass.  Umm... lovely, dear, but where's my tuna?  He had decided that tuna was too expensive if not on special, and that sea bass would do just fine.  Now, wonderful as sea bass is, it isn't tuna.  And my craving was not to be denied.  Must. Have. Tuna. With. Salsa.

So I subsequently went to the supermarket myself (you know what they say about if you want a job done properly...!) and picked up two small and beautifully fresh tuna steaks.  Expensive... but I'm worth it.  I already knew that the nectarines in the fridge would form the backbone of the salsa, but we still needed some bite.  What better to provide a counterpoint to the sweetness of nectarines and ripe tomatoes but coriander leaf (a.k.a. cilantro or dhania).  I've already written reams about this wonderful herb that people either love or hate, so I'm not going to repeat myself.  Suffice to say that if you are a lover of cilantro, the fresh, green zing that it adds to this salsa is its crowning glory. 

If you're not a lover of cilantro, of course, it ruins the entire dish ;-)

NOTES: The tuna steaks were prepared super-simply:  brushed with sunflower oil, sprinkled liberally with Thai seven spice mix, then seared on a pre-heated cast iron skillet for no more than a minute per side to get that wonderful pink interior.  You can cook them for longer if you don't share my taste for almost-sushi-raw tuna.  As a starch, I made couscous and added finely chopped sun-dried tomatoes for flavour.  I had no red onions to hand for the salsa, but would recommend them instead of white.

NECTARINE AND CORIANDER LEAF SALSA

Ingredients

1 fully ripe nectarine
1 fully ripe tomato
1/2 a sweet red onion
a good handful of coriander leaves
2 Tbsp sesame oil
1 Tbsp raspberry vinegar

Method

Finely chop the nectarine, tomato and onion.  Mix in a bowl with the coriander, oil and vinegar.  Allow to stand for 10 minutes or so before serving.

The charming hostess for Kalyn's event Weekend Herb Blogging this weekend is the lovely Katie from Thyme for Cooking - do check her site for the roundup this week!

Bath farmers' market

When am I going to learn?  You'd think that after eight years of living in this country on and off, I would by now have learnt that: a) sunny weather over here does not necessarily mean sunny weather over there; and b) sunny weather at 9 a.m. is no guarantee of sunny weather at noon.  Also: c) Bath is, erm, quite far from London and will probably have different weather!

I had woken up to a surprisingly sunny Saturday and was actually quite keen to wear a summer skirt - jeans all through summer is a bit depressing.  But in the end, reason prevailed and I put on  jeans (but with sparkly sandals) before heading off to Bath to spend a day with the lovely Inge.  I don't even think the train was halfway there before the sky clouded over and Inge sent me a text asking "hope you brought an umbrella!".

Curses.

And that is how I found myself an hor or so later walking around Bath farmers' market in borrowed rain gear and wellies! 

Bath farmers' market was started in 1997 and was the first market of its kind in modern Britain: a producer-managed marketplace for local producers to sell their own produce directly to local people.  In addition to encouraging eatling locally, the market also encouraged sustainable farming practices and supported small producers who might easily have been ignored by large retailers.  Today, the market still provides a place where food can be bought from the people who produced it, at a reasonable price, and almost everything on offer at the market is produced within a 40 mile radius of Bath.  

 

The olives and chillies, I suspect, are an example of things not grown within 40 miles of Bath, but looked gorgeous nonetheless.  Sleight Farm, on the other hand, is most definitely within 40 miles from Bath.  It was here that Mary Holbrook started making cheese in the mid-1970s, armed with nothing more than two goats and next to no knowledge about cheesemaking. Today, she has 90 goats and her cheeses can be bought at Harrods and Neal's Yard Dairy, or by mail order through the Fine Cheese Company in Bath.  Try her goats cheese pyramid rolled in ash - gorgeous.

I'm afraid I didn't take down the name of the stall selling these absolutely gorgeous jars of marmalade and preserves as I was too busy capturing the glorious colours with my camera.  Mea culpa.  The end result is so pretty that I'm sending it as my entry into this month's citrus-themed Click event over at Jugalbandi, which ends on the 30th.

And just beyond the jams, we got to my favourite stall of the day, where at first glance, you might think you've notice a spelling mistake, but closer inspection reveals that every item is quirkily labelled: collyflour, carratz, brockoly...  Inge bought some fresh samphire from them, but was fixed with a beady eye and asked "And how are you going to prepare it?" before the samphire was relinquished into her care.  Presumably if she hadn't said "lightly steamed with a little butter" they may not have entrusted the stuff to her at all!  My favourite, though, was the politically aware, brilliantly topical and totally surreal sign in the oranges. 

One of the most eye-catching stalls was the tomato stall, selling tomatoes from the Isle of Wight.  As gorgeous as the little golden plum tomatoes or the vine-ripened tomatoes were, in the end I could not resist the mini Santa plum tomatoes - I could eat them like sweets!

We also had a slice of rather delicious apple cake from a lovely gentleman who was also selling whole heart-shaped apple cakes, packed with chunks of beautifully caramelised apple.  If we weren't off to lunch at Babington House later, I would have been sorely tempted to buy and munch my way through one of those. (More on our lunch in a later post!) 

The market takes place every Saturday from 09h00-14h00 at Green park Station, Bath and if you're in the area, I can highly recommend a visit.  Just be sure to take your large shopping basket! (If you are interested, there are a couple more pics available on my Flickr album.)  As for my mini plum tomatoes, they were absolutely perfect in a rustic caprese salad with torn basil leaves and torn fresh mozzarella.  Which, in turn, was a wonderful foil for the fabulous lomo Iberico de belotta that we had stashed in the fridge.

Rhubarb, cranberry and ginger fool

When my dear friend Bronwyn and I used to live next door to each other back in 2001, we'd often spend hours drinking red wine on her balcony and talking late into the night.  Sometimes we'd play 3 of a kind (for example what 3 countries would you most like to visit; if you were forced to choose; or what 3 crimes would you commit); sometimes we would reminisce about our student days; and sometimes we'd talk about how we wanted our futures to turn out. 

One fantasy future that we loved to embellish was one in which we both stayed in our hometown, married gorgeous, fabulously wealthy yet down to earth and intelligent guys and lived in beautiful houses on the same street, and took turns inviting each other round for Sunday lunch.  Very Desperate Housewives, long before DH had even been written ;-) 

Something else we talked about a lot was tradition.  Both of us had grown up with all sorts of family traditions that we had always cherished - some lavish and some simple.  Her family used to have a braai (BBQ) every single Saturday night.  Somtimes it would be just her parents and brother; other nights there would be aunts and grannies and cousins. But the point was that if you showed up at their house on a Saturday, there would be a braai in progress and everyone would be welcome.  My family had a myriad of little traditions:  Easter holidays in Plett; Christmas eve at La Fontaine restaurant; omelettes for lunch on Saturday and soup for dinner on Sunday.  Sometimes rituals die out of their own accord, sometimes they stop abruptly when somebody moves away, or sometimes they die together with the people who created them.  Whatever the reason, losing a tradition is like losing an old friend.  It creates a void and breaks a link in the chain that connects your past to your present and your future.  Bron had by then already lost her father (and with him, the Saturday night braai tradition) and I knew I was due to return to the UK and leave behind my beloved family and their traditions, so we talked a lot about the idea of creating new traditions.  For me to try and recreate the traditions of my childhood here in London would be a futile exercise.  But creating new traditions has proved to be relatively easy.  Our annual Henley picnic.  Our annual Big South African Braai at home.  And Cecil's annual summer deck braai. 

Looking back at my archives I see this is the third year that I have written about the braai, so in my book this counts as a new tradition, and it's one that is definitely worth keeping up.  There are few things that are better for your general feeling of wellbeing than an afternoon spent in the fresh air with good friends, eating good food, drinking impossibly adorably named wine - and knowing that next summer you will be able to do it all again.

For more pics of the day, see my Flickr album.

This year, I volunteered to bring dessert.  I went on a bit of a rhubarb binge earlier this simmer, buying bunches of the stuff and making crumbles.  But man cannot live by crumble alone and I started looking around for other ways to cook my rhubarb.  A fruit dessert that I'd never made before is a fool - stewed fruit which is then pureed and stirred into whipped cream.  Simplicity itself! So I went trawling the blogosphere for recipes and when I found this one from Seasonal Ontario Food that featured both my favourite cranberries and ginger in addition to the rhubarb, I was in the kitchen so fast it made my head spin. 

The recipe is simplicity itself, and the best thing is that if you make the recipe just up to the compote stage, you can freeze it, meaning that this dessert can be ready in the time it takes you to defrost your compote and whip your cream.  I went a step further, though, and made a fool with oodles of decadent whipped cream.  To me, the best thing about this is its tart, spicy flavour.  Served in brandy balloons it makes for a very grown up summer dessert, and definitely a tradition worth keeping. 

RHUBARB, CRANBERRY AND GINGER FOOL OR COMPOTE (serves 4-6)

Ingredients

2 cups chopped rhubarb
1/4 cup dried cranberries
2 Tbsp minced ginger
1/4 cup sugar
2 tsp cornstarch/cornflour
1/4 cup cranberry juice
250ml double cream (if making a fool) - or plain yoghurt for a healthier option

Method

Combine all the ingredients in a small saucepan, mixing well.  Bring to the boil and then simmer gently until the rhubarb starts to disintegrate and the sauce thickens.

You can now use this as a compote and serve it with ice cream, or freeze the mixture for later use.

For a fool, allow the rhubarb mixture to chill to room temperature.  Whip the cream until stiff peaks form, then fold the rhubarb mix into the cream.  It's up to you whether you want visible streaks of fruit in your cream, or whether you go for the fully integrated look like I did ;-).  Serve in brandy balloons or wine glasses garnished with a sprig of mint and a couple of dried cranberries (if you have).

Other food bloggers feeling foolish:

Haalo at Cook (Almost) Anything at Least Once made strawberry fool 

Niamh at Eat Lke a Girl made gooseberry fool

Kevin of Closet Cooking made blueberry fool

Bron of Bron Marshall made rhubarb & raspberry fool

The omnivore's 100

If you grew up in South Africa (possibly also in the US and UK?) at the same time as I did, you'll remember the old Electrolux slogan:  "Nothing sucks like Electrolux".  Well, I have now conclusively proved this slogan wrong by discovering something that sucks a lot worse:  losing. 

Yup, the votes are in and counted and my story didn't win the Can You Twist short story competition.  Do not pass Go.  Do not collect R10,000.  A thousand thank yous to those kind souls who did vote and to my cheerleaders who were so encouraging throughout the competition, but in the end those who did vote for me were outnumbered by those who didn't.  Well done to Ragel whose story won, but I'd be lying through my teeth if I said I wasn't gutted.

In the words of the inimitable Bill Murray in Stripes: "And then, depression set in."

In my depressed post-loss blog trawling I found this over at Andreea's blog and thought it might cheer me up.  Nothing like some gratuitous list-making to brighten my mood...! Andrew of Very Good Taste has posted his totally subjective list of the 100 good, bad amd ugly things that every omnivore should try.  He's asked other bloggers to do the same, so here goes mine.  The rules are as follows:

1) Copy this list into your blog or journal, including these instructions.
2) Bold all the items you’ve eaten.
3) Cross out any items that you would never consider eating.
4) Optional extra: Post a comment at Andrew's blog linking to your results.

My total is 58 and there are very few things on the listI absolutely won't eat (I don't like pain, so the phaal and scotch bonnets were immediately out!).  Insects give me the heebies, and the jury is still out on fugu (is a fish realyl worth the risk of death??) and abalone.  Abalone is now so endangered and expensive that abalone (or perlemoen) in South Africa is the target of an organised gang of professional criminals who think nothing of stripping the coastline bare and threatening or assaulting people who get in their way.  South Africa suspended all abalone fishing in February of this year, so please don't eat any abalone in SA - it was definitely caught illegally.  After much thought, abalone remains on the list but I would have to be very sure that it came from a farmed and sustainable source before I tucked in.

So - on to my list!

1. Venison  - hell yeah!
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros
4. Steak tartare (or my sister-in-law's Italian take on it, anyway)
5. Crocodile - and it really does taste like fatty chicken.
6. Black pudding
7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp
9. Borscht - delicious, despite my not liking beetroot :)
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari
12. Pho
13. PB&J sandwich - a school lunchbox standby
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart
16. Epoisses
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes 
19. Steamed pork buns - possibly the best dim sum ever
20. Pistachio ice cream - the true test whether an ice cream shop is any good
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries - from hedgerows in Cornwall.  Marvellous.
23. Foie gras
24. Rice and beans
25. Brawn, or head cheese
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper
27. Dulce de leche
28. Oysters
29. Baklava
30. Bagna cauda
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl
33. Salted lassi
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar - half a point I guess
37. Clotted cream tea
38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O -  aaaaah, university days...
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail - of course!
41. Curried goat
42. Whole insects
43. Phaal
44. Goat’s milk
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more
46. Fugu
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut - highly overrated in my opinion...
50. Sea urchin
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi
53. Abalone
54. Paneer
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal
56. Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini
58. Beer above 8% ABV - God bless the Belgians
59. Poutine
60. Carob chips
61. S’mores
62. Sweetbreads
63. Kaolin
64. Currywurst
65. Durian
66. Frogs’ legs
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake
68. Haggis
69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini
73. Louche absinthe
74. Gjetost, or brunost
75. Roadkill
76. Baijiu
77. Hostess Fruit Pie
78. Snail
79. Lapsang souchong
80. Bellini
81. Tom yum
82. Eggs Benedict - and various riffs on the theme
83. Pocky
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant - had the a la carte, but at least it was a three star.  Half a point?
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare
87. Goulash
88. Flowers
89. Horse
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain Coffee
100. Snake

If the list were mine, I would also have included:

- biltong, beef jerky or carne seca

- fresh buffalo mozzarella

- aged Parmigiano cheese

- Marmite

- bone marrow

- Jamon Iberico de Bellota (or Culatello di Zibello)

So... what's your total?

Aubergine, Cape Town

Right, boys and girls, it's trivia time!  One of the following statements is false.

1.  An aubergine is richer in nicotene that any other edible plant.

2.  Aubergine is a popular girls' name in Namibia.

3.  Aubergine is an award-winning restaurant in Cape Town.

Lucky for me, the third statement is definitely true, and it's here that our fab friends Anthony and John had booked a table for our first night in the South Africa a few months back.  If I had drawn up a shortlist of restaurants that I wanted to visit on this trip, Aubergine would definitely have been on it, along with La Colombe, but it seems that Ant & John were way ahead of me and by the time I got round to focusing on where I wanted to eat, they informed me that they'd already booked a table.  Hurrah!

Like many restaurants in Cape Town, Aubergine is situated in a character-filled old house in Gardens.  The house itself has quite a history, having once been the fashionable 19th century home of Sir John Wylde, first Chief Justice of the Cape, and having boasted an estate of several acres.  Sir John was a colourful character, to say the least, but his elegant table and fine wines were renowned and it is this spirit which Aubergine seeks to perpetuate.  Owner and chef Harald Bresselschmidt (originally from Belgium) comes with an impeccable culinary pedigree, having studied in various European countries before moving to South Africa in the 1990s.  He was responsible for getting Bosman's Restaurant at Grand Roche in Paarl named the best restaurant in South Africa for two years running before opening Aubergine in 1996. Aubergine has also been a regular fixture on the prestigious Diners Club Dine Awards winners lists since its opening.  Harald's style of cooking is a successful marriage of European and Asian techniques, but reworked to incorporate the finest quality authentically South African ingredients.  I was intrigued already.

The building has been extensively renovated and is decorated in warm natural materials, with an open plan bar leading to the dining area.  There is also a mezzanine area which (I think) is more of a lounge bar than part of the dining area, and a beautiful outside courtyard dining area (sadly, it was too windy to sit outside the night we visited). To accommodate the mezzanine level, the ceilings have been removed which makes for a lovely airy feel but I was worried that, as in many restaurants lacking in soft furnishings and interior partitions, the noise levels would be uncomfortable.  But I needen't have worried - some clever design feature (the beautiful reed ceilings?) made the noise comparatively muted - hurrah!  The service, which is often the downfall of high-end South African restaurants, was friendly and excellent all night:  nothing was too much trouble and our waiter was charming. 

And so, to the food.  The menu is of a restrained length but provided an agony of choice, with the East meets West in Africa theme very much in evidence.  The wine list was extensive but there was very little that I would have classed as affordable or good value, which is a pity.  I must also confess that I did not make a note of what we eventually ordered as I was too busy talking to fellow-blogger Sophia who had joined us for dinner. I may as well also apologise now for the hit & miss description of the dishes - I didn't ask for a menu and I was too busy having a good time to want to take notes - mea culpa!  These notes were made the following morning. 

The amuse bouche was a pretty little bite - a rustic terrine (made with pork and mushrooms?  Truffles?), served with sweet and sour butternut and pistachios.  This was a great combo, with the flavourful and salty terrine contrasting beautifully with the butternut.  For my starter I had steamed calamari tubes with a fresh basil dressing, aubergine "caviar" and roasted cherry tomatoes.  That translucent red shard was some addictively crispy tomato skin - talk about beauty with a purpose! The calamari tubes were butter-soft and filled (I think) with some kind of forcemeat, and the roasting had exquisitely intensified the flavour of the cherry tomatoes.  A winner.  Sophia had one of the Aubergine specialities:  an aubergine and goats cheese souffle which was light but intensely flavoured and delicious.

This was followed by a palate-cleansing sorbet - a lovely peach flavour which made a nice change from the usual lemon.  Choosing my main course had been agonising as there had been so many delicious contenders, but in the end I had to go for the option that I would never get on a London menu:  warthog.  Yes, I cannot tell a lie - I ate Pumbaa.  My two medallions of warthog came topped with herb mousseline and accompanied by black cherries and homemade spatzle.  I must say, I thought (and hoped) that the warthog would be a bit... well, gamier.  As it was, the meat may as well have been pork fillet medallions:  tasty, but not exactly exotically flavoured.  I found the herb mousseline to be tasty but a little stodgy for my taste.  The cherries and spatzle, however, were quite divine.  No sooner had my main arrived than I was struck by a serious case of menu envy.  The first attack came when I had a taste of Sophia's main of 5 "pralines" of rare beef, each with a different flavoured crust (pesto, parmesan, and various others); or Anthony's main of ostrich in a Thai green curry sauce - an unexpectedly sublime combination (not pictured).  Nick took a walk on the wild side with perfectly rare kudu steak, and John had the East meets West fish platter - I'm afraid I didn't take proper notes, but broadly speaking, these was a dish of Asian-inspired fishcakes on noodles (East), and some goujons of white fish in a creamy sauce on asparagus and spinach (West).

After this, everyone was too full for individual desserts, but we ordered two to share among the five of us.  The first was a tuille-topped pannacotta with stewed cherries and mango sorbet.  Not only was this gorgeous but each individual element was perfectly executed - particularly the sorbet which tasted quite simply like unadulterated frozen mango flesh.  The panacotta itself was perfectly trembly, and I loved the crunchy contrast of the tuille.  Our other dessert was a platter of thinly sliced pear with Camembert and pistachios - simple and delicious.  Coffee was accompanied by a complimentary plate of petit fours that were bite-sized works of art, particularly the little jewelled fruit tarts (see my Flickr album for pics).

Even leaving aside the fantastic company (!), it was a delightful evening.  And at R1,280 for five people (about £85) with wine, water and service, I thought the price was far less than the restaurant's reputation might suggest.  When we had questions, our charming waiter was able to answer them; when we needed an extra cushion, our charming waiter supplied one.  Everything we ate spoke of excellent local ingredients and well-though out combinations of flavour and texture.  The food was unfussy and not garnished to death, but every element on the plate clearly had a role to play and played it to perfection.  Fusion food these days has become almost a derogatory term and a byword for bizarre and ill-considered combinations.  But Aubergine manages to fuse authentically South African ingredients with European and Asian cooking styles, without any jarring cluture clash. 

In brief: If you are in Cape Town or planning a visit soon, Aubergine is a wonderful introduction to how good South African fusion food can be, and the price is surprisingly reasonable given its stellar reputation.  

Food: 8/10
Service: 9/10
Ambience:  7/10
Value:  7/10

Aubergine
39 Barnet Street
Gardens
Cape Town
South Africa

Tel. +27 - 021 465 4909
Fax. +27 - 021 461 3781
e-mail info@aubergine.co.za

If you are still in suspense about the trivia quiz, number 2 is false.  If you want to see more of my restaurant reviews, click here.  And if you are wondering what suddenly motivated me to post this review after it had been languishing in my drafts folder since March...?  Only the fact that our uber-fabulous friends Anthony and John who accompanied us to Aubergine got hitched last weekend!  Well done guys and tons of love to you both :)

Broad bean, bacon and mushroom pasta

Immigration is a hot topic in the UK these days.  It seems every person that you talk to thinks it's a problem, but nobody seems to know quite what to do about it.  The world and its dog appears to be falling over themselves to get here - antipodean youngsters on their 2-year youth visas; Eastern Europeans from new EU states wanting work; asylum seekers... the list continues to grow.  And some sectors of the population are concerned that with all the new arrivals, Britain is losing its Britishness.  So in typical government fashion, the UK government has waded in with all sorts of half-considered reforms, one of which is that all people applying for residence have to prove that they can speak English - fine and well. 

But another requirement is that people applying for residence have to pass an "Englishness" test.  Fine as far as it goes, but the test that I took contained such esoteric questions as "what percentage of British youth enters tertiary education?", or "in which month is St David's day?".  Come on - I know people born in this country who would not be able to answer those!  It doesn't have a bearing on your Britshness as much as on your ability to absorb trivia!  So if I were in charge, I would most certainly change the Englishness test to include more practical questions such as:

-  do you eat chicken tikka masala at least once a week?

-  do you know on which side of the Tube escalators are you not allowed to stand?

-  can you give me directions for getting from London to Birmingham without using a single road name (as in "take the first exit at the roundabout by the Kings Arms pub, then carry on straight till you see the post office, then make a left at the big tesco supermarket, leave the motorway when you see the Greenlands garden centre" etc etc)?

-  do you discuss the weather with colleagues and friends at least twice a day?

Well, I'm not sure how I'd fare on the others, but looking at my blog posts over the last month or so, I pass the final question with flying colours!  If it's hot, I rejoice and write about it.  if it's cold I complain and write about it.  But in recent weeks the weather has seldom been far from my mind - or my blog.  After a week of heat at the end of July, Thursday night was once again downright cold and miserable - so much for summer.  On nights like this, the challenge is to make winter food from summer ingredients, which can be quite a tall order sometimes.  One of my favourite summer foods has to be broad beans (fava beans for those of you in the US).  Now usually I'd use them in a salad or as a summery crostini topping.  But last week it simply wasn't warm enough to try either of these.  So I took my usual recipe for pea and bacon pasta, tweaked it a little and voila - the result is this delicious creamy pasta sauce - comforting as a winter dish, but with the flavours of summer.  And although on this occasion I used frozen broad beans, if I'd had them to hand I would have used fresh broad beans, podded, boiled and podded again. 

The dish is guaranteed to take your mind off the weather and focus attention on your tastebuds instead!

BROAD BEANS, BACON AND MUSHROOM PASTA (serves 2)

Ingredients:

Enough pasta for 2 people
1 Tbsp olive oil
1 small onion, chopped
4 rashers of bacon, chopped
1 clove garlic, crushed
1 cup fresh or frozen broad beans
6 button mushrooms, sliced
1 heaped Tbsp flour
100ml milk
2 Tbsp double cream (optional)
1/2 tsp dried sage
salt and pepper

Method:

Cook the pasta in plenty of salted water until al dente.

Heat the oil in a large, deep frying pan and fry the onion and garlic until beginning to soften.  Add the chopped bacon and sage and fry until almost cooked. 

Add the broad beans, stirring until they are heated through.  Add the mushrooms until starting to soften, then stir in the flour until all the liquid is absorbed.  Add the milk (and cream if using) and stir until sauce is smooth.  Add salt and pepper to taste.

Drain the pasta, return it to the pot and add the sauce.  Mix well and serve with a green salad on the side.

I'm submitting this dish to Susan of The Well-Seasoned Cook who is hosting the event My Legume Love Affair - a second helping, after the very successful first round earlier in the year.  The idea is to present a dish featuring legumes as a central ingredient and you can still join in until 24 August.

Also, don't forget to read and vote for my short story - these are the final three days to vote!

Other CookSister broad bean recipes:

Broad beans with Spanish ham

Broad bean, green bean & mozzarella salad

Broad bean, cheese and ham tart

Broad bean crostini

Mini pistachio tarts for a WTSIM picnic

I love a challenge, I do.

And as I'm sure you know, the food blogging world is simply full of challenges.  WTSIM, SHF, DMBLGiT, Daring Bakers, Paper Chef, HHDD, WHB, Click (to name but a few)... the choice is yours!  On any given day of the week you can search the Net and find a foodie challenge that's right for you.

But for a terminally disorganised person like me, these challenges can present a problem.  Sometimes you forget to look for the event announcement.  Or you buy all the stuff for a killer recipe and then forget the deadline.  Or you just can't get inspired about a theme.   Or you look at the brief and hyperventilate in terror. 

So isn't it nice that it's also possible to have little private foodie challenges outside this more formal framework?  Challenges without a theme or a deadline - no pressure at all, in fact.  A few weeks ago (OK, I confess, in MAY!!)  Andrew arrived for dinner at Vivat Bacchus and said with a twinkle in his eye that he had a proposition for me.  "Well, Andrew, you're a lovely guy and all - I'm just not sure I'm ready to take our relationship to the next level", I replied.  Andrew rolled his eyes (as he does) at my incurably juvenile sense of humour and explained that this proposition involved food - nothing more sordid.  

Andrew's idea was to challenge me to a mystery ingredient exchange.  He proposed that we buy each other a mystery ingredient which then had to be used in a dish and posted on our blog.  My mystery gift to him was a packet of South African dried mango slices (which became a delicious-looking lamb and mango tagine), and his to me?  A bag pistachios!

Pistachios are old.  Very old.  They were known to the Romans and are one of two nuts mentioned in the Bible (the other being almonds).  The are also hot.  Very hot.  I'd go so far as to say prone to spontaneous combustion.  

If you can get over your fear of spontaneous combustion, they are also my favourite type of nut, possibly rivalled only by macadamia nuts.  There's something about their crazy purple-on-green colouring and savoury flavour that appeals to me immensely and will have me eating an entire packet in one sitting if I'm not careful.  So you could say I was quite pleased when Andrew presented me with my mystery ingredient.  Clearly, he's a man who knows his audience ;-) 

One of the few desserts that I can be relied upon to order if I see it on a menu is pecan pie.  I have happy childhood memories of my mom serving us slices of warm pecan pie with cream at teatime on winter afternoons when my dad came home from work.  As a family we've always eaten dinner late, so when my dad got home my mom usually had something sweet ready for him to enjoy with his coffee.  His favourite was Black Forest gateau that he sometimes ordered from the bakery near his surgery, but my favourite was warm pecan pie, hands down.  So when Andrew gave me the pistachios, I recalled that he had posted a pecan pie recipe on his site recently which, in turn, set me wondering... what if I were to make pecan pie but without the pecans? 

The result was these fabulous little mini pistacho tarts.  The tops were deliciously chewy and nutty, while the pastry was buttery and crumbly, with a caramelly layer between them redolent with rum.  What's not to like??  The finished tarts were perfectly formed, yet robust.  Because they would transport easily and beautifully, I think they would make the perfect picnic dessert, so I am submitting them as my entry into this month's Waiter, There's Something in My... event which is picnic-themed.

MINI PISTACHIO TARTS (makes 6 or more)

FOR THE FILLING:
100g golden syrup
150g granulated sugar
75g butter
3 Tbsp clear honey
3 Tbsp rum
pinch of salt
3 eggs
150g pistachio nuts

FOR THE PASTRY:
200g cake flour
50g icing sugar
pinch of salt
100g unsalted butter
1 egg yolk
1 Tbsp iced water

Method:

Pre-heat the oven to 180C.

Rub the butter into the flour and other dry ingredients.  Add the lightly beaten egg yolk and water, mix well and knead lightly until the dough comes together.  Roll the dough out to about 3mm thickness and press into lightly greased loose-bottomed mini fluted flan tins.  Refrigerate for 15-30 minutes if you can.

Gently heat the syrup, butter, honey, rum and salt.  When the mixture is warm, dissolve the sugar in it - make sure the sugar if totally dissolved before removing from the heat.  Once it has cooled a little, whisk in the eggs and nuts.

Fill the pastry cases with the pistachio mixture and bake for 15 minutes or until set (As I only had 4 mini fluted flan dishes,  I used the remaining pastry and filling to make the slightly larger square tart pictured below - it took a little longer to cook). 

Serve warm with a good dollop of double or clotted cream. 

And if you have not yet done so, please remember to vote for my short story!  Voting closes early next week so these are the final days...

Here's what other food bloggers made with pistachios:

Angela made pistachio macaroons

Helen made rosewater & pistachio cheesecake pops 

Pille made lemon & pistachio shortbread

David made pistachio gelato

Peter made apricot and pistachio cake

**UPDATE** I have also entered the first photo in this post as my entry into the September edition of CLICK, the monthly photo event hosted by the lovely Jai and Bee over at Jugalbandi.  The theme this month is CRUSTS - check out the entries gallery.

WTSIM (the picnic edition), SA food blogs, and a thank you

OK, can somebody please explain to me how I woke up and found myself in the middle of August?  Surely it was only a couple of weeks ago that we were celebrating Easter and now the year is more than half gone.  There has to be some mistake...

Sadly, after checking and rechecking the calendar, I was forced to conclude that we do in fact find ourselves in the middle of August and I realised that I had not even got round to posting a reminder about this month's edition of Waiter, There's Something in My... event, let alone actually make something for it. Eeeeeeek - host Johanna is going to have my hide!  Clearly Johanna is not holidaying in the UK this summer - she keeps posting about sunny days and the temperature hovering around 30C or higher.  Best we draw a veil over what the temperature is doing in England this summer...  Onwards and upwards.  In honour of the wonderful summer weather in Austria, Johanna has picked the deliciously summery theme of picnic food for WTSIM this month.  As a long-standing fan of picnics (see the Henley Regatta picnics of 2005, 2006 and 2007 as evidence!), this is right up my alley so watch out for my contribution later this week. Check out Johanna's post to see how you too can join in this great event.

In a blog-reading rut and looking for fresh inspiration?  Don't forget that every Monday there is a new profile of a South African food or wine blogger that goes live over at the South African Food and Wine Blog Directory.  This week it's the turn of my friend Kit of Food & Family, but there are quite a number of other profiles that have already been posted - go and get acquainted with some new faces and recognise some old favourites.  I've also been doing a bit of work on the site and have now put together a blogroll of all members in the sidebar, so you don't have to go digging anymore to find the full directory.  I've added a couple of new faces too, so do have a look.  If you are listed on the directory but have not yet sent me a profile or have not yet received a badge, please e-mail me and I'll send them (some of you dont' have e-mail addresses on your blogs so getting hold of you can be quite tricky!).

As for the thank you, some of you may remember that a few months ago I put out a call for help on behalf of my friend the gorgeous Mel of the charity Bosom Buddies.  We asked for newborn baby clothes that could be sent to South Africa for free in somebody else's shipping container and the response was excellent!  Mel has thanked everyone who participated in a post on her blog and although I don't know which of my readers did or didn't contribute, a huge THANK YOU if you did.  If you would still like to help (they always need baby donations), get in touch either with me or with Mel and we can figure out how best to help.

And as my kind and patient friends know, the Can You Twist short story competition is coming to an end at the end of this week.  If you haven't yet read my story or voted, please please do so now!  Here's how:

1. First you need to register on the main site and get a confirmation e-mail from them to say that your account is active.

2. Then you need to go to my story's dedicated page and log with your e-mail address & password on AT MY PAGE.

3. Once logged in, you should get two buttons in the right hand side-bar ("great" or "not so great") - feel free to click GREAT!!

4. Remember that you can actually vote six times - you get ONE VOTE PER STORY.  You have to exercise this vote by clicking on the storyteller's name at the top of the page, and on each of their pages you should also get a "Great" and "Not Great" button if you are logged in. 

If you have any trouble at all registering or voting, please let me know and I will take it up with the IT people.  Results will be announced on 20 August and I promise to let you know either way...