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Waiter, there's something in my... nasi ayam nanas!

Before this edition of Waiter, There's Something in My... (the monthly event that I co-host with my buddies Andrew and Johanna), Andrew asked me to help him choose between two themes.  I chose one... he went for the other. 

Clearly my opinion is highly valued over at chez SpittoonExtra! 

When he announced the "something vaguely Indonesian" theme, I will admit that my heart sank.  What do I know about Indonesian cuisine?  What crazy ingredients will I have to buy?  Why didn't he listen to me and go with the other theme??

But, being a good WTSIMer, I started doing some internet research on what I could make.  Indonesia The first thing I discovered is that "Indonesian" encompasses a rather diverse collection of people, places and cultures.  The Republic of Indonesia consists of 17,508 islands and is the world's largest archpelagic state (it's also the world's fourth most populous nation and the largest Muslim-majority nation).  Indonesian history and culture has been greatly influenced by foreign powers drawn to its natural resources.  Muslim traders brought Islam to the islands and European nations fought each other to monopolise the spice-producing islands.  In the end, the Dutch won and were a colonial power for three and a half centuries, until Indonesia's independence after World War II.  This diversity is also reflected in the cuisine  which is based on Chinese, European, Middle-Eastern and Indian heritage.

The second thing I noticed was a certain familiarity in the sound of the Indonesian dishes.   Partly it was the familiarity of individual dishes:  nasi goreng (a spicy fried rice dish often served at banquets and popular as part of a rijsttafel in the Netherlands), sambals (spicy relishes) and atjar (pickled relish).  These are all dishes that I've seen served in South African restaurants and homes.  In fact, I'm sure in the 1980s The Homestead restaurant in the old Elizabeth Hotel in Port Elizabeth used to offer a rijsttafel at Sunday lunch, and my beloved South African Nice 'n Spicy make a nasi goreng spice kit!  But it was not so much the individual dishes that sounded familiar - it was the structure of the words:  goreng, kentang, redang.  Compare these to the Afrikaans words blatjang, piesang, piering, and kaaings.  See the similarity?

And you don't have to look too far to find the reason.  The Dutch East India Company were a powerful force in the Netherlands in the 17th century.  They were in essence the first multinational corporation in the world and were granted extraordinary quasi-governmental powers by the Dutch government, to wage war, negotiate treaties, mint coins and establish colonies.  (Can you imagine private companies being authorised to do this today??) Initially their primary concern was the spice trade and therefore in the about 1620 they established their headquarters in Batavia - known today as Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia.  Thirty odd years later the Dutch East India Company established a refreshment station at the Cape of Good Hope - or modern-day Cape Town - which was the start of Dutch solonisation of South Africa.  To work in the kitchens, manpower was needed and the local population proved to be unwilling and impossible to train, so a number of slaves were brought from the Company's other colonies, particularly Batavia.  It was these slaves (ancestors of today's Cape Malays) who established the Muslim faith at the Cape and who brought with them the dishes of home, which is how I grew up familiar with Indonesian cooking, without ever having visited Indonesia.

Seeng as Andrew specifically said that nasi goreng was not exciting enough (picky, isn't he?!), I couldn't totally cheat and make Nice 'n Spicy nasi goreng and I ended up searching through various (generalyl excellent) Indonesian recipe sites.  I have to admit that in the end, the dish I chose was chosen because I had most of the spices already and didn't have to go on a major shopping expedition (mea culpa!).  I'm off to Chicago for 2 weeks on Saturday and don't need a cupboard full of half-used exotic ingredients!  But I was so, so happy with the dish I chose.  I was still not feeling well when I made it but the dish was dead simnple to make, plus the combination of spices was gently warming and the starchy goodness was tremendously comforting.  The recipe I used is from Merry's Kitchen of Indonesian Cuisine which is a great site and well worth a visit if you want ot get into Indonesian cooking.  

Selamat makan!

NASI AYAM NANAS (PINEAPPLE CHICKEN RICE) (serves 4)

Ingredients

2 Tbsp vegetable oil 
500g boneless chicken, cut in 1.5cm cubes
3 cups chicken stock
1 tsp salt
2 cups uncooked jasmine rice, washed and drained

For the seasoning:

3 shallots, peeled and finely chopped
5 cloves garlic
½-inch ginger root, peeled and chopped
1 tsp coriander seeds
½ tsp white peppercorns
½ tsp cumin seeds
a little freshly grated nutmeg
2 inches cinnamon stick
2 cardamom pods, bruised
2 cloves
1 stalk lemongrass, bruised

For the garnish:

1 Tbsp butter
2 shallots, thinly sliced
½ small pineapple, peeled and sliced and cut in small pieces (I used tinned pineapple)

Method:

Blend all seasoning ingredients except cloves and lemongrass with a mortar and a pestle or a food processor to form a paste.

Heat the oil in a wok or heavy saucepan over medium high heat and then add blended seasonings and the rest of the seasoning ingredients and stir fry it for 2-3 minutes.  Add the chicken and continue stir frying for about 3 minutes.  Add chicken stock and salt and simmer until the chicken is tender.  (If you are using stock cubes as opposed to home-made stock, go easy on the salt as the stock will be salty!)

Strain the stock and set aside the chicken pieces.  Place rice in a heavy stockpot, add 2½ cups of the reserved chicken stock and bring to a boil.  Cover the pan and simmer until the rice is almost cooked and the liquid absorbed.

Add the diced chicken and cook over low heat until the rice is thoroughly cooked.

Using the empty pan that you used to fry the chicken, add 1 Tbsp of butter and melt it over medium heat.  Then add the pineapple and sliced shallots and allow to caramelise slowly - this will take abotu 7-10 minutes.  Turn as necessary but make sure the shallots are nicely caramelised and almost crispy before you remove them, and that the pineapple has a good colour.

Serve the rice garnished with the fried shallots and pineapple pieces.

Indonesian recipe sources:

The official WTSIM Indonesian recipe round-up

Indochef

Merry's Kitchen of Indonesian Cuisine

Astray Recipes

Yummy!

Gifts from the Kitchen

For the Love of Baking

Pork medallions in a creamy chanterelle sauce

Do you remember your first time? 

The anticipation?  The excitement? The way everybody seemed to know all about it except you? 

I remember it well - because my first time was only last week!

My first time cooking with chanterelle mushrooms, that is.  What did you think I was talking about? :o)

In a way, I guess it was fate.  On our drive back from Austria last summer, we stopped off in Heidelberg.  Now if I'd known Charlotte lived in the vicinity, I would most certainly have paid her a visit but, alas, I didn't and so we wandered the streets of the old town in search of supper. I was struck by the number of places offering special seasonal pfifferling (the German name for chanterelles) menus.  Of course, I had to try some and I was instantly hooked.  The meaty texture, the intensely mushroomy flavour - what's not to like??  Well, the price, as I discovered when I got back to England.  One of the few places where you can be pretty sure to find them is Borough Market, and there they on sale last week for £16 per kilo!  So sadly my new-found love remained unrequited for a while, until we visited the Oktoberfest in Munich last weekend.  Most people come home from Oktoberfest with a silly hat, a gingerbread heart, a large beer mug and a hangover. 

Me?  I came home with a bag of fresh chanterelles.

Chanterelles are members of the fungi kingdom and the correct name for the most commonly eaten species, the golden chanterelle, is the Cantherellus Cibarius. (California is also home to the white chanterelle or Cantherellus Subalbidus, which some people believe to have a superior flavour.)  Like truffles, they are micorrhizal, meaning that they form symbiotic relationships with the roots of a particular host plant.  This means that when looking for wild chanterelles, your chances will be better if you look under conifers, live oak (in California) or silver birch (in Scotland).  The mushrooms do not look much like "textbook" mushrooms (e.g. button mushrooms), but are yellow and funnel-shaped, with gills extending almost the entire way down the stem.  Unlike button mushrooms, there is no division between the cap and the stem, and the cap tends to curl up at the edges rather than down.  They have a rather distinct aroma which some people have likened to apricots, but to me it's just intensely mushroomy and quite delicious. 

A word of warning, though.  Golden chanterelles can fairly easily be confused with Jack O' Lantern mushrooms which are also orange-yellow and have a similar shape.  You don't want to be sauteeing these babies, unless you feel like a bout of violent cramps, diarrhoea and projectile vomiting.  Nice. 

Anyway, given my lack of experience in the foraging department (see my elderberry post for details!), I went for the safer option of buying 250g of fresh chanterelles at Munich's wonderful Viktualienmarkt - for €2.50!  Now that sounds a lot better than £16 per kilo...

My only remaining dilemma was what to make with them.  I wanted to make something that would let the flavour of the mushrooms shine through rather than sideline it, so in the end I opted to pair them with pork in a creamy sauce, slightly adapting this recipe from Steffen's Dinners (a site that's well worth a visit if you're looking for great recipes, btw) to suit what I had on hand.  The recipe was quick and easy and the taste was a perfect pairing, with the pork being the perfect foil for the flavoursome mushrooms. (And if you don't eat pork, chicken breast fillets would work just as well in this recipe.)  I served mine with brown rice and a stir-fry of French beans, sugar snap peas and red bell pepper. 

And would you know - our dinner guests Belinda and Andrew blushingly admitted that it was their first time too. With chanterelles, of course :)

PORK MEDALLIONS IN A CREAMY CHANTERELLE SAUCE (serves 4)

Ingredients:

1 pork tenderloin (pork fillets) - mine was a big one at 550g 
1 clove of garlic
1 Tbsp oil
1 tsp coarse salt
250g chanterelle mushrooms, cleaned and cut into large pieces of roughly equal size (the recipe calls for more, but that's all I had) 
1 medium-sized onion, finely chopped
2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
1 Tbsp butter
1 tsp salt
¼ cup dry sherry
2 Tbsp sour cream
3 Tbsp whipping cream
1 Tbsp parsley, finely chopped
1 Tbsp butter
salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

Method:

In a mortar puree 1 clove of garlic with 1 tsp of coarse salt.  Rub the pork loin with the resulting puree and season with freshly ground pepper.  

Heat a heavy, oven-proof pan or dish over medium-high heat (I used my trusty round Le Creuset Dutch oven and cut the loin into two to make it fit).  Add oil and sear the pork loin from all sides until nicely browned. Remove the meat from pan and set aside.

Reduce heat to medium. Add 1 Tbsp of butter, add onions and cook until soft and translucent. Add chopped garlic and cook for another minute or two.

Preheat oven to 180C.

Add chanterelle mushrooms and salt to the pan and cook for about 10 minutes, without covering.  Add the pale sherry and the pork loin. Transfer the dish/pan to preheated oven.  I put the lid on my pot for about half the cooking time, then removed it.  Cook until tenderloins are firm to the touch, about 20-30 minutes.  Remove the dish from oven, remove and wrap tenderloins in aluminum foil and set aside.

Over low-to-medium heat, cook mushrooms until most of the liquid has evaporated.  Stir in sour cream, whipping cream and butter. Add chopped parsley. Season with salt and pepper.

Cut tenderloins into thick slices.  Add them back into the chanterelle sauce to heat through and then serve over rice or noodles.  

I am submitting this recipe to the lovely Haalo of Cook (almost) Anything At Least Once who is this weekend's hostess with the mostest for Kalyn's weekly event Weekend Herb Blogging.  Do check Haalo's beautiful site for the roundup later this week!

Other bloggers cooking with chanterelles:

Anne of Anne's Food made balsamico-glazed pork tenderloin with chanterelles

Wendy of A Wee Bit of Cooking made a cauliflower and chanterelle pie

Niamh of Eat Like a Girl made leeak and chanterelle frittata

Ilva from Lucullian Delights made chanterelle-filled zucchini with thyme

Saturday Snapshots #5

 

Lucky or unlucky, November 2007

I found this door in the beautiful and ancient village of Auvillar on the Garonne in Gascony.  The village is well worth a visit for lovers of history, art or photography.  And for food lovers there is always the Sunday produce market, held in an unusual open-sided circular grain market.

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 previously 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?

Braai sarmies for Heritage Day - better late than never!

What can I say - it's been a bit of a tumultous week.   

First there was the wonderful Oktoberfest in Munich last weekend, where much beer was consumed and many new friends were made.

Then I woke up on Sunday morning to find that my country had no president.

On Thursday my friends Belinda and Andrew left for South Africa and Nick left for Chicago.  

And today I have had the worst cold I have had in ages - aches, pains, fever - you name it.

So it's really little wonder that the post I had been planning to put up on Wednesday kind of fell between the cracks...

South Africa has a whole lot of unusual public holidays.  Here in the UK, we have Christmas, New Year, Easter and a few random Bank Holidays, none of which have any real links to historic events.  In South Africa, however, every holiday tells a story.

Human Rights Day on 21 March celebrates the human rights enshrined in the Bill of Rights our Constitution and commemorates the day of the Sharpeville massacre.

Freedom Day on 27 April marks the occasion of the first democratic elections in a post-Apartheid South Africa in 1994.

Youth Day on 16 June commemorates the tragic but seminal events of 16 June 1976 when Soweto youths marched in protest against the education system and many were shot by police, including Hector Pieterson.

Women's Day on 9 August commemorates the women who marched in 1956 against discriminatory pass laws.

Heritage Day on 24 September celebrates the incredible richness and diversity of South Africa's cultural and natural heritage.

The Day of Reconciliation on 16 December has a particularly poignant history.  In 1837, one of the Voortrekker leaders, Piet Retief, entered into negotiations with Zulu chief Dingane for land.  Dingane promised them land provided they retrieved his cattle that had been stolen by another chief.  Retief and his men did so and apparently did sign a treaty in February 1838, but shortly thereafter Dingane had Retief and his party murdered. Many battles ensued, resulting in much loss of life on both sides.  On 16 December 1838, 10 000 Zulu troops attacked the Voortrekker force of 470 in what became known as the Battle of Blood River.  Having the advantage of guns and gunpowder the outnumbered Voortrekkers overcame the Zulus, killing 3000 while only suffering 3 wounded men themselves.  On the eve of battle, the Voortrekkers had prayed to God for His assistance and made a vow to build a church and forever observe the date as a day of thanksgiving should they win.  Under Apartheid, 16 December was known as the Day of the Vow, but since 1994 it has become the Day of Reconciliation, a day to foster national unity and reconciliation.

There you go - a potted history of the country as told by its public holidays!

Apart from being Heritage Day, 24 September is also celebrated as National Braai Day.  What more fitting example of our shared cross-cultural heritage can there be than a braai??  Far from being the preserve of white rugby-playing, beer-swilling males, cooking on an open fire under South Africa's sunny skies is a uniting activity for everyone - just ask Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the patron of Braai4Heritage.

Sadly, we did not braai on the 24th - the weather was against us and the house was a disaster with three people frantically trying to organise and pack their belongings into their respective suitcases, but I do have a recipe to share with you that we made earlier this month:  braai sarmies.  These are basically sandwiches done on the grill, lending them a particularly appealing smoky taste.  You can keep them as simple as you like or dress them up to the nines - the choice is yours. 

However you choose to make them, here are some hints that you will find helpful:

• butter the outside of the sandwiches lightly.  This will prevent them from sticking to the braai grid or from burning too quickly.

• make sure to use cheese or something similarly melty as a filling - you will need something to 'glue' the two halves together, otherwise they easily fall apart when you turn them over.

• if you have a "sarmie braai" (a long, narrow hinged wire basket that  has a flat grid and a shallow basket for the sandwiches, clipped together at the handle end), use it.  Otherwise, use two metal egg-lifters, one on top and one below, to turn the sarmies.

• either put the sarmies on at the end of the braai when the coals are slightly cooler, or put them on a higher grid than the meat to prevent them burning.  Watch them like a hawk so that they don't burn!

And here is my favourite recipe, developed to perfection over the course of many years.

BRAAI SARMIES (for 2)

Ingredients:

4 slices white or wholewheat bread
2 tablespoons softened butter
1 garlic clove, crushed
2 tsp fresh parsley, chopped
Mrs Balls chutney (see below)
1 tomato, sliced
half a medium onion, very thinly sliced
grated cheddar cheese
salt and pepper

Method:

Use about 2/3 of the butter, the garlic and the parsley to make garlic butter.
Spread the outsides of the sandwich with plain butter (this helps with browning and prevents sticking) and the insides with the garlic butter.

Spread some Mrs Balls chutney (another South African institution!) over the butter and then add thinly sliced tomatoes, onion and grated cheese and season with salt and pepper (or Aromat, my much-beloved daily source of MSG ;-)).

Press the 2 halves of the sandwich together before grilling.  Make sure the fire is cool enough not to blacken the sandwiches before the cheese has had time to melt. Turn when the bread starts to brown and remove when both sides are browned evenly.

Elderberry and nectarine crisp

Apologies for the  (relative!)  brevity of this post, but I am writing in the middle of the night, before departing for Oktoberfest, and I need some sleep...

I am always envious of other food bloggers who talk abtou their foraging expeditions.  Some go lookign for berries, others pick up apples from neighbouring trees, and still others go mushrooming. 

I, on the other hand, am not a natural forager.

Growing up in South Africa might have something to do with it.  There are quite a few poisonous things that we came across as children - the ubiquitous seringa berries, oleanders on every street corner, and poinsettas in every garden.  So although generalyl I think may parents may have been a little over-cautious with us, they probably had reason to put the fear of God into us about found food.  In fact, I remember when we were very little that my mom would say to us in Afrikaans optelgoed is jakkalspiepie (roughly translated as "things you pick up are jackal-pee".  Nice.

So you could say that I came to the UK as a foraging virgin. I would not have been able to tell the difference between a blackberry or a slow-and-painful-death-poisonberry.  And then, on a trip to the Norfolk Broads, a wonderful thing happened.  I discovered that there were blackberries growingin hedges and that you could pick them, and eat them... and live to tell the tale!  Who knew?  And so I became a fairly avid picker of blackberries and I firmly believe they taste sweeter the more obscure the location of the picking.  But until recently, that was abtou all I trusted myself to pick.

This spring, I started taking note of the sweet-smelling white blossoms on my walk to the station each morning.  They appeared in masses and en masse they formed a surprisingly flat flower head.  And when a fellow-blogger posted something about elderflower wine plus a pic, I realised that they were elderflowers!  So I watched them bloom, and the blooms becoming tiny green berries, and recently the berries have turned a purply-black and hang in heavy bunches, tempting the greedy wood pigeons.

But I have not seen a single person picking them.  Maybe they don't know what they are.   Maybe, like me, they fear for their lives.  Who knows.  In any event, last Sunday I dragged Nick off at dusk with a bowl and a pair of secateurs and we snipped abotu 6 big bunches of the berries.

The most common elderberries that we see in England by roadsides or along towpaths are the blue-black fruit of the Sambucus nigra or elderberry bush/tree.  The fruits are very popular with birds and wildlife, and the berries can be quite delicious when cooked in a variety of ways, but beware:  the leaves, twigs and unripe berries contain a toxin (sambunigrin) and should not be eaten as they can cause diarrhoea and vomiting.  In fact, it has been suggested that even the ripe berries should only be eaten cooked, rather than raw because of the potential effects of the sambunigrin.  (So maybe my parents had a point after all!)

That said, elderberries are packed with good stuff.  They are high in potassium and an excellent source of Vitamin C, as well as being high in anthocyanins, powerful antioxidants that are responsible for their attractive deep purple/red colouring.  I lived on the edge and tried a couple raw, and they weren't nearly as tart as I'd expected - more along the lines of properly ripe blackberries, only the size of cultured pearls. 

My six bunches were destined to meet up with two small and slightly wrinkly nectarines that had been forgotten in the fridge, and be turned into one of the nicest and most vividly-coloured crisps I have had in ages.  If there are elderberries about in your neighbourhood, I suggest you grab them while you can as they won't be around much longer, what with the voracious pigeons.  Take it from me - it's a great feeling to be eating something that you found yourself, and that generated zero food miles :)

ELDERBERRY AND NECTARINE CRISP (serves 2 greedy people)

Ingredients:

4-6 good sized bunched of RIPE elderberries
2 small (or 1 large) nectarines
2 Tpsb caster sugar
50g wholewheat flour
50g melted butter
50g soft brown sugar
50g rolled oats
1/2 tsp cornstarch

Method:

Wash the elderberries and remove all bugs (I soaked mine in water in my salad spinner for abotu 10 mins until they all swam to the surface). Carefully remove the berries from the stems - I found a fork worked pretty well, raked downwards through the bunches.

Cut the nectarines into chunks and scatter on the base of an ovenproof dish, then scatter the berries on top.  Scattter the caster sugar and cornstarch evenly over the top.

Mix all the topping ingredients together and spread loosely over the fruit.  Bake in a pre-heated oven at 180C for about 25 minutes or until the fruit is bubbling.  Serve warm with a blob or clotted cream.

Make sure you also check out the wonderful elderberry jelly that Boots in the Oven made recently!

I am submitting this recipe to Zorra of Kochtopf who is this weekend's hostess with the mostest for Kalyn's weekly event Weekend Herb Blogging.  Do check her site for the roundup later this week!

Saturday Snapshots #4

 

The shade of things to come, August 2008

Despite the past few days of mild weather, the ornamental cherry tree outside my window seems to be saying "hah, you may be wearing your bikini but a few warm days can't fool me.  I know what's coming..."

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 previously 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?

Gammon steaks on cabbage, apple and onions

Recently I was listening to a discussion between two of my colleagues about their wills, and about what arrangements they had made for their children's guardians. 

Now guardians are a funny thing.  If you are Catholic, it's quite easy - you pick a male and a female friend who you believe would bring up your kid approximately according to the church's rules and away you go.  Easy peasy.  But as soon as you start separating the idea of a godparent (who has a role of spiritual guidance even while your parents are alive) and guardians (who really are just stand-ins for your parents, should you lose both of them before you reach adulthood).  Freed from the constraints of needing churchgoing folk, parents are faced with the entire smorgasbord of their friends from whom to choose as legal guardians. 

So you are faced with dillemmas like "Well, I've known him my whole life and he is like a brother to me... but I wouldn't trust him to look after my puppy, let alone bring up my child!" 

I remember my parents being quite careful about NOT having to leave us in the care of a guardian.  Until I reached my teenage years, when they flew somewhere, they would go on separate flights (like the Royal family!) just in case one plane fell out of the sky, then at least the other parent would survive to bring up me and my brother.  Really. 

But even so, they did have to nominate a guardian for us in their will, just in case all their precautions were not enough.  I remember many discussions about this, and in the end it was decided that our guardian should be my uncle - my mother's brother.  I was horrified.  Not because I disliked my uncle - on the contrary, I loved him.  He was a geologist and used to bring me crystals to play with.  I wanted to be him.  But I knew that both he and his wife did not put up with nonsense (well, they had five little girls, no two more than 3 years apart in age - how could they let nonsense get its foot in the door?!).  And I could just see that, should we go and live with them, she would force me to go to the dentist.  That was my biggest fear - far worse than losing my parents :o)

If I recall correctly, when they informed us of their choice of guardians, I said that I had somebody else in mind.  My parent were intrigued.  Who else could I possibly suggest?  My suggestion was Aunty Evelyn.  Now Evelyn was not really my aunt, nor related to me in any way.  She was a radiographer, like my mom, who had moved to South Africa from the UK in the late 1950s and she and my mom had become firm friends.  She once said to me that she thought the secret of getting on with everyone was to treat adults like children and children like adults.  Maybe that's why I adored her so - she actually spoke to me like a person not a kid.  When I got older and Evelyn had retired and moved back to London, we would look forward to her annual visits with glee, because she was a willing courier for bringing all manner of rare and unobtainable (in South Africa) pop merchandise to us from the UK.  When we made our annual Easter pilgrimage to Plettenberg Bay, Evelyn would often accompany us, and I remember often finding her in the kitchen when I woke up, peeling ruby grapefruit segments in the sun for our breakfast, or planning the days menus with my mom.

I still see Evelyn occasionally as she still lives in London, and although she is not as mobile as she once was, she has such a busy social life that making an appointment to see her is well nigh impossible.  But even so, I think of her often, and most frequently when I make a dish that she taught us on one of those blissful Easter holidays:  gammon steaks on cabbage, apples and onions.

It's not a fancy dish, but it is very comforting and a great dish for slow cooking and it perfumes the house with its aroma.  Thanks, Aunty Evelyn :)

GAMMON STEAKS ON CABBAGE, APPLE AND ONION (serves 2)

Ingredients:

2 gammon steaks
half a head of white cabbage, shredded
1 medium onion, sliced
2 sweet red apples
a little sunflower oil or butter
salt and pepper to taste

Method:

Pre-heat the oven to 180C.

Shred the cabbage, slice the onions.  Core both apples and cut one into small chunks. 

Heat the oil/butter in a large oven-proof casserole dish on the stove (a cast iron Le Creuset Dutch oven in perfect for this).  Add the onions and fry for a few minutes.  Add the cabbage and apple, and stir fry on medium for a few minutes until heated through.  Give it a generous grind of black pepper (but hold back on the salt - remember the steaks will be salty.)

Lay the gammon steaks on top of the cabbage/apple/onion mix.  Slice the other apple into rings and cut each in half.  Lay these apple slices on top of the steaks.  Cover the casserole and place in the pre-heated oven.

Bake for about an hour or until the steaks are cooked and the cabbage has softened.  Serve with brown rice to soak up the deloicious, smoky juices that have seeped through the cabbage from the steaks.   

Sun-dried tomato pesto twirls, current addictions, WTSIM and more

Do you ever get the feeling your mouth is developing the nasty habit of writing out cheques that your body can't cash? Or at least, that there aren't enough hours in a day to cash?

That's where I am right now. My head is fizzing with ideas and plans and schemes, but when I get into bed at the end of the day (usually way too late), all I can see before my eyes is the items that I did NOT manage to tick off my to do list today. The list is beginning to rival Jack's beanstalk (so to speak) in terms of its speed of growth and I despair of ever seeing the end of it.

One of the many symptoms of this affliction is that I always diligently plan to give various items their own post on this blog to highlight them, but then the posts spend weeks or months languishing in my drafts folder, unloved and incomplete, and I end up never mentioning them on my blog at all... It's a sad, sad situation.

So, to try and kill as many birds with one stone as possible, I am going to cram a number of announcements in to one post and reward you at the end with an easy-peasy-impress-your-friends recipe. How does that sound? Are you seated comfortably? Then off we go:

Waiter, There's Something in My... Yes folks, time for another round of your favourite monthly food blog event, WTSIM! Your charming host this time is Andrew and he has asked you to come up with "something Indonesian". Make it sweet, make it savoury, do the classics or do yuor own riff on a traditional recipe. Just make sure you get your entries to Andrew by the end of the month!

US readers - Doula Mel needs your help! My dear blog friend Mel who does such an astonishing job running the Bosom Buddies charity in Cape Town is calling for help again. Mel and her band of ladies sew and put together from donations a load of goodie bags for new moms at some of the most deprived of the Cape state hospitals. Many of these girls are teenagers, alone and scared after having been dropped off by family at the hospital to give birth alone; or HIV positive; or just desperately poor. Mel and her ladies not only make sure that each new mum gets a bag full of baby essentials to take home, but they also take the time to sit down, chat or pray with these new moms. Money for filling these goodie bags is always a problem, despite all the effort that Mel puts into fundraising, and donations are always welcome. One of Mel's contacts will soon be travelling to SA from the the US and will be able to bring back a parcel of donated baby clothes for free!  In Mel's own words:  "If you have gently used goodies up to age 6 months, then please send and enjoy the fuzzy feeling knowing some cute little African baby will be wearing that outfit. If you would like to shop for us, please only buy 0-3 month sleepers and 0-3 month onesies. As you know we want the mothers to be able to dress their babies when they go home so that is why we need small sizes."  So if you are in the US and can possibly help out wth new or gently used clothing, please send it to our mutual friend Dawnielle, who will sort and pack the donations and pass them on the the "courier" - please make sure they reach her by 3 October at the latest.  Her details are:

BB c/o Mrs Dawnielle California
1414 Cherry Valley Drive
San Jose
CA
95125

My article in WE Magazine again If you've kept an eye on my press page, you might have seen that another of my articles was included in the summer 2008 issue of online publication WE Magazine for Women. This one (on page 43) is about the history of cachacas, the main ingredient in moijitos.  Mmmmm, cocktails!

It's Oktoberfest time again! Oh yes, it is, and I'll be heading off to Munich this weekend. If you are doing the same, do check out my comprehensive tips for surviving Oktoberfest, and come and look for me in the Paulaner or Loewenbraeu tents on Saturday and Sunday. I'll be the one with the flashing bunny ears :).  If you aren't lucky enough to be in Munich, check out my experiences in previous years here, here, here, here and here.

South African Food and Wine Blog Directory Don't forget that I profile a new blog on the Directory site every Monday - do remember to go and check them out. This week it's the turn of Saaleha from Meals on Speed.

And what the heck, how about I throw in a meme? My lovely blog friend Gill of Gill's Jottings has apologeticalyl tagged me for the Current Addictions meme. No need to apologise, Gill: I've never yet been known to turn down a meme!

The rules:

* Post at least five current addictions (with some details, please).
* Mention the person who started this meme (Being Brazen) and also the person who just tagged you (hi Gill!)
* Type your post with the heading "Current addictions".
* Tag at least two people and pass on the above rules.

Well allrighty then - here are my five:

1.  Read My Mind by The Killers.  I cannot get it out of my head, and I listen to it over and over again.  I love the lyrics, I love the melody, I love the way it reminds me of how it felt to be 19 years old.  And they so have that boys-in-eyeliner thing going on :)

2.  Mamma Mia - the stage show, the movie, the soundtrack, the whole kit and caboodle. The world needs more ABBA in these dark times!  

3.  My ski holiday next year.  How many hours can you spend agonising over which village and which chalet and which week, without going totally bonkers?  Quite a lot, apparently.

4.  Getting through all the unread posts in my Google Reader.  To give you an idea of the magnitude of the problem, I celebrate when I get the total of unread posts below 250.  So now it's Google Reader before breakfast, after dinner, and instead of a chunk of my nightly sleep.  I need therapy!

5.  Boys in eyeliner.  Where were they when I was a teenager??  Brandon Flowers.  Gerard Way. Alan Cumming.  Need I say more? 

Apparently I also have to tag two people, so Charlotte & Kit - you're it, dahlings!

Anybody still here?  And awake?  Bueller?  Bueller??

On to the recipe!  I've been trying to be diligent with my blog reading lately and trying to tame the wild growth of posts in my RSS reader (see 4 above!).  One of the benefits of this is that I am bookmarking loads and loads of recipes - including this one from the ever-fab, ever-amusing Katie at Thyme for Cooking.  What instantly caught my eye about this recipe was the look - ooh, twirls!  Ooh, pretty!  I'm shallow that way.  I made these for a friend's party over the weekend and they were dead easy and as pretty as I imagined (even though the really bad lighting in the photo above doesn't do them justice!).  Seeing as I have been promising to join in for the longest time, and seeing as this is a rather special edition of my dear friend Stephanie's Blog Party event, I'm submitting them as my entry.  As my accompanying drink... well, what's a birthday without bubbles??  I raised a glass of bellini, made with Spanish cava and a generous splash of Funkin' White Peach Puree.  HAPPY BIRTHDAY STEPHANIE!

RED PESTO TWIRLS (makes about 15)

Ingredients:

about half a roll of ready made puff pastry
2 Tbsp red pesto

Method:

Unroll the pastry and cut off a piece about 15cm long (the roll should be about 25cm wide).  Spread the pesto evenly over the whole piece of pastry.  Lightly mark the centrepoint along the long edge of the pastry.

From the short edge, roll up the pastry to the centrepoint.  Do the same from the other short side so that the two rolls meet in the middle.  Wrap in clingfilm and refrigerate for at least an hour - you could even put it in the freezer.

When ready to bake, pre-heat the oven to 200C and remove the pastry from the fridge.  Slice in 1/2cm thickh slices and lay the slices out on an ungreased baking sheet.  Bake in the pre-heated oven for about 10 minutes.  Serve hot with drinks.

Variations:  instead of red pesto, you could also use green pesto, olive tapenade or grated parmesan (if using Parmesan, drizzle 2 Tbsp of olive oil over the pastry before sprinkling the cheese over.

I'm also submitting this to Ruth's Kitchen's Bookmarked Recipes event, a weekly roundup of any recipe that you bookmarked on a blog or in a book and subsequently made.

Thyme and sage roasted spaghetti squash - and a cautionary tale

Human beings are, as a rule, obsessed with youth and remaining young.  You only have to glance through your local newspaper to see the advertisements for botox (for the stunned as opposed to stunning look!); cosmetic surgery; or lotions and potions "guaranteed" to make you look younger within hours. It seems as if we can't help ourselves - however much we extoll the virtues that come with age and experience, some small part of us still wants to be twenty years old.

Some people achieve this illusion by the aforementioned surgery or injections.  Others (guys, this means you!) go for the little blue pills that are advertised so aggressively that my e-mail inbox cup runneth over on a daily basis. Some buy flashy red cars with no roof and hope they look younger behind the wheel than they do in the mirror.  And yet others date people who are too young to even rememebr who the heck Duran Duran were. 

Me, I don't go for any of those - I have my own personal take on how to stay young.  Drink lots of water, get 8 hours of sleep per night, get 5 or more portions of fruit and vegetables a day, and hit the gym three or four times a week.  Becuse youth, like true beauty, comes from within.

:)

OK, hands up - who fell for that?  Anybody?  Anybody??

I did try to type that with a straight face and MAN it was hard!

And I'm afraid that I will have to disillusion those who trusted me on that advice: my personal recipe for feeling like you are twenty for the rest of your life is a little different.  Basically it goes like this:  believe nobody - rather try it for yourself and see.  I mean, come on, surely you remember your parents telling you at university "that boy/girl is unsuitable - it's all going to end in tears".  Did anybody actually say "oh, OK, you know best - I'll dump them immediately"?  I know I didn't.  Of course I HATED it when my parents were right and it did all end in tears, but at least I had the satisfaction that I'd found this out for myself, empirically.

To me, that's what feeling 20 years old is all about.

Until recently, I had never cooked spaghetti squash.  I don't recall it ever being available in the shops in South Africa and even if it was, I probably shunned it for my beloved butternut and gem squashes.  In London, I see it on the shelves quite regularly,so when Kalyn wrote about it I decided it was high time to give it a go. Now Kalyn does state in her recipe that spaghetti squashes have hard outer rinds unless picked very young, and in that case they can't be eaten whole.  Judging by its size, I would not say ours was partcularly youthful when it arrived, plus it spent another week or so on our kitchen counter. And yet, when the time came to cook it, I decided that I was in a hurry and in no mood to peel it, so why bother?  I mean, I do a butternut squash bake where I don't peel the butternut, so how different can this be? 

Grown-ups - what do they know?!

Umm. Quite a bit, it would appear.  The squash roasted for probably the better part of an hour and caramelised beautifully, speckled yellow skin and all.  But although the flesh was soft and delicious (reminiscent of gem squash), infused with the flavour of the herbs, the skin had an appalling texture. I'm trying to think of what to compare it to and coming up short of a description.  Maybe some sort of plastic packaging accidentally left in your mince when making cottage pie??  Shudder.  Not good. 

Did I feel 20?  Yes.  Did I feel stupid?  Yes.  Sorry Kalyn - next time I'll listen to you!!

I told you all about thyme last week, so let's chat a bit about sage instead.  Sage (Salvia Officinalis) is a member of the mint family and originated in the Mediterranean region.    There are about 500 known varietes and its aromatic flavour is described as a mix of rosemary, pine, mint and citrus.  It contains generous amounts of Vitamins A and C and (unlike more delicate herbs) can be added to foods at the start of the cooking process as its robust flavour will withstand cooking.  But it was not until the 17th century that people started to cook with sage.  For most of its history, it has been known as a healing herb, being prescribed for all sorts of reasons, including to relieve intestinal problems, an aphrodisiac, tooth whitening and brain stimulation.  In fact - maybe the secret to eternal youth is sage!!

THYME AND SAGE ROASTED SPAGHETTI SQUASH (serves 2-3)

Ingredients:

1 large spaghetti squash, PEELED!
Olive oil
1 Tsp dried sage
1 Tsp dried thyme
Maldon salt flakes to serve

Method:

Pre-heat the oven to 190C.  Peel and halve the squash.  Remove the seeds and slice the flesh into crescents about 3cm long and 1.5cm wide.

Toss the squash pieces in enough olive oil to coat and lay in a single layer on a baking sheet.  Sprinkle the herbs over the squash and bake for 45 mins or until soft.  Sprinkle with Maldon (or fleur de sel) salt flakes to serve.

I am submitting this recipe to Gretchen of Canela y Comino who is this weekend's hostess with the mostest for Kalyn's weekly event Weekend Herb Blogging.  Do check her site for the roundup this week!

Saturday Snapshots #3

Tower Bridge reflections, September 2006

This marvel of Victorian engineering crosses the river at the eastern edge of the City of London and was completed in 1894.  It was the first bridge to be built east of London Bridge and took 432 men 8 years to build.  It is a bascule bridge, meaning that it can lift up to accommodate tall shipping traffic - it still does so several times a week and it's still exciting every time I see it happening.  Tours of the bridge's internal structure are available, including a walk across the high-level walkways above the road.

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 previously 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?