Cook sister!

Bobotie revisited

[As I am currently on holiday, this is a re-posting of one of the first traditional South African recipes that I ever posted on this blog, over five years ago in 2004.]

Bobotie is a classic South African dish and if you visit a restaurant serving traditional South African foods you are almost sure to encounter it.  It's also one of those dishes that reflects the history of the country and the many cuisines that melded together to create what we now know as South African cuisine.

(Oh, and by the way, I now love bobotie - started liking it in my teens. And I have never figured out why I hated it so much when I was 5.)

When the Dutch settlers, led by Jan van Riebeeck of the Dutch East India Company, arrived at the Cape in 1652 they found that to work the land they would need slaves, as the indigenous people were, unsurprisingly,  none too interested in slaving for the colonists. The first Malay (the term “Malay” indicates Muslim belief and tradition, but not any particular place of origin) slaves arrived from Java and various Indonesian islands in 1658 and over the years their influence on Cape cuisine and the emerging Afrikaans language has been considerable (for example the word baie meaning very is unknown in Dutch as it is derived from the Malay word baiang). Being slaves, the Malays often ended up in the Dutch kitchens and their influence remains apparent in dishes such as bobotie. The origins of the name are not clear, but the curried spice, turmeric-yellow rice and the use of fruit in a meat dish are all indicative of this dish’s Malay roots.

Incidentally, descendants of these slaves still live in Cape Town in the historic Bokaap (say “boor-carp”, or Malay Quarter) on the slopes of Signal Hill in Cape Town, where they originally settled and it remains a tight-knit community who preserve their traditions and faith.  And while we are having a history lesson, don’t make the mistake of confusing the Cape Malay population with the Indian population of KwaZulu-Natal on the east coast – these are descendants of the indentured labour force which the British government authorised to be brought from the Indian subcontinent in about 1860 to work on the Natal sugar cane fields. They constitute the largest Indian community in South Africa and have made their own rich contribution to the cuisine of South Africa, including such delights as bunny chows.

The dish itself is a gently-spiced mince dish full of raisins which is then oven-baked with a layer of savoury egg custard on top to form a crust and keep the meat moist.  It is traditionally served with yellow rice and sambals.  There are dozens of variations – this one is was posted by Sean Borman, who obtained it from the Kaapse Tafel restaurant in Cape Town. If you are in a hurry and can’t be bothered to source all the spices, there is an easy way too – simply buy a Nice ‘n Spicy bobotie spice pack which comes complete with instructions and all the spices you need! Ideal for the lazy gourmet… and you can buy off the Net!

BOBOTIE Serves 4 to 6 persons

Ingredients:

1kg steak mince (or lamb mince)
1 large onion
1 tablespoon oil
1 thick slice stale bread without the crust (white)
1 cup milk (more or less)
1 tablespoon apricot jam
juice of half a lemon (you can add more if you like it less sweet)
10-12 dried apricots
2 tablespoons seedless raisins
3 Tbsp slivered almonds
1 teaspoon curry powder (more if you prefer it stronger, but the dish is meant to have a mild curried flavour)
1 teaspoon fresh ginger grated
3 cloves garlic
salt and pepper
6 lemon leaves (or 3 bay leaves as a poor substitute) -you could grate a bit of the rind of the lemon before you squeeze it for the juice and add it to the bay leaves but add carefully so as not to allow the lemon to dominate
2 eggs
Milk

Method:

Lightly fry chopped onion over medium heat in oil till golden. Add chopped garlic and grated ginger. Remove from heat.

Soak bread in half a cup of milk, then crumble with a fork. Add to the mince and mix well.

Return the pot to the stove on medium heat. Add a little oil if the onion has absorbed it all. Add the meat and all other ingredients except the rest of the milk, the lemon leaves and the eggs.

Mix well to avoid lumps of mince. Cook until soft and cooked through, to the stage when meat is getting brown and not pink.

Check for seasoning and add anything you think is missing.  Use a slotted spoon to transfer the meat mixture to a baking dish with about 5cm high sides 

Reduce any residual gravy left in the pot by gently cooking without a lid.  When reduced sufficiently, add it to the baking dish – the meat should not be dry but there should not be any gravy pooling at the bottom of the dish.  

Lightly beat the two eggs. Add 1 cup of milk plus what is left of the milk in which the bread was soaked. Total should not exceed one and a half cups. Mix well, add salt and pepper.

After beating well, pour the milk and egg mixture over the meat.  Place lemon leaves (or bay leaves & a little grated lemon rind) on top.

Bake uncovered in moderate oven (350-375F / 180-190C) for 30 to 40 minutes until the egg mixture has set. Hot with turmeric rice and chopped tomato and onion salad.

Serve piping hot with the yellow rice - see recipe below.

YELLOW RICE Serves 4

Ingredients:

2 cups long-grain rice
4 cups water
2 Tbs oil (approx)
1/4 tsp turmeric
salt 
sutanas - as many or few as you like

Method:

Heat oil a little. Add the rice and stir till coated.  Add water, salt and rice.  Add the powdered turmeric (a little at a time till the shade of yellow you like has been achieved) and sultanas.

Cook gently for 15-20 min, covered and simmering on low heat. When most of the water is absorbed, switch off stove & let the rice swell before serving.

This post is part of a new series for 2010 called Sundays in South Africa.  As the entire football-conscious world knows by now, the FIFA World Cup 2010 will be taking place for the first time ever on African soil - in my home country of South Africa!  I can't tell you how proud this makes me, or how good it is to see that all the stadiums that the naysayers said would never be built on time standing tall and proud and beautiful.  The country is, of course, anticipating a huge surge in visitors and I know that many people will see the cup as a reason to visit a country they have long been meaning to visit, and use the tournament as a jumping-off point for visiting other, non-football South African destinations. With this in mind, as well as my backlog of posts about my South African trips, I will be trying to post a review of somewhere South African, or a South African recipe, every Sunday in the run-up to the tournament.  I can't pretend it is going to be a comprehensive guide to South Africa - but it will certainly be enough to give you some ideas!  Click here for previous posts in the series.

Saturday Snapshots #75

 
Aiguille du Midi climbers - Chamonix 2008 

The Aguille du Midi is an impressive 3,842m peak in the Mont Blanc Massif in the French Alps above Chamonix.  Its name literally translated means "needle of midday" and it is so named because the sun sits directly over the peak at noon, when viewed from Chamonix.

According to Wikipedia, the cable car to the summit, the Téléphérique de l'Aiguille du Midi, was built in 1955 and held the title of the world's highest cable car for about two decades. It still holds the record as the highest vertical ascent cable car in the world, from 1,035 m to 3,842 m. There are two sections: from Chamonix to Plan de l'Aiguille at 2,317 m and then directly, without any support pillar, to the upper station at 3,777 m (the building contains an elevator to the summit).  The cable car travels from Chamonix to the top of the Aiguille du Midi – an altitude gain of over 2,800 m – in 20 minutes.  When you step ont at the peak, your breath is literally taken away - I know mine was when we visited in the summer of 2008 - not only by the view but by the distinct lack of oxygen!

The Vallée Blanche ski run begins here, and the nearby Cosmiques Refuge is the starting point for one of the routes to the Mont Blanc summit.  From various viewing platforms at the summit you can see the parties of roped climbers and skiers like this one beginning their journeys, shuffling along a ridge no more than a foot or so wide (think the ridge of a sand dune, but with a couple of thousand metres to fall), down to the snow-covered glacier to proceed either up or down.

My skiing trip to the Alps this week should be far less fraught with danger!

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.  All photos featured in Saturday Snapshots are available to buy as greeting cards or prints in my RedBubble store, including the new Year of Saturday Snapshots calendar, an A3-size calendar bringing together the most popular images from the first year of Saturday Snapshots.  Feel free to browse - it makes a great gift!

Roast lamb breast with rosemary & mustard flageolet beans

"Breast of lamb is a strange joint which is pretty nearly inedible unless you have this recipe."  Thus spake Old Scrote.  I think he is being a little harsh, but since  didn't have the benefit of his wisdom before I embarked on my cooking adventure, I didn't feel any rising panic about how to cook the meat!  Probably for the best.  You don't want your roast smelling your fear and seizing up ;-)

I'm sure I've mentioned before that my husband loves a bargain, so when he came across the small rolled breast of lamb in the supermarket, it made its way into our trolley at light-speed.  It cost something truly ridiculous like £2.50 and looked big enough to feed us both - now how can you argue with that?  Subsequent research has revealed that it is an oblong-shaped part of the forequarter containing ribs and alternating layers of fat and meat, usually with fat covering one of the sides.  The one we bought was deboned and rolled up with the fatty side outside.  In retrospect, perhaps I should have unrolled it and tried stuffing it, but it was a weeknight and we were hungry, so in the end that seemed like too much of a faff.  Instead I seasoned & roasted it on a bed of flageolet beans in a fragrant rosemary and wholegrain mustard sauce

If I were to make this again with lamb breast, I would roast it for longer (I have amended my recipe instructions to allow for longer cooking).  In fact had I known that "lamb brisket" is another name that this cut goes under, I would probably have shied away from roasting it altogether and assumed that it needs braising. This is a roundabout way of saying that the meat will not be tender if you treat it like an ordinary lamb roast!  But the meat certainly was tasty, and if you find lamb too fatty, you will like this cut as it is not nearly as fatty as a leg roast. But beware - there was also a heart of gristle... What did work very well was the beans.  I had chosen to cook the roast on top of the saucy beans because I did not want the meat to dry out, and this was a good call.  As for the flavour - wonderful!  Rosemary is a classic lamb pairing and the creamy beans definitely benefited from the zing of the mustard.  

So all in all, this was a far cry from "pretty nearly inedible" and let's face it, what's not to like about a piece of lamb that provides 2 meals (watch this space) for 2 people for under £3?

ROAST LAMB ON ROSEMARY & MUSTARD FLAGEOLET BEANS (serves 2-3) 

For printable recipe, click here.

Ingredients:

1 small lamb roast (I used breast but any roasting joint will work) - about 600g
1 small onion, diced
1 410g tin of flageolet beans, drained
1 Tbsp wholegrain mustard
100ml double cream
1 large sprig rosemary, leaves chopped
salt and pepper
olive oil

Method:

Pre-heat the oven to 170C.

In saucepan, heat 1 Tbsp of olive oil over medium heat.  Add the onions and sautée until translucent but not browned.  Stir in the mustard and cream, heat and then add the drained beans.  Heat through, adding a little milk if the mixture is too thick.  Add the rosemary, check for seasoning and add salt and pepper to taste.  Pour mixture into an ovenproof dish and keep warm.

Rub the meat all over with salt and pepper.  Place on top of the beans and cover with foil.  Roast in the pre-heated oven for 2 hours, removing the tinfoil for the last 30 minutes to brown the fat.

Serve in slices on top of the beans, accompanied by green vegetables.

I was going to submit this recipe to this month's My Legume Love Affair, the event that's passionate about pulses created by the lovely Susan of The Well-Seasoned Cook - but sadly I see that only vegetarian recipes are accepted this month.  Oh well - next time.  Do make sure to check out the roundup over at host Simple Indian Food after 1 Feb.

Roots @ the Forum Homini, Johannesburg

When I go home to South Africa, I always feel a little like I'm being pulled in ten different directions by all the places I want to go, people I need to see and things I want to do.  As my family are in Port Elizabeth, I always go there when I visit, but as for my point of entry, I tend to alternate my trips between flying into Johannesburg and Cape Town.  We often spend quite a while in Cape Town but I seldom spend more than a day or two in Johannesburg - which is just enough to see some good friends, shop up a storm... and have at least one swanky meal in a local restaurant.

On my most recent visit to Johannesburg last year, the restaurant in question turned out to be Roots @ the Forum Homini.  One of the best barometers of what's hot in South African dining is the Eat Out magazine restaurant awards.  Almost every year, restaurants from Cape Town and surrounds completely dominate the top ten spots in these prestigious awards, so I was intrigued to see a Johannesburg restaurant on the list - restaurant choice made!

The Forum Homini boutique hotel is situated at the Cradle of Humankind, about 50km north of Johannesburg.  The area has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1999 and is home to the Sterkfontein Caves, a system of limestone caves where the 2.3 million year old Australopithecus Africanus fossil skull (nicknamed Mrs Ples) was found by Dr Robert Broom and John T Robinson in 1947.  Apart from innovative architecture, luxury accommodation, conference facilities and Roots restaurant, the other added bonus is that the Forum Homini is situated on Letamo private game reserve, so keep your eyes peeled for game as you approach the restaurant.

Roots restaurant has been garnering restaurant awards on a regular basis since 2007.  Chef patron Philippe Wagenfuhrer was born in Strasbourg, Alsace, and raised in West Africa.  He apprenticed at L’Arsenal in Strasbourg before attending catering school for seven years.  This was followed by 14 years in Scotland, working at Cameron House on Loch Lomond, Darroch Learg in Aberdeenshire, and The Sheridan in Edinburgh.  In search of warmer climes and new challenges, Philippe then worked in Antigua and Barbados for five years before settling in South Africa.  It was while working at The Michelangelo Hotel in Johannesburg that  he met Hendrik Marais, owner of Forum Homini - and the rest, as they say is history.

The fact that the restaurant is a 40 minute drive from Johannesburg only adds to the sense of occasion, and when you climb out of your car in to the starry, insect-filled African night it feels as if you are miles from civilisation.  The restaurant itself is an appealing space with clean lines and, modern decor and a view through a wall of glass over a lake and a deck where lunch is also served.  The menu uses top local ingredients transformed into dishes inspired by French, African and Asian influences.  There is a choice of of either a set four-course lunch or a six-course dinner menu (both of which change daily), with the option of adding a glass of matching wine to each course for an additional fee.  

Service when we arrived was very friendly and soon we were seated, unfortunately (despite our booking fairly far in advance) right by the restaurant's main door.  More on this later.  It took a further 30 seconds debate to decide that we would go for the matching wines per course, and then we waited for the show to begin. [Sadly, I cannot find the menu where I jotted down the individual wines we had - apologies!] 

After good bread with olive oil and balsamic vinegar, we were presented with our starter:  corn and vanilla soup and a mini corn fritter with fresh cilantro.  This looked beautiful (that little bowl was yearning to come home with me and feature in a Cooksister photoshoot...!) but I did not think that the flavours worked well at all.  The vanilla was not a clear enough flavour (random sweetness, rather than spicy vanilla) and the strangely grainy texture of the soup was not very appealing.  Besides, the sweet flavour of the corn needed something spicy as a contrast, not more sweetness, as the delicious little corn fritter with its cilantro leaf topping beautifully illustrated.   This was followed by a heavenly dish of seared tuna with Asian flavours - soy, sprouts, sesame and bok choi.  This was truly outstanding - simple, ultra-fresh ingredients, perfectly prepared with lovely clear flavours.  As good a piece of fish as I've had anywhere in the world.

Up next was pan-fried salmon trout on kedgeree with sauce vierge.  Again, this dish worked beautifully - the fish was cooked to crisp-skinned but moist-fleshed perfection and the saffron-laced kedgeree provided a creamy, salty counterpoint.  I also think the was topped with herb butter.  The first of the meat courses, and the one to which I had been lookign forward the most, arrived next:  confit duck leg on puree potatoes with foie gras. This was OK - tasty but not something I could get excited about, compared to the outstanding examples I have had in France.  The duck leg was tiny (which is probably not a bad thing, given that it was part of a larger menu) but looked a little ungenerous, and was not as fall-apart tender as some confit duck that I have had.  The puree potatoes were... well, mashed potatoes.  But the biggest disappointment for me and Nick was the foie gras.  Can you spot it?  Yup, it's those two beige-coloured blobs on top of the leg, plus maybe another blob hiding behind the diced zucchini (yes, the blobs were smaller than diced zucchini bits...).  When, halfway through the meal, the chef himself came round to the tables to chat to diners, we did ask about this particularly stingy portion - his reply was that because it is a controversial ingredient, he does not want to use too much of it in the dish.  But surely if this is his reason, he should not be using the ingredient at all?  Are people who object to foie gras going to be appeased because you use only a little bit?  Hmmm, I doubt it.  (He did say, though, that next time I could call ahead and request a larger portion, but I'm not sure this is the way forward either!)

The final savoury dish was pork belly braised in cider on egg noodles with butternut squash.  This was another pleasant but unspectacular dish.  The noodles were excellent, the pork was tasty and well-matched by the butternut squash cubes.  But I still believe that the way to enjoy pork belly is roasted to fall-apart tendernes and crackly perfection, rather than braised.  Still, a tasty dish.  Another success story was the dessert:  mini cheesecake with cranberry jellies and a red wine reduction. This was a perfect portion size for me - just a taste of something sweet and creamy, kept from cloying sweetness by the zingy and jewel-like cranberry jelly cubes.  I thought the red wine reduction was a little strident in comparison to the other flavours in the dish, but overall I liked this dish and its pretty presentation.

I seem to recall that coffee and petit four were included in the price, but by then we had lost all patience with the service and left without having coffee. I have left this all for a separate paragraph so as not to detract from the food, which was generally very good, but as with other high-end restaurants in South Africa, in my experience it is more oftern than not the untrained and unsupervised service that lets the entire experience down.  So here go the gripes. 

We had decided to push the boat out and have the matching wines with each course of our meal.  Instead of printing the matching wines and a short description on the menu, the restaurant has chosen to have a sommelier come to your table with each flight of wines and tell you about the wines, which sounded like a nice touch.  When the first wines were brought, he introduced himself, told us all about the wine, and that was great.  By the time the second wine arrived, we were in mid-conversation when he arrived.  Instead of hovering a bit until we were quiet, he stood at the head of the table and theatrically cleared his throat to hush us, like the father of the bride preparing to speak at a wedding.  I think we were all stunned into silence, and so he proceeded to recite his speech for the next wine.  When the third wine came, he tried the same tactic again, so my husband said "do you mind, I was just in the middle of a sentence".  In response, the sommelier wagged a finger at him and said "I can see you were a troublemaker at school" and launched straight into his description of the next wine.  Although this may be seen as charming or amusing in another context, in a restaurant billing itself as one of the country's top fine dining establishments where I am paying nearly R400 for my meal, this is totally inappropriate - and more than a little rude.

As I said, we were seated by the main restaurant door - and when I say by the door, I mean I could touch door if I twisted around a little in my seat.  We would not have minded if the door were kept fully open, or fully closed, but most of the time it was left open an inch or two, creating a concentrated blast of cold Highveld air directly onto our table and our food.  Trying to gobble down your food before it gets cold is not the way I want to spend a rare evening out with friends, so we asked staff repeatedly to either keep the door closed, or open - all the tables were full so we could not be moved.  Despite numerous trips to the door by our table to try and wedge it in the open position, no doorstop could be found and people (i.e. every smoker in the restaurant, plus the staff) passing in and out seemed determined to try and close the door.  Sadly, the door also could not latch, so inevitably it would pop open an inch or two and the draft would start again.  After initially trying to address our concerns, in the end the staff simply gave up and ignored us as being the "difficult table".  There had been a maitre d' when we arrived, but he had quietly disappeared during the course of the evening.  When one of our furious companions had finally had enough of the door fiasco, she stormed off to the kichen to find him - but when she peeked through the kitchen porthole, the matire d' was inside having an ice-cube fight with one of the waitresses.  Needless to say, my friend did not think it was worthwhile pursuing that avenue. When we asked for the bill, nobody even bothered to ask why we were leaving without coffee, and our waitress who had started the evening all smiles was as sullen as a grounded teenager.

I visited the restaurant about nine months ago - maybe service has improved since we were there.  Or maybe we just struck a bad night (although at this level of dining, a restaurant should not be having bad nights at all!).  Either way, I am going to say what I have said many times before - why do so many South African restaurants run a great kitchen and serve good food and pay a designer to create a beautiful space... but then skimp on staff training and a professional, attentive maitre d'?  Service is the single biggest factor that stands out in international fine dining restaurants, and one that top-end South African restaurants are going to have to pay more attention to if they want to compete on a world stage.

That said, I would go back to Roots.  Philippe's food was generally of a very high standard, the wine matches were good, the price (R395 or about £33) very reasonable by international standards, and the setting truly gorgeous.  As were driving out of the restaurant at around midnight, we rounded a corner and came across a large antelope in the middle of the dirt road.  It contemplated us for a moment, just as its ancestors must have contemplated ours here thousands of years ago, and then lumbered off towards the waterhole.  Welcome to Africa.

Roots
Forum Homini Hotel
Letamo Game Estate
Bartlet Road
Kromdraai
Mogale City
South Africa
Tel.  +27 (0)11 668 7000
Fax. +27 (0)11 668 7010
Website: http://www.forumhomini.com/

This post is part of a new series for 2010 called Sundays in South Africa.  As the entire football-conscious world knows by now, the FIFA World Cup 2010 will be taking place for the first time ever on African soil - in my home country of South Africa!  I can't tell you how proud this makes me, or how good it is to see that all the stadiums that the naysayers said would never be built on time standing tall and proud and beautiful.  The country is, of course, anticipating a huge surge in visitors and I know that many people will see the cup as a reason to visit a country they have long been meaning to visit, and use the tournament as a jumping-off point for visiting other, non-football South African destinations. With this in mind, as well as my backlog of posts about my South African trips, I will be trying to post a review of somewhere South African, or a South African recipe, every Sunday in the run-up to the tournament.  I can't pretend it is going to be a comprehensive guide to South Africa - but it will certainly be enough to give you some ideas!  Click here for previous posts in the series.

Saturday Snapshots #74

 

Wells Cathedral - January 2008

The first time I heard of the city of Wells in Somerset was as a student in South Africa - not through one of my academic courses, but through my love of the Blackadder TV series, where mention is made of the "baby-eating Bishop of Bath and Wells".  Amazing what you can learn from TV :)

What I didn't learn was that Wells is home to a spectacular cathedral, built between 1175 and 1490, mostly in the Early English style.  The eastern end has retained much original glass (in fact, the cathedral is home to one of the most substantial collections of Mediaeval stained glass in England).  The exterior has a splendid Early English façade and a large central tower, as can be seen above.

The current bishop of Bath and Wells was appointed in 2001, and it is widely accepted that he has not eaten any babies ;-)

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.  All photos featured in Saturday Snapshots are available to buy as greeting cards or prints in my RedBubble store, including the new Year of Saturday Snapshots calendar, an A3-size calendar bringing together the most popular images from the first year of Saturday Snapshots.  Feel free to browse - it makes a great gift!

Mock risotto (for very lazy or very hungry people!)

What if Cambridge University had stipulated physical attractiveness as one of their criteria... and refused to employ modern genius Stephen Hawking in this basis?

What if Britain's Got Talent imposed a "size zero" size limit on contestants... and failed to select runaway success Susan Boyle on that basis?

Or what if Hollywood studios imposed a height restriction... and failed to employ Oscar winner Joe Pesci on that basis?

Just think what a loss to the world these decisions would have meant.

The same can be said for this rice dish.  I did not initially photograph it - but after a few mouthfuls I realised I HAD to share this yummy recipe.  Then I thought twice about even posting it because oh boy, it was not photogenic (this is the best shot of about eight - imagine what the others looked like that didn't make the cut!).  But as they say, what is pleasing to the palate is not always pleasing to the eye...

It was one of those happy accident dishes.  There was some leftover cooked basmati rice from a Thai green curry dinner,  and some leftover goats' cheese from my cheese and homemade crackers lunch.  The rest of the fride was full of day-before-grocery-shopping scraps, Nick was out, for dinner, and I did not feel like making a big effort. My first thought was to stir-fry the rice with some peas and soy sauce and to top it all with a poached egg... but then inspiration struck.

The most surprising thing about this dish for me was how the goats cheese behaved when I stirred it into the warm rice - it melted away into a rich creaminess that reminded me of a slightly dry risotto, hence the name.  But whereas risotto takes 20 minutes of stirring and your virtually undivided attention, this can be done in10 minutes flat - and maybe even without a trip to the grocery store :)  The gentle warmth of the chile, the creamy goodness of the cheese - it's close to simple perfection.

GOATS' CHEESE MOCK RISOTTO (serves 2)

For printable recipe, click here.

Ingredients:

about 2 cups cooked basmati rice
1 red or orange pepper, diced
1 onion, diced
1 large clove of garlic, minced
1 tomato, diced
4-6 small mushrooms, diced
pinch of dried chile pepper flakes
150g (1 small log) soft rindless fresh goats cheese (no rind - this is important!)
olive oil
butter (optional)
salt and pepper

Method:

Steam the rice to re-heat, or warm in the microwave.

Heat a little olive oil in a pan.  Add the chile flakes, onion and garlic and sautee until the onion starts to soften but not brown.  Add the pepper and tomato until the pepper starts to soften, then add the mushrooms. 

Add the rice and mix thoroughly.  Once the mixture is hot through, stir in the goats cheese a tablespoon at a time.  Mix well, check for seasoning and add salt and pepper to taste.

Just before serving, I added a blob of butter, but this is optional.  Not everyone has the close relationship with butter that I have ;-)

Fame, fortune and muffcakes

When I was in high school, my parents wanted me to be a doctor. Other kids I knew wanted to be lawyers, physiotherapists and journalists.  I wanted to be either a film director or an advertising copywriter.

So clearly, three law degrees was the obvious next step for me :)

OK, so it's a long and angsty story with which I won't bore you but it came down to the fact that when you come from a family where nearly everybody (two parents and two half-sisters) goes into the medical field in some form (radiologist, radiographer x 2, and nurse), the pressure is ON.  I already knew (and my maths and science grades confirmed) that the sciences would not be the place for me and hinted at advertising school, but The Parents absolutely insisted that I study towards one of the traditional professions (law, medicine accountancy - you get the picture!). 

I looked reluctantly at the commerce degree curricula and found one that contained marketing management (yaaaay - advertising!) and accountancy (which kept the Parentals happy).  But the clincher was that, out of eight different 1st year curricula, this was the one that only had ONE 8 a.m. lecture per week.  Oh yes, and there were a few law subjects included too.

On such frivolous decisions rests our fate.

Anyhoo.  The universe has a funny sense of symmetry, and late last year I was aproached by an advertising agency to submit a recipe in one of a number of categories for a new outdoor media campaign.  I submitted a muffin recipe and thought no more about it... until they responded and said that my muffin recipe was to be The One.  It seemed I was going to get my turn in the advertising industry after all, albeit in a different way to what I'd dreamed of.

It was a steep learning curve in the strange dance that makes up an advertising campaign.  I submitted my cranberry, orange and pecan muffins.  The agency liked it and sent it to the client.  The client said they were gorgeous, but did I have muffins with fewer things in them?  So I sent a simple sugar & cinnamon muffin recipe.  Better... but they still did not like the "cracked on top" look of muffins - did I have a cupcake recipe instead?  I sent my dark chocolate cupcake recipe.  The client liked the smooth tops but hmmm... dark brown food?  Did I have a PALER cupcake recipe?  Umm, not to hand.  So it was off to the kitchen to do a little recipe development, and thus my white chocolate and raspberry cupcakes were born.  And thank goodness, the client was equally happy with them. Hurrah!

The date was set for the photo shoot in a studio in Shoreditch and the lovely Emma from the agency asked whether I would be able to attend the shoot.  Luckily, I was still on a four-day working week, so I agreed but I could not for the life of me think what I was needed for.  They had already told me that there would be a home economist on site so surely she was far more qualified than me to bake the cupcakes? Still, it would be interesting, and so I found myself in a lovely airy studio in Shoreditch one day last October.

The first thing that struck me was OMG, look at how many people it takes to take one pretty picture:  agency people, client people, freelance people - and my fellow food-blogger Helen, who was there to have her chicken pot pie photographed.  The second thing that struck me is the amount of hanging about that has to be done.  Everyone's role is so specific that while one part of the process is happening, many of the other people are hanging about, checking e-mail or just shooting the breeze.  And the third thing was a tremendous feeling of relief when I saw the extensive kit set up for the shots:  I suddenly felt a lot better about my own food photos, given my near-total lack of equipment!

Once Helen's chicken pie had been made and comprehensively photographed, it was my turn.  I'd had a chat to the team and found out that they needed the cupcakes to be different heights, so I chatted to the charming home economist to decide how best to achieve this.  At this stage I still thought that my main role was to talk the home economist through the cupcakes - and talking is definitley something I can do!

After a lot of debate about the colour of the muffin tins we were using and whether or not to use paper muffin cups, we finally had a clear idea of where we were heading and the home economist turned to me and said "off you go".  Umm... you mean, like, bake the cupcakes?  Well, yes.  With all these people watching, and that bloke with the camera positively stalking me??  Well... yes.  Okeydokey.  I've baked these a few times, I can do this.  Even while I'm on Cupcake Cam.

Oh yes, I baked.  I calculated that I baked close on 80 cupcakes that afternoon, single-handedly!  The difficulty came from the fact that we needed to have a tin full of cupcakes of different heights.  Some batches we tried doubling up on the baking powder, which gave a very odd surface texture and shape.  Other batches we tried over-filling the cups, but that just made the cupcakes spill over the cups and lose their shape. We took one overfilled batch out of the oven early to stop them rising any more - and the promptly collapsed.  Live and learn!  It's hard to create uneven cupcakes when you have spent a lifetime trying to get them to rise evenly.  In the end, the solution was to bake a batch where the cups were filled to capacity, then another batch where the cups were underfilled, and then mix the batches up. 

What I am very pleased to report is that, despite what you may have heard about food in advertisements being inedible, blowtorched and coated with glycerine to make it photogenic, every one of the cupcakes that I baked was edible - and was enthusiastically eaten by the assembled hordes!  It took a good 4 hours but in the end the perfect shot was achieved.  It was a fascinating peek into the advertising world and I really enjoyed meeting everyone who was at the studio - charming and professional one and all. 

So, I hear you ask, what's with the muffcakes?  Well, remember the start of the post where I explained how we arrived at this particular recipe to bake on the day?  It seems that the recipe that will be put out to accompany the pics at the start of the campaign is still the cinnamon sugar muffins that I originally submitted.  So you will have a picture of cupcakes, but the recipe for muffins - and when I saw my friend Mowie's hilarious post this week about muffcakes, I knew that this was the perfect name for these :)

So what happens now?  As I said, it's an outdoor media campaign, so my muffcakes are going to be on billboards!  As big as a bus! And it won't be nearly as pervy as these last two sentences would lead you to believe! The campaign goes live on 1 February and on that date I will post the artwork as well as info on where you can see my famous muffcakes.

As for the product that my muffcakes will be promoting - have you guessed what it is yet?  If not, you'll just have to come back here on 1 February to find out...

All photographs in this post except the first one are the property of and used with the kind permission of the lovely folk at Wieden + Kennedy - with thanks in particular to Emma and James who were a pleasure to work with.  
 

Moroccan-spiced roasted vegetables

So the festive season is well and truly over.  All the Christmas decorations have been taken down, all the gammon leftovers have been eaten, and everyone is talking about good intentions, more exercise, losing weight, drinking less and eating light. 

Going out to dinner with friends has become fraught with difficulties as this one won't go to a pizza joint ("I'm off carbs"), that one won't go to a steak joint ("I'm trying to keep vegetarian this month") and nobody will share a bottle of wine with me as half the world seems to by trying to have an alcohol-free January!  And having people round for a meal is no less complicated, as endless lists of things friends aren't eating find their way into my inbox while I am finalising the menu. 

What's a girl to do?? 

I am not into culinary self-denial, and I refuse to serve my friends a bowl of bean sprouts when they come to visit, so the search has been on for diet-friendly but still tasty foods to take the edge off January's self-imposed food restrictions.  Remember last year I posted about my friend Kalyn's spicy roasted chickpeas?  As I said, the spice mix makes a lot more than you need for the chickpeas, so I kept the extra spice and kept finding uses for it - most notably as the perfect spice mix in which to toss vegetable chunks prior to roasting!

Roasting vegetables is almost always my favourite way to cook them as I love the concentrated flavours that roasting produces, and the fact that once the chopping is done, you don't have a lot to do and can focus on other things.  The vegetables that you use are open to your interpretation - these are just the ones I happened to have in my fridge on the day I made this.  On their own, these Moroccan-spiced vegetables make a delicous side dish; or served on fluffy couscous, they make a vegan (and diet-friendly!) main course for the fussiest eaters.  I am repeating the spice mix recipe here and I would highly recommend keeping some of the mix permanently in your spice rack (in an airtight container) to sprinkle on anything from chickpeas to potatoes to chicken. it's the perfect thing to add a little spice to an abstemious, grey January.

MOROCCAN-SPICED ROASTED VEGETABLES (serves 2 as a main or 4 as a side dish)

Ingredients:

1 medium-sized aubergine
2 courgettes
1 large red onion
half a butternut sqush, peeled and deseeded
olive oil

FOR THE MOROCCAN SPICE MIX:
2 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp ground coriander
1/2 tsp chile powder (I used Osman's chilli powder that a friend brought from South Africa)
1/2 tsp sweet paprika
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground allspice
1/4 tsp ground ginger
1/8 tsp cayenne pepper (I omitted this as I had none)
a pinch ground cloves
1/2 tsp sugar

Method:

Preheat the oven to 190C.

Chop all the vegetables into bite-sized chunks and place in a bowl.  Add a good glug of olive oil and 2-3 tablespoons of the Moroccan spice mix, depending on how spicy you want your vegeteables.  Using your hands, toss the vegetables in the oil and spices until they are thoroughly coated.

Turn the vegetables out onto a foil-lined roasting tray and plae in the centre of the oven.  Roast for about 40 minutes, or until the butternut squash chunks are tender.  Serve on couscous, or as a side dish with chicken or fish.

Le Chameleon, Humansdorp

I have often said to people that one of the characteristics I admire most in somebody is their ability to surprise me, even if I've known them for ages.  It might discovering a clutch of heavy metal CDs in the collection of an old friend with a taste for opera.  It might be a long-term vegetarian friend ordering a bacon sandwich.  Or it might be finding out that a reserved colleague is an excellent salsa dancer.  Few things can please me more, in a world where things are depressingly seldom truly surprising.

Which probably explains my fondness for Le Chameleon - a shop and restaurant situated on the outskirts of Humansdorp in South Africa.   Now Humansdorp is a farming town - in fact, it is the centre of the district's farming and light industry.  And although it has some fine characteristics, such as the beautful trees (planted before the First World War) that line most of its residential streets, it's not where you'd expect to find much by way of restaurants.  If you persevere and go in search of Le Chameleon, you will find it sandwiched between petrol stations and agricultural machinery merchants, with an unprepossessing facade.  But step inside and the surprises begin.

The first area looks like a cross between a farm stall and home-bake shop.  Shelves are lined with local produce and preserves, and a good selection of baked goods including (when we were there) the Biggest Chelsea Buns in Africa.  Step up into the next room, and yo will find yourself in a decor and gift shop that feels like a veritable Alladin's cave.  Floaty dresses jostle for space alongside sparkly handbags; gilt frames cosy up to rustic wall hangings; and scented candles perfume the air while customers make their choices - or just fondle the merchandise!

Step yet further into the building and you will arrive at the restaurant - an engaging room filled with a charming mix of unmatched furniture, huge gilt mirrors, and whimsical lights, from paper star-shaped to twinkly crystal chandeliers.  Step through the next door and you will find yourself in the tea garden, but we chose to stop under the twinkly chandeliers and check out the menu.

The menu is extensive and covers the full spectrum of breakfast, brunch, lunch and tea options (the salads in particular sounded fantastic).  We had opted for brunch and decided to order a sweet and savoury dish and share both as the portions are very generous.  First up was the Le Chameleon omelette with a bit of everything - bacon, mushrooms, onions and cheese.  The omelette itself had that fantastic light, pillowy consistency that really good omelettes have and mine never quite seem to achieve - maybe it requires separate whipping up of the whites and yolks?? Either way, the omelette was delicious and a very filling brunch option.  But of course we could not leave without sampling something sweet and we had selected the French toast with green fig preserve, bacon and maple syrup. 

This was everything I could possibly want fron French toast.  The toast itself was made with slices of baguette and the contrast between sweet figs and savoury bacon was perfect (and besides, I'm a sucker for green fig preserve!).  I also loved the addition of flaked almonds that gave the dish some textural interest.  As you can seem both dishes were beautifully presented, complete with a fresh flower - a feast for the eyes as well as the tongue.  Our bill, together with coffees and excellent fresh fruit juices but excluding service, came to R76.00 (about £6.30).  The restaurant is also fully licensed and has an extensive wine list, so long lunches over a bottle of something bubbly are a distinct possibility :)

If you find yourself in the vicinity of Humansdorp or nearby Jeffrey's Bay or St Francis, do yourself a favour and pop into Le Chameleon for a meal.  It is a little like steppng into the looking glass and into Wonderland - but with  better food!

Le Chameleon
53 Voortrekker Road
Humansdorp
6300
South Africa
Tel.  +27 (0)42 291 0262
Fax. +27 (0)42 291 0078
e-mail: rudivw@absamail.co.za

Open Mon-Fri 08h30-16h00 and Sat 08h30-15h00, closed Sundays and evenings

This post is part of a new series for 2010 called Sundays in South Africa.  As the entire football-conscious world knows by now, the FIFA World Cup 2010 will be taking place for the first time ever on African soil - in my home country of South Africa!  I can't tell you how proud this makes me, or how good it is to see that all the stadiums that the naysayers said would never be built on time standing tall and proud and beautiful.  The country is, of course, anticipating a huge surge in visitors and I know that many people will see the cup as a reason to visit a country they have long been meaning to visit, and use the tournament as a jumping-off point for visiting other, non-football South African destinations. With this in mind, as well as my backlog of posts about my South African trips, I will be trying to post a review of somewhere South African, or a South African recipe, every Sunday in the run-up to the tournament.  I can't pretend it is going to be a comprehensive guide to South Africa - but it will certainly be enough to give you some ideas!  Click here for previous posts in the series.

Saturday Snapshots #73

Blackbird - London, January 2010

Our house has a mature pyracantha hedge that surrounds the garden on two sides.  It's a great plant for a number of reasons:  it is evergreen (meaning that we have year-round privacy); it makes masses of sweet-scented blossoms in the spring and summer; it has formidable thorns (meaning good security); and in the autumn and winter it is covered in brightly coloured red and orange berries.  Or rather, it was until early January.

On 5 January, it started snowing and the land only really thawed out yesterday.  There was much complaining in the press about cancelled flights and delayed trains, but for the most part, people did not starve.  But for garden birds, the situation was very different. If you have no stores of food and no paws to dig through snow and ice, the frozen ground is a feeding disaster and starvation a real possibility.  It took only a day or so for the birds to discover that our hedge was a veritablle smorgasbord of non-frozen nutrition and soon we were inundated:  blackbirds, blue tits, robins, wood pigeons, fieldfares, black caps and chaffinches were suddenly making swoops on the hedge all day long. Over the course of less than a week, they have systematically picked the hedge clean of berries.  It does not look as pretty anymore, but it's great to know we helped so many birds to survive the cold snap.  This picture was taken on the first day when the birds started feasting on the hedge - a female blackbird delicately picking a single berry.

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.  All photos featured in Saturday Snapshots are available to buy as greeting cards or prints in my RedBubble store, including the new Year of Saturday Snapshots calendar, an A3-size calendar bringing together the most popular images from the first year of Saturday Snapshots.  Feel free to browse - it makes a great gift!