Everyone has their favourite burger and since two days ago, this is mine. Make it as spicy or mild as you like, and go wild with the toppings.
My preferred version is chicken burger-with-everything.
This truly is the chicken burger of your dreams!
Serves 6
Ingredients:
650g deboned chicken thighs
1 sweet red pepper, deseeded and white pith cut away
1 onion, roughly chopped
2 T (30 ml) olive oil
Bunch of chives
Salt & pepper to taste
2 t (10ml) Robertsons Roast Potato seasoning, or spice blend of your choice
1 egg
Approximately 1 cup (250 ml) breadcrumbs, or more as required
6 hamburger rolls
Melted butter, to brush on inside of toasted rolls
250g streaky bacon, fried until crisp
1 avocado, sliced
1 tub (150g) Ashton’s cream or crème fraîche
2 T (30ml) soft blue cheese
50g rocket
Woolworths’ peppadew salsa or chutney
Offenau Sweet and sour gherkins, sliced lengthways
McCains fries
Method:
1. Preheat the oven to160 C. Pulse onion and sweet pepper together in your food processor until very finely minced. Cook in the olive oil until softened.
2. Roughly chop deboned chicken thighs and also pulse in food processor until finely minced. (No need to clean out the processor bowl first.)
3. Transfer chopped chicken to a mixing bowl. Add cooked onion and sweet pepper, finely snipped chives, egg, breadcrumbs and seasoning. Use your hands to mix thoroughly, making sure the ingredients are evenly dispersed throughout the hamburger mixture. If it seems a bit dense or sticky, add more breadcrumbs 1 T (15 ml) at a time until mixture feels looser but still clumps together.
4. Form into 6 equal-sized patties and let rest for 15 minutes while you prepare the toppings and cook the chips. Mix the Ashton’s cream (you can also use crème fraîche) with the blue cheese until smooth and spoon into a small serving bowl.
5. Fry the patties in shallow oil over medium heat until nicely browned on both sides. Drain on absorbent paper, then keep warm on a baking tray in the oven for 15-20 minutes while you set out the toppings on attractive serving plates or in bowls. Toast the hamburger buns and brush with melted butter inside.
6. Let everyone assemble their own burgers with layers of rocket, chicken patties, blue cheese cream, bacon, avo, salsa and pickles, with hot fries on the side.
Smash down and feed your face!
Chicken burger with bacon, avo and blue cheese cream
Because there is just no way this sugar bomb of a dessert can ever be Paleo-fied. Can it? Do we want the world to end?
Rich, delicious and one spoon short of cardiac arrest, malva pudding represents everything that is glorious and good about traditional South African cooking. Some things deserve to be preserved in all their magnificent excess, and nobody wants to be touched on their malva pudding, do they? As with most traditional and heritage food, everybody holds their own version dear, if not exactly holy.
Yes, it’s loaded with calories, sugar and fat, which is precisely why you should be having lots of it during a South African winter – just think of it as your own personal Eskom, providing energy in abundance, and dish up, dear.
I’m not one much for sweets and desserts, but since my children are growing up in an Outer Mongolia of puddings and desserts, I figured I ought to try at least ONE pudding this winter. Malva pudding always gets enthusiastic response, except, of course, if you start fiddling with the recipe – which I usually do -and if you subsequently start a Facebook enquiry with your creative ideas.
‘Evaporated milk or cream? #MalvaPudding’ I mildly tweeted and Facebooked, and a deluge of opinions followed. Some friends who really know their way around a kitchen, like retired diplomat Derek Auret and food market magician Surita Riffel, offered swoony diversions from the standard recipe. Amarula was suggested by many as addition to the syrup, as was Kahlua, or star anise. Whiskey, brandy, sherry…it would be easy to guess that malva pudding is an excuse to get tipsy, but then we’d be intruding on Tipsy Tart territory, which is a whole different pudding altogether.
Bon vivant Derek professed to using treacle brown sugar with cream for his syrup, boiling it down by a third before pouring over the baked, warm pudding. He also scolded me for preferring evaporated milk to cream but hey, I grew up in the Free State, OK? We do things differently there. Evaporated milk was almost the only canned food my mother used and nope, I have no idea why cow country did not offer us regular fresh cream in the days back then. Perhaps it all went to make butter for you fancy city folk, who knows? But trust me, evaporated milk works just fine, and gives a lighter taste and finer mouthfeel to your malva.
Surita suggested adding a shot of whiskey to the syrup – AWESTRUCK! – and serving coffee ice cream alongside. Big win there, my friend. Big win.
Whether all these remain verifiable versions of malva pudding I could not possibly say, except that MY recipe comes from the cookbook Traditional South African Cooking by Magdaleen van der Merwe and Pat Barton. It was published by Struik in 1993 and has since been reprinted 5 times. If that doesn’t count as authority, what does?
Strangely, though, this recipe refers to malva pudding as ‘marshmallow pudding’ in the English edition, which I’ve never come across before. Perhaps a direct translation from the Afrikaans ‘malva’? Which is erroneous, anyway, as it does not refer to marshmallows in the Afrikaans version either, but rather to the wine thought to have been used originally in the ancestor of this pud, malmsey wine or Malvasia.
All a bit of a mystery really, but what’s no secret is that it is darned delicious, and you should be making it today. Or soon. But don’t wait too long, because come summer, you’ll be regretting every portion you scoffed in the grips of the big freeze…
Here is my friend the food and wine guru Michael Olivier’s tried and trusted recipe for Malva Pudding 1.0 on his blog: Malva Pudding – the original
And below is the original recipe from the Traditional South African cookbook, along with my alternative suggestions –
MALVA PUDDING
Serves 10 – of which several portions will probably seconds, maybe thirds.
SONIA’S RECIPE NOTES:
I stirred about 25 ml finely chopped preserved ginger into the batter before baking, because my son likes it. I also used 1 tablespoon of the preserved ginger syrup in the pour-over sauce. Of the liquid options for the pour-over sauce, I opted for the orange juice in the cookbook’s recipe and boy, oh boy, it worked like a charm. The combination of the ginger and orange juice, as well as the *ahem* evaporated milk lifted my malva pudding from the usual cloying density to something almost approaching freshness and lightness. Give it bash!
Ingredients:
250 ml (1 cup) castor sugar
2 large eggs
15ml (1 T) smooth apricot jam
(Optional: I added 25 ml or so of finely chopped preserved ginger plus 5 ml/1 t vanilla extract)
185 grams cake flour
5 ml (1 t) bicarb
pinch of salt
20 ml (1 and a half T) butter
5 ml (1 t) white vinegar
125 ml (1/2 cup) full cream milk
SAUCE
250 ml pouring or whipping cream (or evaporated milk, in my case)
125 ml (1/2 cup) butter (I lessened this to 100 ml, even 80 ml)
125 ml (1/2 cup) white sugar (I used firmly-packed treacle brown sugar – the really soft and sticky one)
125 ml (1/2 cup) water, orange juice or sherry (I used 80 ml juice and found there was plenty of liquid sauce to pour over)
Optional – 15 ml (1 T) preserved ginger syrup
Method:
1. Preheat oven to 180 C or 160 C fan-assisted. Beat the castor sugar and eggs until fluffy and light. Add the apricot jam and whisk until smooth. (If using chopped preserved ginger and vanilla, add them now too.)
2. Sift together the flour, bicarb and salt no fewer than 3 times. (Yes, it is necessary. Mens stry nie met tradisie nie!)
3. Place butter, vinegar and milk in a bowl and microwave on medium strength until butter has melted. Whisk and add to the batter in thirds, alternating with the flour mixture, while the blender is running.
4. Spoon the batter into a lightly greased/Cook & Sprayed ovenproof dish. Bake for 30 – 40 minutes, until set and nicely golden brown on top. A toothpick inserted into the middle should come out clean if it’s done. If dough sticks to the toothpick, bake further in increments of 5 minutes until done. Remove from oven and keep warm. The pudding must still be warm when the sauce is poured over.
5. You will have made the sauce while the pudding was baking, dearest, unless you were whatsapping or taking selfies, so here is the method: put all sauce ingredients into a saucepan, bring to the boil, and simmer at a gentle bubble until reduced by a third. Pour the hot sauce over the warm pudding, and let stand for 30 minutes for the sauce to seep in deeply.
Because that’s what malva is all about – that sauce-steeped sticky, gooey gloriousness. Cream, custard, ice cream: the choice is yours.
Glorious malva pudding! Photo courtesy of Henk Hattingh
Baking a cake for a friend’s birthday is a special task and not one you want to fail at. This recipe is incredibly easy and straightforward and takes next to no time to prep.
If I recommend a cake recipe, you can be sure it works, because like all nervy bakers, I like 100% guaranteed results.
I’ve baked this li’l piece of goodness on three different occasions before, each time adapting the recipe a little.
And so, with a final tweak of the brilliant original from Jane Price’s ‘Kitchen Classics: Chocolate’, here it is:
Easy Chocolate Cheesecake
A word of warning: since the baked cake has to rest overnight in the refrigerator, HIDE IT WELL FROM SCAVENGERS. Last time I baked this chocolate cheesecake, my family scoffed three quarters before it had even set properly, let alone gotten it’s crowning glory of whipped cream and raspberries.
Cook’s note: Jane Price’s original recipe gives grated orange zest. I’ve added it and I’ve omitted it, and even though I personally prefer it without the zest, votes around the table yesterday were unanimously in favour. Decide for yourself, honey bunch, there’s no right or wrong.
Ingredients:
Crust
200g packet Romany Creams or other chocolate biscuits, cut up in rough chunks
40g chopped or ground almonds (I use flaked, and fling it in the processor to be ground fine with the cookies)
90g melted butter
Method:
1. Preheat the oven to 160 C. Cut a circle of baking paper to line the base of a springform tin and spray insides of cake tin and paper with Cook & Spray.
2. Grind the cookies and nuts finely together and mix in the butter.
3. Spread crumb/nut mixture evenly across base of cake tin, press down firmly with back of a large spoon and put in freezer while you prepare the filling.
Filling
150g Lindt 70% or other dark chocolate
1 heaping dessertspoon (about 25 ml) organic raw cacao powder
500g full fat cream cheese
95g castor sugar
1/2 cup (125 ml) thick cream
2 eggs
1 t (5 ml) vanilla essence
1 t (5 ml) grated orange zest (optional)
1/2 cup (125 ml) very cold cream, whipped till just set, for topping
2 punnets fresh raspberries
Method:
1. Place a metal bowl over a large pot of hot water, making sure the bottom of the bowl does not touch the water.
2. Break chocolate into pieces in bowl, and bring water to a gentle boil. Do not add thd cocoa powder yet.
Once half the chocolate has melted, turn the heat off and let stand until fully melted, stirring till smooth. Do not let the water boil too fiercely or the metal bowl get too hot; the chocolate will seize – become grainy – and you’ll have to throw it away and start again. Let cool for 5 minutes or so.
3. Beat the cream cheese and sugar together until creamy.
4. Add the cocoa powder, cream, eggs, vanilla, zest if using and the cooled melted chocolate. Beat very well until completely blended and no flecks of white appear.
5. Pour filling over the crumb crust in the cake tin and bake in the middle of the oven for 1 hour 10 minutes, until just set and the centre looks firm.
It should still have a very slight wobble to it when you remove it from the oven. Let cool completely and refrigerate 8 hours or overnight.
Spread cold whipped cream on top and scatter raspberries over to serve.
Growing up in the Free State and visiting our Cape relatives during school holidays, I was always struck by the sheer exoticism of the people down south. The Cape air smelled damp and salty. There was sand instead of ‘grond’, meaning earth. People spoke in a peculiar vernacular, mixing up languages in a way that my 10-year old puritan self thoroughly disapproved of. ‘Dis òf een òf die ander, maar nie beide tegelyk en tesame nie’ I’d crossly tell my mom on the plane home, bitterly disgruntled by my cousins’ linguistic masala.
Cape people seemed softer than the rest of us, looser and just a little bit odd. Most folks appeared to be marginally criminal and shifty – including my family – so you could never really rely on a Capetonian, one felt. And they ate a lot of snoek. Snoek was big in the Cape. Still is, really.
If you come from a culture such as I did, where red meat was a staple and often on the table three times a day, then eating slithery, slimy and scaly things caught from the sea just seemed barbaric. There’s always been this inherent disdain towards people who relied on the ocean’s bounty for food, as if to say ‘they’re so lazy, they can’t even grow their own food’. Yes. That was the implicit judgement.
I carried this half-formed obnoxious prejudice towards all things Cape inside of me pretty much all of my life, until I came to settle in Cape Town 20 years ago through a quirk of fate.
It’s been a long and very interesting journey, made that much more rewarding by the discovery of Cape traditional cooking. Cape cooks love spices, and certainly know how to make the most of meagre ingredients. This recipe for smoorsnoek just about sums up everything I have ever loved about living in Cape Town. It’s unique to this region – ware kontreikos – it’s a humble and down-to-earth thing, and whilst not being the most attractive looking dish on earth, it certainly makes you feel lovely inside when you eat it.
If I ever became mayor of the mother city, I’d demand that smoorsnoek not only has its own national holiday, but that the snoek is somehow worked into the official logo of the city.
Smoorsnoek
This recipe makes enough for 6 normal people or for 1 teenage boy and his father. It keeps well in the fridge for 2 days. I like it best with a mug of strong black coffee.
Ingredients:
More or less 250 g smoked snoek, flaked and carefully deboned
2 medium-sized onions, sliced thinly
2 T (30 ml) sunflower oil
3 large tomatoes, peeled and chopped
4-5 medium-sized potatoes, peeled, cooked till tender but firm and cut into chunks
1 heaped cup cooked rice
Parsley, coriander, salt and pepper to taste
Method:
This is a very simple recipe. Have your cooked, chopped potatoes, your peeled chopped tomatoes and cooked rice ready. Make sure you have removed all the bones from the snoek.
Fry the onions until translucent and just beginning to brown. Add the tomatoes and ‘smoor’ – braise – together for 10 minutes. Add some hot water if it looks like burning.
Add the potato and flaked snoek, stir through thoroughly and cook for 10 minutes. Stir in the cooked rice. Taste for seasoning, add as much chopped fresh parsley and coriander as you like even though it’s not traditional, and serve piping hot with some Mrs Balls’ chutney on the side.
Cook’s Tip: I like to stir in a big spoonful of home-made chilli tomato sauce. Many smoorsnoek recipes add chopped chilli but I prefer mine without. And if you want to take your smoorsnoek to a completely new level, season it with a dash of Thai fish sauce.
Typically of all regional dishes, the way you prefer your smoorsnoek is a profoundly personal thing. I like to think that my addition of a healthy dollop of home-made chilli tomato sauce and judicious amounts of hot water is what makes my smoorsnoek die beste.
The best way to learn to make something perfectly is to put it on a catering menu in such large quantities that you can’t afford to fail. While I wouldn’t necessarily recommend this method to anyone else, it appears to be one that works for me.
I’ve made gravlax – cured salmon – before, but only in small quantities, when I was living and working in London. Faced with the prospect recently of serving it to 20 guests at a very special dinner party, I knew I’d better get my research and methods straight before attempting to cure upwards of 2 kgs of very expensive fish. Salmon is not native to these waters, and imported fresh Norwegian salmon will set you back anything from R185 – R245 per kilo. At that price, failure is not even an option.
Some nimble Googling brought me to this recipe: The best gravlax recipe on the internet. I don’t know why we sometimes feel the need for someone to hold our hand, even when we really do know what we’re doing, but there you are – I found some solace in this recipe.
What is gravlax? Simply put, it’s fresh salmon, layered with salt, sugar and dill, wrapped, chilled and weighted for three days, before being served in thin slices with a traditional sweet mustard sauce. The sugar, salt and dill cure the salmon and make it more appetising than simply serving it raw. Some recipes add vodka, schnapps or whiskey, beetroot and other herbs, but I like the original version best.
Gravlax is extremely simple to make. You need fresh fish, you need sugar and salt, and you need dill. That’s it. Perhaps it’s the very simplicity of the process that makes people jittery about trying to cure salmon at home -who knows? The results are so transportingly delicious I’d really recommend you try it at least once. I haven’t yet attempted this method with some of our local fish, but it’s on my list of ‘must-makes’ in the near future. I imagine yellowtail, kingklip and Cape salmon might work quite well with a similar cure. I shall investigate and duly report back with the results!
The addition of the chopped lime in this recipe was new to me, but I happily followed the instructions to the letter. Make sure that none of the lime touches the fish anywhere, as this will ‘cook’ those parts of the fish and turn it opaque, which you really do not want in gravlax.
I used Maldon sea salt flakes that I ground down to a finer flake with pestle and mortar – do use the best and purest sea salt salt you can afford. I wouldn’t go for fine, iodised salt in this recipe, as the iodine has a nasty bitter aftertaste to it that might spoil your fish. Also, I used white sugar, as brown sugar might discolour the fish.
Ask for your salmon fillets to be pinned (all bones removed) and with the skin on. Use spankingly fresh fish and proceed as follows: Place one fillet skin down on a length of clingfilm. Sprinkle the salt and sugar all the way down the centre, not including the thinner sides, as this will overcure the thinner parts of the fish. (See photo 2 below). Chop fresh dill very finely and cover surface of both fillets thoroughly. For 2 kgs of fish, I used 4 x 50g punnets of dill.
Take three paper thin slices of fresh lime and chop finely. Layer on top of the dill on one fillet only, making sure no parts of the fish is exposed to the lime. Sandwich the two fillets together and press down firmly. Remove and discard any bits of the cure mix that have fallen out. Wrap salmon very tightly in three layers of clingfilm.
Now place salmon in a container just big enough to hold it snugly, and at least 3cm deep – a Tupperware is perfect. Place a smaller lid that fits inside the Tupperware on top of the salmon and put some cans of beans, tomatoes etc on top of the lid to act as weight. Leave in the fridge for 3 days, turning once or twice a day. Do not discard any of the liquid that gathers inside the wrapping as this liquid is what cures the fish.
When ready to serve, unwrap, pat dry and wipe off the excess dill. Use a very sharp chef’s knife to slice thinly on the diagonal and serve with a garnish of marinated cucumber, saladings and pretty micro herbs. I made a light vinaigrette of tangerine and lime juice with olive oil, honey, salt and pepper and a little Dijon mustard to spoon over the gravlax and salad before serving on chilled plates, as below:
1. Ingredients for gravlax: salmon, fresh dill, paper-thin slices of fresh lime, sea salt and sugar
2. Mix sugar and sea salt and sprinkle all the way down the centre of the fillets
3. Chop fresh dill finely and cover both fillets evenly
5. Sandwich the two fillets and press firmly together6. Remove any of the cure mixture that has fallen out and discard7. Wrap salmon very tightly in about 3 layers of clingfilm
Now place salmon in a container just big enough to hold it snugly, and at least 3cm deep – a Tupperware is perfect. Place a smaller lid on top of the salmon and put some cans of beans, tomatoes etc on top to act as weight. Leave in the fridge for 3 days, turning once or twice a day. Do not discard any of the liquid that gathers inside the wrapping as this liquid is what cures the fish.
When ready to serve, unwrap, pat dry and wipe off the excess dill. Use a very sharp chef’s knife to slice thinly on the diagonal and serve with a garnish of marinated cucumber, saladings and pretty micro herbs. I made a light vinaigrette of tangerine and lime juice with olive oil, honey, salt and pepper and a little Dijon mustard to spoon over the gravlax and salad before serving on chilled plates, as below:
Gravlax with marinated cucumber, saladings and micro herbs.
Quince trees were a dime a dozen in the backyards of the little Freestate dorp I grew up in, except ours, for some reason. My mom had a sizeable backyard orchard with apricots, plums, peaches, apples and even a walnut tree, but no quince. Nada. Niks, Zero. And she was always somewhat evasive when I asked her about it.
Perhaps it’s because quinces are often considered not easy to cook properly, and they are certainly not easy to love. If you’ve ever winced at the gritty texture of baked quinces between your teeth, or shuddered at the sickly sweet, gloopy pulp of overcooked ones, you might understand why my mom simply chose to give quinces a wide berth. There must have been quince-related trauma at some point.
I’ve had my fair share of personal quince disasters, and here it is perhaps wise to caution readers that if you’ve never made a recipe before, it is generally not a great idea to start with 10kg of the ingredient for it. Let that just lie there.
There are a number of ways to cook quinces in savoury ways, too. One happy upshot of posting the photos for this dish on Twitter and Facebook were the conversations that ensued. I ended up having a lovely chat with two Pakistani food bloggers on Twitter, one of whom told me about the lavish use of quinces in Kashmiri cooking. She’s promised to send me recipes for spicy quince dishes that I in turn promised to reblog here. I’ve also been promised some egte boerekos quince recipes on Facebook, which I shall post here as soon as I’ve tried them.
This has all helped to make me like quinces considerably more than before, I must say.
Last week I timidly purchased three medium sized quinces from the local farmers’ market. They were small enough not to put the fear of Quincedom into me, so I decided to try my hand at one of Maggie Beer’s recipes from her famed and fabulous cookbook Maggie’s Harvest. Maggie is a renowned Australian cook and food writer and if there’s one thing she knows about, it’s quinces. I only had 3 instead of the 6 required for her recipe, so I halved all her original quantities, and added the spices. I also baked the quinces in the oven rather than potroasting them on top of the stove, and will definitely lessen the amount of sugar to 3/4, if not 1/2 of Maggie Beer’s recipe. I give my adapted recipe below. It’s so easy, and so confoundingly delicious, you’ll wonder why you’ve never made it before.
Spiced quinces ready to go into the oven for 5 hours
Perfect Oven Baked Spiced Quinces
The quinces keep well in the fridge for a week or two in a Tupperware or airtight container.
2. Wash 6 medium quinces, halve or quarter them lengthways with peel on and pips in, and place in an ovenproof dish just large enough to fit the quinces snugly.
3. Pour over 3 – 4 cups sugar, dependly how sweet you like it. 4 cups will be very, very sweet. Pour over 4 cups (1 l) water.
4. Scatter over 4 cloves, 3 star anise, 2 cinnamon sticks, 4 cardamom pods and 3-4 thin slices fresh ginger. Cover tightly with foil or the lid of the dish and bake at 160 C for 5 hours. You might like to check halfway through and add a cup or two of water if it’s running dry.
5. Remove from oven and serve hot or cold with thick, cold cream, or alongside roast pork, lamb or game as a relish.
Yayy! You’ve learnt how to make baked spiced quinces!
Cook’s Tip: You might like to try adding 3 fresh bay leaves and a pinch of grated nutmeg to the spices.
The first step to making a meltingly tender, fall-off-the-bone lamb shoulder is obvious: find a decent butcher, who won’t sell you feedlot lamb. This recipe relies on minimal seasoning and precious little effort from the cook’s side, since all the lovely rich and herbal flavours infused in your free-range lamb will come to the fore with tender, slow and loooong cooking. The key is low, low heat and very long cooking in a closed roasting dish. ( Have some Le Creusets? Now’s your time to use them.) Use bone-in lamb, since that’s where a lot of the flavour comes from, and as the bone heats up, it helps to cook the meat evenly from inside too.
Yesterday I tried the recipe at 20 C higher temperature than usual, simply because I wanted to check the results. It was a bit less tender than when cooked at 140 C – about 20% – so I would recommend that you stick to 140 C and no more. Remember that fan-driven ovens are generally 10 degrees hotter, so compensate by turning your fan oven 10 C lower than the recipe requires. Or turn the fan off.
Apart from the obvious benefits of it being a ridiculously easy recipe, this dish perfumes the house with a such a maddening aroma of pure essence of lamb, you will find yourself checking its progress in the oven more often than you need to. But do check in from time to time, though, just to make sure there’s always at least 2 cm of liquid in the bottom of the roaster. This is slowly going to turn into one of the most delicious gravies you will ever have in your life.
The shoulder I cooked was about 2,8 kg and fed 8 people. Remember that the meat will lose up to 25% of its volume while cooking.
Shoulder of lamb ready for the oven
Slow-roasted shoulder of lamb
Serves 8 -10
Ingredients:
2.8 kg shoulder of lamb, prepared with excess fat removed (ask your butcher to chine the bones for you)
3 T (45 ml) brown or white vinegar
1 T (15 ml) Maldon salt or sea salt
2 T (30 ml) caramel sugar (the light golden one, not the sticky treacly one)
1 T (15 ml) barbecue spice
1 t (5 ml) mixed spice
1 whole lemon, chopped into 8 pieces
2 medium onions, chopped into large chunks
2 large carrots, peeled and cut into large chunks
3-4 large, whole garlic cloves
fresh thyme and rosemary sprigs
6 fresh bay leaves
pepper
Method:
1. Turn the oven on to 140 C. No need to preheat, as long as the meat is at room temperature. Place the lamb in a lidded oven roaster (we all use them for braais, the cheap ones with dimples in the lid and bottom, remember?) and sprinkle all over with the vinegar. Make sure to rub it in.
2. Grind the salt flakes, sugar and barbecue spice together and rub all over the meat, covering the whole surface. Put the lemon, garlic and all the vegetables around the lamb, arrange the herbs on top and pour 2 cups of water around the lamb. Season liberally with black pepper, put the lid on, and place in the oven at 140 C for 8 hours.
Remember to check the meat from time to time, to make sure there is at least 2 cm of liquid in the bottom. You can turn the lamb halfway through the cooking process, but no more, as it will fall apart.
Remove the lid for the last 30 minutes of cooking to brown lamb beautifully.
That’s it. You have made slow-roast lamb, congratulations!
Cook’s Tip: You can use leg of lamb of this, on the bone, but cook for about 4-5 hours.
GRAVY: scoop out the vegetables from the cooking juices and rapidly reduce the jus to concentrate the flavour. Season to taste and serve with lots of roast potatoes!
Plaatkoekies are the boerekos version of American breakfast pancakes. Except they are about a million times better, of course, and we don’t have them only for breakfast, but for brunch, teatime and supper too. In fact, plaatkoekies make one of the finest Sunday suppers any child could wish for – served still hot from the pan, drowned in melting butter and capped with a peak of grated yellow cheese under a sludge of runny honey. Or golden syrup, straight out of the Tate and Lyle’s tin, with all its wickedly sweet, burnt-sugar, caramelly goodness.
I am not sure exactly which strain of our culinary heritage we have to thank for flapjacks – which is what plaatkoekies are also called – and have more than a suspicion that they could be of Irish or Scottish origin. There was a time when the Afrikaners, Scots and Irish rather enthusiastically embraced one another through marriage and other alliances, no doubt largely to annoy the English, whom everyone agreed were Thoroughly Bad. Lucky for us, political tensions eventually eased, by which time flapjacks had arrived in our kitchens to stay.
This recipe is from my Ouma Hettie, and has been in use in its given form for over 70 years. That is one seriously tried and tested recipe, my friend. I found it in my mom’s last remaining handwritten recipe book and was stunned by how good it was the first time I made it. If you’ve only ever had flapjacks made from ready-mixes sold in packets, you’ve been conned. Correct this sad state of affairs immediately by getting some eggs, flour and milk, and whipping up a proper batter for this real makoya of flapjacks.
Cook’s tip: for the best results, follow the recipe below exactly, and that means adding the milk and oil slowly, bit by bit, rather than all in one go. When I tried the latter method in order to speed things up – that modern malaise of always having to speed everything up – the flapjacks were still damn tasty, but lacked that ‘OMG I can’t believe what I’ve just tasted’ amazingness that the old-fashioned method delivers.
These plaatkoekies deserve to take centre place at your next lazy weekend brunch. Serve with crème fraîche, honey, toasted almond flakes and fresh banana, or salty, sticky chipolatas, bacon and maple syrup, or whipped mascarpone and smoked salmon trout if you want to show off. Alternatively, just load them up with butter, grated cheese and syrup and off you go to food heaven.
Ouma Hettie se Plaatkoekies – Flapjacks
Makes about 18-20 flapjacks, enough for 4-6 people.
The batter will keep for up to one day in the refrigerator.
Ingredients:
2 cups (350g) cake flour, unsifted
½ t (2,5 ml) salt
1 T (15 ml) baking powder
3 T (45 ml) sugar
1 egg
1 ¾ cups (430 ml) milk
¼ cup (60 ml) sunflower oil
Extra oil for baking
Method:
Sift dry ingredients together in large mixing bowl or your blender’s bowl.
Beat the egg very well with only 1 cup (250 ml) of the milk, until completely smooth. Add to dry ingredients and beat for exactly one minute – no less, no more.
Now add the remainder of the milk slowly, while the beater is still running, and then the oil, 1 T (15 ml) at a time. Beat the batter for exactly one minute after all the ingredients have been added, and then let stand for 30 minutes. The batter can also now be stored in the refrigerator for up to 24 hours – beat lightly for 30 seconds before using.
Heat 3 T (45 ml) oil in a heavy-bottomed frying pan over medium heat. When the oil is hot, pour out excess oil into a heat-resistant bowl to use again later. Leave only a thin film of oil coating the bottom of the pan and wipe lightly with bunched-up absorbent kitchen paper.
Ladle or pour spoonfuls of batter into the hot pan and bake without turning until small holes form in the top of the flapjacks. Flip over immediately, using a metal spatula.
Bake until golden brown on both sides, remove from pan and keep warm while you use up the rest of the batter.
Wipe the bottom of the pan with kitchen paper lightly dipped in oil before baking each fresh batch of flapjacks.
COOK’S TIP: For best results, don’t turn the heat too high and keep toggling the heat so that the flapjacks don’t scorch on the outside while remaining uncooked on the inside. Practise makes perfect! Keep flapjacks warm in a large metal oven tray at 100 C, and don’t stack them on top of each other, so they don’t go soggy. Best eaten as soon as you’ve prepared them.
Plaatkoekies drowned in melting butter and syrup or honey – best Sunday supper
Of course many other boboties exist, many of them are spectacularly good, but this recipe comes from my sister-in-law and it’s truly the best I’ve ever made. Yet.
Because left to my own devices, I can wreak utter havoc upon bobotie like you can’t believe. I have done so many times up till now, and would have continued, had it not been for my sister-in-law’s timely intervention. I once even had the gumption to serve the abomination I’d created to British dinner guests in London many moons ago, calling it ‘the pride of South African cuisine’.
(They never did become bosom friends really and left rather hurriedly that night, as I recall.)
In my ignorance, I’d always followed an anecdotal recipe from a C. Louis Leipoldt book, with instructions to ‘knead’ the raw meat with the seasonings before baking it in the savoury custard. Time and time again, I’d end up with something that resembled not bobotie so much as a tortoise that had died after prolonged suffering in a sea of curdled grey and yellow bile. And tasted more or the less the same. While Leipoldt’s might have been an interesting historical anecdote, it was horrible food.
Bobotie is an interesting dish, curious not only for its unusual marriage of sweet, savoury, meaty, fruity, custardy, crumbly and spicy components, but also because of its sheer divisiveness. If ever a food war would erupt in South Africa, the Bobotie Wars would be it. Some insist on calling it ‘the national dish of South Africa’, while some (such as I) scoff derisively, saying ‘That’s ludicrous, it’s a Southern Cape regional speciality!’
Some people add grated apple and many add raisins (I’d rather starve than eat raisins in my meatloaf, thank you) and once I even rather unexpectedly got myself embroiled in quite a sensational fight with a highly respected cookery teacher, who almost physically attacked me in front of her students because I refused to concur that mashed banana did, indeed, belong in an ‘official national bobotie recipe’. (Let me just hasten to add the screaming and cussing that day emanated from only one source, and it wasn’t me…)
It’s wasn’t the banana so much that stuck in my craw, as the sheer arrogance of decreeing a national recipe of any kind, but there you go: it seems that bobotie drives people a little bonkers. Which is odd, because it’s the essence of simplicity, really, and the closest that traditional boerekos comes to fast food since it’s usually made from cooked mince that is covered in custard, and then baked for only half an hour.
Ostensibly a spiced meatloaf baked in a savoury custard to serve as a homely supper dish with some accompaniments, its precise pedigree has never been properly and conclusively established. It remains a matter of conjecture, folklore, some rather loose and fast historical research, and huge chunks of sentiment. Some time ago a ‘food historian’ popped up out of nowhere with her thesis on boerekos, instantly setting the cat among the pigeons by roundly refuting most current beliefs – and respected research – about traditional local cuisine at large, and this recipe in particular. In doing so, she ruffled quite a few feathers to say nothing of bruising egos and caused considerable harm in intercultural, cross-cuisinal relations.
The dust still hasn’t quite settled, as can be seen on the comments section of this article published by journalist and food writer Johan Liebenberg, as counter-refutation to the historian’s original refutation: Boerekos
There have also been many lively, lighthearted but very opinionated discussions about the egte, opregte bobotie recipe on my Facebook wall. And so it goes. For me bobotie was always a novelty, something my mother made to enliven the tedium of the endless roasts my father required, and I was particularly fond of the little accompaniments served with it: thinly sliced fresh banana dusted with desiccated coconut, Mrs Balls’ peach chutney, and a sharp tomato and onion sambal generously seasoned with white pepper and white vinegar. I’ve had good boboties and I’ve had bad boboties. I’m hardly the world expert on bobotie, as demonstrated above, but on one thing I will not budge – no raisins in my bobotie. Ever.
Also, beware ready-made boboties sold in supermarkets. Rumour has it they may contain minced cat and other indigestibles, and certainly always too much turmeric which renders it bitter. Better off to buy some lovely fresh mince, and make your own.
Here’s the recipe.
(Note: A kilo of mince feeds my two teenagers amply with a decent-sized portion left over for their dad, although you might have a better outcome with a bigger ratio of adult eaters to teens, who as we know easily consume their own bodyweight in food daily. Cooked bobotie without the custard also freezes well, so you could split the quantity between several smaller containers and freeze what you don’t need immediately. Defrost completely before adding custard, and bake as usual.)
Doreen de Waal’s legendary best-ever Bobotie
Serves 6-8
Ingredients:
2 medium onions, peeled and very finely chopped
2 t (30 ml) oil or butter
1 kg lean beef mince (I like to use a mixture of beef and ostrich)
1 – 3 T (15 – 45 ml) mild curry powder (bobotie is not meant to be fiery or too strongly spiced, but I like using 3 T of La Motte’s curry spice mix)
1 T (15 ml) sugar
2 t (10 ml) salt
1/2 t (2.5 ml) ground white pepper
1/2 T (7.5ml) turmeric
2 T (30 ml) fresh lemon juice or vinegar
4 T (60 ml) Mrs Balls’ chutney
1/2 cup (125 ml) raisins soaked in warm water for at least 45 minutes, then drained (I’ll turn my head the other way while you add this as I find it abhorrent, but some love it)
2 thick slices sturdy white bread, crusts trimmed
1 cup (250 ml) milk
2 eggs
pinch of turmeric, salt and pepper to season custard
4 fresh bay or lemon leaves
Method:
1. Heat the oil in a large, heavy-bottomed pot and cook the finely chopped onion over medium heat for 5-7 minutes, until softened and translucent.
2. Add the meat and turn the heat up, stirring briskly to ‘crumble’ the meat and brown it without letting clumps form.
3. Add all the curry powder, sugar, salt, pepper, turmeric, vinegar or lemon juice and chutney, and stir through. Add sufficient water to reach the top of the mixture in the pot, and proceed to cook vigorously for at least 20-25 minutes, until the sauce has thickened and the meat has a lovely loose, granular texture. (This is my sister-in-law’s crucially important tip.) Stir well.
4. Preheat the oven to 180 C and grease the inside of a large baking dish with softened butter. Set aside until needed.
5. While the meat is cooking, break the bread into chunks using your fingertips, and place in a shallow dish. Pour over all the milk, and let stand until the bread has absorbed as much of the milk as it can. Place a sieve over a bowl, tip the bread and the milk into it, and press against the soaked bread with a spoon to extract as much liquid as possible. Don’t discard the drained milk – you’re going to use that for the custard later.
6. If you’re using raisins, now is the time to stir them into your cooked bobotie base until evenly spread throughout the mixture. Do the same with the soaked, drained bread, making sure it disperses completely into the meat – no white flecks allowed. The bobotie police will come for you.
7. Spoon the bobotie base into a large baking dish and smooth with the back of a large spoon.
8. Beat the eggs until completely smooth, whisk in the milk, adding the pinch of turmeric, salt and pepper, and pour carefully over the bobotie base. Push the bay or lemon leaves upright into the bobotie and bake at 180 C until golden brown and nicely set on top, about 30 – 40 minutes. Remove and let stand for 15 minutes at least, before serving with rice, sambals and chutney.
Best bobotie by far! Photo courtesy Johan Liebenberg
Raisin bread toast with honeyed figs and ricotta. Photo Sean Calitz, from my cookbook Luscious Vegetarian, published by RHS
A while ago I gave a recipe for raisin bread toast with honey figs and ricotta, and promised a post on making ricotta. It really couldn’t be easier and since it’s not always to be found in the shops when you most need it, why not give it a bash at home?
Ricotta is a very mild-tasting, soft white cheese with a curd-like texture. Mixed with some flour, seasoning and beaten egg it makes yummy fritters to drench in honey for a sweet, or use it in combination with vegetables as filling in savoury tarts and pastries. Altogether more rich and decadent, use ricotta to make pashka with preserved fruits, honey and nuts, or simply stir some into a buttermilk batter for breakfast pancakes.
Ricotta is extremely easy to make provided you use a thermometer. Muslin can be tricky to find, so I use a clean, lightly-rinsed J-cloth instead to line the strainer. Since it’s low fat, it’s a healthy treat too.
Makes about 4 cups (1 litre).
Ingredients:
1.9 litres fresh low-fat cow or goat’s milk, preferably organic
1 litre buttermilk
Method:
Place a large strainer or fine-holed colander in the sink and line with dampened muslin or a rinsed clean J-cloth.
Take a large stainless steel pot – about 6 litre capacity – and gently heat the milk to 90 degrees Celsius.
Remove from the heat and whisk in the buttermilk. Let it stand. After a while the whey will start separating from the curd. After 10-15 minutes, when curds and whey have completely separated, pour it into the lined strainer and leave to drain for about an hour or two. (If you don’t want to let the whey go to waste, position the strainer over a bowl, and use the resultant catch in your smoothies. Will keep in the fridge up to 4 days.)
Transfer ricotta to an airtight, spotlessly clean container and refrigerate until needed. Use within three days.
Home-made ricotta photo by Sean Calitz courtesy RHS
This recipe originally appeared in my cookbook Relish – Easy sauces, seasonings and condiments to make at home, published in 2012 by Random House Struik
