Holiday Feast

We've just returned from ‘n wonderful 5 day break in Ballito with 2 dear friends. We had the most incredible weather while here in Joburg winter has definitely arrived!

For now I’m only posting photos of some of our holiday creations. In time I might put up some of the recipes as well.

I tried to keep to food photos but I just had to include some holiday photos as well! I hope that they give you a bit of a “behind the scenes” look into the atmosphere and spirit in which these dishes were created!

Enjoy!

The South African's benchmark supper -
tjops & wors, braaibroodjies (cheese & tomato grilled sandwiches)
& salad

Egg & Mushroom toast with leftovers for breakfast

Bread in the making

Sun-dried tomato and cheddar bread

Grilling the vegetables

Grilled vegetables with fresh herbs and balsamic vinegar

If this has you curious see Mediterranean vegetables over the coals

BBQ chicken

Creamy scrambled eggs with cheddar
and crispy bacon drizzled with  syrup

No comment.

Girls' turn to prepare supper

Karmi & Karlien

Potato salad with a tomato twist

Sweet potato tart

Brunch at the seaside

Pork bangers in a ginger beer sauce 

Peri-Peri prawns

Lunch time

Sun-dried tomatoes & feta chicken pockets

Rump steak. Medium.

Creamed spinach pie

L: Creamed spinach pie
M: Zucchini, onion and chili cakes
R: Honey & Mustard Pork Roast

This was probably the last summer braai we had for the season. I guess it's time to turn our attention to soups and stews now!


Cheers

Mediterranean vegetables over the coals

I love potato salad and I love braai broodjies…but sometimes you want something different, something fresh as a side dish with your braai.

I saw something on a Jamie Oliver show last week (I’ve never been the biggest Jamie fan but this looked so good that I decided to try it) which I adapted a bit to come up with this deliciously fresh & light but tasty Mediterranean vegetable salad.

Here is how it unfolded:

Mise en Place

I first made the dressing to drizzle over the salad later on. I wanted to give the flavours from all the fresh herbs time to release into the dressing which is why I did this first.

Use whatever herbs you like, I used the herbs that I had available which were parsley, basil, chives and dill – proud to say that most of them come from my own garden!

I finely chopped the herbs as well as a clove of garlic. In a mixing bowl I added olive oil and balsamic vinegar to the herbs, gave it a good stir and left it to rest while I started with the vegetables.

Chopped herbs

In hindsight I think something with a bit of a kick would be a great addition to the dressing. Dried chili flakes perhaps.

The vegetables I used were: 1 large aubergine, a couple of baby marrows, a few patty pans, a robot of sweet peppers and 2 red onions.

I cut the patty pans in half, sliced the baby marrows into strips (cut lengthwise about 4-5mm thick), sliced the aubergine into roughly 1cm discs and finally sliced the onions into slightly thicker discs than the aubergine.

Next step is to roast these over the coals.

So wood or charcoal?

It much easier to manage the heat and to get a consistent heat across the grill with charcoal so it’s definitely the easier option.

I had a wood fire and even though it was difficult to control the heat and to spread the heat evenly underneath the veggies that smoky taste that the wood fire gives to the vegetables is worth it! If you are planning to still braai your meat on the same fire you’ll need some serious hardehout that will last long enough to roast the vegetables and the meat – just something to keep in mind.

I’ll get to the sweet peppers in a minute but all the other vegetables should be roasted until they start turning brown on the outside by which time they should be semi-cooked. I drizzled some olive oil over the aubergine cutlets after every turn to avoid them drying out too much.

The peppers go on the grill whole as they are. Turn them every few minutes and turn them upright every now and again as well to also roast the bottom and top of the peppers. If they turn charcoal black on the outside don’t worry you didn’t overdo it, that is actually what you want!

An unusual sight...a braai with no meat?

My heat was a little bit low so on the photo mine doesn’t look black but you can see that the outside skins started to come off. When your peppers are charcoaled on the outside I assure you the skins are loose and you can take them off the heat.

Leave them to cool for a few minutes until you can handle them with your hands. Now peel of the skins and you are left with just the fleshy part. Then cut them open and remove the stem and all the seeds and slice them into strips.

Peeling off the pepper skins

Toss all the vegetables into a serving bowl mixing in the dressing prepared earlier. You can also add salt, pepper or any other spices keeping in mind that none of the vegetables have been salted so far.

Adding the salad dressing

Get your hands dirty!

This is perfect served at room temperature so I put it aside at this point and started with the meat. By the time the meat was finished the salad had enough time to cool off and to mix with the herbs.

The colours...

A succulent medium rib-eye steak with sweet mustard sauce accompanied by the colourful veggies

This is actually a perfect summer dish and even though it feels like winter is upon us there might still be a couple of sunny days left to serve this with your next braai!

COFFEE TASTING

Because I was the one who stumbled upon the Joburg Coffee Club, I (Christiaan’s wife) have the honour to share our caffeine experience.

Hosted by Russell Hobbs, this coffee tasting was presented by the Bean There Coffee Company at the Good Food Studio. But first, a bit more information about Bean There and the Good Food Studio.

According to their website, the Bean There Coffee Company acquires, through direct fair trade, the world’s finest single origin coffee, which is hand-roasted to produce an exclusive optimal roast. A few facts about the company:

• They only use single origin coffee - the coffee is not blended which means that they have to get great quality coffee that is great on its own, because it can’t be fixed by blending it with other coffee.
• The company believes in direct fair trade, which means that the pay the farmers a fair price for their coffee, no matter what happens on the market.

The Good Food Studio is situated at the Pick n Pay on Nicol. In my opinion the studio is a stunning venue for any food event and the décor is fresh and interesting. Upon arrival at the coffee tasting we received a cup of delicious cappuccino and some tasty snacks. Local musicians Michael and Derrick entertained the guests with their melodic African tunes in the background and the studio was already buzzing with people.

Jonathan Robinson form Bean There gave some background info about the coffee company and then we tasted a Tanzanian Coffee and a coffee from Rwanda. As with wine tasting, we first had to smell the aroma of the coffee. If I had to be honest I couldn’t really smell anything specific, except of course coffee. But it was still interesting to smell and taste this special African coffee.  After the tasting there was a lucky draw where you could win Russell Hobbs coffee machines, but unfortunately we didn’t win anything! The night ended with a delicious coffee tiramisu.

All in all we thoroughly enjoyed the evening but we would’ve liked a bit more education about the coffees, what you are supposed to smell, taste, and what the main differences are etc. But I will definitely make a point of it to rather buy African coffee than coffees imported from overseas.

Learn more about the different companies involved at:

www.beanthere.co.za

www.picknpay.co.za/picknpay/content/en/about-jhb

www.joburgcoffeeclub.co.za

Karlien

Dinner Time

I'm sure a lot of you would agree that there is just not enough time during the week to prepare something special or to even consider plating the dish that you've just tossed together from whatever you could find in the fridge.

So this should sound familiar...you get home after work and you throw something in the pan, scan the fridge for some veggies, pop potatoes, rice or pasta in a pot....throw it all on a plate and make yourself comfortable on the coach.

Hey, I'm not judging! Most nights in our house aren't much different.

But tonight I decided - screw that!

So I also started by scanning the fridge to see what I have at my disposal. Chicken fillets, green beans, carrots, and rice. Doesn't sound much different to the average mediocre weeknight meal does it?
Oh, I also had a few slices of sandwich ham, tomato jam I bought in Parys last weekend and a piece of leftover puff pastry.

Here's what I did with it:

If you decide to follow this recipe, I added a few extra comments in blue

I deboned the chicken fillets and butterflied them. Then added some salt to both sides of each fillet and a bit of mustard to the inside of each fillet. I also had a little bit of sesame seeds so I sprinkled them on the outside of the fillets.

Next I sautéed some finely chopped onions and browned the chicken fillets on the outside using the same pan. They were still going into the oven later on so no need to cook them at this point.

This is a good time to pre-heat your oven to 180 degrees celcius and to get some water boiling for the rice.

In the meantime I rolled out the puff pastry so that I had enough to wrap the chicken fillets. I only had a small piece of pastry to work with but my plan wasn't to make chicken pie so I didn't need a lot anyway. I wanted a thin layer of pastry to wrap around each fillet just for that rich salty taste that puff pastry brings to the party.

I opened the fillets again and added the ham, onions and a spoon of tomato jam to the inside of each.

I folded them in half again and wrapped a piece of pastry around each fillet.

To prevent the pastry from drying out too much in the oven I painted the outside with a bit of milk and popped them into the oven.

I must admit I don't know how long they were in the oven, I just watched them carefully and took them out once the pastry was golden brown. Probably about 20 minutes.

With the chicken in the oven and the rice simmering it was time for the veggies. I blanched the green beans first and then the carrots.

In plain English: add the veggies to a pot of boiling salty water. When you add the veggies the water obviously cools down, as soon as it starts boiling again take it off the heat, toss it in a colander and rinse under cold water.

I then cooked them in "unsalted" water for a couple of minutes.

I wanted the carrots a bit sweeter but I also wanted to keep the meal "relatively" healthy so I only took 1 tablespoon of sugar and 1 tablespoon of butter and melted it in a pot to form a syrup. In goes the carrots which simmers on a low heat in the syrup for about 10 minutes.

All together it probably took about 50 minutes. Not much longer than the preparation time for any other meal hey...

I could sit through Masterchef Australia without feeling ashamed about the food I have on my lap!

Joburg Coffee Club

My wife came across this website last week. We immediately booked ourselves 2 seats!

Go and look at the link and come and join us for a coffee tasting – after all it’s free!

http://www.joburgcoffeeclub.co.za/events

I'll be sure to let you know how it was afterwards!

Birthday Weekend…No jokes.

Friday was my birthday (yes I’ve heard all the April Fool’s day jokes) and our dear friend Lia organised their family’s river house on the Vaal river for a weekend getaway to celebrate!

She was also kind enough to dedicate her Friday post on her blog to my birthday!

http://diditellulove.blogspot.com/2011/04/christiaans-birthday.html

Friday afternoon we packed the car joined up with the rest of the clan and headed out of the city for the weekend.

We knew we would arrive well after dark so we stopped for some take away pizza on the way. On arrival, it wasn’t long before the corks popped and we started the weekend with pizza and wine!

Saturday Morning

We took the dirt roads to Parys for a bit of antique shopping and lunch at Hoi Polloi.

It’s quite a unique restaurant in most aspects. The décor, the atmosphere, the location (on top of a motor workshop) and obviously the food!

Hoi Polloi's stoep

Despite the interesting menu and after much debate we all ordered either the gourmet lamb burger with creamy minted tzatziki or the creamy white wine chicken pie.

Creamy white wine chicken pie

Gourmet lamb burger with mint tzatziki

Unfortunately the tzatziki had so much mint in it that the burger was later called the Colgate burger. I just realised again how easily too much herbs (especially the strong ones – coriander, basil, mint etc) can kill a wonderful dish.

The dough used for the pie was not the usual puff pastry type of dough, more like pizza dough. But pizza dough is baked with lots of cheese and fillings on top so it doesn’t dry out except for the outside crust. These “pie pots” were probably baked on their own and the pie filling poured in afterwards. The result was a VERY hard “pie pot”.

Despite this, I’ll probably go back there next time! It has a lovely atmosphere overlooking Parys’ main street and I think we just had bad luck with our limited 2 choices from the menu.

Saturday afternoon

It’s been a while since I made a lekker boerepot!

It takes about 4 hours to prepare and cook a potjie and one seldom has the time to sit and nurture a potjie for 3 hours. Except of course when you are away from home in the bush with not much else to do – then it’s the perfect time to make potjie!

Here’s a quick rundown of how I prepared this particular potjie:

-     -  First the meat went in (a few pieces at a time) with a bit of onions and garlic just to brown the meat. I used lamb shank and normal beef stew pieces.

-     -  Once brown I removed them and browned the next lot.

-     - I then put all the meat back in the potjie, added about half a bottle of Cab, a packet of sun-dried tomato cook-in-sauce & spices.

-     - I left the meat to simmer for about 1h30 in the sauce.

-     - Next was the new potatoes, carrots and onions and the bouquet garni (main flavour in it was rosemary). I didn’t stir the meat when adding the vegetables; I simply added them on top of the meat.

-      - With the vegetables I added a bit more sauce, this time another packet of the sun-dried tomato sauce, a can of peeled tomatoes, tomato jam and a bit of chutney.

-     - I left the potjie (with the meat still simmering and the vegetables steaming) for another hour before adding the softer vegetables – beans, baby marrows, mushrooms and mielies.

-     - The last stretch…Letting the softer vegetables steam in the pot until cooked – about 40 minutes.

-     - Then I stirred the pot for the first time, turned off the heat and left it to stand for a while before serving it with cooked rice.

Since a potjie takes hours it is advisable to have enough wine, good company and 5 dice to keep you occupied while the potjie slowly does its thing!

Just a last remark, I opened a bottle of Springfield Work of Time 2004 to complement the potjie – what a match! Complex enough for such a rich plate of food but still velvety and smooth.

Thank you to my father-in-law for leaving that bottle at my house a few weeks ago!

I would love to see some of your potjie recipes! If you would like to share your recipe with the rest of us please send it to me and I will post it on the blog.

To my friends - thank you for a wonderfully relaxing weekend and for the good laughs!

Cheers

Chris