CURING YOUR OWN BACON

With supermarket meat prices being as ridiculous as they are
over the holiday season I decided to buy a whole pig from a mate's
dad's butchery, Vrystaat Vleis in Welkom.

Apart from the fact that the price per kg is about a third of what
you'd pay at a supermarket or deli here in Joburg, the other nice
thing about it is that you can tell the butcher how you want the meat to
be cut, what you want to keep whole and what you want to 
hop up (excuse the pun).

So I asked oom Kallie to keep the pork belly whole so I

could make myself some yummy bacon.

I found so many recipes online and they all differed

quite a bit so I asked around on Twitter.

I was put in touch with Ammy from HomeCooks who
helped me out with a recipe.

The idea is that the salt-sugar cure draws out all the
moisture from the meat leaving you with a preserved piece
of meat that can be used over a period of time.

Here goes:

Ingredients for the cure:

1 cup of coarse koshering salt

1/2 cup of brown sugar

a few shredded bay leaves

2 tsp crushed black peppercorns

spices according to taste

This was for a 2kg-2.5kg pork belly, adjust according to the weight of your meat.

1) Cut the belly into manageable pieces (I divided my 2.5kg belly into 2 pieces)

2) Make the cure by mixing together all the above ingredients

3) Take about half of the cure and rub it into the meat especially into the cut surfaces (the raw meaty areas that are not covered with fat) to prevent mould.

4) Put it into a non-metal container preferably with a grid at the bottom (this prevents the meat from lying in the drawn out blood) and put it in the fridge.

5) After 24 hours drain off all the liquid, rub in some more of the cure,

turn the meat and put it back in the fridge.

6) Repeat for 4/5 days. The longer you cure it the more stable

(and more salty) the meat becomes.

7) Rinse the belly under cold water, pat dry with a cloth and

hang it in a cool spot with good air flow.

8) I built my own biltong maker (or in this case bacon maker) which helps to

speed up the drying process and keeps the flies out. If you don't have one,

I suggest you wrap the meat in cheese cloth before hanging it and perhaps put

a fan on it especially for the first day or two.

9) After a week my bacon was dry and firm and ready to use. If you are not using a biltong maker it might take a few days longer.

I've used it for canapes, on snack platters or as a replacement for pancetta

in pasta alla carbonara (see Fritz Brand's recipe here).

This stuff is absolutely brilliant! 

Try it, you know you have to. 

STARTING WITH A CLEAN PALATE

We are expecting our first born baby who hasn't yet

revealed if it prefers blue or pink.

My wife has a pregnancy app on her phone which after entering a few

things to determine the age of the baby, sends her a weekly update on

the development of the baby during that week. Flippin' amazing! 

So this morning I got the weekly update and even though the baby is just

10cm tall at this stage, it is already developing taste buds! How crazy is that? 

It took me about 26 years before I realised just how much I love

food and for my 'Taste buds' to develop! 

May our baby's taste buds develop a lot quicker than mine!

Looking forward to baking many birthday cakes and
coming up with smiley face meals.

Chocolate Blondies & white chocolate and berry splinters

This recipe scores highly on the results to kitchen time ratio!

Blondies are just the hot white chocolate cousins of normal chocolate brownies.

Firstly the white chocolate and berry splinters:

200g  good quality white chocolate (get it from a baking supply store)

50g unsalted cashew nuts (chopped)

50g dried berries

- Fill a pot with boiling water (halfway), put a large enough bowl over the top of pot and add the chocolate to the bowl

- Keep stirring the chocolate while it melts until you have smooth runny chocolate

- Pour this onto a sheet of baking paper 

- Distribute it evenly over the paper so that you have a layer of chocolate roughly 5mm thick

- Sprinkle the nuts and berries evenly over the chocolate and leave it to set

While the chocolate is setting, get going with the Blondies:

115g        butter

400g        light brown sugar

1.5 cups cake flour

1ml          salt

2.5ml       baking powder

100g        good quality white chocolate (roughly chopped)

100g        macadamia nuts (chopped)

2              eggs

5ml          vanilla essence

9 tsp        strawberry jam

icing sugar to decorate

- Pre-heat the oven to 160 degrees C

- Line a baking pan with baking paper and make sure the sides are also lined to the top

- Melt the butter and sugar in a pot over medium heat, the sugar doesn't need to completely dissolve

- In the mean time, sift the flour, salt and baking powder together

- Add the sugar mixture to the dried ingredients and mix well

- Next add the nuts, chocolate, eggs and vanilla and fold the whole lot into mixture

- This is supposed to be quite a dry mixture (don't expect a runny pancake batter) but I added a squirt of cream just to get the mixture to stick

- Spoon the mixture into the lined pan and add a drop of strawberry jam every couple of centimeters

- Let it bake for 55 minutes

- Once it has cooled off slightly remove it from the pan and cut it into squares

- Sift icing sugar over each piece and enjoy!

 Serve with fresh cherries dipped in the remaining melted white chocolate...

*The pretty pics were taken by my wife!

Red Rabbit

On Sunday we found ourselves in the new Nicolway shopping centre in Bryanston. All the restaurants are situated in one spot which creates a nice vibe and makes it easier to choose a spot. We walked passed Tasha's (which was packed as always) and a few others but it was the "French Cuisine" in the Red Rabbit logo that caught my attention.




They don't have their liquor license yet - this is the worst news for a restaurant owner but the best news for patrons! And seeing that this centre apparently has the biggest and best Woolworths Food in the country I was sure that they would have a good wine selection and I wasn't disappointed.


I had my first real carbonara pasta and it was rich and delicious!

If the following matters to you, then you will like this restaurant:

- A quality, well polished wine glass
- A waiter appearing out of nowhere with a corkscrew as soon as I put the bottle of wine on the table
- A bowl of ice and a wine cooler without having to ask for it
- Fresh ingredients
- Proper olive oil and balsamic vinegar on the table
- Friendly service
- And for a limited time...no corkage!


I have no affiliation to this restaurants and don't even know what the waiter's name was never mind the manager's! But it's been a while since I experienced really good service at a Joburg restaurant so I thought I'd give these guys a thumbs-up!

La Boqueria Mercat

This is one of many food markets in Barcelona but definitely the most famous as it is situated on the La Rambla (a long street packed with restaurants and flea markets and thousands of tourists).

There is just no way that I can describe it as well as the pictures do.

Why oh why do we export our best quality produce? Surely we also produce fruits and vegetables of this quality in SA, we just never get to see and taste it. The stuff we buy in South African supermarkets… ag shame.

Some of the photos were taken with my iPhone but the prettier ones were taken by my wife – you can see more of her work here happenings.

Enjoy!

¡Hola!

Hello blog. It’s been a while. Partly because we’ve just returned from an awesome long-awaited holiday in Spain and Portugal, but mostly because of my studies that have kept me occupied for the last couple of months.

But enough of that, I’m back (at least until the next round of exams…) and I have a lot to write about!

I expected quite a lot from the Spanish food world and I came back with mixed feelings. On the one hand the quality and freshness of the typical street café food impressed me but on the other hand I was expecting more creativity and "prettier" plates of food. I went to Barcelona with this elBulli/Ferran Adria idea of the food scene there but soon realised that the gastronomy I was expecting is only to be found in expensive restaurants and that there is a big gap between that and the food on offer in the typical street café.

Spanish restaurants vs local South African restaurants

The Spaniards can learn a thing or two from us when it comes to friendly service in a restaurant – they are an arrogant bunch and leave you with the impression that they are doing you a favour to serve you food & drink even though you are paying a good penny for it! After all if it wasn’t for tourism half of these establishments would have to shut their doors.

Another thumbs-up for our local restaurants is the food presentation and restaurant decoration & layout in general.

They of course have the cobblestone streets going for them! Be warned you pay between 20% - 40% extra if you sit at one of the few tables outside on the street. But who wants to sit inside a stuffy, cramped little bar if you could sit outside admiring the old buildings and taking in the atmosphere!

Nevertheless it was an interesting experience and not all bad!

Some interesting facts

It’s common for restaurants to have a Menu del Dia (menu of the day) that they serve over lunch time ranging between 8 and 14 euros. This includes a three course meal as well as a drink so it’s good value for money even in Rand-terms.

Seeing that lunch is generally from 14h00 to 16h00 during which most places close for siesta and dinner only after 21h00, it takes some getting used to!

We soon realised that it is quite normal to have a beer or a glass of wine with breakfast at 8h00 in the morning. I didn’t see this myself but apparently it gets even better in Portugal where they’d have a bottle of wine with breakfast, another with lunch and 2 with dinner…per person!

A traditional breakfast option in Spain is Churros & Chocolate. Churros is a salty, deep-fried pastry served with a cup of warm, think chocolate… How bad can your day possibly be if you start it this way!

Jamon

Pronounced “gammon”

Jamon, Jamon, Jamon! Every second shop in Spain sells it, every single restaurant serves it and any meat-loving South African can’t get enough of it! My favourite Jamon spot was the Museo del Jamon in Madrid. Just like we have a lot of baker-turned-coffee shop places in SA, this is a butchery-turned-bar – what an awesome idea! There are a few different outlets around Madrid but the one in Calle Mayor was by far my favourite. Always packed, barmen running around like crazy, and legs of jamon literally hanging wall to wall from top to bottom. They serve it simply as shavings of this delicate meat on plate, or with a slice of Emmentaler on a bocadello (bread roll). Just like that. No butter, no mayonnaise, no salad.

To read more about Jamon go here 

Tapas

One can’t write about Spain without writing about tapas! It’s a great way to sample lots of different foods but it’s also very smart of the restaurants (many of which are only about the size of a bedroom) because they prepare all the food during the day and don’t need a big kitchen to cope with the dinner service nor do they need waiters plus the they can accommodate more people per night because food is served immediately.

It also makes it easier for us non Spanish-speaking tourists because you can browse the menu with your eyes.

If you are travelling through Spain on a tight budget adopt this as your plan-of-action: When you are hungry, you simply drink. Let me explain – most of the bars/restaurants bring you a complimentary tapa/snack when you order a drink!

Some other dishes we had that I would simply have to find recipes for were their Salmorejo (a cold tomato soup), paella of course and some of the more unusual tapas. More about this in the next couple of weeks!

Buenas noches!

BOBOTIE PIES

Next up on the traditional South African menu is Bobotie. Below is my bobotie recipe but this time I used it as the filling for pies and not as a baked dish on its own.

Makes 18 small pies

Ingredients

1kg beef mince

2 onions, finely chopped

1 tbs salt

4 cloves garlic, finely chopped

1 tbs coriander seeds, finely crushed

6 cloves, finely crushed

1 tbs turmeric

2 tbs medium curry powder

6 bay leaves

20 ml lemon juice

100ml apricot jam

1 tbs brown vinegar

A handful of fresh thyme

2 cinnamon sticks

8 slices of white bread, crusts removed

1 glass of milk

3 rolls of puff pastry

100ml fruit chutney (if necessary)

You can add 80ml of raisins if you prefer, not everyone likes them which is why I left them out this time round.

- Brown the onions and garlic in a bit of oil.

- Add the mince to the pan and brown.

- Add the salt, coriander, cloves, curry powder, bay leaves, thyme, lemon juice, sugar and cinnamon and let it simmer for 5 minutes, stirring continuously.

- Add the apricot jam, vinegar and turmeric.

- Pour the milk into a bowl, dunk the bread slices in the milk for a second and add each of them to the pan.

- Keep stirring until the bread dissolves into the rest of the mixture. You should see the colour suddenly change after adding the bread giving it that typical yellowish bobtie colour.

- Turn off the heat and remove the thyme and bay leaves.

If you want to make a traditional bobotie dish – see below.

To make bobotie pies - you need to let the mixture cool down first. I made the bobotie the night before.

- Pre-heat the oven.

- Roll the pastry out on a floured surface or alternatively cover the surface with cling foil.

- The pastry shouldn’t be too thin; I’d say you can roll it out until the surface of the pastry is roughly 30% bigger than the original pastry roll.

- Spray a muffin tray with Spray & Cook.

- Use something with a round shape to cut circles out of the pastry which are big enough to cover the bottom and sides of each “cup” in the muffin tray.

- Use a smaller object to imprint a smaller circle in the middle of the bigger circle; this should be the same size as the bottom of each “cup”.

- Form radio-active pastry shapes as in the photo below.

- Scoop the bobotie filling into each pie, add a dollop of chutney and cover with a pastry lid.

- Beat an egg and brush the top of each pie with it.

- Bake until the outside crust is golden brown; this should take about 30-40 minutes.

To make the traditional bobotie dish - simply pour the mince mixture into an over dish, pour egg-wash over it and bake at 180 degrees until the mixture has set and there are no runny parts anymore. Egg-wash: 1 egg mixed with 100ml of milk.

Bobotie is normally served with yellow rice:

Ingredients

half a cup of raisins

2 cinnamon sticks

2 tsp turmeric

2 tbs brown sugar

1.5 cups basmati rice

1 tsp salt

1.5l water

- Bring the water and salt to the boil, add all the other ingredients.

- Turn down the heat and boil for 14 minutes

- Strain the liquid and remove the cinnamon sticks.

SKUIMPIES

Following on from my lasagne post I am still busy with typical South African dishes/treats/desserts. Like I said before, I know not all of these originated in South Africa but that's not what I'm after. I want to learn how to make the food I grew up with before delving back into all sorts of other weird and wonderful things the rest of the world has to offer. You can't make bobotie wontons if you don't know how to make a bobotie! And that is the point - basics first!

So…meringues. Or in Afrikaans, skuimpies.

I must admit I am not the biggest fan of meringues but for some reason most people absolutely love them. I got an e-mail from a dear friend (who married my best friend this weekend) asking if I would make skuimpies for her dessert table at the wedding. Having never made them before and knowing that this will be on display for all to see and captured on the wedding photos to forever remind me of it, the first thought I had was "At least I can buy them at P'nP if mine turns out to be a disaster".

But I'm glad to say they turned out perfectly and made their way onto the Zandberg wedding dessert table!

Here's my recipe:

Ingredients

3 eggs

2 cups castor sugar

60ml boiling water

30ml white wine vinegar

4ml baking powder

Method

Pre-heat the oven to 100 degrees

Cover 2 baking trays with heavy duty foil (shiny side on top)

Separate the eggs - you only need the egg whites

Add the egg whites, castor sugar, water and vinegar into a mixing bowl and mix on a fast speed until the mixture leaves a stiff peak when you swipe your finger through it.

Fold in the baking powder

Scoop into a  piping bag and squeeze it out onto the foil just like the tannie in the ice-cream van used to do with your soft-serve! You are allowed to play better background music though.

Bake them for about 3 hours, then turn off the oven but leave them in there overnight.

Keep them in an air-tight container especially in humid conditions like we're having in Joburg at the moment.

Traditional lasagne

I’m not quite sure where the inspiration came from but I’m on a mission to cover basic South African recipes. Lasagne, koeksisters, milk tart, bobotie, chicken pie, tongue... the stuff we grew up with – boerekos! The hearty type of dishes you’ll still find on the dinner tables on our farms, made with lots of love and lots of butter in old school kitchens by tannies with the flowery aprons.

Call it my little kook-en-geniet experiment.

This is not a quick middle-of-the-week-dinner-in-30-minutes-recipe! Rather something you make lots of over the weekend and freeze for those middle-of-the-week-dinners.

Serves 4-5

Ingredients:

500g lean beef mince

1 fresh tomato finely chopped

1 can peeled tomatoes (in thick sauce)

1 onion finely chopped

3 cloves garlic, peeled and finely chopped

125g (half a packet) of rindless streaky bacon chopped

2 tbs dried rosemary & thyme (or other herbs if you prefer)

2 tsp salt

1 tsp pepper

3 tbs chutney

1 ½ tbs brandy vinegar (or other dark vinegar)

3 tbs caramel sugar

1 bottle of red wine (80ml for the dish, the rest is for you!)

± 12 sheets of lasagna pasta (depending on the shape and size of the sheets and the dish)

1 cup grated cheese (I used half cheddar, half mozzarella)

Thick white sauce

1 cup of milk

90ml cake flour

75ml butter

1.    Pan fry the onion, garlic and bacon with a little olive oil over medium heat in a deep pan.

2.    Add the mince, salt, pepper and herbs and brown the mince.

3.    Add the chopped tomato and can of tomatoes as well as the red wine and let it simmer for  10 minutes over medium heat while you prepare the white sauce (see below). Give it a stir every now and again.

4.    Now add the chutney, vinegar and caramel sugar and let it simmer for another 15 minutes. You want to reduce the sauce quite a bit.

5.    Pre-heat your oven to 180°C in the meantime.

6.    Remove from the heat and mix in the white sauce.

7.    In an oven-proof dish, smear a thin layer of the white sauce on the bottom of the dish, put down the first layer of pasta sheets. Break them to fit so that you cover the whole surface.

8.    Cover with a layer of the mince mixture and top with a layer of the pasta sheets again.

9.    Repeat until the mixture is finished or until your dish is full. Be sure to end with a layer of the mince mixture, a layer of pasta on top will not cook thoroughly.

10.Don’t fill it right to the top, leave about 1cm open. The reason is that the pasta increases in volume and your lasagne will boil over if you didn’t leave enough space.

11.Cover with cheese and pop it in the oven for 45 minutes.

12.I served it with fresh sweet basil leaves for a bit of green.

Making the white sauce:

1.    Melt the butter in a pot

2.    Add the flour and whisk until it forms a smooth paste with no lumps

3.    Add the milk and keep stirring until it thickens.

4.    You’re looking for a custard-like consistency otherwise the lasagna will be too runny.

Note: If you need to make the sauce thicker, don’t just add flour to your white sauce. Rather pour out a bit of the sauce into another round dish, add the flour and whisk until all lumps are dissolved and then add it to the rest of the sauce.

This lasagne is really good if I may say so myself! Enjoy!

Basil Pesto

On our visit earlier this week I “pruned” my mom’s basil plants since they were going on holiday the next day and all that sweet green was just too good to waste. And then my own basil plants suddenly doubled in size this week. I think I finally found the perfect spot for them with the right sun/shade combination.

Point is, there was a lot of fresh basil to be had. I couldn’t find pine nuts yesterday (which most basil recipes call for) so decided to experiment with other nuts.

Ingredients

2 cups of packed basil leaves (packed meaning that the cup is stuffed with leaves not a cup of loose leaves)

¼ cup parmesan cheese

¼ cup pine nuts (or walnuts/hazelnuts as alternatives)

2 cloves of garlic (chopped & crushed)

1 tsp salt

Lemon juice (half a lemon’s should do)

½ cup extra virgin olive oil

-       Pick the leaves off the stems and discard the stems and any flowers/seeds, make sure the leaves are clean and dry

-       Roast the nuts in a dry pan and then chop them finely. (I use a spare coffee grinder which has become my spice grinder)

-       Blend the chopped nuts, garlic and lemon juice together in a blender/food processor and start adding the oil while it blends (only half the oil at this stage)

-       Blend handfuls of basil leaves into the mixture until all the basil have been mixed in

-       Now add the parmesan cheese and blend again

-       While the cheese is blendingin, slowly add more oil to the pesto until the desired texture is achieved. It might be more or less than the ½ cup specified above.

Making pesto is more forgiving than say baking a cake as you can keep adding and changing until you’re satisfied - up to a point of course. I took samples of the basic pesto and added salt/sugar/more oil/a drop of peri-peri sauce etc. to the different samples and then compared the different tastes and adjusted my recipe accordingly.

Crumble a bit of feta cheese over the pesto when serving. I guess you can add it from the start but the visual effect of the clean white feta on top of the green pesto is stronger!