Bountiful broad beans

18 October 201414 April 2020 ~ Fiona ~ 1 Comment

Next to the pea patch, we had a bed of broad beans. Broad (or fava) beans are another childhood memory: picking them during a sunny winter afternoon and then shelling them in front of the fire for supper. We had another bumper crop this year, I am delighted to say, so some are safely stored in the deep freeze.

Ever since I lived on my own and had a patch of ground, I have grown vegetables (or tried to). The Husband happily tells friends that when he met me, and I had a tiny terrace cottage with an equally tiny back garden, he discovered a couple of enormous tomato plants among the ornamentals. I have yet to loose an almost childlike excitement with which I greet the first picking or pulling of any vegetable that privileges our garden. Then I set to thinking about what I’m going to do with it. Usually, the first pickings are the sweetest and most tender so they get the least amount of “treatment”. So it was with our first broad beans: lightly boiled (not to death like my English mother would have cooked them) and as an accompaniment to supper. However, that gets really boring …

So, in addition to that way, I also use them in salads: blanch the beans and pop them out of their grey skins and toss the beautiful, bright green cotyledons into the salad. This salad, in addition to the broad beans, and as the flavours seem to work well together included mint and chives, as well as pepino. For a little extra colour, a scattering of calendula petals topped it off.

I have mentioned my love affair with Katie Caldesi’s Italian Cookery Course, and in it, discovered a traditional Italian dip made with broad beans and mint. I had never thought of including mint with broad beans. Mint is for peas – or so I had been brought up to think (by that same English mother….) Anyway, I looked at the recipe and gave it a bash: essentially, it’s broad beans (popped out of their skins if they’re big – I didn’t with this batch as they were still tiny), mint, finely grated Parmesan cheese, garlic leaves (or a small clove if you don’t have the leaves), all of which are whizzed or pulsed together into a course mixture. Serve on crostini drizzled with olive oil.

We enjoyed it so much that I now make it quite often and have also used the basic idea, mixed with parsely pesto, as an accompaniment for home made pasta.

Like this week, which has gone in a flash, all to soon, the bean plants are spent and the bed liberated exposing the artichokes we weren’t sure would survive the winter……… More of them, anon….

African Slow Cooking: North and South

30 July 2014 ~ Fiona ~ Leave a comment

It was cold this weekend – perfect weather for a slow cooked stew. Stews are a fantastic, nutritious way to use inexpensive cuts of meat – and they are usually the most flavoursome.

On Saturday, after the market, I decided to make a traditional South African bredie. A bredie is, essentially, a stew that was made by the Boer folk, and depending on the variation you make, also includes some Malay influences. The Boers were descendants of the Dutch colonists, and who trekked to the hinterland of South Africa; the Malay folk were slaves and religious exiles sent to Africa. Much of the food in South African homes is a fusion of our rich history, so here is how I made a butternut bredie.

Butternut Bredie

You will need an appropriate quantity of lamb or mutton stewing meat (I used neck), one or two onions, a green pepper (or a chilli if you like a bit of heat), a clove of garlic, a thumb-sized piece of fresh ginger and a stick of cinnamon; butternut – cut into cubes or chunks and potato, similarly prepared.

If you are using a slow cooker, place half the raw vegetables along the bottom, reserving some for the time being. Sauté the chopped onion, pepper/chilli, garlic and ginger, and then seal the meat in the same pan. Put the meat on top of the vegetables in the slow cooker and then deglaze the pan with a little water or stock to make a gravy. Add the remaining vegetables and then pour the liquid over that and put on the lid.

“Fire up” the slow cooker and leave it alone to develop into a wonderful rich bredie – a good few hours. The vegetables will be tender and the meat will be soft and fall off the bones!

A note about the fat: for those who are Banting, it’s not a concern. For those who don’t like it – there was much less fat than I expected. Don’t shun fat – that’s where the flavour comes from!

Serve, either with or without rice or pap and other vegetables.

And now, this, for my first ever follower!

Moroccan Lamb Tagine

This is a Jenny Morris recipe – from the Giggling Gourmet newsletter, what seems like a million years ago, and which I’ve made successfully, often – also in the slow cooker.

Chris, I’ve put in brackets my substitutions for the “unusual” ingredients, and it serves 4.

1 tablespoon olive oil
8 small lamb shanks
1 Spanish onion. chopped (white or red)
2 cloves garlic, sliced
1 tablespoon grated ginger
1 teaspoon chilli powder
1 teaspoon turmeric
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon cardamom pods
1 cinnamon stick
2 tablespoons grated palm sugar (molasses sugar)
4 teaspoons fish sauce
4 large ripe tomatoes, roughly chopped
4 kaffir lime leaves (lemon or lime leaves)
2 cups chicken stock or water
2 potatoes, unpeeled and chopped

If you are doing this in the oven, preheat to 160°C. Heat the oil in a frying pan over a high heat. Add the lamb shanks and cook for 2 minutes on each side, or until they are well browned. Remove the lamb and place in a baking dish/crock for the slow cooker. Reduce heat and add the onion to the pan. Cook for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the onion is translucent. Add the garlic and ginger and cook for 1 minute longer, then add the chilli powder, turmeric, cumin, cardamom and cinnamon. Cook for 2 minutes, stirring constantly. Add the sugar, fish sauce, chopped tomatoes, lime leaves and stock, and bring to the boil. Remove from heat and add potatoes and sweet potato to the baking dish/slow cooker with the lamb, and pour the sauce over the top. If using the oven, cover with foil and bake for 2 hours, or until the lamb falls away from the bone. For the slow cooker, put the lid on and leave until you’re ready to eat and the lamb falls away from the bone.

Serve with steamed couscous or rice.

Two different African stews, one from the North and the other from the South.

Enjoy!

A lovely bunch of….

13 July 201414 April 2020 ~ Fiona ~ 13 Comments

….parsley!

I love parsley. I’m not happy until my garden grows herbs, especially parsley. And the challenge of parsley is that it’s a slow grower and it can be temperamental. My mum also always had parsley in her garden – some of my earliest culinary memories are of being sent to pick parsley – usually just as she was about to serve dinner. She, however, only grew the curly parsley and used it mostly as a garnish and for parsley sauce. I, on the other hand, prefer to grow the flat leaf, Italian parsley – it has a stronger flavour. Parsley is also a fabulous flavour enhancer, so if you are short of a particular herb, add parsley!

The Prima Donna

Given parsley’s prima donna status (in my experience, anyway), when it just grows, one just let’s it grow as it’s likely to thrive while one’s seedlings, carefully nurtured, and planted in the optimum position just do ok. So, we have self-sewn parsley all over the garden and when our red onion seedlings needed to be planted out, The Husband had to negotiate a parsley plant – in more ways than one!

Pesto al limone e prezzemolo

It seemed such a waste to hoick out such a beautiful plant and not do anything with it (…the Scottish blood and all that jazz…), so I decided to make Pesto al limone e prezzemolo (aka parsley and lemon pesto). This is a divine, fresh and versatile pesto, and which has just deepened my love affair with parsley. I now try to have a permanent stock of this in the fridge. We use it as the foundation for basting sauces for fish (we braai* fish regularly); when we roast a chicken (on the Weber, of course), I usually make a stuffing to go under the skin of the breast, and Pesto al limone e prezzemolo is now the base on which I build this stuffing. It’s also divine on warm bread…..

The recipe comes from Katie Caldesi’s The Italian Cookery Course which was a gift for my 50th birthday from good friend and graphic designer, Jaynie Lea. This is also the book from which I have learned important tips that have improved my home-made pasta and inspired me to start making pizza dough and bread. But more of those, anon….

To make this pesto, you need equal quantities of dry bread crumbs (stale ciabatta is best) and parsley, zest and juice of a lemon, a clove of garlic as well as olive oil. Whizz all of this together until you have a paste and then either use immediately or store. The olive oil and the vitamin C content of both the parsley and the lemon add to the shelf life, so this keeps well.

Tips:

If you are short of parsley leaves, do use the stalks (the whole parsley plant is parsley-flavoured), but before adding them to your food processor, chop them a bit otherwise you’ll be left with pesto with parsley stalks!
To make breadcrumbs, put slices of bread into a cool oven (about 40°C) for an hour or so, or until it’s dry, and then whizz in a food processor. If the crumbs are still “damp” put them on a baking tray and back into the oven for a little longer.
And pesto is a great way to use up herbs towards the end of summer to use through the winter – if you make sure that peso is always “sealed” with a good layer of olive oil, they keep much longer than one expects – just another Katie Caldesi tip!

And Jayne, thank you for the gift that keeps on giving – I still get a thrill when my produce looks like the picture in the book – and the passata, below, was my first attempt – last year!

…and you see that “Fiona’s Favourites” was already “branding” my produce…

* this is the Afrikaans and South African word for “barbecue”

Beetroot: it’s beautiful – and delicious

4 May 2014 ~ Fiona ~ Leave a comment

We have a bumper beetroot crop at the moment and although it’s easy to bottle, it’s also great doing new things with it. Freshly pulled, beetroot cooks more quickly than when shop bought, and is beautifully tender and sweet – another reason not to just pickle it. Besides being delicious roasted or simply added to a leafy green salad, here are two salads that have become firm favourites with us.

This first one is often requested by our friends, so I suppose it has become one of my “signature” dishes. The other is a new addition to the repertoire. More of that in a mo….

Beetroot and plum salad

The original recipe for this salad comes from Fruit & Veg City’s range of recipe books which I have adapted (Not that there’s an outlet anywhere near McGregor…). I’ve served it on a large platter for a buffet meal, and this Christmas, served it plated, as a starter – either way, the presentation is the same, just the scale varies – and it’s very attractive.

In terms of quantity, I usually work on one beetroot (cooked and sliced) and plum per person and then work the leaves and other bits accordingly. Make sure that you select beetroot of similar sizes so that when you assemble your plate or platter, you don’t get all balled up because things don’t look right.

The salad consists of fresh plums, pitted and quartered, red onions, thinly sliced (or chopped spring onion leaves), all marinated, in a lemony vinaigrette for about an hour.

To assemble: if you’re using a platter, place a circle of overlapping slices of beetroot around the edge and then pile salad leaves in the centre (the original recipe says baby spinach), top with the plums, reserving some of the marinade, and sprinkle crumbled feta over these and then drizzle some of the remaining marinade over the plate.

Rocket, beetroot and goat’s cheese salad

We recently went to see the magnificent gardens at Babylonstoren. There is also a restaurant, Babel. The menu is based on seasonal fare with much of the produce from the garden and surrounding area. Although we didn’t eat there, we did get the book about the garden and its produce, and also some of the recipes they use. The approach is interesting, in that it talks about a particular vegetable, and what other ingredients compliment it. On the way home from our visit, we also passed Fairview and had bought some of their fabulous goat’s cheese.

So given both the glut of beetroot and my reluctance to use rocket (which, I think can be overpowering), I gave one of the combinations suggested a bash – beetroot, rocket and goat’s cheese. This is what I came up with: Beetroot on a bed of rocket, with slices of black pepper chevin, drizzled with lemon and parsley pesto.

It was delicious – the sweet beetroot is a fantastic counter to the peppery harshness of the rocket and the textures work beautifully.

And then, there’s more…

Remember that if you’re growing your own beetroot, the leaves are a wonderful addition to salads and stir fries. The flavour is rather earthy, like spinach, and young leaves add lovely colour variations.