Anyone for eggs?

25 August 2014 ~ Fiona ~ Leave a comment

I have always loved eggs. As a little girl, I loved eating Dad’s scrambled eggs; of course I had had my own, but they were much nicer when I perched on his knee, eating them off his plate. He loved his eggs on buttery toast and topped with a good sprinkling of freshly ground black pepper. Another “egg” memory associated with Dad, and which I’ve mentioned before, is my (actually Dad….) bidding for the winning egg and succeeding, at the Gonubie Agricultural Show. I guess those eggs must have been quite expensive in the grand scheme of things. Why was I besotted with those particular eggs? I have no idea, except that they were generally a beautiful white, not the brown we are used to, now. And always double yolkers.

Eggs feature quite a bit on our menu; fortunately, we both could eat them for breakfast, lunch and supper! There was a time when an egg-rich diet was considered potentially dangerous. Not so, nowadays, and for two key reasons, it seems: they don’t contain “bad” cholesterol, and it would appear that there are now even questions about whether cholesterol is the consequence of too much unsaturated fat. Adding fuel to this fire is the move to a low carbohydrate, high-fat diet – people are Banting bonkers at the moment. I’m not knocking it as I have been leaning in that general direction for a while…

Eggs are an essential ingredient in many things we eat, often without realising it, for example mayonnaise, cakes and cookies, rich pastries and of course, in custards, including the savoury custard in a quiche. My home made pasta is egg-rich. So, we eat eggs, often, and not just for breakfast.

Breakfast

Over the weekend, have sort of a ritual. I loathe early mornings and am virtually non-functional, so what needs to be done must be done in “auto pilot”. On a Saturday, because there is no alarm, things are a little more leisurely, but we still need to be at the McGregor pop-up market, and set up by nine o’clock, so our day begins without breakfast.After the market, we get home and unpack the bakkie (also known, depending on where you live, as a pick-up or ute), and Tom does breakfast: soft boiled eggs, toast and coffee. He’s a real egg-boiling pro, and if the batch of eggs contains a speckled one – it’s always mine! The speckled egg is another throwback to my childhood and Alison Uttley’s wonderful stories about Grey Rabbit and Speckeld Hen; stories that my granny read to us when she visited South Africa in 1969 into 1970. A “speckeldy” egg always gets me clucking with childlike delight!

Sunday is a whole different ball game; breakfast is the full catastrophe! Fried egg, beautiful, homemade bacon, fried tomato, mushroom, brinjal, potato… And, needless to say, toast or croissant, and coffee. We love our Sunday brunch which, weather permitting, we usually eat on our lovely, sunny veranda.

Lunch

So, if that was breakfast, what about lunch, you ask. Well, ever since I was a tot, a favourite sandwich was egg mayonnaise – it still is. I even enjoyed the ones we got at boarding school! There can be few things more delicious than lovely fresh bread, hard boiled egg, grated and mixed with home made mayonnaise, seasoned with salt and freshly ground black pepper. Jazz that up with some fresh parsley, a lettuce leaf and some sliced tomato, and you have a feast!

But you don’t have to stop there: firm, but not quite hard-boiled eggs (so that the yolk is not quite cooked and a lovely rich, orange colour), added to a green salad are delicious, on a hot summer’s day.

On a cooler day, here’s a thought: poached eggs on freshly picked spinach, wilted, with tomatoes, topped with a dollop of cottage cheese, grilled. Fresh fennel goes well with all of these components, so I use it both as a garnish and as an element in the meal – with or without lovely crusty bread.About poaching eggs: make sure that your eggs are as fresh as possible, and add a little vinegar to the water when you cook them. Once they’re cooked to your taste, remove them with a slotted spoon and place them on a cloth (not paper towel – it sticks to the egg and is hard to get off). Allow them to drain for a little while – there is nothing worse than a poached egg that deposits puddles of water over your plate!

Supper

A regular supper, one night during the week, has egg as the main protein, in one form or another: an omelette, a Spanish Omelette, a frittata, or a quiche, accompanied by a garden salad. A two-egg omelette, with a filling of your choice, which includes cheese, is a really filling and easy meal.If you’re nervous about folding an omelette, and other than practice, my technique is to make sure that I use a pan that is the right size, and I don’t believe anything is non-stick, so I always add a knob of butter and olive oil. Don’t overheat the pan…. Once the eggs are in the pan, don’t fiddle with them until you see that the edges are cooking. Then, with a small egg lifter, draw a little egg towards the centre and allow the runny egg to flow out to the edge. Once the egg is mostly cooked, add your filling – on one side and then gently lift the other over it.

Another tip about folding omelettes over their fillings: make sure that you have the pan handle at nine o’clock. Put the filling on the same side, between twelve and six o’clock. Then you can comfortably hold the pan and gently lift the other side of the omelette over the filling, and then slide it onto a warm plate. If you’re left handed, do it the other way round, i.e. have the handle at three o’clock, etc…

Have a look at another supper that includes eggs, cooked in a tomato sauce….

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”