Growing your own cress for snipping onto those open-faced sandwiches (which are not as nasty as they sound, just openly begging for extras, like cress).
Harvesting herbs from your garden (balcony), a free and priceless touch to any salad worth its name.
Beetroot chocolate cake and pinot noir. Need I say more?
Oh yes, and Bloody Mary continues to be the cocktail for all seasons.
I rarely watch TV anymore. That doesn’t mean I don’t spend time in front of the box (or “slab”, perhaps – box doesn’t quite describe sleek flatscreen LCD HD TVs, or whatever they’re called): I watch dvds, and do my daily Wii fitness test, of course, and one or two good series (Dirty, Sexy Money is my new favourite), but apart from that, TV sucks. Still, because I haven’t lost hope completely – or because I refuse to believe that there REALLY isn’t anything somewhere on the hundreds of channels out there – I regularly scroll through the guide and set the PVR to record things that might have value.
Which is how we ended up watching Paris Hilton on the Ellen Degeneres show last night. I’ve watched Ellen a couple of times before, and though she can get too much, she’s easier to tolerate than Tyra Banks, or Oprah for that matter, mostly because she can dance. And also because I imagine her as a straight shooter, so what I was really hoping for was to see her make Paris squirm. But no! The show was so far from anything interesting that it was just nothing at all. No provocative questions, not a single shred of irony as she first indulged Paris (for being Paris, as Paris is), and then went on to promote her bloody clothing and fragrance lines (called? Paris Hilton, of course). When Ellen wasn’t doing that, it was all about her. In fact she should call her show All About Ellen, and can someone then please explain to me then why a show that is all about Ellen, and a bit about Paris, is interesting to anyone, at all? Anyone?
Ditto, I now have to conclude, Heston Blumenthal’s In Search of Perfection. We’re just getting the second season here, which seems to have moved from perfecting classically “British” (bangers and mash) to perfecting classically ethnic British. Naturally he begins with chicken tikka masala, but amazingly begins by going to Delhi (yes, in INDIA, where the dish is NOT from) for “inspiration”. He visits two restaurants where he eats something apparently called chicken tikka masala (I remain unconvinced, we didn’t see any of the menus) and then – surprise, surprise – decides that delicious though they are, they don’t resemble British tikka masala at all. And so he goes to work in his lab-kitchen to perfect the thing that has clearly already been perfected in countless British curry shops, given that it has been declared that country’s favourite and ‘true national dish’.
Some of Heston’s exploits were kind of fun to watch in the beginning, in that wierd science kind of way, but given the sorts of things that are going on in the wider world (for instance that everyone’s worrying about money, and a lot of people are worrying about food, too), I found it both sad and disturbing to watch him on his solitary mission to put chicken breasts through an MRI to see which kind of marinade works best with their fibrous make-up. There’s no question here about actually learning anything from him in a way that is potentially useful in a normal kitchen – this is mad scientist talking to himself, and quite honestly, boring.
I need to read more.
Spotted on a Cape Town road yesterday: “THNKSDAD”
Given that the car – a nifty little new something – was driven by a young woman (let’s be kind, she was probably a first year student, and therefore somewhere on that very ambiguous road between child- and adulthood), this is Dad sending little Katy out into the world, but not without letting everyone know that she’s still Daddy’s (paid for) little girl. And what else could she say when he presented her with the car? THNKS DAD!
OK, I apologize for having resorted to shock tactics in my previous post, but the in’ernet can be a mean place sometimes. Still, I’ll compensate with a few shots that are hopefully more inspirational. Here’s something delicious to do with the humble eggplant (inspired by this recipe for Japanese-style eggplants). Start by cutting them into chunks, which you then slice not quite through the skin (think of a chunky hasselback), and get some good colour going on a hot pan with a splash of olive oil:
You’ll want to turn the heat down soon enough, so they can cook evenly without getting too charred – 10-15 minutes or such. When they’re almost cooked (you don’t want brinjal mush, as lovely as baba ghanoush is, it’s not what we want here), add a little mixture of soya sauce, rice vinegar, a bit of sugar, and some sliced fresh chilli. Move them around so they’re nicely coated in the sauce, and put the lid on and give them another 5-10 minutes until you’re sure they’re done, and the sauce has reduced and started to become a bit sticky. At this point, they are pretty lovely and ready to go:
But life is always a little fresher with some greens, so if you’ve got a handful of herbs available (I used basil and parsley), finish with a flourish:
Lovely warm, or room temperature, with something like a nice piece of seared tuna, or a little chicken breast, or some ultra tender pork belly, why not.
I love the internet. I could even be moved to say that I love Google. (By “love”, of course I mean depend on for head-stuffing, plenty of it great, too much of it rubbish). But what I hate is scrolling through my Google Reader, looking for all the good stuffing, and being confronted – nay, being hounded – by questions like the above.
How do you respond?
Indulging my “occasional outbreaks of bullshit for the purposes of humour or frivolity”, and in celebration of having survived marriage to me for an entire twelve moons, on Sunday the philosophe gifted me a book containing horoscopic pronouncements for EVERY DAY of 2009. Beyond the good news of my frivolity now no longer being constrained to Sundays (when he reads the newspaper for news and I do for stars), the book actually starts in July 2008, so I could get tucked in right away.
The entry for 2 October 2008 tells me that I should “hang in there. Mercury turns direct again on October 15. [huh?] Your home life won’t be chaotic for much longer. Try not to start any new home-improvement projects under this retrograde. Instead, touch up the improvements you’ve done already.”
So, fellow Cancerians, we are apparently in retrograde. Chaotic home life, anyone? Blame Mercury. I didn’t realise my own home life was chaotic, except for the ugly kitchen floor which I do grow to hate more vehemently by the day, and which we have been planning to do something about. But clearly not today; don’t want to mess with the stars.
Now, bullshit aside, it amazes me how superstitions continue, and how easily we (yes, even me, just sometimes) fall prey to their rubbish when it seems convenient. Just the other day (in fact on the same day that we celebrated our twelve moons – indeed, in celebration of the twelve moons) we were enjoying a nice sit-down at a Blackjack table in a casino that sucks money out of people for apparently not knowing better than to imagine they can really bring down the house. There were a couple of established punters there already, and whenever anyone came to join the fun they started their mumbo-jumbo about how no one should open any more boxes on the table [start new hands, for those of you who don't play cards] because four boxes was “working”. And if anyone defied them and did it anyway, thereby causing everyone to lose (naturally!), it was blamed on the bad too-many-boxes-karma. If only they could put their imaginations to the good use of either accepting the utter randomness of gambling, or to honing their own playing strategy, they might actually have a bit of fun. We did, plenty, even though we lost.
Still, superstition isn’t all bad. Two Sundays ago we were too lazy to take the walk by the sea we had intended, so we ended up paying good money to enter the Serendipity Maze at Mouille Point. Its gatekeeper told us many charming tales about mazes, including the fact that this one is supposed to be very big (it’s not) and that historically, lovers had to go their separate ways and then find each other in the middle, after which all woes of the heart will have disappeared. We laughed and made to start getting lost – together – but he refused: we had to go our separate ways. So we did, and thankfully found each other 5 minutes later in the “heart” of Serendipity. We had no woes when we started, but it was heartwarming to be found, nevertheless, and we walked out hand in hand, not quite into the sunset, but to Beluga for very spicy bloody marys and a platter of sushi. And they lived happily ever after.
It was in a (not so?) rare stroke of luck that we yesterday had the privilege of taking a jag for a spin. Perhaps a purr would be a better description. I’ve never been one to fantasise about big expensive cars – I’d probably rather spend that kind of money on a string of first-class air tickets to cool destinations – but this car provides its own first class travel, and I think I now get why people spend money on this kind of thing. It is a truly sweet ride (and if you enjoy other people on the road coveting your wheels, it’s good for that too).
So that was a good start to a day which ended on an equally sweet note with a killer meal, lovely wine and company, and general good cheer. To recreate:
1. Start three days in advance by making a BBQ sauce and marinating some pork (spare) ribs.
2. On the same day, go through phase one of braising beef ribs (ie. braise them for about two hours in red wine and other goodies). Leave to cool and then chill in the fridge until eating day (this could be done one day ahead rather than two, but I had other things to do on day 2)
3. On day 2, add some beer to the pork ribs, seal with foil and cook slowly for about three hours. Leave to cool and refrigerate until eating day (this can also be done on eating day, which would then lead straight into that sticky, smoky wonderfulness that you get by removing the top foil, slathering with more BBQ sauce and grilling, but I had other places to be, like in a jag).
4. On eating day, wake up early-ish and, after enough coffee, bake the base of your Bounty cake (basically a meringue with coconut). Go drive a jag. When you get home, melt some dark chocolate and spread over the coconutty meringue. Garnish with some caramelised citrus peel and hide it somewhere cool until it’s time for dessert. Then play some Wii, drink some champagne, and when your peeps have arrived, get their appetites going with some nice crunchy tempura (of raw ginger, naturally, and some other token veg, like brinjal). Don’t forget a dipping sauce of soya and wasabi.
Both sets of ribs should be back in the oven now, for their final hour or so of cooking, and beckoning with increasingly urgent aromas. When it’s time, make a salad and polenta, serve it all piping hot (minus the salad of course), sit back and eat and ooh and aah (these sounds should be coming from all around the table).
Then while you get someone else to do most of the washing up and make coffee, pull out the Bounty cake and whatever other after dinner treats are on hand (for example, honey grappa, pink port, homemade Limoncello and anise biscotti).
Just a suggestion.
So with a number of deep-frying successes safely in my repertoire, last night I attempted the ultimate: fish and chips. It was such a disaster that dinner had to be cancelled.
In my defense, a number of good things came out of it nonetheless. For one, in my typical fashion of doing too much research, I happened on this idea of making home-made crisps in the microwave. Following Fer’s suggestion, I soaked some paper thin (mandolin) slices of potato and sweet potato in vinegar for about an hour, then laid them out in a single layer in a lightly olive oiled dish, sprinkled with salt, and zapped them in the evil machine for about 4 mins (or just under). They looked like they were on the verge of shrivelling up into burnt nothingness, but having had the good fortune to be saved before that stage, they emerged as some pretty righteous crisps. Think kettle-fried, but without a kettle of oil. And they were super crispy, even two hours later. This is something to come back to: a world of thickness and flavours to experiment with (and, as the sailor pointed out, all manner of vegetables. Ginger crisps, I am onto you).
As for the actual frying, I couldn’t make up my mind between a good ol’ beer batter and the Old Bay Better Batter Mix I’ve been waiting to use since we got back from the US. So I reckoned I’d do some Old Bay onion rings and a beer batter for the fish. The onion rings actually turned out pretty well (clearly some very functional chemicals in the Better Batter Mix), but by the time I had gotten half way into the fish disaster (the batter wasn’t sticking, despite having floured the fish beforehand; it wasn’t puffing, or turning golden, and the fish was getting horribly overcooked) I was so fed up with it all that I abandoned the entire project, including part 2 of the real chips I had already par-fried.
I think I know what went wrong: I’ve gotten too confident. So confident that when frying for small numbers, I don’t bother with the big machine anymore (it’s a bitch to clean), which means that I can’t regulate the oil temperature properly. And I guess the beer batter I tried (no egg in this one) just wasn’t right. Anyway, that means I’ll have to keep trying, and it’s a useful lesson for control freaks like me to come up against my limits once in a while.
I had also, you see, spent most of the day doing other things which I am actually good at, like roasting my Swazi peanuts (family secret, that one), baking biscotti, and a nice seed loaf with the last of the Beaumont home-milled flour. So even though dinner didn’t turn out as planned, we didn’t go to bed hungry, because the sailor also brought round some home-brew limoncello which was the perfect biscotti dipper. Lesson? Sometimes you just have to stop trying to do too much. Fry the fish another day.
from Swaziland, where dangers lurk in things like this:
and this: 
You will do well not to ask what’s in the bag. As you will not to ask too many questions about celebrations this weekend, marking 40 years of Swaziland’s independence. The cakes are as flamboyant as the king’s coffers:
Let’s wish them well, all the same. Life in small countries run by big egos isn’t always a piece of cake.
I never thought I would do this, but last night it happened. Tempura avocado.
And while this may look like a general greasy mess, let me assure you, each of these items was deliciously crisp and, if I may say, fried to perfection. The only real problem with frying a number of items at home is that they can’t all be super hot at once (if you want to avoid staggered serving, that is), but if you get the springrolls nice and crispy hot first, they retain their heat pretty well.
The nuggets to the left of the avo are my now second success at raw ginger tempura (which I STILL can’t believe no one else has thought of – the avo is less original).
So what’s deep-fried avocado like? Good crunch on the outside, followed by a creamy and pretty bland flavour which you will recognise as boring avocado. But dip it in a little sauce of wasabi mixed with soya, and you have a clear winner. Add to that a nugget of the ginger, and you’re getting close to Michael Phelps country. Avo, ginger, wasabi, soy, crunch: it’s deep-fried sushi. Just try it.
Signe Rousseau
Cape Town.
