Burger schmurger

Posted July 24, 2011 | , , | Leave a response

Two weeks or so ago the Philosophe asked if I would consent to being all ‘Capetonian’ and hitting the Loading Bay for a burger.

The Loading Bay, for all non-Capetonians (and that includes some of you who actually live in the city but who – like ourselves – roll on different wheels), is a clothing-accessory ‘luxury apparel’-coffee-food-shop. They serve food all day (including a burger), but Thursday nights they stay open just for burgers. ‘Capetonians’ know about this, and there are enough of them to make booking a necessity. This is how they describe their burger (veggie available too, but who cares):

Looks good enough, no? So we booked (accepting a rather early slot, which was the only one available), we went, and I got so Capetonian on that burger that I even ate the whole thing with my hands.

Yes, so I’m one of those irritating people who usually leaves the bread and tucks into the patty with a knife and fork (technical term: going Danish on a burger). It’s not that I don’t like bread. I like bread. A lot. It’s just that usually burger rolls turn into these soggy, useless discs of starch that add no value to the meal, except as useless, soggy starch. A bit like mashed potatoes, come to think of it.

But eating the Loading Bay burger was one of those rare experiences when the whole package just worked: good patty, righteous bun (lightly toasted, as I recall, and dense enough to serve a palatable function), good cheese, condiments, etcetera. Being a Capetonian is rather delicious, it turns out.

Then the Capetonian in me got greedy, and decided that we needed to search out the best burgers in town (which is a) yawn, and b) why bother when you’ve found something that works?, as my brother-in-law pointedly remarked of the venture). We have been impressively committed to the task, hitting some most of the spots people bother to talk and blog about in the burgerverse.

The results, in a word: Meh. With the exception, of course, of the glorious bacon and blue cheese numbers that the Philosophe himself conjured on the braai just the other night (coming a close second to another home-experiment involving hand-chopped meat and duck fat). And then there was this morning, when we found ourselves in the decidedly un-Capetonian hinterland of Somerset West Mall. Look, no-one forced us there. We happened to be driving past, and decided on the spur of the moment to watch a movie in the middle of the day (because that’s the sort of thing you can do when the only creatures you have to look after are yourselves, and three cats).

11am, an hour to kill. What to do? Spur of the moment indeed:

See that processed cheese? Now imagine some crispy bacon on there, and a good puddle of Spur’s secret BBQ sauce. And no, I didn’t eat the bread. But I had a bloody mary with it, and on a Sunday morning in Somerset West, it was the very best brunch to be had. Lessons learned (attention Heston Blumenthal!): why mess with something that works?

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Birthday tripping

Posted July 4, 2011 | | Leave a response

I have a birthday coming up in a few days, and for the first time in years (ever?), I am quite happy to let it pass quietly by. See, I’ve just spent 14 days in various manifestations of the pictures above: mostly on a boat (pictured centrally, she is Isola Bella, the beautiful island), where many hours were spent watching waves, less hours (but rather a lot) drinking gin and tonics to yet another gorgeous sunset, some time sitting on deck chairs in various marinas watching other boats while sipping gin and tonics, and even a few stolen afternoons lounging at pools with other hot and weary travellers. We were a small crew: our captain, my father-in-law; his son, my husband and first mate, and yours truly, the galley slave (later to be promoted to galley admiral, and thereafter commander – either because the sandwiches got better and better, or because I became less tolerant of interference with the sandwich-making. This remains unclear).

Our home point was Kent Narrows, Maryland – where la bella lives when she is not out sailing – and our destination New Bern, North Carolina, where my Raleigh family came to hang out for a day before we turned around and headed on back. Little did I know that I would also be greeted with a bucket-load of birthday presents to make up for their not being here on the actual day. And you know how people sometimes give you all sorts of useless crap because they feel they have to give you something? Well, this bounty was the exact opposite of that. I got a rocking brownie pan (the one that makes lots of edges) that I’ve been coveting ever since I got into the sordid business of finding the best brownie recipe (it’s all in the pan!). I got some funky Bodum and Scanpan accessories (it’s sometimes nice to be Danish). And all the way from Jamaica:

So, after two three weeks of eating and drinking copiously (oh, the Maryland crabcakes. Oh, the North Carolina shrimp. Oh, the captain’s steak Fiorentina. Oh, the beef jerky!), and coming home with a stash of goodies to a kitchen that has already had one big gift this year (oh, beloved Kenwood Chef), who needs a birthday?

In fact, I rather like the idea of drinking water and eating apples for the next few weeks. And working from dawn till deep into the night, like some mad monk.

OK, that last part was bullshit. I would never be so irresponsible. Work and apples should be used in moderation.

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Gone boating (and perhaps fishing)

Posted June 10, 2011 | | Leave a response

If I were a (better) food blogger, I would have spent all yesterday evening taking pictures of the wonderful food we ate (again) at the much-loved Test Kitchen, and then all morning uploading them for you, dear reader, to drool over.

These pages would similarly be dripping with pictures of fantastic plates of fillet, osso buco, and even chicken (!) from our favourite local,  Societi Bistro, where we spend enough time eating that everyone really should know our names by now.

There might be a picture of a delicious little grilled sardine sampled recently on a sunny winter’s afternoon at La Boheme (before moving on to the much less successful new X-Men movie).

But that’s not how I roll, so if looking at pictures of food is your thing, then I can recommend heading on over to Tastespotting, and if looking at pictures of food spotted in restaurants gets you going, then head on over to Foodspotting (where you can even look at a picture of sirloin steak from Societi Bistro).

Instead I just eat and drink, and generally forget to update my blog, which is also the likely course of action for the next three weeks, when I will be on a boat, sailing from Maryland to North Carolina. So expect no pictures of (pre-lunchtime) gin and tonics, or crab cakes picked up along the way. I definitely won’t be sharing any of the pulled pork I plan to slather liberally in the general direction of my mouth (because that’s just pornographic!). Imagine it, if you must. Me, I’ll just be cruising.

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Brownies, redux: Trust no-one!

Posted May 18, 2011 | | 2 Responses

While the rest of South Africa is out doing something important today, I though I should do something important to. So I made brownies. Again. Yawn.

I know, I have said it time and again that I will stop this madness. But wait! This time I cracked it. Let me be clear: I have not found the perfect brownie, but I finally understand the brownie. And like all things in which one aspires to expertise, it has taken a lot of hard work. I have now read about, thought about, looked at, and actually baked, so many brownies that finding yet another page like this one no longer fills me with fear, trepidation, nightmares (!!), or the need to draw up shopping lists consisting of only eggs, chocolate, cocoa, sugar, butter and flour. Yes, there is a brownie called “Better Than Brad Pitt“, and I do not need it in my life.

Perhaps the most important thing I have learned is that you cannot trust pictures or words on the interwebs. (And, as Julia Moskin recently pointed out in The New York Times, you should not trust recipe search engines either). Take-home lesson: be distrustful.

Just look at this recipe, for example, for “Bakery Style Chewy Brownies“, which comes with this picture:

Well that looks like a pretty damn fine brownie, and the word “chewy” hits all the right tingly bits in my brain. But if you look at the original recipe, the description reads “Thick and almost fudge-like in consistency“… So what is it – chewy or fudgy? In the brownie world, those words are basically antonyms. Said recipe also tells us that “The key to this brownies [sic] yummy chewy top is beating the eggs and sugar together for several minutes until they become very light and fall off the beater in a ribbon, so definitely don’t skip that step.” Well, just the other day I made the famous Supernatural Brownies, and they got exactly the same top without beating the eggs for an age. (The supernaturals are supposed to be the “perfect chewy brownie“, by the way. They are not. They are damn tasty, but chewy they ain’t.) So if anyone tells you that you must beat eggs and sugar together for many minutes to get that special crackled brownie-top, just step away from the Kenwood and remember, that’s bullshit.

So in the spirit of distrusting everything I read, I decided to finally try these famed browned butter brownies, which are described as (ugh) “fudgy on the inside”. Here they are, in all their sweet-baby-jesus chewy goodness, and packed with peanut-power too:

Anyone for coffee and brownies? (If you don’t like peanuts, you can have Kahlua-toffee, or fudgy-peppermint…).

Oh, and one more lesson learned: brownies make an excellent breadbrownie-and-butter pudding. Soak chunks in custard, sprinkle tops with sugar, bake. Try not to burn. Eat with Tahini ice cream. Or, you know, whatever other whacky concoction lurks in your freezer. (PS. You can of course trust me on this.)

 

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Lessons (re-)learned from Thor 3D

Posted May 6, 2011 | , | Leave a response

On the film:

1. Do not trust IMDB ratings (7.6: really?).

2. Do not be fooled by the quality connotations of “Kenneth Branagh” or “Anthony Hopkins”.

3. Do not expect visual wonders from “3D”: here it was obviously just a ploy to sell you stoopid glasses @R6 each.

4. Natalie Portman does not make everything better.

4. Take home lesson: Do read many reviews before committing to 2 hours of schlock.

On the cinema-experience:

1. Cinemas are full of morons.

2. Paying for popcorn at cinemas is a fucking rip-off.

3. On Nu-Metro’s chocolate salt for popcorn: really?

4. Take-home lesson: stay at home (or just enjoy a drink by the fireplace at 221, perhaps followed by a steak at Belthazar, and then go home).

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Kenwood brings you… the exploding brownie!

Posted May 4, 2011 | | 1 Response

Today is my honorary birthday. Which means today is the day that I acquired my first-ever (!!!) stand-mixer (!!!), which is a very early birthday present from my darling Philosophe (and to all those who think kitchen appliances are not cool birthday gifts: you are just wrong. They bring joy to all).

I admit I’ve coveted the KitchenAid ever since I saw it as a wee lass on Nigella’s counter on the telly. But after careful consideration, much research (including much eye-popping at the outrageous prices of those things in this part of the world), I settled on this little sexy number:

There are only a few things I hate doing in the kitchen. The first is making short-crust pastry (by hand), so that was the first item on the appliance-christening list. It worked like a charm (like, it works!!). We’ll see how it tastes later on a chicken pie, but so far so good. The second is being stuck in one place when you have to beat things like eggs and sugar till thick and pale (old-school, with a hand-held mixer). So much activity lost in those 3-5 minutes!

Brownies, then. Which was opportune, as I had just picked up some cheapo “panned almonds” from Woolies with no clear intent except to buy them before someone else did, seeing as they were half-price (it’s the old rule: only buy chocolate after Easter). And seeing as these “panned almonds” had some sort of white-chocolate-strawberry coating (who knows), I thought it would be clever to introduce a bit of “French” nougat into the mix for some more sweet-berry/nutty goodness (the Sailor lately informed me, by the way, that he has never seen “French” nougat in France. He’s French):

So far, so better. Until I pulled the pan out the oven and discovered that those Frenchies don’t like being in the brownie mix one bit:

This almost takes the cup(cake) for the ugliest thing I have pulled out the oven. Ah well, who says it has to be pretty. Besides, exploding things have a tendency to be rather damn tasty, isn’t that right, little piggy?

Happy birthday to me. Now committed to making bigger and better mistakes in the kitchen, so you don’t have to.

 

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Making a milkshake out of yoghurt

Posted April 18, 2011 | , , , | Leave a response

I have been reading (and writing) about Mr. Oliver’s latest LA venture for some time now, but I didn’t get to *enjoy* the full spectacle of the first episode until last night. Late at night was a stupid time to watch, because it sent me to bed depressed.

Smite me with your bleeding heart if you must, but I am not depressed about the obesity “epidemic” in Los Angeles, America, or the rest of the world for that matter. Which is not to say I don’t find it sad that so many people get it wrong when it comes to feeding themselves and their families. Nor that I don’t find it sad that some children are made to eat something resembling airplane food on a mostly-daily basis. But getting depressed about these things would be a waste of my time and energy, a) because the reasons for this state of affairs are much more complex than even I dare to imagine that I fully comprehend, and b) because there is little I can do to change it.

Not so Mr. O. He’s depressed alright. And he also has the conceit to imagine that a) he understands everything about the system that he is taking on, and b) that it his responsibility – nay, his right – to take this system on. He keeps talking about how it is his “job” to do this and that: his “job” to try to force the LAUSD to let him into their schools (where he’s been banned from filming); his “job” to try to persuade Dino – the nice man who let Jamie into his burger joint Patra’s – to make his burgers with grass-fed Black Angus beef, and his milkshakes with yoghurt instead of ice cream. Dino really is a nice man. He lets Jamie mess about in his kitchen, and lets him fix a yoghurt smoothie, and then rightly responds: “I tried it, and it tasted good, but he missed the point. This is a great drink, but it’s not a milkshake.”

Here’s what Dino looks like when he’s explaining that Jamie is crazy for thinking that he can take burgers and fries off the menu at a burger joint:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And here’s what Dino looks like when Jamie tells him that using grass-fed Black Angus beef for his burgers will make his burgers cost $4,89, instead of $2,69 (warning: picture of a scared man):

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I nominate Dino as the Food Revolution hero, because Dino gets it right. He gets that Jamie is missing the point if he thinks that putting a smoothie on the menu of a burger joint is going to do a damn thing to curb obesity. I’ve never been to LA, but I’m also pretty sure that people who want smoothies can find them elsewhere. Dino gets that he is running a business, and servicing customers who come to his restaurant because there’s something on his menu that they want to eat. He gets that there is a difference between freedom of choice and responsibility.

What Jamie Oliver does not get is that saying, on leaving Patras, “I don’t know if I can work with Dino” is in fact a very stupid thing to say, because he does not have to “work with” Dino, and neither does Dino have to work with him. Just as the LA Unified Schools District has no mandate whatsoever to work with Jamie Oliver. (Which they did in fact offer to do, just not on camera. But that, as someone else put it summarily, ‘is not a TV show‘.)

But my case is not really with Jamie Oliver, just as my case, in another context, is not with quacks like Gillian McKeith. No, my case is with the many people who do listen to them, and who do not get that these people, who may even have their hearts and concerns in all the right places, are simply not the authorities that they make themselves out to be. What’s the harm, especially if *something* improves? The harm is that worshipping pseudo-authorities is a slippery gateway to compromising all our rational decision-making faculties, believing whatever scare stories and half-baked statistics they throw about, and soon everybody will be taking advice on how to live their lives from someone called Oprah. Oh wait…

(And oh, if do ever find yourself at Patra’s, don’t forget to try the new Jamie Oliver Revolution burger, made with grass-fed Black Angus beef. If you’ve got $4,95 to drop, that is:)

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Learning to Rest in Peace

Posted April 13, 2011 | | 3 Responses

Life is scary. We get bad news every day (and now even more bad news at an even faster rate, thanks to Twitter et al). Most of it is distant, thank goodness. Bad stuff generally happens to other people. But every so often, the degrees of separation become uncomfortable close. A friend’s mother passes away. A mother-in-law. A few days ago, Stephen Watson, a writer I used to pass in the corridors as an undergraduate in the English department, and once or twice while walking in the forest, died after what I understand was a short illness. Stephen was highly respected as a writer, a poet, a teacher, and a friend, as the many tributes that are pouring out attest to.

We say RIP to the dead, but I wonder if we don’t need it more for ourselves. However much Stephen’s death saddens me, it is the thought of his wife and two children that saddens me more. Because of course I cannot help but imagine myself in their position, and it is that thought that stops my breath for a second and fills me with terror. The thought of learning to find rest again in a life that was restful, and safe, and loving. It seems impossible.

I suppose the worst thing about finding a space of rest, and safety, and love is the very real possibility that it can disappear so quickly. When my father disappeared 11 years ago, I thought it would be impossible to live without him. I am sure my mother thought it impossible. We have all managed, some with more rest than others.

I have little doubt that Stephen Watson is resting in peace. I hope his family can learn do the same.

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Pop that in your corn and smoke it

Posted March 26, 2011 | , , , | Leave a response

So Heston Blumenthal has been entertaining his viewers (me) with some more fascinatingly cringe-worthy television with his/Channel 4′s latest Mission Impossible (or as someone else puts it, his Michelin Impossible). Brief: take world’s UK’s quackiest chef, put him in places where he does not belong, turn on liquid nitrogen, watch.

That is, watch him try to feed hay-smoked mackerel paired with blueberries to a naval submarine crew who normally subsist on a full fry-up and something ‘comforting’, like steak and yorkshire pudding, followed by shortbread and custard (or some such) – every day. (This is HB trying to regenerate their tired, overfed, brain cells.)

Watch him get BA passengers to begin their in-flight meals with a nasal spray, which causes much nasal gunk to drip in the general direction of gravity, which is also in the general direction of their actual food trays: not pretty television. (This is HB trying to rehydrate their dehydrated noses so they can taste their food better.)

Generally he ends up looking like a tosser for the first 38 minutes of each 45 minute episode, until he finally cottons on to the (big) difference between the world inside his restaurants and the world the rest of us live in. Like that a naval submarine crew don’t have time, space, money, or any bloody interest in on-site hay-smoked mackerel and blueberries, but they respond very well to a good ol’ Irish stew (sous-vided for a couple of months, naturally). Or that BA passengers quite like to eat something they can recognise as food while they are hurtling through the air, like a good ol’ shepherd’s pie (taste-powered by the secret addition of seaweed, since umami is the only flavour that doesn’t get lost in the sky. Naturally.)

Each of these institutions has supposedly recognised that the food they deliver is shite, and each is genuinely (supposedly) looking for a real-life solution to that problem. And in the end, food-mentalist HB ends up being a totally wasted commodity, because the solutions he creates that can actually be implemented are totally pedestrian. And by pedestrian I mean the kind of ideas that anyone with a food-brain who can also cross a street would be capable of coming up with. Problem: Fresh ingredients take up too much space on a submarine, and too much time to cook? Solution: Cook them on-shore and vacuum pack them for easy on-board storage in the fridge or freezer. I can’t decided if Channel 4 is taking the piss out of HB, or out of its viewers.

Then there’s his popcorn ice cream in cinemas. (This is HB trying to get people to stop eating popcorn.)

Well, ok, that sounds pretty cool actually. Genius Heston strikes again!

Except that if he spent a bit more time on Google, and less time in his science books, he would also have discovered that that’s hardly an *original* idea (WTF Heston?). I bookmarked a recipe for that AGES ago (last year) already – not to mention that in 0.14 seconds, Google comes up with 7,400,000 hits on it.

Well I finally made it the other day. It goes against all my popcorn instincts. You have to soak the things (in cream, sugar and milk), which means you have to listen to all their delicious crunchy airiness die a slow pffffft into a soggy mess. Then when you’ve really drowned them good and dead (30 mins to an hour), you have to sieve them and mash the life force out of them.

Then you turn that creamy, popcorny goodness into a silky smooth custard (with an egg and mild heat). Churn that custard when it’s nice and chilled (not forgetting a good slosh of vodka to prevent it from freezing too hard), and there you have perhaps some of the most deliciously counter-intuitive ice cream. Go ahead and serve that with some salted caramel sauce, as recommended, and also a fudgy ginger brownie, if you have one to hand. It’s so delightfully wrong it’s almost like having HB in your kitchen.

(Disclaimer: Sorry, Heston. I’m just grumpy because the Philosophe recently ate a piece of pork belly that was cooked in one of your kitchens for 52 hours. I really should have been there. But you are welcome to come and try my popcorn ice cream – if you can handle defeat.)

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Alton Brown-ies (or, glutton for punishment?)

Posted March 6, 2011 | , , | Leave a response

Being an honorary South African (or Swazi, or Dane), I am a relative latecomer to the phenomenon of Alton Brown – who, as per above, has apparently been teaching (American) geeks how to cook since 1999. He’s entertaining and whacky in a Heston Blumenthal sort of way, except the comparison stops at invention: they’re both mad scientists, but Blumenthal is definitely one up on the Willy Wonka factor (never mind snail porridge: how many people can actually get their dinner guests to lick the wallpaper?). Alton Brown is fun to watch because he explains how stuff works, in a way that you could actually try at home (I once mimicked his recipe for mint juleps: they was good).

So it only made sense that I should break my latest vow never to make brownies again with Alton Brown’s recipe. I like it because it only uses cocoa (no faffing about with melting chocolate), and it contains four eggs, which should produce some nice thick, chewy brownies.

And I planned to follow it exactly to the letter, so I could only blame Alton if they didn’t work. Except for one minor alteration, which was to add an entire box of Dalla Cia grappa chocolates. How beautiful it promises to be in execution:

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I wish I could say the above picture (of the brownie) came out of my own kitchen, but alas, my brownies are still cooling in the pan, so I borrowed this picture from someone who actually got it right (click on the image to visit that baker). And I may as well add right now that I didn’t have enough butter and couldn’t be arsed to go to the shop again, so I supplemented with a little oil. Oh, and I added some espresso powder too.

In theory, these will be the perfect ode to something the Philosophe and I call our cap-grap routine: cappuccino and grappa after lunch (which ideally includes a glass of some nice cold riesling for these hot summer days). But I fear that I – unlike Alton Brown – am a crap scientist in the kitchen. My last batch of brownies contained two whole boxes of Lindor chocolate balls. They should have been superb. Instead the whole lot ended in the bin.

Let’s hope the garbage trolls don’t get lucky again.

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