What is it with chocolate?

By E | Posted on: July 7, 2009

It was my birthday yesterday, and in the best birthday fashion, it was unlike any other day of the year. The philosophe and I have invented something of a tradition that involves going away for the night – typically somewhere cheap but nice, by the sea, say (or attached to a casino: even better!). The irony is that we often miss out on the “nice” bit because it rains, and we’re not the types to enjoy getting cold and wet. So to kill time before dinner and/or gambling, we go to the local mall and watch whatever crap happens to be on. Preferably something really crappy, and yesterday may have taken the cake with the truly godawful Ghosts of Girlfriends Past in Noordhoek’s Long Beach Mall.

(By the way the weather was wonderful yesterday, and had we been true beach bunnies – or walkers – we would have been out there in full swing. But such is the force of tradition). It was unlike any other day not only because we normally wouldn’t have paid to watch such crap, but because any sensible person – which we like to think of ourselves as good examples of – would have walked out about 15 minutes into the film.

But birthdays are like airports, where time and place – and perhaps intelligence – don’t really figure in normal dimensions. Like being in an airport, when it’s your birthday you can respectfully start drinking whenever you choose, so for a brief window, sipping Jameson’s in a mall coffee shop at 11.30 in the morning is totally the way to go. Especially if the way you’re going is to see Ghosts of Girlfriends Past. (The Jameson’s probably also explains why we were so tolerating).

And the champagne we drank afterwards in a jacuzzi with serious piano muzak (hey, at least it wasn’t Enya!) probably helps to explain how we tolerated – even enjoyed – a bad dinner in a funky wooden restaurant with an amazing view of the longest beach in town.

Of course birthdays are also just days like any others, sometimes depressing, sometimes actually happy, and I’m sure not everyone has the luxury of pausing “real life” for a day to get silly in a Noordhoek mall. I am a lucky 34-yr old for being able to, and for having someone very cool to share it with.

But, for all the unexpected in-law-family-weirdnesses the philosophe has bravely dealt with since he wooed me into his life with pasta puttanesca and Talladega Nights, the one thing he forgot to organise for yesterday was chocolate. I may have a supercool new way of doing birthdays, but we always had chocolate when I was little! Most often chocolate digestives, or Romany Creams, with a cup of hot chocolate in bed (we all had to pretend to be asleep and then act groggily surprised when the family burst in with a tray of chocolate goodies and presents and candles on a tray). Sometimes broken up pieces of chocolate in a bowl with a Danish flag stuck in a piece (!!) would do, but when it was properly planned, someone would have baked the secret Hansen chocolate cake the night before.

Anyhow, understanding that tapping into my weird and sometime illogical expectations need not figure at the top of his priorities, I organised the chocolate myself. I opted for a box of Woolie’s assorted dark chocolate, mostly because I spotted that one of the selection contained ginger, and I’ve developed something of a crazy fondness for anything ginger.

I’m sorry – I know reading a blog post without pictures quickly gets boring, and unfortunately we didn’t whip out the camera when we munched on the chocolate (which wasn’t very good either!), but I thought I could compensate by finding a picture on the interweb that approximated how delicious I was hoping that ginger chocolate was as I unwrapped it after breakfast on my birthday.

Ha! Have you ever tried searching for a simple picture of chocolate? There are thousands, of course. Millions. And probably 75% of them are in-foosed with a seriously tacky subtext. Roses. Love. Ooh. Guilty. Decadent. Or just… happy maiden tucks into enormous bar of chocolate:

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(Try not to pay attention to the stress marks on her neck which indicate something of what she really feels about that slab of wickedness in her hand. Almost as convincing as Heidi Klum about to tuck into three KFC twisters

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Next is the quintessential lip shot:

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(Try not to look at it too long, because you may start believing that she’s actually blowing something into the strangely pert white chocolate truffle. She must, of course, be sucking).

And then what I like to call the Kylie Minogue shot:

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So clean. So Pure. Yet so… red and black. Is that a miao-uw or a growl?

I don’t know what it is about chocolate. I just wanted some for my birthday. And I got everything that I wished for.

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Livery

By E | Posted on: June 28, 2009

This is how the Free Online Dictionary defines livery:

1. A distinctive uniform worn by the male servants of a household.
2. The distinctive dress worn by the members of a particular group; uniform: ushers in livery.
3. The costume or insignia worn by the retainers of a feudal lord.
4.
a. The boarding and care of horses for a fee.
b. The hiring out of horses and carriages.
c. A livery stable.
5. A business that offers vehicles, such as automobiles or boats, for hire.
6. Law Official delivery of property, especially land, to a new owner.

Etymology: [Middle English liveri, from Old French livree, delivery, from feminine past participle of livrer, to deliver, from Latin lberre, to free, from lber, free; see leudh- in Indo-European roots.]

It’s a funny word. (Free) Delivery = rental (which is what servants and horses have in common in the definitions).

I wanted to title my post something clever about liver, and liverish is neither here nor there in my Sunday, referring as it does to being irritable or bilious. Not here. I’ve had one of my favourite kind of days, with maximum time in the kitchen, close to the oven. First I baked seed loaf (intending a nice wholewheat bread only to discover I had no more yeast), then almond and ginger biscotti, then my mother’s famous chicken liver pate, and now, finally, a shaggy yeast dough containing rosemary and candied orange peel is puffing itself into a righteous loaf of bread.

As in most things culinary, my mother makes her liver pate well done. The purists will no doubt frown: what, no soft pink interior? No layer of congealed fat on top?

Nope. Baked for almost an hour, with a lovely herby crust on top, and chunky bits of mushroom underneath, this stuff is the business. And I have never made it before. I’ve fried chicken livers before – almost crusty outside, with lots of onion and peri peri (just like mother does: perhaps well done is our livery) – but I realized today that I’m very inexperienced when it comes to “cleaning” a chicken liver. How do you know for sure that you’ve found, and gotten seriously rid of, that horrible green bitter stuff? It’s a strangely textured meat to navigate, because it is so silky smooth – quite disgustingly so, actually, but also quite soothingly. I expected myself to be more turned off handling the raw stuff than I was. Unlike most meat, this actually smells good raw.

But it smells SO much better when it’s been in the oven for 30 minutes or so, and the kitchen starts taking on its aromas. Imagine not being able to smell, and to remember through your nose. Today I smelled that chicken liver pate and I remembered 100 weekends in my childhood, and the days after, and the months later, when a bowl would emerge out of the freezer and go back into the oven to remind us of those months before…

I just hope this one tastes as good.

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We grow old, we grow old

By E | Posted on: June 26, 2009

Some of us already wear the bottoms of our trousers rolled…

I am in shock this morning, having just found out that Michael Jackson is dead. It’s not that I’m sad that he’s dead – in fact the sooner he could get out of that crazy life the better for him, I imagine. But he’s always been there somehow, part of my outer, but living, atmosphere.  Like Madonna. And Prince.

It’s generational I suppose. Bob Marley and Elvis Presley were always dead (OK, I was six when the Bob died, and stuck somewhere between Danish and English, so I doubt there was room for his positive vibrations between my blond little plaits), and therefore already “legends” when I met them. And I do remember Princess Di dying, but that was Princess Di. This is Michael Jackson!

Maybe the upshot for him and his memory is that children being born or growing up now will be spared the sight of the once great becoming pathetic. Though given our often revolting tabloid culture, it’s probably the nasty stuff that will live on, and one day some boy band will do a stomach-turning version of Billie Jean which all the teenagers will love.

Getting old(er) doesn’t scare me. Actually it’s fascinating, like watching seasons change for the first time. But it is strange. Like Michael Jackson. Don’t forget to remember the good stuff.

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Weekend heat

By E | Posted on: June 20, 2009

Despite forecasts of rain, we continue to experience something I want to call an Indian summer, but that wouldn’t be quite right, because the dead of winter has already revealed itself. So let’s just say some freaky, but lovely, hot weather in the middle of winter.

Still, that’s no excuse not to get some other heat going. Like yesterday – I sat down fully intending to work, but after two hours there was no sign of a sentence, only this:

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It’s “the one with yoghurt,” according to its Greek name, which translates more helpfully into a yoghurt and almond cake with lemon syrup. The original recipe calls for a good amount on brandy in the batter (probably why I bookmarked it), but since we had none, I put on my creative hat (which is full of multicultural stereotypes) and decided that ouzo would do the trick. It’s all Greek, right? Oh, and I used buttermilk instead of yoghurt (it’s all bacteria, right?), and plain flour instead of half semolina (all wheat, right? You get my thinking).

(You probably can’t see it, but the punktum in the above picture is just behind and to the left of the ouzo bottle. Celery salt. Indispensable for any self-respecting kitchen – or bar, that is).

Almost as nice as the cake itself with its crunchy almondy-sugary topping (excuse me while I show off my new camera, but the thing is in the detail, right?) – DSC00690

- was the sauce I concocted to go with it for an after-braai dessert: whip up a little creme fraiche with icing sgar (not too much), a squirt of lemon and a nice glug of ouzo. It worked majestically – and so did the cake quite naked of adornments for breakfast this morning.

We braaied because it was nice and balmy on the balcony – at least while the sun was up, which unfortunately wasn’t for long. But while braaing in summer is sometimes quite silly (hmm, what shall we do on the hottest day of the year? Make a fire!), some flame action is a wonderful thing to cope with early evening chills. And flame action it was, as the philosophe tried out his new coal gadget:

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I would like to say it was so hot that our fire was actually pink, but that’s just some trick of lighting that I’m afraid I didn’t author. The eery bit in the middle of the cylinder did get freakishly hot – so much so that I got nervous the metal might melt, and then proceeded to put two of my fingertips far too close to it with the result that I now only have eight fingerprints left. Oh well, who needs ten right?

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This little piggy

By E | Posted on: June 14, 2009

First sat in a brine (of sugar, salt, peppercorns, juniper berries and bay leaves) for 24 hours.

Then I unrolled it and rubbed its fat little belly with a top secret blend of herbs and spices (including onion, almonds, currants, citrus peel, thyme, rosemary, all loosened up with a good glug of honeyed grappa):

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Then it got rolled up again and sat in the fridge for another day.

At lunchtime yesterday, into the oven it went – nice and cool, 150C – where it sat for the next five hours (covered for the first two), while we caught up on some more vintage Star Trek. At the end of our voyages, with some fiercely directed heat for crackling, we got this:

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Which, with a sharp knife and asbestos fingers, finally became this:

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And now that pork belly is fast on its way to becoming human – we managed all but one slice. We thank it for its patience – unhurried pigs make happy people.

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Dairy Queen

By E | Posted on: June 11, 2009

Yesterday I heard one of the Cape’s more irksome radio hosts lamenting a new advertisement trying to get people to drink more milk. He wasn’t lambasting the idea of consuming more dairy, but found the ad untasteful. I haven’t seen the thing (not even Google could help me there), but apparently it satirised the crime situation in South Africa (give a burglar/killer a glass of milk to calm him down or some such?), which as most people will agree is no laughing matter.

In the course of my research, I did come across this blog post which charts some of the milk campaigns around the world, mostly famously the American Got Milk? one, but also another apparently South African one with this picture:

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Here’s how the ad is described: “Let’s see, a guy gets stuck in bear trap; guy tries to free himself by sawing off foot; guy fails to saw off foot due to incredibly strong, milk-fortified bones; guy dies and rots.”

Well that might just take the cake for the most inappropriate ad I’ve ever seen – it definitely doesn’t inspire me to drink milk.

So, as I was whipping myself up at cappuccino this morning, I thought it would be selfish not to share some of the more interesting ways to consume milk, if you’re not the type who generally sports a milk moustache. I’m not a big milk au naturel drinker, but I do manage to consume a lot of the stuff in my coffee. I like milky coffee, and if there’s one thing I have grown to really appreciate about microwaves it’s their essential function as milk warmers. It’s not really that I mind cold-ish coffee, but heated milk actually tastes better.

I also love milk foam. Or froth, as some purists might call it. But I don’t like what I consider to be froth – there’s nothing worse than a cappuccino with this bobble-head of “foam” sitting on top of the cup trying to look like a muffin. That airy stuff lends nothing good to a coffee. Good foam is thick, like very softly whipped cream. And it must lie in a decent layer on top of the coffee – a situation well-captured by the name “flat white”.

Unfortunately not many places get that right. Some of the best restaurants in this town make the crappiest cappuccinos, lattes, and “flat whites” because they don’t get the milk right (and plenty don’t get the coffee part right either – and let’s not get me started on the biscotti).

The cappuccino I make at home is very different from the good ones at coffee shops mainly because the milk I foam is cold. It’s also “2%”, which puts to bed the myth that good foam has to come from hot full-fat milk. I can even throw in another one: it’s long life milk. In fact that processed ultra-pasteurised stuff (we can’t be sure it’s really milk, after all) makes the best foam. Here’s how.

1. Get a small 1-cup plunger. Many “milk frothers” at supermarkets are basically that, though with a fine mesh instead of the three-layered filters for plunging coffee. Note: the three-layered coffee plunging filter is better for frothing milk. There’s probably some obvious science, like creating more friction or suction when you get into rapid plunging mode.

2. Fill to about one third with cold, processed, low-fat milk. Roll up your sleeve and then plunge up and down very fast until your bicep feels like it’s about to go into a spasm (20 seconds? Don’t do this if you have Schwarzenegger arms: something is bound to break).

3. Now leave it alone (plunger in) while you heat milk and pour coffee as for a normal milky coffee. Remember to leave room for foam – I’d say two centimetres is a nice indulgence.

(Here comes the good part).

4. Now slowly lift out the plunger, which will have a nice thick layer of foam clinging to it. If you are not in polite company, you can lick/suck this straight off the plunger. Now pour the foam onto the coffee, stopping just before it starts spilling out of the cup. Now take a spoon, and simply eat the remaining foam in the plunger (there will still be about half left, but you can’t make good foam in tiny amounts, so eating milk is one of the sacrifices of a home-made cappuccino). It is creamy and delicious, something between whipped and ice cream.

5. Once you have this technique down, you can start to go crazy. Like cinnamon in your coffee? Don’t sprinkle it on top. Put it IN WITH THE MILK before you manhandle it: cinnamon foam. Ginger foam. Cocoa foam. Paprika foam. (Oh, this works perfectly well in a large plunger too. Good for many cappuccinos or for one very serious solo milk experience).

(In other, non-dairy news, I’ve just made oxtail for the first time. I followed a 2 hour recipe yesterday, but there was no meat falling off bones. So I added another two hours today, and the meat fell off. Neither the philosophe nor I are really bone-gnawing, marrow-sucking types, so I picked all the meat out and shredded it. That was a bit bothersome, but I now have a bowl of some seriously melting delicious meat. I see it becoming ragout for pasta, with a very zingy gremolata, or ravioli…. I’m also brining a pork belly which this weekend is destined for something along the lines of Gennaro’s stuffed porchetta. If only the damn weather would stop pretending it’s summer.

And finally, some fool has just had his eyeball tattooed.)

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Treasures from afar

By E | Posted on: June 9, 2009

So it was a happy conclusion to many long days (of which the last was possibly the longest? I am convinced that there were actually two hours disguised in every one of yesterday’s) that I could collect the Philosophe from the labyrinthine mess of Cape Town’s “International Airport” last night.

Today I’m wearing a t-shirt that says “I wish I was in Lake Tahoe. This place sucks”, which as he pointed out when he bought it, I actually needed then, not now. But it’s cute (as they no doubt say over there).

And having finally comes to terms with my brownie hell this weekend with what I consider a successful batch (indeed a return to the first ones I ever made, but now with the right size tin) now stashed in the freezer as I had promised, what was my other surprise gift?

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Original Supreme Brownie Mix (with Hershey’s semi-sweet chocolate chunks). I have never, ever, never, ever (that was never, ever) baked anything out of a box. I have refused, even for muffins. Then again, there was a day I vowed I would never bake a cake in a microwave. So yes, bloody Betty Crocker may undo me yet. (Though I seriously suspect not: they will be too sweet. Too fudgy. Too chewy. Too fake. Too good. Too damn right).

(In fairness, I did jokingly suggest he should bring me exactly that when I couldn’t think of anything else I wanted from over there. Be careful what you wish for).

My philosophe knows me well, so on the day I munch Betty Crocker brownies wearing my Lake Tahoe t-shirt, I can look forward to many hours of smoking the 1 kilogram of Golden Virginia tobacco I now own (don’t say a word, mother – it will last me till Christmas), followed by some Eclipse Chewing Gum which promises not only INCREDIBLY FRESH BREATH, but is also (astoundingly!) Naturally Germ Killing.

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I wonder which germs the gum will be targeting – perhaps some of the ones lurking in the host of unpronouncable chemical additives used to manufacture the stuff? Yes, Michael Pollan would be appalled. But this doctor likes her gum, so back off. (Funnily enough, Cadbury’s has apparently challenged Wrigley’s germ-killing claims. Pot of chocolate calling kettle of gum fake? You gotta love America).

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Blank

By E | Posted on: May 30, 2009

So it’s been a week since I put the Philosophe on a plane that took him far far away. It’s funny how easily you forget to be alone – in fact I remember I used to take some pride in how good I was at being alone. I was adamantly not lonely – just alone, proud and strong. But that was because I had to be, and I’m generally quite good at buckling down and dealing with what needs to be done.

Which is also why the week has mostly been fine, and I’ve been pleasantly surprised to be reminded that time marches on, even when days feel impossibly long.

I am not good at being alone anymore, because I know how much better life is when I’m not. But I’m also glad to be reminded of that (I’ll be even happier next week when  it’s over), and I’ve caught myself doing a few weird and wonderful things in between. One day I ironed for two hours.

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That was strangely soothing, and pleasantly wifely.

I also discovered how to hypnotize Mogwai. I lit a candle and poof! She fell asleep:

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I now keep as many candles on as possible to distract her from her infuriatingly perpetual greediness (I timed my last bowl of popcorn to coincide with her dinner, but she still came and scoffed half the bowl).

The other day I made coq au vin – or should I call it chicken in wine, for it was no old rooster, just a plain packet of chicken from Pick ‘n Pay. But I browned that chicken in duck fat and for a few blissful moments the kitchen teased me with the smells of duck confit. Unexpected things intervened so I haven’t yet had the pleasure of eating it, but it awaits in the freezer for a cold day (today is one, but another unexpected invitation has intervened).

Last night a well-known chef in this city gave me a secret recipe for “perfect” brownies which I will have to humour one of these days. I’ll need my calculator again – the recipe calls for 16 eggs!

I also have a rack of smoked pork ribs in the fridge. They whispered to me in my sleep that they want to meet the jar of sauerkraut that the Sailor neglected to eat while he was here, so Mogwai and I are thinking of spicing things up by borrowing some of Elise Bauer’s ideas about ribs and sauerkraut.

Ours will of course be so delicious that the Philosophe’s absence might become even more acute. But to paraphrase a sage tweet I sent out the other day, absence makes the heart grow fatter.

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The big brown(ie hell) hole

By E | Posted on: May 24, 2009

There were days, nay months (dare I even confess to a year) when I was obsessed with finding the perfect muffin recipe. Not any old thing that “works”: I needed to recreate the only muffin that I have respect for, which comes from the unlikeliest of places, which is UCT campus. They make (on good days) an infuriatingly good bran muffin, with just the right sweetness (not very much, and just one or two raisins to bump up the occasional bite), a great crust, and most importantly, an admirable muffin top. AND, they are of a size that is tolerable.

But that’s a long (infuriating) story which I never had any success in, so I’ve ditched the muffin and turned to brownies.

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I’ve been on a brownie crusade for a couple of months now – I wish I could say that all of the above were the results of my efforts, but no. These are other people’s – some considered “slebs” – versions of the “perfect” brownie (click on the pics to see who’s who).

My own efforts have been with varied success – the first ones were pronounced very good by my tasters, but I wasn’t convinced of their perfection. Since then its been a number of hits and misses, none of which were convincing enough that I had hit on a recipe I could stop trying to improve.

I soon realised that my main problem is that I – unlike both the sailor and the philosophe, who have spent their fair share of time eating brownies in the US (terroir!) – actually have no benchmarks. I have an idea of what it should be like – fudgy, yes, but preferably chewy, with a top crust – but I don’t know that I’ve ever eaten the thing I’m trying to make.

Anyway, as these obsessions go, I have now spent the larger part of this morning doing yet more research, and I have just had another lightbulb moment. I’ve hardly paid attention to pan SIZES – I did recently go out and buy what I thought was a good brownie tin, but of course that’s just one size, and in most of the recipes I’ve tried, I haven’t really paid attention to the recommended size, which of course is crucial to the results: too big = flat, cakey brownie; too small = too fudgy/gooey etc etc.

I have now measured my tins, I’ve done the calculations, and I am pretty sure I am onto something. What relief! A little intel makes it so much easier to figure out which recipes to discard, and which to pursue.

Only thing is, I am – sadly, pitifully, heartbreakingly! – alone for the next almost THREE weeks, having yesterday sent my philosophe off to the big land of brownies. But then I did promise him a fully stocked kitchen on his return (that means brownies and biscotti), so it’s only right that I should start practicing my now achievable perfection.

In other words, I have to bake brownies NOW, dammit. Otherwise how am I supposed to get any work done?

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Sex Trek

By E | Posted on: May 16, 2009

After variously sorting out the world in a bumper morning’s work, the Philosophe and I allowed ourselves the naughty indulgence of a Friday afternoon at the cinema, so off we went to Star Trek. I confess to being one of those culturally superior inferior people who have never watched any of the Star Trek films (nor even Star Wars), thinking myself a non-sci-fi kinda gal.  But it was great, and now I can say “beam me up, Scottie” and know what I’m talking about.

We enjoyed an after-movie whisky under the brooding sky of a Cape Town gearing up for a weekend storm:

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(Free snacks are always good).

Ho hum, but we still had a couple of hours to kill before it was respectably dinner time, so we decided to check out the Sexpo. (We were hoping to get there to see the silly Christians protesting, but we imagined the weather put them off – apparently it didn’t, though we missed them).

It was altogether a pretty silly (and expensive!) experience. Not only was the space far too big for what was in there (meaning you never shake the feeling of being in a large warehouse with a few dildos), but there was very little raunch – not to mention the absurd stalls in between selling olive oil, and other gratuitous marketers like the stall selling pet cushions for “pussy lovers”, and “doggy style” (my, how clever!).

We watched Miss UK poledance doing her number – she was very good, but more of an athlete than a nymphette, and then we watched the Boerewors Brothers (which turned out to be one man) doing penis puppetry. What it is? I’ll leave that to your imagination, which will probably do a better job than half-bro Boerie.

We also saw Pricasso and his portrait of our new president, penned with – yes, you guessed it – his penis.

There were a couple of topless women standing around, and a couple of large wandering penises:

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Ho hum. More crunch than raunch there. Anyway, it was certainly a different way to spend a Friday evening, and after we’d had our fill of fake genitals and whisky, it was thankfully time for dinner at a little bistro that made us decent versions of (appropriately) coq au vin and T-Bone steak.

Now we continue to await the storm, and since we’re both on strict diets, I spent the morning making sure we were armed for the rain:

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On the left we have a naartjie cake which involved boiling the fruit whole before pureeing and adding to a polenta-olive oil batter with a touch of almond. For the syrup on top, I boiled down a last drop of Beaumont’s delicious Goutte D’Or dessert wine with some lemon juice and sugar. Since the naartjies were also gifts hailing from Beaumont, I’ll call it the Naartjie D’Or. Should hit the spot with afternoon coffee in front of the heater.

Oh, and on the right, one more pan of brownies. I am STILL looking for the perfect recipe, and this one comes from the one who will not be named. I almost hate to say it, but I think these might be the ones.

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