Category : Recipes
I happened to be hurtling home through the Karoo after a recent wine roadtrip, but made sure to stop and pick up some Karoo lamb rib chops on the way. Lamb chops are arguably best cooked on the braai, but in winter you can still whip them up in your kitchen while its pouring outside. They work well in this recipe, though you could use pork chops or even chicken fillets instead. The recipe also combines some of my favourite ingredients: lemons, parmesan and olives. In fact, anything with parmesan is a winner in my book. If you can’t get your hands on a bottle of Italian Primitivo or Barbera, serve it with a quality bottle of chalky, earthy shiraz (Lammershoek Syrah would be my first choice).
Parmesan Crumbed Lamb Chops
Ingredients
For the sauce
1 cup green olives, pitted
1 handful flat leaf parsley
zest of 1 lemon, very finely chopped
¼ cup olive oil
salt
freshly ground pepper
For the lamb chops
1 cup bread crumbs
½ cup grated parmesan
6 lamb rib chops
½ cup flour
1 egg
salt
freshly ground pepper
2 Tbsp butter
Preparing the sauce
Roughly chop the olives, parsley and lemon zest. Mix together in a bowl and add the olive oil. Season with salt and pepper. (You can blend the ingredients in a mixer, but I like it roughly chopped for texture)
Preparing the lamb
Beat the egg in a bowl. Mix the breadcrumbs and parmesan in another bowl, along with some salt & pepper. Coat the chops with flour, shaking off any excess. Dip chops into the egg, then evenly coat with the crumbs & parmesan mixture. Fry in butter in a medium-hot pan approximately 7 minutes a side, so nicely browned (best served medium-rare). Turn them whenever necessary while cooking to prevent burning. Serve over polenta and spoon the green olive & parsley sauce over the top. Steamed fine beans go well as a side dish.
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*this post originally featured on www.eat-in.co.za
If you think it’s a good idea to go out and drink beer, wine and tequila till 4AM, think again. It’s a great idea. Great, so long as you don’t do it too often and always prepare with a good meal beforehand, something I didn’t do a few weeks ago. I also didn’t do the obligatory 3AM food-stop at the Engen either, stupidly. Needless to say I felt suitably hungover after this occasion. Sitting on the couch, I heard the word ‘fishburger.’ I don’t know if it was the flying unicorn or the birds circling my head that said it, but someone definitely said it. Feeling a bit like I’d had a night in Vegas and woke up without a tooth, I stumbled to the nearest fish ‘n chip shop and bought a greasy piece of deep-fried hake, took it home, stuck it on a roll and smothered it in mayonnaise. It was delicious, greasy and completely satisfying. And afterwards, I was completely ready for the rest of the afternoon, starting with a quick 2-hour nap, of course.
My realization a few days later was how good it was to eat something fried and fattty, to soak up all the alcohol, plus also reasonably healthy for you. Fish is so good for you, it’s actually okay to eat it deep-fried. So your LC the next day doesn’t get worse because you’ve completely thrown your health out the window to join your name and probably more than a few hundred Rand that abandoned you last night. I recreated the fishburger from scratch (no, not directly afterwards, but a few days later) and it was superb, even without the hangover. After your next big one, try one of these fishburgers. It will put you on your way to a normal day, just as soon as you er, find your personality.
Ingredients (makes 2 fishburgers)
4 small pieces fresh hake
1/2 cup beer
1/2 cup flour
salt
freshly ground black pepper
peanut oil (or cooking oil)
2 hamburger rolls
1/2 cup mayonnaise
1/2 tsp curry powder
2 sprigs coriander
Preparation
Mix flour and beer together to form a smooth batter. Season with salt & pepper.
Coat each piece of fish in the batter and fry in the peanut oil on medium heat. There should be about 1/2 cm of oil on the base of the pan. Cook until browned on each side. Fish should be white and flaky, but soft inside.
Place two pieces fish on each roll. Mix the curry powder into the mayonnaise and divide over the top of the fish and sprinkle with the coriander.
Eat while pondering what actually happened the night before.
I salvaged a chicken carcass a friend’s roast chicken dinner on Friday (just one of those things I do, I guess), and made a seriously delicious stock with it on Saturday, following Giorgio Locatelli’s recipe, which is foolproof and turns out superbly. It’s the kind of recipe that involves brushing the carcass in tomato paste and roasting in the oven. Basically the awesome kind. So Saturday night I simply threw some tortolini in this potent broth and that was dinner. As simple as Italian fare gets, right there, but hearty, rich and filling. I used beef and parmesan tortellini, but you could use any kind. On Sunday, with about 300ml leftover stock in the fridge and a tin of tomatoes eyeballing me on the shelf, I decided to use them for spicy tomato soup.
I do seem to have a tomato addiction and might have to seek counseling for it in the near future (please, if you know someone that is an expert at tomato overdose prevention, do get in touch). Addict or not though, you might enjoy this recipe for possibly one of my favourite new dishes. Simple to make and rather quick also, taking roughly 30-minutes in total, it would make a great starter.
Ingredients (makes 2 starter portions)
1 tin whole-peeled tomatoes
100g totellini (beef & parmesan works well)
300ml chicken stock
100ml water
1 garlic clove, finely chopped
1/2 an onion, finely chopped
2 birds eye chilies, finely chopped
1 Tbsp chopped parsley
olive oil
Preparation
Saute the chili, garlic and onion in olive oil in a hot saucepan for 3-minutes, till onions start to darken.
Add the tin of tomatoes, stir to mix and cover.
Simmer for 20-minutes, stirring occasionally, until tomatoes are softened and broken up.
Use a hand-blender to blend the saucepan contents into a smooth consistency.
Add the chicken stock and water, simmer another 5-minutes.
Add the tortellini and cook another 3-minutes.
Serve in bowls, drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with parsley.
Every now and then I make something I’m well and truly chuffed with. I made this for my chef sister and potential-future-brother-in-law last night. After we’d eaten, all they could say was, “Wow!” Scratch that, while we were eating, all we could do was ooh and aah, it was that good. If I ever had a restaurant (God forbid), I’d like to think that this dish would be on the menu. In fact, the sis said she’d be stealing the recipe for her own use. Either way, we all celebrated after licking our bowls with some superb Grappa Ruta (more on that soon).
One of my favourite curries ever is a Malaysian crab curry served by Fatty Crab, a hipster curry joint in New York. It’s a favourite because it combines all the richness of a coconut cream curry with quite an Indian-like flavour. So for this fish curry, I decided to marry Indian spices with Thai; something of a hybrid, but something of a gem too. Prepare yourself for a little bit of wonderful. In fact, I’d suggest you make it to impress visiting dignitaries, potential husbands/wives or Gordon Ramsey. Okay, that last one can be taken out. Who’d want to cook for that loud jerk?
Ingredients
400g white fish, sliced into smaller pieces (I used kingklip, which I don’t eat often, but worked great)
340ml tin coconut cream
3 large tomatoes, diced
1 clove garlic, finely chopped
1 small onion, finely chopped
1 large chili, finely chopped
4 sticks lemongrass, outer layers removed
curry mix (2 tsp Masala curry powder, 1 tsp turmeric, 1 tsp mustard seeds, 1/2 tsp cumin seeds, 1/2 tsp ground coriander)
4 kaffir lime leaves, finely chopped
2 tsp fish sauce
3 Tbsp peanut oil
1 small handful of fresh coriander
Preparation
Saute the garlic, chili and onion in the peanut oil in a saucepan over medium heat until onion is soft, about 3-minutes
Add the curry mix and fry another minute, stirring constantly to mix well
Add the diced tomatoes, lemongrass sticks and kaffir lime and cook another 15-minutes, stirring occasionally, until tomatoes are softened
Add the coconut cream and the fish, as well as the fish sauce; cook another 8-minutes
Serve in bowls over steamed rice or on its own with bread; garnish with the fresh coriander
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Obviously beer and curry is a good choice, but this dish went really well with a bottle of Chenin Blanc. We had the Santa Cecilia Ten Barrels, an uncertified Chenin Blanc 2009 made in small amounts (I’m guessing they make about ten barrels) the sis had picked up in Riebeek-Kasteel recently. Aside from loving it automatically because it came from Riebeek-Kasteel and has the word ‘Santa’ in the name, I loved it because the sweeter fruits really came out when paired with the curry. In fact, it’s got a rather sweet vibe about it all together, but not offensively so. Oh, you also might like that it was apparently R40. Bonus!
I just made this for lunch because I had the ingredients in my fridge, but I’m going to recommend you do it for Sunday brunch this weekend. If you’re like me, you’ll probably be a little hungover after heavily celebrating Argentina’s imminent victory over Germany, so this will go down a treat. Anyways, it’s very simple to make, especially since you’re not a restaurant and don’t have to make your fishcakes or mayonnaise from scratch (though kudos if you do).
Poached eggs, man, they make me happy… and no Sunday brunch should pass without them! Oh, and try not to burn the shit out of your palate on the steaming hot fishcakes because you’re so excited to eat them. I bloody well do that all the time…
Ingredients: (for 2 portions)
4 salmon fishcakes (bought mine at Woolworths)
4 eggs
2 handfuls of pak choi leaves (Pick ‘n Pay usually has)
6 Tbsp mayonnaise
2 Tbsp Dijon mustard
1 Tbsp white wine vinegar
2 tsp chopped fresh parsley
Preparation:
Heat the fishcakes in the oven till warm; 160′C for 15-minutes works well.
Blanche the pak choi in a frying pan with boiling water for 2-minutes. Remove and place in colander.
Pour water out and boil more water in the pan. Should be about 2 fingers of water for poaching the eggs. Add the vinegar once it’s boiling (not too roughly, just a fine bubble rising). Individually crack each egg into a cup/mug and gently transfer to water. Using the side of the pan helps not end up with a yolky mess in the pan, but temperature is key.
While your eggs are poaching, mix your mayonnaise with your mustard. Divide the pak choi onto two plates, place two salmon fishcakes on top on each portion and then divide your Dijonnaise over the top. Once the eggs are as you like them, simple place one on top of each fishcake. Sprinkle the parsley on top of each and enjoy.
There’s nothing like soup when you’re hanging. Sloppy, hearty and warming, it really is your best friend on those nights in when you wish the previous night out never happened. And if you’re like me, partial to the occasional night out, then you’ve probably had several of those. Next time, try this recipe – one of my favourite Asian soups, right up there with Tom Yum and Miso. It’s not very difficult to put together and makes a great warming winter dinner. You can substitute pork with other meat, but pork works best. And if you’re Jewish, remember it’s okay to eat pork, you just can’t tell anyone about it. Best make it spicy and hot. Leaving the seeds in the chili gets the best results both in terms of flavour and the er, ‘next day’ effect.
Ingredients. (makes 2-3 portions, depending on size – of the company)
300g pork mince
2 tsp fish sauce
1 thumb-sized piece of ginger, crushed or grated
2 garlic clove, one sliced, the other finely chopped
1 green chili, chopped finely
3 sticks lemongrass, outer ‘sheath’ removed and finely chopped
1.5 tbsp peanut or sesame oil
1 litre chicken stock
2 handfuls rice noodles (soaked in water for 10 minutes to ‘freshen’)
1 large handful pak choi leaves
Preparation.
Mix half of each of the chili, fish sauce, ginger respectively along with the finely chopped garlic with the mince. Fashion about 7 or 8 small balls from it using your hands.* Fry the porkballs in your saucepan with half the oil on medium-high heat for about 8-10 minutes, moving them around so they brown nicely all over. Don’t worry about the pork sticking. Once the porkballs are cooked, remove to a separate dish. Then you can deglaze the saucepan with a touch of rice vinegar or wine and pour this over the porkballs.
Add the rest of the oil to the saucepan, and fry the lemongrass and remaining chili, garlic and ginger for about 3 minutes. Then pour in the stock and scrape the bottom to remove anything that’s stuck. Add the remaining fish sauce.
Simmer for five minutes, then add the porkballs, noodles and pak choi and allow to warm. Serve in bowls with chopsticks, which ensures you slurp loudly directly out the bowl, an important part of ‘eating Asian.’
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* You do not need breadcrumbs. You never need breadcrumbs when making patties, meatballs, etc. This is a myth, probably thought up by a vegan.
“Who does Number Two work for?” You, he works for you. That is, your second lunch works for you. There’s nothing wrong with having a second lunch. Two smaller lunches are better than one. True. Besides, my Monday early lunchtime sandwich wasn’t enough. Anyways, this was one of those completely unplanned dishes that just came out perfectly.
I had cooked some tomato soup for lunch yesterday, and had a little left over. There wasn’t much soup left, but I heated it up, gently cracked an egg into it and watched it cook. The tomato soup was reducing, being cooked with an open lid, and actually got nice and thick. After five minutes, I had an egg poached in tomato soup. I scooped it out onto some rocket on toast. Eggs for Lunch Number Two, yup, and it was bloody delicious. If only I had a glass of bubbly on hand…
There’s a lot of flack flying around the Twitterverse this week about who’s qualified to write what and when. What makes me qualified to write about food? Who shot the sheriff? What planet is Malema really from? I’m sure William Shatner has the answers to all of these intriguing questions, and if you’re really interested you can try find him. Otherwise, if you’re interested in good food, keep reading…
So this lamb is really killer. I can’t really say much more than that. It was quite honestly the best lamb I’ve ever eaten. Constantia Uitsig restaurant does a great slow-roast lamb – Abbaccio, I think they call it -which I have eaten several times, but this I think trumps it. So, how do you make it? Well, it was a group effort, and if you want to make it exactly* as we did, the recipe would be something like this:
Invite Simon Wibberley for a weekend away along with some other friends. Ensure he brings a large leg of lamb. Proceed to spend the entire Saturday night smashing vast amounts of red wine. Somewhere around 11pm, remember the leg of lamb and decide to start cooking it. First rub it with olive oil, salt and pepper. Then place it in a large, flat oven tray over high heat and brown it nicely all over. Don’t leave the kitchen for fear of forgetting it. Avoid other guests deliberately trying to splash red wine on your white shirt. Laugh at Simon ‘popping’ a bag of chips all over the kitchen floor. Shit – you’ve almost forgotten about the lamb, which is now ready to go in the oven. But first, pour half a bottle of red wine (I think we were drinking the dangerously delicious Warwick First Lady at the time of cooking, which duly went in) over the lamb so it sits in a nice ‘wine bath’ within the dish. Then place in oven, which should be around medium setting – about 150′C, I’d guess.
The next sequence of events should be rather drunken and blurry for you, but must involve a few glass breakages, some flying bottles, plenty of fridge-raiding and a bit of karaoke sing-along. Sometime around 2am you should notice the gas has run out and the oven is off. Just leave it and go to bed. You’re drunk and you need rest.
Wake up around 9am. Remember the lamb. Change the gas bottle and relight oven. Turn the lamb over in its dish. Drink a cup of coffee and have a fellow weekender make you an omelette. Go back to bed. The lamb should cook another three hours, at which point four of you assemble in the kitchen to empty in two cans of Cannellini beans (rinsed), one can of Borlotti beans (rinsed), one can of whole, peeled Italian tomatoes and 250ml chicken stock. Then return it to the oven. Drink a tomato cocktail for your hangover and stare longingly at the lamb in the oven. You should be feeling okay by now. If you’re up for it, go play a quick game of boules on the beach. Otherwise just laze around reading or trying to piece last night back together.
After another hour, turn the lamb over again. Then cook another hour or two (it’s hard to keep track of time when the clock on the wall is so blurry) and the lamb should be ready to eat. You’ll know when it’s ready – you shouldn’t need to cut it; it should be tender enough to rip hunks of meat away using a fork. Sprinkle with some chopped parsley and enjoy with some sides and importantly, a selection of wines and beer.
Though a chunky red wine would be the obvious pairing, I really enjoyed this lamb with the Eikendal Chardonnay 2009. The wine was quite rich and creamy, but actually fresh when compared to the lamb, heavy in all its juices. It cleaned the palate nicely and made for a good combination.
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*Naturally, you don’t have to follow this exact recipe, but the lamb will taste that little bit better if you do.
French onion soup is not your health shop ‘skinny latte’ type soup. It’s got real cheese (Gruyere) and bread and a fairly large amount of butter. No, the Flora Fake Butter Heart-Healthy Recommended Tasteless Diet Plan doesn’t approve of it. But it is bloody delicious. It’s a soup that is actually quite similar to a grilled cheese sandwich. At least when you use a little extra bread, it is, and that’s how I made it. Instead of the one slice of old baguette, I used three, which basically formed a layer of bread and melted cheese over rich, tasty onion soup.
I was inspired by the French onion soup Cathy Marston had made at the recent Vinatics dinner. It was tasty, hearty and the perfect dish for a cold evening. We struggled a bit with the wine pairing on the night, but I think I’ve cracked it: Red Jerepigo. I used the Botha Wynkelder Red Jerepigo (which just happened to be in the house, so complete luck!) in the recipe and drank some with it to great results. It’s sweet (some of my wine mates would call it, “Fokken soet!”) and luscious, but really does go nicely with the onion broth as well as the cheesy bread. Try it!
Ingredients:
6 large brown onions, sliced (not diced)
1 finger of butter
1/2 cup Red Jerepigo (you’ll need more to drink, of course)
6 cups chicken stock
1 bay leaf
1 old baguette, sliced in 2cm thick slices and toasted.
block of gruyere cheese
pinch of chopped thyme
salt & pepper
Preparation:
It’s really simple. Saute the onions with the butter in a large pot, over medium-low heat for about 25 minutes. Stir every few minutes. They should start to caramelize. Yum. Don’t put them on a boerie roll. Instead, add the Jerepigo, and cook another 2-3 minutes until the alcohol has evaporated.
Then add the stock, the bay leaf, thyme and a good dose of salt & pepper to season. Keep on the heat, stirring a few more times for about another five minutes.
Divide the soup between four oven-proof bowls. Cover the top of each soup bowl with slices of toasted baguette and grate a thin layer of gruyere over each. Place in oven under the element to melt the cheese.
Once the cheese is melted, remove and serve. I recommend you enjoy with a liberal glass of the Jerepigo. By a fireplace. In the country somewhere. On a cold night. With attractive company.
I couldn’t resist making this. It’s not exactly the healthiest lunch, but then, it’s not too bad either, so long as you use (and I can’t stress this enough!) good weiners. Don’t buy anything with the word Enterprise on the pack. Or the word vienna. Do go to Raith’s (or SPAR) and get weiner sausages, made without any weird colouring or shit. Anyways, once you got them, you pretty much grill them (on grill or under broiler) and throw it on a toasted bun with some sliced jalapeno peppers, paint it with tomato sauce and mustard and you have lunch. I don’t really need to get too technical, since this is about the simplest thing you can make. Oh, don’t forget to remove the seeds from the jalapeno. That is unless you want to be painting something else too.
