Cheap Bone Stew in a Pressure Cooker

This is a rather low effort, quick recipe and the ingredients are cheap. You can get the meaty flavour without buying actual meat. Hooray for resourcefulness and for a good effort-to-tastiness ratio!

Ingredients:
2 tbsp oil
1 tspn butter
1kg bones
1 onion
2 big stalks of celery
5 carrots, chopped
2 potatoes, chopped
5 turnips, peeled & chopped
1 big head of broccoli, chopped
1/2 cup brown lentils, cooked (without salt)
1 medium aubergine, chopped and lightly fried

Method:
Brown the bones with some oil and melted butter in a hot pot or pressure cooker. 
Take the browned bones out and then start to brown the onions. 
Add the chopped carrots and celery at this stage to make a mirepoix.
Once those look nicely fried, add the bones back in and then also the rest of the roots (potatoes and turnips). 
Add enough water to almost cover the vegetables. We used a pressure cooker, so these ingredients only took 20 minutes to get cooked. A stove might take one to two hours.
Once the pressure is released from the cooker, take out the bones and discard them.
Add the broccoli, cooked lentils and fried aubergines.
Put the pressure cooker on for one minute (it takes a few minutes to get up to pressure as well). Don't over do the broccoli or else it will turn into green mush.

Enjoy this hearty meal with a piece of buttered, crusty fresh bread or with grated Parmesan on top.

Spongy Lentil Cake

Part of trying new things means that occasionally you'll find something that you don't quite enjoy. Case in point is this fluffy lentil sponge cake from Anjum's New Indian cook book. It was made with chickpea flour, tumeric, mustard and ginger and other spices. Maybe the chickpea and ginger flavours are what combined to make a really strange taste. Perhaps I need to develop my palate. But I wont be making this again for a while.

Poppy Seed Brioche French Toast with Honey, Lemon & Blueberries

Technically not a bread, brioche is a viennoiserie instead because of all the egg and butter used (hence more of a pastry, if you will)! It can be eaten plain, sweetened or even savoury and is characterised by the shiny, dark and flaky exterior, which is emphasised with a egg wash before baking. It tastes almost like croissant but is a lot easier and less time consuming to make.

After some searching, I found this awesome recipe for making brioche. It's super rich, delicate and melt-in-your-mouth. It freezes wonderfully and toasts very well in a toaster.

Once you've made your brioche you can prepare it for freezing (if that is your plan). Let it cool for a while before using an electric carving knife to cut through that soft, fluffy bread. You can store the slices in ziplock bags and then put them in the freezer in a spot where they won't be squashed. 

For the French toast slightly stale bread works best, so you can leave out a few slices to dry out overnight. Alternatively, start right away! One of my new favourite discoveries is The Sugar Hit, where you can get the recipe details on how to make this yummy French Toast (you can see from my photos that I added the poppy seeds into the bread rather than the French toast batter; and I used fresh blueberries).

Winter Salad Inspiration

For a crisp, sunny winter's day.

Ingredients:
1/2 of a medium roasted butternut, peeled
1/3 wheel of feta
A few salad leaves
Some watercress
1 tsp sunflower seeds
1/4 tsp linseed
1 tbsp lemon juice
3 tbsp olive oil
Salt
Pepper

Method:
Lay out the salad leaves on a plate and lay the roughly chopped butternut on top.
Next, break up the feta over the butternut. 
Mix together oil and lemon juice, adding salt & pepper to taste. 
Then gently pour this dressing over the feta and the butternut and top it off with the seeds.You can even roast the sunflower seeds in a dry pan beforehand if you would like them to have a more toasty flavour.

Gourmet it: 
Add in squares of roasted beetroot, chopped pieces of fresh orange and maybe even some ripe avocado.
Perhaps a touch of chilli and a teaspoon of Bulgarian yoghurt in the dressing will go down well too.

Breakfast Idea

Gluten-Free Dairy-Free Aubergine Lasagne

This is probably one of my favourite Whole30 meals I've had so far. It doesn't take too long to make, so I'm probably going to make this again this week (double sized).

Ingredients:
500g beef mince (preferably not lean since there is no dairy fat being added)
2 handfuls of baby tomatoes and 1 tsp tomato paste (instead of making your own 'passata', you can use some from a can too)
1 onion, chopped finely
2 cloves of garlic, chopped
2- 3 aubergines, sliced length-ways and fried in olive oil
A handful of olives, roughly chopped
Some thyme and oreganum
Salt
Pepper

Method:
Fry the chopped onion in some oil on a medium-low heat until translucent.
Add the beef (if it's not yet defrosted you have to continuously keep scraping off the cooked bits to make sure it doesn't make one giant meatball) and fry it until browned. This might take some time and can be done on high heat. Add extra oil if it starts sticking to the pan.
Once the meat is browned, add the garlic and season with salt.
In a separate pan I sautéed the tomatoes until soft and then I used a blender to make a  sort of soup (or 'passata'). I added tomato paste to add extra flavour.
Then, add your tomato mixture to the beef and make sure that any extra liquid is reduced away. Now the beef is ready to be ladled into a casserole dish and topped with some chopped olives (for flavour). Start with about a third of the beef and use half the olives.
Next, layer the aubergine on top (about half of them / enough to fit your casserole dish dimensions). 
Repeat the beef layer, the olives and then the aubergines again. It might be a good idea to end with another layer of beef if possible because my aubergines dried out a bit.

Put your casserole dish in the oven at 180'C for 30 minutes and then it's ready!

Tip (from an olive-lover): The olives add a lot to the flavour so don't leave them out! If you're not an "olive-person", don't worry because you can't really taste them :P

Pot Au Feu

This French beef stew is eaten by both the rich and the poor as a comfort food.  Literally the name translates to "pot on the fire". It is relatively easy and cost-effective to make.

If you use marrow bones, the cooked marrow can be eaten on toast, the broth can be served separately as a soup and the vegetables and meat can be served on their own as a stew (one meal, three ways). If you live in the Meadowridge area, in Cape Town, The Fat German can supply you with super marrow bones for R25/kg (and other very tempting things).

Simple, deliciously comforting and cost-effective, this recipe is one of my favourites (especially the broth).

Ingredients:
500g beef blade (you can also use beef shank, chuck, ribs)
500g large beef marrowbones
2 whole cloves
1 large white onion, peeled, halved
1 bouquet garni (something like 3 sprigs of thyme, parsley)
1 small cinnamon stick
1 tsp black peppercorns 
1 tbsp coarse sea salt
2 bay leaves
5 stalks celery, cut into large pieces
4 medium carrots, peeled and quartered
6 small turnips, peeled and quartered
500g new potatoes 
2 baby cabbages, optional

Method:
Place all the ingredients except for the last four (the vegetables) into the stockpot and pour enough cold water into the stockpot to cover the ingredients.

Bring this to boil and then turn it the heat down to a low simmer (just below boiling) for 2 1/2 hours. Add water, if needed, to keep the meat and marrowbones covered. 

After 2 1/2 hours, add the carrots, celery and turnips. Simmer these for 20 minutes. Add the baby potatoes and simmer for a further 20 minutes. 

Remove the vegetables and meat which should now be tender and cook the cabbages for ten minutes. When it's cooked through you can take the cabbage out and just reduce the broth.

To serve, spread the marrow onto toasted baguette and enjoy with gherkins, mustard, horseradish and sea salt. You can serve the broth also with some toasted baguette, and the stew can be eaten as is with the afore-mentioned condiments.

Potato Omelette

This could be a more English version of the Spanish omelette, which is made with only potato and egg (and maybe some onion). Serves 2.

Ingredients:

3 eggs

2 medium potatoes

5 cherry tomatoes

Cheddar cheese

Oil for frying

Salt & pepper

Method:

Cut your potatoes into 1cm square pieces.

Put some oil in a pan and fry your potato pieces. It works best of you don't crowd the pan too much.

Once the potato is browned and cooked inside, you can remove these from the pan and rest them on paper towel to absorb extra oil.

Beat the eggs together and add a pinch of salt and pepper.

Turn down the heat to medium-low and pour the egg into the pan and put a lid on to speed up the cooking.

Once it's no longer very liquid at the top, I usually like to flip my omelette to make sure that it's going to cook well on both sides. However, for this recipe I don't flip it, because when I add the potato I want to it to sink into the omelette a little bit (since it's not completely cooked through yet).

Once the potato is added, continue to cook the omelette with a lid on until done. 

Add the tomatoes and the cheese on one half.

Fold the omelette over and serve topped with a little extra cheese.

Fried Aubergines with Gruyère and a Greek Yoghurt Dip

We had a great braai on New Year's Eve with some lovely rump steaks, sweet potato chips, roasted tomatoes, and for starters we had aubergines.

Having eaten aubergines a few times before dipped in egg and fried; they were my least favourite vegetable. Last year we gave the purple vegetables another chance. They've been a regular in our shopping basket ever since. This is my preferred way of cooking aubergines as a snack, side or starter.

Ingredients:
1 big aubergine
Mixed herbs
Olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste

Gruyère cheese

Greek Yoghurt 
Garlic
Mint
Calamata olives

Method:
Cut your aubergine into 1cm thick slices and set your pan on a medium heat. 
Make a 'dressing' with olive oil, salt, pepper and the herbs to baste your slices with. 
Put one or two layers of oil on each side of each slice.
Put a little oil in the pan and fry the first few slices (only one layer, so no overlapping).
In about 5 minutes you can turn these slices and they should have brown spots (from the frying) on them and have changed to a darker colour (they will be much softer too). Cook the new side until done and remove from the pan.
Add the next few slices.
Once they are all done, you can top them with the grated cheese and serve with calamata olives. To make the dip a bit moreexciting, you can mix chopped garlic, mint and some additional olive oil into the yoghurt.

Tip: If you want the brinjal to cook quicker, you can steam the slices a bit by putting on a lid (they aren't going to be crispy anyway because they have too much liquid). 

Pan-fried Trout

We recently had a rather interesting meal for breakfast: pan-fried trout with a few fresh salad ingredients (pepper, tomato, cucumber) and a Greek yoghurt dip (sprinkled with spices like pepper, cumin and paprika).

Frying fish is really easy. Put a little oil in a pan and let it heat up on a medium high heat. You start with the skinless side facing down. Cook the fish for about 5-8 minutes before turning it over and cooking the skin side down for a further 5 minutes or so until golden. This way the skin is crispy when you serve it.

Mediterranean Couscous Salad

Great for a hot summer's day.

Ingredients:

A punnet of baby tomatoes

A big aubergine / egg plant / brinjal sliced & chopped

A yellow pepper, sliced

Half a cup of dry couscous

3 leaves of sage

5 leaves of mint

3 leaves of rocket

Olive oil

Flax Seeds

Greek yoghurt

Salt

Pepper

Method:

Get out a nice big roasting pan and put all your veggies in there. Sprinkle over the herbs (chopped), a bit of salt and pepper. And coat with olive oil (stir it up).

Roast this on 180 degress Celcius for 45 minutes.

While that is roasting, just cover your couscous with water and let it soak it up. You can also lightly salt it.

Add flax seeds to your couscous.

Serve the hot veggies around the couscous and top with Greek yoghurt and garnish with a spring of mint.