Sweet Potato Shepard's Pie

Serves 2 very hungry people

I made this the other day and it was so very tasty and so it's highly recommended. It's filling and tasty, and mostly healthy. The original recipe is from Good Food, and as I usually amend the recipes a bit depending on the state of my ingredients, or purse. So, here's my own version:

Ingredients:
250g beef mince
1 onion, chopped
1 leek, chopped
3 carrot, in rondels
2 cloves of chopped garlic
1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
1 tsp Marmite
1 cup dry lentils, cooked
3 medium-large sweet potatoes
Butter & milk for the sweet potato mash

Method:
Fry the onion & leek until translucent. Add the garlic, Marmite, Worcestershire & mince and fry until brown and almost crispy. Add the carrots and cook until soft. Add a little water if necessary. It should be a little bit saucy.

In the meantime boil the sweet potatoes. If you can cut them into 2cm slices they cook through quite fast. Drain & mash with butter & milk and a pinch of salt if you like.

And, then for the lentils: If you have a can or 2 you can use that, but if you are cooking dry lentils, it will take about 30 min. Put a cup of lentils into a pot with lots of boiling water. If you add a whole cup it will really make a lot of lentils but it will make your meal go further (my husband and I were particularly hungry this day and ate the entire pie in one night). Anyway  lentils are tasty and a healthy source of protein. But if you want less lentils to meat ratio, then use only half a cup.

Mix together the lentils and the vegetables and pour into a baking dish. Top with the mash & flatten. The butter in the mash is what should help it to brown and crisp a little bit under the grill. Grill for 10 min and enjoy hot!

Here is the original recipe: http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/1718633/sweet-potato-shepherds-pie

Pumpkin & Lamb Stew

Ingredients:
1/2 pumpkin, peeled and roughly chopped (ours weighed 3,2kg whole)
5 tomatoes, chopped
1 onion, chopped
1 can kidney beans
1 can butter beans
200g stewing lamb
1 heaped tsp minced garlic
1 heaped tsp minced ginger

Spices
Grind the following into a powder in a spice grinder:
1 tsp salt
1 tbsp coriander 
1 tbsp fennel seeds
2 tsp cumin
2 star anise
1 chilli
1/2 quill of cinnamon

Method:
Fry the onion with some oil and when brown add the garlic, ginger, spices, and the meat to brown. Just cover with boiling water. Then add the tomatoes and simmer for 40 minutes until the meat (if there is some of the stewing bones) is soft. 

Add the beans and pumpkin and leave the lid on to steam the pumpkin that is not covered with water / sauce. Cook this for about a half an hour, or until the pumpkin is cooked through.

Enjoy hot, topped with coriander and a dollop of creamy Bulgarian yoghurt.


Next time we're going to try a pumpkin dish with pork, bacon, apples and chilli.

Root Mash

This is a really simple and delicious side to a roast, or whatever you would normally eat mashed potatoes with, but much more exciting and healthy.


Serves 4 as a side dish


Ingredients:
5 medium potatoes
3 medium carrots
1 stalk of celery
1 medium onion
2 turnips
2 cloves of garlic, halved
2 tsp Dijon mustard
3 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp pepper
1 handful of finely chopped fresh parsley


Method:
If you feel like being fancy, you could make a rough mirepoix* by chopping your carrots into rondels** and slicing up the celery and frying that with the onion quartered. When the onion is translucent, add with the the potato, garlic and turnip to salted boiling water in a pot. Leave to simmer for 30 minutes until the vegetables are cooked. (Otherwise, you could just chop all the vegetables roughly and boil them all at once, altogether).


Drain the vegetables and then add the mustard, olive oil, pepper and fresh parley and mash it together until creamy.


Easy, healthy and delicious.


*mirepoix (pronounced "meerpwah"): the name for carrot, celery and onion chopped and used together for a base of a wide range of dishes.
*rondels: When you slice carrots at 90 degrees, they end up in little round circles, the word if from Old French, and also apparently Middle English. It's a very descriptive word. I like it.

Creamy Lentils

I pretty much just made this up right now and now I'm eating it and blogging about it at the same time so that I don't forget what I did.


Serves 2


Ingredients:
1 large carrot, chopped
2 peppers, chopped
5 tomatoes chopped / 440g can
2 tsp vegetable stock powder
2 tsp herbes de provence
1 bay leaf
1 cup water
1 tsp crushed garlic
1 cup dry, brown lentils
white sauce (1/2 c milk, 2 tbsp butter, 1 tsp flour)
1/2 block feta cheese
black pepper


Method:
Throw all herbs, garlic and vegetables in the pot with the dry lentils, water and stock. Boil for 45min until the lentils are soft. I think that the acid in the tomatoes and the salt in the stock makes them take longer to cook  - usually they take about 30 min.


Make some white sauce with about half a cup of milk, 2 tbsp butter and then gradually add in the flour and stir quickly to prevent lumps on a medium heat. As the butter melts, and the flour cooks, the sauce will thicken. Let it boil for 5 min, stirring. Honestly, I am not sure about the quantities, I have never made white sauce from a recipe, I just throw stuff together and stir it until it's thickened. Sometimes I like to stir in black pepper as well.


Serve white sauce on top of the lentils and top with crumbed feta. Enjoy with some toasted pieces of baguette.

Simple Borscht

As you may know, I don't like a lot of fuss when it comes to recipes- they shouldn't take days to prepare unless you are making something pretentious, ridiculous, and most likely Parisian. Most of the time, I don't think that the taste is much affected if it takes you 2 hours to cook instead of 2 days. This recipe I amended to be quick and easy. It is surprisingly tasty and one of my winter favourites.

Boscht, or Bortsch, is eaten from the Ukraine to Poland and Russia and can take many different forms, be eaten hot or cold, the common factor generally being beetroot. This version tends to be more typically Russian.

Ingredients:
8 cups beef stock
500g shin-in stewing beef
2 onions, peeled and chopped
5 medium carrots, chopped
8 medium beets, peeled and chopped into chunks
1 large potato, peeled and chopped into chunks
2 cups of thinly sliced cabbage
3 tsp red wine vinegar (lemon juice is a good substitute)
Double cream Greek yoghurt to serve (or sour cream)
Pepper to serve

Method:
This method is much simpler than the original recipe as you will see...
Add your stock, meat and onions into a large pot and let it get to the boil. Simmer for 1 hour until meat is cooked. If you like, you can get the meat out, cut it off the bone and cut it into bite-sized pieces to make it easier to eat.
Time for the carrots, beets and potato to go in. Let the pot simmer for an additional 30 min.
At this point, the meal is almost ready. Add in the cabbage and simmer for 15 min.
This is when you add the vinegar and stir in. Ladle the hot soup into bowls and top with a couple of tablespoons of the yoghurt and sprinkle with pepper.

Enjoy with a nice bread, or if you have a burst of energy, look up piroshski  (small Russian pies often enjoyed with borscht) and try making some.

Notes:
To illustrate how Borscht is made in different ways, Constance Spry's recipe involves egg white and the only vegetable included is beetroot, other variations do not include beetroot at all, some rather include cucumber and others include a tomato base.


Beetroot are good for your heart, liver and can help prevent diabetes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beeturia

I got my recipe from Simply Recipes and adapted it a bit: http://www.simplyrecipes.com/recipes/borscht/

Nacho Soup

The problem with this post is that I didn't have nachos to enjoy my 'soup' with so I just used some baked potatoes as the accompanying starch and served the soup over that.


WARNING: This is an extremely lazy meal.


Serves 2
Ingredients:
1 can Rhodes Mexican tomato mix
1 can kidney beans
1 onion, chopped
2 tsp ground garlic
1/2 cup frozen or fresh corn
2 avocados
4 tbs double cream greek yoghurt
1 tsp whole coriander
3/4 tsp ground cumin
1/2 cup water 


Method:
Fry the onions and garlic until the onions are translucent.
Add the can of tomato, corn, water and the beans with the spices.
Simmer on medium heat for 15 minutes to combine the flavours.
Serve with a avocado cut up on top and add the yoghurt. If you have some fresh coriander, it will also garnish the dish nicely. A extra splash or Tabasco also won't do any harm. ;)


Enjoy.

Caramelised Apple

A tasty crêpe topping!

Ingredients:

1 granny smith apple

1 big tbsp demarara sugar

1 tsp butter

Method: 

My pans don’t often burn so I hardly use butter or oil when frying, but in this case it may help the process.

Cut the apple in half, core and finely slice – about 5mm thick if possible. Lay these in your pan, covering the bottom with one layer. This should use up all the apple. Add in the sugar and butter on top and let it melt and soak through.

When they’re brown and slightly sticky, you can remove them from the heat and arrange on a crêpe with some stiffly beaten cream, fold traditionally.

Yum.

How to make crêpes.

Raspberry Clafoutis

Traditionally a clafoutis is made with whole cherries, if made with other fruit it is called a flaugnarde. It comes from an area near east of Bordeaux called Limousin (yes, it vaguely has something to do with the word limousine). I ate a raspberry clafoutis in Carcassonne and decided to try my own one this week!

Ingredients:

1/4 cup full cream milk

3 tbsp melted (but not hot!) butter

1/2 cup cake wheat flour

3 large, free range eggs

1/4 cup brown sugar

250g fresh raspberries

Zest of 1 lemon, finely grated

Icing sugar for dusting 

Method:

Beat all the ingredients together, except for the berries (always remember that if you are adding melted butter to egg, there is the danger of the egg cooking if your butter is too hot - gross!). Once your batter is smooth, pour it into a 10cm diametered baking dish. I found that a 20cm dish made the clafoutis too thin and difficult to serve properly. 

Carefully spread your raspberries out into the batter – they will sink down while cooking.

Cook at 180’C for 30 minutes and rotate it in the oven half way through, if necessary.

Dust with the icing sugar immediately before serving otherwise it will disappear. I think it can be eaten warm or cold, but we liked it cold and with vanilla ice-cream!

For this culinary adventure, I Googled my way to this link. 

Mexican Salad

A matching side dish for the Mexican Roast Chicken. The salad contains beans, so it can also count as a starch. Although, if you are not convinced, use it as an excuse to get some Nachos and a can of Rhodes Mexican-style chopped tomatoes with green pepper and chillies as a salsa.

Ingredients:

20 olives (without pips)

A golden habanero chilli

20 baby tomatoes

3/4 tin of red kidney beans

A handful of fresh coriander

Half a cup of corn

An avocado peeled and cubed

Cottage cheese

Dressing:

2 tbsp. of lime juice

5 drops of tabasco sauce

2 tbsp. canola oil

Salt

Pepper

Method:

Chop the olives, tomatoes and coriander roughly.

If your avocado is ripe, the pieces can be quite big (3 x 3cm), but the habanero you should chop as finely as you can, taking care to wash your hands afterwards and not touch your face at all.

The beans and corn can be added whole after rinsing , if from a can.

Pour over the dressing and toss the salad.

Serve with a dollop of cottage cheese on top and a sprig of coriander for garnishing.

Variation: Squash was also a popular Aztec food, so cooked, chopped and cooled, it would make a good addition and bulk up the salad.

Mexican Roast Chicken

A fantastic twist to a Sunday roast lunch. Hmmmmm!

Ingredients:

1 chicken to roast (ours was 1,8kg)

3 green chillies

2 onions, peeled and halved

2 tbsp oil

A few cloves of garlic

Spice rub:

4 dry red chillies

2 tsp whole coriander

4 tsp whole cumin

1 tsp salt

Method:

Put your spices for the rub in a coffee bean grinder and grind up. You could use a pestle and mortar, but if you want finely milled spices use a spice mill or a coffee bean grinder (which is what we use and it works really well! But we only use it for spices, not coffee). The chillies won’t really flake with a pestle and mortar so you could use cayenne pepper instead if you don’t have a spice mill.

Baste your chicken with the oil all over  and sprinkle the ground powder over it. Position the garlic and onions around the chicken and the chillies on top. 

Put this into you oven heated to 180’C and cook for 2 hours.

When the juices run clear, the meat is cooked to the bone and the meat is flaky and almost falling apart, then you know that the chicken is cooked. Cut down the breast bone, pull of the drumsticks and serve.

Lamb Pilaf

For my husband's birthday I got him Anjum's New Kitchen. It was a great gift as since then we have made many delicious Indian recipes from there, dipping into our 'exotic' supply of spices from the Spice Emporium and introducing our taste-buds to new and fantastic flavours.


Yesterday I came home to a absolutely delicious Lamb Pilaf or Lucknowi Biryani.


What's unique about this dish is that the rice is cooked with the meat rather than separately, the latter I would assume is usually the case with rice-accompanying dishes.

Ingredients:
350g jasmine rice 
650g lamb neck
6 cloves of garlic
12g fresh, crushed ginger
1 tsp salt
1 big onion, chopped
10 cardamon pods (green)
1 tbsp black pepper
4 bay leaves 
4 pieces of cinnamon sticks
4 whole cloves
4 tsp canola oil
2 tsp cumin seeds
4 green thai chillies


Method:
Rinse the rice and soak it for 30 min.


Make a stock by putting the following ingredients into a large sauce-pan: 500ml water, the lamb, half the onion, garlic, ginger, salt, cardamom, black pepper, bay leaves, cinnamon and cloves. Simmer for 40 minutes or until the lamb is tender.


Take out the meat and place it in a separate bowl so that you can strain out the spices from the stock with a sieve. The stock shouldn't have any solids in now. Measure it and add enough water for it to reach 700ml.


Heat the oil in your saucepan and add the cumin. When the seeds start to make a sizzling sound, add the chillies and other half of the onion and cook until the onion is translucent. Add the lamb neck in again to brown (about 5 minutes). Your stock can now be added along with the drained rice that has been soaking.


Simmer with the lid on for 15 minutes. Turn the heat off and leave it to steam for a further 5 minutes.


Note: This version is slightly different to the one published in the book, just describes how we cooked it.

My Tiramisu

I read about 6 recipes and then combined them into this:

Ingredients:

1x tub marcapone (250g)

1x 250ml double thick cream ( I only used about 200ml whipping cream because its thinner)

150g sugar

A tot of rum (or amareto or marsala wine, something to that effect)

1 1/2 cup strong coffee (I wanted decaf so I used a good brand of instant decaffeinated coffee)

2 tsp cocoa powder

1x big pack boudoir / finger biscuits

Method:

Let the marscapone and cream reach about room temperature or the cheese will lump up when you beat it. Beat with half of the sugar and the cream. Castor sugar dissolves faster and better, so use that if you can, but I didn't.

Then make your coffee and add the rest of the sugar there to dissolve, stir it and let it also cool a little.

Get a dish that can fit in 2 layers of your biscuits, try see how they fit when they are dry first.

Dip the biscuits for about 2 seconds into the coffee until they have liquid all over them and shake it off before putting it in the dish so that it doesn't leak liquid everywhere. 

First layer: Half of the biscuits dipped and laid down next to each other to cover the bottom of the dish.

Second layer: Half of the creamy mixture spread over the biscuits. Sprinkle over 1 tsp cocoa powder.

Third layer: Do another coffee-dipped biscuits layer. 

Fourth layer: The creamy mixture again sprinkled with the last of the cocoa.

Put it in the fridge to set for about 2 hours to set.

Cut into pieces and scoop out. 

To serve more easily you could also make little mini-tiramisu's in ramekins or dessert glasses. 

Enjoy.

Naan Bread

After a delicious supper at Bhandari's I decided that I could try my hand at naan bread. It was rather easier than I had thought!


Ingredients:
4 cups flour
1 tsp salt 
1 tsp baking powder
2 cups of low fat yoghurt


Method:
I mixed together 4 cups of flour with 1 tsp salt and 1 tsp baking powder. I then kneaded in 2 cups of low fat yoghurt, but double cream might make it tastier.


Once you've kneaded it for about 5 minutes, oil another bowl lightly and put the ball of dough aside to rest for an hour. Thereafter, divide the dough into about 10 balls and roll them out. 


Since you will probably be using a round frying pan, try to make them round rather than long. When ready, add the dough, once piece at a time to the pan on medium-high heat until the bread puffs up and gets brown marks on it. 


Then transfer it to a hot oven (220 - 290'C). My oven started smoking at 290 so I turned it down. I think this part of the process just cooks the inside a bit more.


Serve hot with butter and garlic.Enjoy with a nice hot curry and a home-made chutney.


Note: I found that they weren't great the next day, so if you're going to make them, eat them all that day (which shouldn't be too difficult). 


I used this recipe: http://low-cholesterol.food.com/recipe/naan-203261

Easy Coconut Ice

I'm not a fan of the super-sweet but it makes a good Christmas present! This is also one of my gran's recipes:


Ingredients:
1 tin condensed milk
400g icing sugar
350g dried coconut
1/4 tsp salt


Method:
Mix all the ingredients together in a bowl and then pour out into a flat pan with at least 3cm high sides. Allow to set for a couple of hours and then cut into blocks and serve. Actually I would recommend cutting into blocks when half-set. If you cut it too soon, it'll merge again and too late will require too much muscle.

Roasted Tomatoes and Tomato-Jam Sauce

I love tomatoes and can't wait until I have my own garden to grow plenty of vine-ripened varieties in! In the mean time, I try to pick out the ripest once from the supermarket.


Roasted Tomatoes
Ingredients:
6 ripe tomatoes (cut in half with seeds and juice spooned out)
Salt
Pepper
Olive oil
Topping (such as Italian herbs, fresh basil, half a clove of garlic in each half etc)


Method:
Put the tomatoes in a baking try with the skin side down and drizzle with olive oil, pepper, salt and add your herbs or other seasoning.
Bake for an hour at 180'C.
The tomatoes may have become smaller and their taste will have concentrated. Their useful shape allows you to fill them with Chevre/Chevin or some Buffalo mozzarella (if you used Basil leaves). Because olive oil is so delicious you can always add a glug over the top and a small splash of balsamic vinegar as well. The tomatoes can be served hot or cold and can be eaten simply as they come out of the oven.


Tomato-Jam Sauce
Ingredients:
1 tsp salt
2tsp sugar
2 tsp chilli chutney
Pepper
2 tsp balsamic vinegar
Juice and seeds of 6 tomatoes (scooped out)
1 tsp cornstarch/ mazina


Method:
Add all the ingredients (except mazina) into a small saucepan and once it starts boiling add the mazina stirring constantly. Once mixed in you can leave the mixture to reduce until it's thick and almost jam-like. It will also thicken as it cools, so keep that in mind.
This can be used for finger foods such as bites of crusty bread with cheese, or simply eaten as a spicy jam.

Jam Tartlets with Roasted Peaches and Ice-cream

I mainly made this dessert because I had puff pastry left overs from making a pie.

Ingredients:
Puff pastry squares
Jam (cranberry & apple), 1 tsp per square
Ripe peaches slices into 1 cm strips
Sugar
Vanilla ice cream or plain yoghurt
Honey for drizzling


Method:
You can cut your own pastry squares once rolled out, about 5cm for all sides. Make a little hollow in each square for the jam to sit in. The cranberry jam worked nicely, but as it heats up, the berries slide off and stick to the pan instead of the pastry, so try to avoid that from happening.

Lay your peach strips, gently sifted with sugar, next to the pastry in a roasting pan and cook for 15 - 20 min on 200 degrees until lightly browned. Serve with ice cream or yoghurt after drizzling with honey.

Roast Chicken & Mushroom Pie

My own invention and hence might need some tweaking here and there :)

Serves 6

Ingredients:
1,2kg free-range chicken
A lemon
3 cloves of chopped garlic
3 tbsp olive oil
Salt
Pepper
1 tbsp chicken stock powder
1 tsp chilli flakes
1 tbsp herbes de provence
400g brown mushrooms chopped into 2cm squares
2 tbsp butter
1 roll of puff pastry (defrosted)
2 tbsp cornstarch
1/2 c milk
1 egg



Method:

Squeeze the lemon into the olive oil, chicken stock powder, herbes, 2 cloves of chopped garlic, 3 tbsp olive oil, a sprinkle of salt, 1 tsp chilli flakes and stuff the chicken with the rest of the lemon. Mix the oil and rub into the chicken. Roast at 190 degrees celsius for an hour. When the juices run clear, it's cooked and the meat can be pulled from the bone and shredded.

In a saucepan, heat a tbspn butter and add in the cornstarch once dissolved into the cold milk and stir until thick. Add in some pepper and remove from the heat.



In a big frying pan sauté the mushrooms (wiped down with a damp cloth so that they aren't waterlogged!) in a tbsp butter with a clove of crushed garlic and some more chilli flakes, a pinch of salt an a little pepper. Once all the water has been released and evaporated from the mushrooms, pour the sauce over and stir in the chicken. The filling mutn't be too liquid, but more like a sloppy mud viscosity.


Roll out your pastry and lay it into a greased pie dish. Add the filling on top, and put your second layer of pastry over the top, squeezing the edges together with your thumb and forefinger. Decorate the pie with extra pieces of pastry and poke a few breathing holes in the top. Return to the oven, after brushing with a beaten egg, for 30 min at 180 degrees celsius until golden.

Teriyaki Chicken & Pineapple Burgers

Teriyaki is a Japanese sweet soy sauce. As I understand it has sake and mirin in it if you are to make it properly, but I just cheat and use sugar. It still tastes good.

Ingredients:
4 sesame seed burger breadrolls
4 free-range chicken breasts
1 pineapple (4 slices)
Lettuce leaves
1 tsp chopped garlic
1 tsp freshly chopped ginger (or 1/2 tsp dry)
1/4 c Tamari soy sauce
3 tbsp sugar
2 tbsp cornstarch/Mazina
1/4 c cold water


Method:
Prepare your burger roll by cutting it in half and lining it with lettuce (also stops the sauce making it soggy).
Cut up your pineapple into 1cm wide slices and fry these with your chicken breasts (or after) until the chicken is cooked through and browned (fry for about max 10min on medium heat). Remeber to put the bigger pieces of chicken in the middle of the pan and the smaller ones on the outside.
While that's frying, make the teriyaki sauce by heating the sugar and soy sauce with the garlic and ginger over the stove on a medium heat. Dissolve the cornstarch into the cold water and add it into the hot mixture on the stove, stirring continuously until thick. It'll go almost as thick as melted chocolate. 
Layer the chicken, pineapple and sauce onto your burger and enjoy! :)

Smoked Turkey Pasta

Because of those amazing 50% off Christmas meat sales at Woolworths, we ended up with a lot of turkey in our fridge. I haven't eaten much turkey in my life so it was slightly challenging trying to find ways to eat it in a meal. This quick-to-make and absolutely delicious turkey pasta is a good reason to invest in a chunk of ready-to-eat turkey for any occasion.


Ingredients:
250g pasta (spaghetti)
50g Gruyere
200g baby tomatoes
1 tsp herbes de provence
1 tsp dried garlic
2 hot chillies
A glug of olive oil
Salt
Pepper


Method:
Cook the pasta through with a tsp of salt and drain. Add it back to the pot with the Gruyere (grated), mix in the olive oil and the turkey (cut into 2cm square chunks). 
Remove from heat once cheese is melted.
In another pot, throw in your washed tomatoes and chopped chillies. Set the stove plate on a high heat and poke a few of the tomatoes so that the juices can run out and become sticky. Sometimes this happens on its own when the tomatoes get very hot. 
Quickly add the herbes and the garlic and stir very few minutes until you are convinced that your tomatoes are soft and sweet inside.They should be soft to the touch and not firm.
Add the tomatoes to your spaghetti and serve.
Serves 3

Joy's Fudge

My gran studied home economics and is always baking, cooking, sewing or canning something. She's the family queen of jams, preserves and sweets. I tried out her recipe and improvised by adding in some nutty chocolate once the fudge was poured into the pans and left to set.


Ingredients:
6c sugar
3 tbsp syrup
1 1/2 c warm milk
100g butter
1 can condensed milk


Method:
Add the sugar, syrup and milk into a very large saucepan (to prevent the hot sugar boiling over later). On a medium heat, dissolve the sugar for about an hour without letting the mixture boil at all.
Then pour in the condensed milk and stir it in. Leave this on a medium boil for about 20minutes at which point it should make a klink sound when a drop of the mixture is dropped onto a glass saucer with cold water in it. This is a quick set test.


The next step is to add the butter and continue boiling for 5 minutes. Remove the pot from the heat and let it cool for 10 minutes before beating it madly until the mixture thickens slightly and remains smooth and glossy.
It can now to added into pans, like a Swiss Roll pan and allowed to set for a couple or hours.


Don't forget to cut the fudge into blocks with a hot knife (clean regularly to make neat incisions) when it's half set so that once it is fully set, the blocks will be easy to remove having already been fashioned into bite-seize pieces.


Yum.

Butter Rum Sauce with Nectarines

 Serves 4.

Ingredients:
2 tsp rum
2 tsp butter
4 tsp brown sugar
4 ripe nectarines/ peaches

Method:
Melt the butter over a medium heat and then add the rum and sugar. Stir until dissolved and boil for five minutes (to thicken) before adding the fruit (roughly chopped) and the juices (that resulted from chopping).

Boil this on a medium heat until slightly thickened (5- 10 minutes). Note that the moisture in the fruit will change the consistency of the syrup.

Tasty served hot over ice-cream - reminiscent of a fruity Tin Roof. Yum.

Strawberry Sauce

Great with pancakes... And maybe some vanilla ice-cream too!

Ingredients:
2 tsp brown sugar
2 tsp water
1 tot Kirsch
400g ripe strawberries

Method:
Melt 2 tsp brown sugar in a pan with a little bit of water. When it starts bubbling and thickening, add a tot of Kirsch and 400g chuckily chopped strawberries. Boil for 5 minutes and serve hot, or cold and slightly sticky.

If you would like it thicker, use some corn starch (1 tsp) and stir that in on the heat until it thickens.

Tomatoe-y Cottage Pie

If you find yourself lacking in some of the ingredients necessary to make a traditional cottage pie, why not change it to something new with the ingredients you do have, give it an Italian twist.

Ingredients:

For the tomato-beef:

1 onion

1 chilli

1 tsp Italian herbs

1 pack minced beef

1 can red kidney beans

2 tsp vegetable stock powder

4 chopped fresh tomatoes

1 small tub of tomato paste

A cup of dry red wine

2 orange/ red peppers

1 small tub of yellow baby tomatoes

2 tbsp lemon juice

2 tbsp balsamic vinegar

For the potato topping:

5 medium potatoes

Boiling water

Salt and pepper to taste

1/2 c milk

For the sauce:

1 tsp Italian herbs

1 tbsp butter

2 tsp fresh garlic, grated

1/2 milk

Salt to taste

2 tsp flour

A half-palm sized piece of cheese, preferably Italian

Method:

The topping:

Wash and peel 5 medium potatoes. Take out all the eyes, but don't use them if they are green as this means that they have become poisonous and should not be eaten! Put them in a pan with boiling water covering them and add some salt. Cook for 20min, or until soft, and almost breaking. Drain them and add a sprinkle of pepper.

Mash them with 1/2 c milk until fluffy. If you have added to much milk, put the potatoes on the heat until they have sucked up all the liquid.

Tomatoe-y Beef:

Chop and fry 1 onion, 1 chilli in a little oil and add 1 tsp dried Italian herbs. Add in your pack of minced beef (or ostrich if you prefer) and keep stirring it until it's all broken up into small pieces (otherwise the protein will all cook together into one big gross lump). Sprinkle over 2 tsp vegetable stock powder - you can taste it towards the end to see if you need to add extra salt or not. Add in the drained kidney beans. While this is all frying on a high heat, you will need to add some moisture: 4 chopped fresh tomatoes, 1 small tub of tomato paste, a cup of dry red wine and 2 finely chopped orange/ red peppers. By this time your meat should no longer be pink at all. Let this cook for a few minutes with the lid on, maybe 10 minutes, then while you are getting the below ready, let it reduce so that there is no more liquid left at the bottom of the pan.

Wash the small tub of yellow baby tomatoes and put them in a hot frying pan over a high heat. Add the following after about 2 minutes: 2tbsp lemon juice, 2 tbsp balsamic vinegar and let it cook until sticky. Keep the tomatoes whole.

Sauce:

Melt 1 tbsp butter with 1/2 milk over a medium heat and add in 2 tsp fresh garlic, grated. Add a sprinkle of salt to taste. Get 1 tsp flour and sprinkle over your mixture while stirring it in slowly- avoid making lumps.

Final Steps:

Sprinkle 1 tsp flour over the bottom of your casserole dish (to suck up additional moisture) and scoop in the beef and then the baby tomatoes. If you have fresh basil, you can put a layer of leaves between the beef and tomatoes. Next, scoop in your mashed potatoes and smooth it over the other ingredients. Pour over your sauce and sprinkle with your cheese and 1 tsp Italian herbs. I only had Young Amsterdam and I didn't grate it finely - it was delicious just like that.

Put this under the grill for 10 minutes, or until the cheese starts browning and bubbling and enjoy with a fresh rocket and spinach salad drizzled with olive oil.

Hot Chocolate: Coconut; Cinnamon

We use cocoa to make hot chocolate instead of that hot chocolate powder, its tastier, variable and healthier. Nestle got it right and kept it simple in France but in South Africa they decided adding lots of salt and other things to their powder recipe, bleh. Anyway, you're probably better off making your own.

Basic Hot Chocolate

Ingredients:

2tsp sugar (or less if you only like 1 tsp sugar in your tea, or none)

1 level tsp cocoa

200ml cup milk

50ml boiling water

Method:

While the kettle's boiling, put your sugar and cocoa in your mug.

Add the boiling water and stir until dissolved.

Add the milk and microwave for about 50 seconds until warm, but not too hot to drink.

Coconut Hot Chocolate

You could keep aside some coconut milk from cooking Savoury Carrot Soup, or Thai Green Curry and put it to good use. Sometimes if you open the can of coconut milk without shaking it you can get a thick layer of cream on top. This is the kind of tastiness that you would want to add to hot chocolate and desserts. Yum.

Method:

When your hot chocolate comes out of the microwave, stir in 3 tsp coconut milk/ cream.

Cinnamon Hot Chocolate

Alter the basic hot chocolate recipe above by adding a pinch of cinnamon before putting it in the microwave.

Savoury Carrot Soup

So I had 1kg of carrots and they needed to be eaten, hence my attempt at a savoury carrot soup. In short, it turned out pretty bland when I followed the recipe (link below) so I had to improvise until it was deliciously tasty. Next time I will make it from scratch, recipe-less.

Ingredients:

Oil to coat the pan
1kg baby carrots - sliced/grated
1 onion - chopped
2 tsp freshly chopped garlic
A pinch of cloves
3 cups water
5 tbsp coconut milk
5 tbsp lemon juice
2 tsp curry powder or a chopped chilli
1/4 cup whipping cream
Fresh coriander - for garnish

1 tsp Nando's hot sauce (may be too spicy depending on the chilli- do a taste check).

1 tsp salt

Method:

Fry onions and garlic in the oil and when translucent add the carrots, clove, curry powder and saute for a few minutes.

Add the water (the hotter the better) and simmer for 20min.

Add in the other ingredients and stir while simmering.

Taste and add in more ingredients if necessary.

Swirl coconut milk over soup served in bowls and top with fresh coriander from the garden (very easy to grow).

I got the original recipe here: http://funnfud.blogspot.com/2008/10/creamy-carrot-soup-recipe.html

Use at own risk.

Marrow and Cabanossi Pasta

It seems Pick 'n Pay has livened up their cured meats and cheese section. They are now importing tiny French cheeses, such as the original Roquefort from Roquefort-sur-Soulzon and selling them at outrageous prices (R80 is a bit much for a few grams of cheese). Anyway, despite the price it's nice to have the very expensive option of buying these fancy cheeses as well as the less pricey option of buying international style prepackaged hams and sausages such as Cabanossi (from Namibia).

Marrows don't make me feel very creative, so it helps when you're married to someone with ideas about how marrows can be added to a dish and become a fantastic taste sensation.

Ingredients

A blob of butter

A pack mixed marrows (slice in 1cm pieces)

A 400g can of chopped tomatoes

2 thinly sliced Cabanossi sausages (can be substituted with another sausage, or bacon)

1 tsp freshly grated garlic

A big squeeze of lemon juice (or of one lemon)

A finely chopped chilli

Olive oil

Pasta shells (about 250g)

Method

Fry the Cabanossi in the butter. Add the garlic and when lightly browned, add chilli and the marrows. After a few minutes of frying, add the tomatoes and lemon juice. Once the marrows have absorbed some of the tasty sauce, they will become slightly soft, almost like cooked pasta. Take them off the heat.

Get your pasta boiling with a teaspoon of salt in water and drain when ready. Serve with the marrows and sauce on top. Dress with a swirl of olive oil.

Serves 3

Ginger Tomato Beef

My husband just made this delicious meal for supper....hmmm. If you're patient enough for it to cook, it's easy to make and tasty to eat, so you should try it.

Ingredients

Enough cooking oil to half cover the pot

A handful of cake flour

800g cubed beef

1 kg tomatoes (skins removed by briefly boiling in water until split)

1 finely diced onion

1 heaped tsp fresh garlic (finely chopped)

1 heaped tsp of fresh ginger / about 2 tsp dry ginger

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/4 tsp dry clove

A generous pinch of freshly ground pepper

1 tsp salt

2 chopped chillies

Enough orange juice to half-cover all the ingredients once in the pot

Method

Fry the onions and garlic in a little bit of rice bran / canola oil until lightly browned. Add the meat pieces and let them brown. If water starts appearing (from the meat), generously sprinkle over the flour while stirring. The flour will absorb the water and turn into a kind of roux that sticks to each piece of meat.

Add all of the other ingredients and measure out the right amount of juice to half-cover all those ingredients.

Boil with the lid on at a medium-high heat for half an hour. Take the lid off and let it boil on a lowish heat for an hour. If the liquid all disappears (it most probably won't), just add a little more juice.

Serve with the rice of your choice.

An Italian Twist

With the same basic ingredients, you can change the recipe into something Italian, but using Italian herbs and a red wine with the beef, garlic, onion and tomatoes. Serve with a hard cheese grated on top and some fresh basil. I haven't tried this, but I will soon!

Here pasta would match better than rice.

Quick Pea and Bacon Soup

This s the first time I ever tried this type of soup which is closely related to the pea and ham soup. I thought that the ham might as well be replaced by anything porky such as gammon or bacon. It really is easy to make and required very little preparation time.

Ingredients:

1 onion

2 cups split peas

125g bacon

6 cups boiling water

3 tsp stock powder

A dash of cayenne pepper

Method:

I half fried the bacon and used the oil to fry the chopped onion so I didn't add any extra oil. When the onions where browned I added the bacon (now chopped) back in with all the split peas and water. I only ended up adding the stock powder at the end- I think that extra salt might influence the cooking of legumes, but I'm not sure about the credibility of that...

Cayenne pepper is probably my most favourite spice and even ends up in dishes that aren't supposed to tingle the tongue (not that it dis in this case, it just adds another dimension to the taste).

Simmer that all on a medium heat for half an hour to an hour. The split peas should be cooked by now (test a couple). Reduce it for about 5 minutes and while the soup is still hot add it to a blended and blend it before it cools (and becomes all thick and starts challenging your blenders motor). If necessary, add it back to the pot to reheat and enjoy it garnished with some cheese, such as feta on the top, a dash of cayenne pepper and perhaps some toasty garlic bread.

A Note on The History of Pea Soup

While pea soup seems mostly an English sort of dish, it was being sold in the streets of Athens as far back as 500 - 400BC and cultivated by the Romans as well as the Greeks!

Split peas are cheap (and could, in olden day England be seen as a sign of poverty), easy to store and if kept dry, can last a decent while. This made them a common meal for sailors- accompanied by salted pork.

It also used to be referred to "pease pudding" or "pease porridge" back in the 1700's in England because of it's consistency, as mentioned in the 1765 rhyme:

Pease porridge hot,

Pease porridge cold,

Pease porridge in the pot

Nine days old

It's consistency also inspired the London Fog, or London Particular to be called "Pea Soup". The smog caused by the burning of coal covered urban areas in a thick layer and claimed a substantial amount of deaths particularly in the early 20th century until the Clean Air Act was put into place in 1956, prohibiting the domestic burning of coal in urban areas.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pea_soup