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.