Cooking South African

We were browsing through a bookstore a while ago when I noticed a small recipe book with the title in Afrikaans on the spine 50 van die Beste Tradisionele Suid-Afrikaanse Resepte or 50 of the Best Traditional South African Recipes. With an air of scepticism I picked it up and looked at the cover, not because I have a poor impression of South African food, the little book just seemed a tad bland due to a dull cover design. And I judge a book by its cover.

But this one proved me very wrong. As I flipped through it I was taken back to my youth through 50 recipes that were staples at dining room tables several years ago. Gortsop (gord soup), waterblommetjie bredie (water lilly stew), melkkos (milk-soup), kerrie perskeslaai (curried peach slaw), and of course desserts like asynpoeding (vinegar pudding) and souskluitjies (sauce dumplings). And it was all beautifully illustrated in full-color pictures of the food in seriously retro serving dishes.

I had to admit that I was very wrong for being so sceptical at first. It is really a neat little recipe book that pays homage to the rich cultural traditions of South African cuisine which the dishes themselves highlights. Our food is, after all, a unique blend of African, European, Malay, and Indian culinary traditions.

Alexander decided to pick it up immediately so I can start cooking Suid-Afrikaans for him. I have tried my hands at a few of the recipes and they came out with varying degrees of success. I will try to blog about my successes and so be able to not only rediscover for myself but also share with you my gastronomic past with you.

 

An Announcement

An announcement I have wanted to make forever but kept on forgetting to. It feels a little unreal, like when you know something is real between you and someone else, why even bother with tradition. But it won’t be traditional…

…it will be special, intimate, and it will be our wedding. And deep down I actually know it is a very big deal, and that makes me very happy and very excited!

 

Paarden Eiland (Island) Treasures

Heading out of the city on Marine Drive, in the direction of the West Coast, lies the industrial neighbourhood of Paarden Eiland. As with most such areas, this one is not terribly attractive by any stretch of the imagination. It lies sandwiched between the breakwater; that hides a perfect view of the ocean, and the N1 heading to the northern suburbs. It’s the kind of place that I try my utmost to avoid.

It is here on a stretch of open land between the ocean and Marine Drive that somewhat informal market sets up on Saturdays and Sundays. It fits the locale, a motley congregation of scruffy cars, rusty trailers, faded gazebos and large sheets of tarp spread out on the ground. The trunks of cars stand open to reveal home-baked goods or old LP’s, from trailers are sold boerewors rolls, cinnamon pancakes and dried fruit and nuts, anything from fresh fruit to fake Rolexes can be found under the gazebos, and on the tarps are displayed pieces of second hand furniture, kitsch old bits of home décor and battered power tools.

Though it does not sound like the kind of place one would want to visit on a grey and miserable Sunday morning, it is exactly what we did this past Sunday. Although the market sounds miserable, it is a bit of a treasure chest of old South African style and antique pieces if you know what you are looking for. And most of it available for a steal. It is here we picked up an old piano stool I re-upholstered (something for another entry), two camp stools and some retro kitchenware.

Only a couple of traders decided to weather the chilly wind and wet earth to set up their stands, and so the market was sadly pretty empty. But not without some great finds. While stepping over muddy puddles we spotted a set of teacups and saucers. The saucers actually match a plate we picked up at the market months ago. We asked about the price, it was not much, and decided to walk around a bit more and think about it when the trader called us back with a lower offer, the equivalent of US$5. It would have been rude to say no.

On the way out we picked up a non-descript, yet funky, metal teapot for brewing the leaf tea our friend James left us before heading back to the UK and a little side table. As soon as we got home and washed our new tea items I brewed us a pot of hot Earl Gray, settled down in the living room and enjoyed our new treasures from Paarden Eiland.

* Thanks to X for the pictures of the market, taken on a much more pleasant day earlier this year.

 

Steamed Egg

Steamed egg is something I used to associate with bland school lunches at my bushi-ban in Taiwan. It never looked very appealing and was consistently bland. It was not until a friend took me for dinner to a very attractive Japanese restaurant in downtown Hsinchu that I appreciated the dish.

In between gossiping about her husband and my boss she ordered me a serving of steamed egg. I was a bit apprehensive I have to admit, but when the waitress placed the dish in front of me I knew it was going to be far superior to any other steamed egg dish I’ve ever had before. The color was a lovely pale yellow, with a silky texture, like perfect soft tofu. It tasted supreme.

I have since attempted to recreate this perfect steamed egg dish several times, but sadly my efforts have not come near the one I had that day. So instead of trying for a perfect and simple variety I started experimenting with adding some additional ingredients to create a small breakfast or lunch, resulting in this, my tuna steamed egg.

For tuna steamed egg you need to find:
a steamer
2 large eggs
2 teaspoons soy sauce
1 teaspoon sesame oil
¼ cup water
green part of one spring onion, sliced thinly and some reserved for garnish
1 small chili, sliced thinly and some reserved for garnish
pinch of white pepper
1/2 tin of tuna, drained and shredded

The process:
Bring some water to a gentle simmer in a pot and cover with a steamer. While the water is coming to a simmer, mix the eggs, soy, oil, water, spring onion, chili and white pepper in a bowl. Divide the tuna between two ramekins or heat proof cups and pour the egg mixture evenly over the tuna. Lightly mix the two together, place in the steamer and cover, allowing it to steam for about 15 minutes, or until a fork inserted comes out clean.

Enjoy as is or serve with some fingers of toasted bread, dipping the bread in the steamed egg.

The fun thing about steamed egg is that the varieties are almost limitless. Instead of tuna, try bits of fried bacon, or strips of shredded chicken, or slices of plum tomatoes. Use some white wine instead of water, olive oil instead of sesame and so forth. have fun and do share your attempts!

 

Fried Egg in Toast

I suspect that this dish may be called a ‘toad in a hole.’ Why a toad I do not know and quite honestly it sounds a little gross. Nothing against toads of course, they are quite sweet if you see them lurking around streams and ponds and in jungles, like the enormous one we saw in Kao Sok in Southern Thailand, a real brut that one. But I do not want to associate them with my lunch.

So I will call this ‘fried egg in toast’, simple and terribly unoriginal but at least Alexander will know exactly what I am serving him when I say “We’re having fried egg in toast for lunch today”.

For our fried egg in toast I took out:

2 slices of toast
2 eggs
2 tablespoons crumbed feta
bits of chopped dried meat (I used South African biltong)
a small bunch of fresh thyme leaves
some butter for frying

Prepare it by:

Cutting a hole in the toast with a cookie cutter. Fry the circle briefly in some butter and set aside. Put the slices of toast in the pan and briefly fry on each side carefully breaking an egg into each hole. Let it cook until the bottom has set and then carefully flip the toast over, allowing it to cook for a bit to set the yolk and flip it round again. Sprinkle with the cheese and thyme leaves and serve with the circle.

I left the eggs slightly runny so we could dip bits of toast into the yolk, cheese and thyme mixture. But if that is not your cup of tea you can cover the pan briefly to speed up the cooking process, it usually helps with setting the egg. Slide the toast onto plates and sprinkle the feta, thyme and meat over top, serving it all with cut out circle on the side. If you enjoy your eggs slightly runny you can dip the circle into the yolk.

Preparing this is real easy and the variations on what you can put on top is endless. Have fun!

 

What I’ve Been Up To

It has not been mere weeks, but two months since my last entry. A shameful record. And in those two months I did not even read any blogs, followed any events or made any comments. The thought makes me sad. I’m blaming the dark ages of internet that South Africa finds itself in mostly. I believe we had better connectivity in Laos than here in my home country. So without being online at home I never find the time to read blogs or update my own and inspiration has completely left me.

But I’m sure you, my last reader, do not want to hear excuses, so I’ll just hop into other news. When we were still living in Thailand we started dreaming about opening a café serving some of the food we came to love from the region. A café inspired by the cafes we frequented in Hanoi, Bangkok, Siem Reap, Vientiane, Phnom Penh, Chiang Mai, Saigon and Penang, something that would bring together the food, drinks, atmosphere, style and tropical feel of our home region for the past two years. And so, Piesang was born.

Pisang, as I’m sure many of you already know, is the Malay and Indonesian word for banana, a fruit tree whose image almost epitomizes the region. The Afrikaans word for banana came from the Malay-Indo term, with a slight change in spelling. And as Piesang conjures up thoughts of Southeast-Asia combined with a retro South African feel, we thought it would be perfect as our name.

We have not yet opened a café. But we have made our first steps into the local food scene by getting into the Neighbourgoods Market. THE hottest place to be on a Saturday. It is a fantastic market where you can buy fresh breads, cheese, spreads, wine, chocolate, baked goods and more and also enjoy freshly prepared food from a variety of vendors. When we learned about it we knew we had to get in and we were lucky to have been offered a spot there so soon.

So besides not having the web we have also been busy setting this up, preparing food, thinking of new recipes and things to try and getting people familiar with us. If you find yourself in Cape Town on a Saturday, rainy or sunny, head over to the Biscuit Mill’s Neighbourgoods Market and come say hello.

For more on Piesang, check out our Piesang blog.

 

Dan-bin! and a BloggerAid Event

I am terribly excited to announce that I mastered making the bin for dan-bin, one of my most favorite breakfasts in Taiwan. Dan, which I believe is the Mandarin for pancake, is a thin stretchy pancake also known as a Mandarin pancake. It is usually enjoyed in Taiwan for breakfast, accompanied by a slightly scrambled egg and rolled up with some cooked bacon, chicken or melted cheese. Very satisfying and I could never get enough of it while living there.

After leaving Taiwan (twice now) I always became very sad because I could not find the frozen pancakes used to make this breakfast at any import grocers, neither here in South Africa, nor in the States or even Thailand. I firmly believed that these pancakes could only be bought and not made yourself. I am still not sure where I got that idea from, but it kept me from ever trying to find a recipe.

I once stumbled onto a recipe in a newspaper in Bangkok of something that sounded like dan, but the process seemed complicated. Twice since have I read recipes, but the instructions always confused me and I never mustered the courage to try it. We recently picked up a really old Chinese recipe book and in it I saw a recipe for Mandarin pancakes. The steps seemed simple and easy to follow, and today I finally decided to try it out. And it was so easy!

The steps still sound a little awkward, but it turned out to be a lot of fun preparing them with Alexander and having our very own home and handmade dan-bin at home.

To make dan-bin you need to get:

2 cups all-purpose flour
¾ cup boiling water
2 tablespoons sesame oil

Process:

Mix the boiling water gradually in with the flour. I ended up not using the full amount of water recommended as the dough was looking like it was going to become too sticky. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and kneed for about 5 minutes or more to form an elastic but not sticky dough. Leave in a bowl covered with damp cloth four 30 minutes or more.

Remove the dough and roll it into a log, about 1.5 inches thick. Cut 16 pieces from the log and roll them into balls, then flatten to about half an inch thick little rounds. Brush each round with the sesame oil and put them together two-by-two, oiled sides together. Flatten them slightly more before rolling them into thin pancakes, 5-7 inches in diameter. The two rounds look like they become one.

On a heated skillet (not greased), cook them quickly on each side, only until brown spots form on the underside of the pancake. Be careful of burning, they should stay on each side for only a few seconds. Remove the pancakes and separate them, storing them on a plate under a warm towel or aluminum foil. The pancakes can be refrigerated or frozen in aluminum for a later occasion, just steam them until warm before using.

The new roti pan we picked up today worked perfectly for making the pancakes and although mine did not turn out anywhere close to round the colors were perfect and the taste and texture fantastic. Just as I remembered it.

I served mine like they do in Taiwan with the egg, bacon and I added some avocado too for fun. To prepare it, break an egg into a pan and break the egg just a little in the pan and shape into a slight circle. Drop a pancake on the egg and push down a little to bring the two together, flip everything at once so the pancake is on the bottom. Let the egg cook while adding the bacon (or whatever else you want on it), roll up and serve. A thick soy sauce or chili sauce makes a pleasant accompaniment.

I was really surprised at just how easy it was to make the pancakes and I cannot wait to serve them to friends for breakfast now. The best of all is that I can now enjoy this tasty breakfast whenever I want in my own house. Of course this does not mean I don’t still miss Taiwan terribly, but it does help a little.

One more thing ere I go. I read about this event of BloggerAid on Jeanne’s blog a little while back. Through the creation of a cookbook they are contributing to the UN’s World Food Programme, specifically to the School Meals programme, which aims to provide meals to children at schools with low-attendance in poorer communities acroos the globe, thus encouraging children to attend school and get an education, as well as feeding them.

And all food bloggers are invited to help! Until the end of March, recipes can be submitted to BloggerAid for the cookbook, which will go on sale towards the end of this year on Amazon. They are looking for original recipes that you have not blogged yet. So if you have been experimenting with something new and would like to contribute to this project, head over here for more information.

It’s a fantastic excuse to play around in the kitchen and help some less fortunate kids.

*Note- I am so sorry for not commenting and reading any blogs at the moment. We are still figuring out internet at home. So I am limited to writing entries in Word, running to a cafe occassionaly and posting them, without getting time to catch up. It sucks, hopefully we can get something figured soon.

 

Drinker’s Adobo

As I sit here by our new breakfast table, admiring the view of Signal Hill, the fragrant aroma of an adobo is wafting in from the kitchen. I woke up this morning craving this Philippine dish that blends a variety of spices, meats and other ingredients to create a wonderfully flavored stew. Another blog friend introduced me to it when she sent me The Little Adobo Book from her native Manilla a long time ago.

Back then I experimented with a couple of recipes, but it has been forever since I’ve last tried any of them, so over morning coffee I paged through the book looking for a recipe. There were so many delicious-sounding versions to choose from; fish in coconut cream, duck adobo, spicy chicken adobo, one with pineapple and pork. I finally settled on adobong pang-inumam or drinker’s adobo. So named, I assume, for the generous amount of gin that is added to the stew.

It was not the gin that was calling out to me though, it was the combination of vinegar, black pepper corns, garlic, onion, fish sauce, soy sauce, bay leaves and fresh chilies that impressed, and had me feel like dinner at breakfast. After a quick trip to a local weekend market to look for some home items we stopped by a grocer to pick up some ingredients and headed home to start preparing for tonight’s meal.

To cook a drinker’s adobo for two you’ll need:

1 tablespoon oil
1 teaspoon garlic, sliced
½ white onion sliced
500g meat (I used pork)
1.5 tablespoons vinegar
½ teaspoon cracked black pepper
1 tablespoon fish sauce
1.5 red chilies (or more if you like)
¼ cup gin
¼ cup soy sauce
2 cups stock (I used vegetable and no I did not make it I bought it)
2 bay leaves

Prepare:

Heat the oil in a saucepan and fry the garlic and onions until fragrant. Add the meat and brown while stir-frying. When the meat has been browned, add the vinegar, don’t stir until it has released its acidic odor. Add the pepper, followed by the fish sauce, chili, gin, soy sauce, stock and bay leaves. Bring the dish to a simmer and cover, leaving it to simmer and cook until the meat is tender.

I prepared the adobo, removed it from the heat and left covered for several hours before serving. It was only about 2PM when I prepared it and we spent the rest of the afternoon hanging out on the beach, soaking up the sun and dipping in the icy Atlantic.

I heated it up quickly for dinner and served it on a bed of rice noodles. I’m sure rice would have been more appropriate, but we are waiting for pots to arrive, so I had to make do with something else. It worked out quite well. The dish turned out flavorful and satisfying, washing it down with refreshing gin and rum drinks Alexander mixed.

 

Avo Shakes

Ever since I was a child I loved avocados. I used to slice one in half, take out the pit and pour lemon juice and some freshly ground black pepper and salt onto half, mash it up slightly in the skin and eat it with a spoon. Avo sandwiches were always a winner and any form of salad that involved this rich fruit.

Imagine then how horrified I was when I discovered avocado shakes in a health food store in Taiwan. The mere idea was just wrong to me and I avoided this item for the longest time. One day my curiosity finally got the best of me and I decided to give it a try. And loved it. The pulp from the fruit was blended with a caramel custard, flavoring the earthy flavor of avo with a rich sweetness. It was pure decadence.

While Alexander and I were living there again for two months last year we tried it several times. Traveling through Vietnam we also discovered that it was a local favorite at shake stands there, mixed with sweet milk instead of custard. We often stopped at stands to enjoy a glass of cool avocado shake.

Robyn from Eating Asia writes that they are also enjoyed in Indonesia, usually with a swirl of chocolate syrup added, but you can even enjoy it with some strawberry swirled in. The recipe I used to make these shakes was borrowed from her blog.

I made them while we were still in Albuquerque where we had lots of ripe avocados in the kitchen the whole time we were there. Being neighbors with tropical Central and South America must be fabulous.

To make avo shakes you need to collect:
-    2 medium ripe avos, flesh scooped out
-    1 cup milk
-    ice cubes
-    blended fresh strawberries juice

The process:
Blend the avo, milk, sugar and ice until smooth. Pour into glasses and swirl in some of the blended strawberries and drink up. For a slightly more decadent version, use sweetened milk or some custard.

 

Welcome Home

I would like to start this entry by apologizing for my terrible lack of blogging activity since the end of January, but then again I believe most of you are used to my lapses in writing by now. I know, very lame.

We have been rather busy since my last entry. We arrived in a very windy Cape Town three weeks ago, ready to begin a new chapter in our lives. After spending the past two years traveling around Southeast Asia and the US we decided to move back to South Africa. We missed living somewhere familiar and we have been inspired by our time in the East to start on new projects at home.

We were living with some friends while house-hunting, which turned out to be a nightmare of note. The highlight of these was a particularly nasty Wednesday when we found we were not getting our dream apartment. We discovered that doing freelance work and travel for a living does not make you an ideal rental candidate in the eyes of realtors.

We were getting ready to move in with our friends for good when Alexander finally found a listing on gumtree.co.za that seemed promising. A privately owned two-bedroom apartment in the city bowl, next to the Company Gardens, walking distance to most fun areas in the city and with views of Lion’s Head. We went to the viewing, loved the owner and space right-away and asked where we could sign. Three days later we arrived at our new front door with our boxes that traveled from Thailand, Vietnam, Taiwan, the US and Northern South Africa. (Look here for some before pictures.)

After living out of bags and in other people’s homes for the past 8 months it felt incredible to finally have a space that was our own again. Of course our furnishings are still rather rudimentary and we still need to do a lot of work, but slowly we are settling in. We painted, picked up some stools, and even baked during our first week here.

Feeling comfortable in our own place has also inspired us to make better use of our new city; climbing Lion’s Head at 5:30 in the morning, going to the Clifton beach and braving the icy waters, enjoying the invigorating Turkish baths and seeing owls getting chased by squirrels in the gardens in the evening. As things start falling into place I will continue to update you on how things are going and what we are up to.