Clarissa’s kedgeree

Isn’t it nice when people offer to lend you their cookbooks?

Really? I don’t think so. In fact, I can’t stand it.

‘Oh, you’ll love this. Take it with you! There’s a pork ragu in there I know you’ll go berserk for.’

I accept the proffered tome with a brittle smile and the usual pleasantries (‘No, I couldn’t. Are you sure? Oh well, If you insist...’)  — all the while thinking, ‘Oh. Great.’

You see, it’s not that the cookbooks people try to lend me are no good — well, not usually. It’s that they’re too good. I get too attached, you see. It causes me very real psychological trauma to have to return them. Particularly — and this is almost always the case — if they are out of print, or otherwise tricky to get hold of.

Usually I have a fairly firm grip on my financially crippling cookbook addiction; I know to avoid certain bookstores or websites when I’m not flush. I give myself over to a new cookbook only when I have the means to purchase it. But when someone lends me a book willy nilly, out if the blue, I am without my armour. (Not to be confused with my armoire, which is also very handy in a scuffle.)

At first, I’ll just leave the book somewhere I won’t have to look at it — under the bed, say — with the intention of returning it to the owner, unread, accompanied by a glowing review: ‘It changed my life. Really, I’ll never cook stroganoff any other way.’

But my curiosity always gets the better of me. It whispers to my subconscious, telling its silken lies: ‘Just a quick skim — no strings attached. You don’t have to commit. We can just go our separate ways tomorrow. I’ll still respect you in the morning...’

Ha.

I never learn. I always do it, thinking, ‘Just a quick skim...’ And there’s always that one recipe, isn’t there? You know, The One. With Your Name On It. It seems it was created Just For You.  And that’s it. Down the rabbit hole I go — hook, line and sinker.

That’s how the Guinea Pig finds me: in bed, clutching the book, white-knuckled, eyes glazed, slack-jawed and quite unconcerned about the thin stream of drool making its way down my chin.

On that note, I’d like to introduce you to my latest obsession: Clarissa’s Comfort Food. It was lent to me by a very dear friend, handed over with the words: ‘Do try the kedgeree — you won’t be sorry.’ And what do you know? I wasn’t.

This dish has the kind of ingredient combination I can’t turn away from: eggs, lentils, rice, salmon, a bit of spice, friend onions, coriander, toasted almonds... I feel a bit of a bore to admit I’m mad about anything to do with legumes, but it’s true. I get far more excited about a bowl of dressed up lentils and brown rice than I do about roast lamb. If that says anything about me, I haven’t the faintest idea what it could be.

You may remember the author, Clarissa Dickson Wright, from that show ‘Two Fat Ladies’. She was one of them, and by God, if this book doesn’t prove that you should take cooking advice from a fat cook over a skinny chef any day, then nothing does. I am dying to try her onion, aniseed and tomato soup, and something called ‘Fuzdah’s eggs’ (involving boiled eggs, coconut milk, mango and spices — sounds weird but the recipe had me salivating) — she’s got some quite out-of-the-ordinary ones, as well as a host of gorgeously rich traditionals like cottage pie, fish pie, cheese soufflé, fish cakes (made with store-bought gnocchi, thank you), salads, stews and pies.

I’d never heard of kedgeree before, which isn’t saying especially much as I’m not that knowledgeable about food, but what a delightful discovery it was. Apparently it’s very British, and usually made with haddock, though Clarissa does it with salmon when no one’s looking.

When the time came to return the book to my friend, I found my hand would not let go, and there was a spot of polite yanking before it was restored to its owner. So I had to go out and procure my own copy... As if there was ever going to be any other outcome.

All I can say is, do try the kedgeree. You won’t be sorry.


Clarissa's kedgeree
Serves 8

1 tsp coriander seeds
½ tsp cardamom seeds
1 tbsp ground turmeric
1 tsp cayenne pepper
1 dried red chilli
4 tbsp ghee or clarified butter [I just used butter]
1 onion, ½ chopped, ½ slivered
500g long-grain rice
500g brown lentils
Salt
500g cooked salmon, flaked
4 hard-boiled eggs, shelled and cut into quarters
1 tbsp vegetable oil
1 tbsp slivered almonds
Coriander, to garnish

1. Pound the spices and chilli together. Put them in a saucepan with 1.2 litres water and simmer for 10 minutes. Strain and keep the water.
2. In a large saucepan, melt the ghee or butter and fry the chopped onion until coloured. Add the rice and lentils and cook, stirring continuously, for 2 minutes. Add the strained spice water and the salt and simmer until all the moisture has been absorbed and all is cooked and tender. Stir in the cooked fish carefully, along with the hard-boiled eggs.
3. Heat the oil in a separate pan and fry the onion slivers until brown and crisp, then drain well on kitchen paper. Sauté the almonds quickly in the same pan.
4. Turn the kedgeree onto a serving dish and scatter the onions and almonds on top. Garnish with coriander.

[To bulk out the recipe you can add cauliflower or potatoes.]

Super duper, easy peasy vichyssoise

This time of year, for me, usually entails a trip to Calitzdorp — a sweet, not-too-pretty-but-filled-with-character dorp in the Klein (small) Karoo, just outside Oudtshoorn — to visit my folks. They retired there from Jo'burg about six years ago, and since then I've come to look forward to my visits, not just because I get to spend time with them, but because it always means lots of fun in the kitchen with the spoils form my dad's veggie patch, a lot of wine appreciation, and generally a lot of togetherness, laughter and good eatin'.

Huge home-grown carrots, gargantuan beetroots, fresh salad leaves, lovely, earthy potatoes, snappy leeks, sweet cherry tomatoes and firm, shiny zucchini were all potential ingredients, but I decided to give vichyssoise (cold leek and potato soup) a bash. I'm not sure why, exactly, because I'd only had it once at a restaurant and I hadn't really enjoyed the taste or the temperature — the merits of chilled soup eluded me. Perhaps, now, I came to this recipe due to the baking Karoo temperatures, and the fact that I'd been on a steady diet of rich meats and carbs for about a week straight... I needed a reprieve from the heat and heavy food.

I didn't want to leave the result to chance, so I consulted both Larousse and The Joy of Cooking — the former called for a base of water with a bouquet garni thrown in, while the latter called for stock. So I used both (a stock cube, I admit), and boy, oh boy, was it delicious — thick, savoury and filling, but quite light at the same time. I also didn't chill the soup completely, but rather served it on the cool side of room temperature, and I think this allowed for more flavour. But if you prefer your soups icy, by all means.

This is one of those stupidly easy recipes that yields fabulous results — and we all need more of those, don't we? Don't worry too much about getting the amounts exactly right, they're more of a guide.

If you happen to be experiencing a cold winter right now, this soup is also — hey presto — exceedingly yummy served hot.

(Side note: Vichyssoise was invented in the US by a French chef, who named the dish after his home town, Vichy. So drop that into conversation, why don't you.)

Vichyssoise

Serves 4

12 leeks, white bits only, washed and finely sliced

50g butter

600g potatoes, peeled and cubed

1 bouquet garni*

1 litre chicken stock (or just enough to cover the potatoes)

1 cup cream

Salt and white pepper, to taste

Chives, to garnish

1. In a large soup pot, gently fry the leeks in the butter until soft and translucent — do not allow to brown.

2. Add the potatoes and garni to the pot, as well as enough stock to just cover the potatoes. Give it a good stir, bring to the boil, then reduce the heat and allow to simmer until the potatoes are soft.

3. Using a handheld blender (or an ordinary one — which just means more washing up!), blend the soup to your desired consistency. I like it slightly chunky.

4. Leave the soup to cool, then plonk it in the fridge if you'd like it chilled, for about an hour.

5. Stir in the cream, season with salt and pepper, and divide between four bowls. Garnish with chives (snip-snip) and that's that.

*Two sprigs parsley, two bay leaves and one sprig each thyme and rosemary, tied together with a piece of kitchen string.

Current addictions

La Parmigiana

This pasta factory in Dean Street, Newlands, offers expertly made fresh and freshly frozen pasta so you can plonk it straight from the freezer into boiling water, and their prices put Woolies to shame. Their Napoletana and arabiata sauces make me want to take up poetry. If you take a baking dish to them they’ll fill it with virtually anything (pasta-related) you desire. 021 448 8852


Yoghurt, garlic, olive oil, salt

Okay, make that: 1 cup thick, diet-be-damned full fat yoghurt, 2 cloves super-fresh crushed garlic that perfumes your fingers (1 clove if you're squeamish), a few glugs of herby extra-virgin olive oil, and a generous helping of flaked Maldon salt, to taste (I like it plenty salty). Mix it all up until blended and allow to stand so the flavours infuse for at leat 10 minutes.

This sauce is heavenly. I love glooping it over poached eggs, sliced tomato, and anything with a vaguely Indian or Middle Eastern slant. Sometimes I just stand in the kitchen, staring into space, eating it by the spoonful.


Kuhestan Lemongrass and Ginger Cordial

This cordial has a delicate, fresh, floral, not-too-sweet flavour — I imagine this is what nectar tastes like to bees. I bought it at the Hope Street Market. Here's their website.



Hibiscus salt 

I don't know if I can call this an addiction yet, because I'm in the process of making it — but I'm pretty sure all the signs of imminent addiction are there. I'll let you know how it goes.


White Saffron & Cardamom Chocolate

Whoever decided on this flavour combination should be canonised (it was a company called Chocolate Marionettes — I'm looking into the paperwork). Unfortunately the only place I know of that stocks it is the Peregrin Farm Stall on the N2 just over Sir Lowry's pass. But maybe if you contact them they can tell you where to get some.

real purdy: red cabbage & citrus chicken salad

I am completely obsessed with red cabbage at the moment. Its crunch. Its colour. Its versatility (mostly in the salad department). On a nerdy note, it contains 36 different varieties of anthocyanins (or ‘thingies’), which have been linked to cancer protection. Plus, a large, violet, delicately veined globe placed artfully on a kitchen shelf is a viable décor item.

This vibrant salad screams summer. It’s full of flavour and super-duper good for your body, but more importantly, it’s delicious. The crunchy cabbage, the sweet citrus, the savoury chicken… If you have an aversion to grapefruit, replace with orange. (Actually, any sweet citrus works well.) It’s a great way to use up roast chicken leftovers.



Red cabbage & citrus chicken salad
Serves 6—8
 
½ head cabbage, shredded
2 oranges, peeled and sliced
1 grapefruit, peeled and sliced
3 cups shredded cooked (preferably roasted) chicken
2 cups pomegranate rubies

For the dressing:
½ cup extra virgin olive oil
1 tbsp English or dijon mustard
1 cup orange juice
Salt and black pepper, to taste.

Arrange the salad ingredients on a platter (fancy shmancy like). Combine the dressing ingredients in a jar and give 'em a good shake. Drizzle dressing over the salad, rejoice and serve.

Yotam Ottolenghi's aubergine cheese cake

My bathtub is a death trap for ants.

For the few unfortunate ant-souls who find their way up the legs (it’s a ball & claw) and over the lip, there’s no escape.

In fact, the sight of them scrabbling up the sides, tumbling down, then starting all over again, is so existentially traumatising that I am compelled to rescue each and every one before I open the floodgates at bathtime. (I get the ants to crawl onto a piece of tissue, then airlift their asses out of there — I like to pretend I'm in an episode of Rescue 911.)

Sometimes I’m too late, and there are few lifeless ant corpses scattered about. I picture their families back home, holding vigil (with little ant-sized candles), ant toddlers innocently asking, ‘Mama, where’s Papa?’ To which Mama ant replies, ‘I don’t know baby, I just don’t know…’ before dissolving into tears.

And then I smile to myself, satisfied that — in the lives of those few ants I’m able to rescue — I've made a difference.

Of course, I think nothing of emptying a can of Doom over the thriving N1 ant highway that runs under our kitchen sink.

Life is full of contradictions.

Here is an extremely yummy thing I made last night, which I found here.


Yotam Ottolenghi's aubergine cheese cake
Serves 4

90ml olive oil
2 small aubergines, cut into 2cm thick slices
Salt and black pepper
150g feta
150g cream cheese
60ml double cream
3 eggs
150g baby plum tomatoes, cut in half lengthways
2 tbsp picked oregano leaves, torn
¾ tsp za'atar (optional)

Preheat the oven to 190C/375F/gas mark 5. Line with foil the base and sides of a deep, 19cm square baking tin (or a round, 22cm diameter dish), then brush lightly with oil.

Lay the aubergine slices on a baking sheet lined with greaseproof paper and brush all over with four tablespoons of olive oil. Sprinkle with salt and pepper, and roast in the hot oven for 40 minutes — the aubergines need to go soft and golden. When cooked, remove, set aside to cool, and lower the oven to 150C/300F/gas mark 2.

Put the feta, cream cheese, cream, eggs and some pepper in a bowl and whisk until smooth and thick.

Arrange the aubergine neatly in the baking tin — the slices should fill up the tray as they lean against each other, almost standing on their sides. Fill the gaps with tomatoes and sprinkle over half the oregano.

Pour in just enough of the cheese mix to leave some aubergine and tomatoes exposed, sprinkle over the remaining oregano and bake for 30 minutes, or until the "custard" sets. Leave the cake to cool down to room temperature, then remove it from the tin and cut into four squares (or into wedges, if using a round dish). Before serving, gently brush all over with za'atar mixed with a teaspoon of olive oil, or just olive oil.

Fried butternut with mint (OMF)

I went a little nuts at Woolies the other day. They had a promotion on: a giant bag of butternut for R30, but you could buy three for R60. So of course I had to buy three — about 25 butternuts!

When I got home and stumbled through the front door with my booty, the Guinea Pig just looked at me and said, ‘Uh-oh.’

And he was right to be wary. The bags sat under the kitchen counter for a few days, untouched, and it began to dawn on me that I probably don’t have enough synapses to deal with 25 butternuts.

Butternut soup... Er, roasted butternut... Er.

Oh sure, I have plenty of cookbooks and recipes that include butternut/pumpkin, but they’re a bit too fiddly and, more importantly, only require a small amount of the stuff.

Enter inspiration, stage left.

I am lucky enough to work for a magazine whose food editor uses a test kitchen just down the corridor from our office. So quite often I’ll have finished stuffing my face with leftover pizza in the cafeteria at lunch time, only to have platters of gourmet concoctions plonked down in front of me, going begging. (Which is when my second stomach comes in handy.)

Yesterday was such a day, and one of the plates happened to contain an incredibly tasty, incredibly delicious butternut dish. Little blocks of fried orange yumminess. Sprinkled with mint.

You heard me: MINT.

I simply had to know how to make it, but a cross examination of the assistant food editor yielded only that the butternut was boiled and then fried in butter.

‘But there was more to it,’ I wailed to GP later that evening in the kitchen, poking the air with my sloshing wine glass. 'It was so tasty — I couldn’t have just been fried in butter with a bit of salt. It was sweet as well...'

And that's when I figured it out. And here it is — more or less approximating what I tasted in the kitchen that day. I’m not going to bother with amounts because, well, I’m too lazy, and it’s not really all that important.

If you’re a veggie lover, this is a little plate of heaven.


Fried butternut with mint

Butternut (duh)
Butter
Olive oil
Salt
Sugar
Fresh lemon juice
Mint, chopped

Boil up some cubed butternut until tender but still firm. Drain. Then melt a large (and I mean heart-attack LARGE) nob of butter in a frying pan with a similar amount of olive oil — you basically want enough to coat the butternut and make it nice and glossy. Turn the heat up really high, then add the butternut in a single layer (you may have to work in batches).

Okay, now you want to sprinkle a generous amount of sugar and salt (yes) over the butternut. Start with a tablespoon of each, then taste the butternut halfway through cooking and decide if it needs some more.

Fry the butternut until it's golden and the sugar is beginning to caramelise. Transfer to paper towel and drizzle with fresh lemon juice (to taste) and sprinkle with chopped mint.

Spring minestrone

I recently took up hot yoga.

It was a tactic to cope with stress, because as effective as drinking several tall jugs of wine every evening is, I was finding it unsustainable.

Hot yoga, if you’ve never tried it, is yoga in a large room heated to about 40C — or, as some prefer to describe it, hell on earth.

It involves ingesting large volumes of your own sweat through inverted nostrils while your muscles cuss at you. Then there’s the humiliation factor of emphatically jumping to face your right when the entire rest of the class jumps to face the left.

It is deeply uncomfortable. It makes me feel like a motor function impaired gorilla. And yet... While I’m there, sweating like a hog in heat, I don’t think of anything else. I am completely present. One might argue that inserting rusty forks under one's kneecaps would have roughly the same effect, and I wouldn’t have to pay R60 a pop for the privilege. (Can’t fault you there.)

All I can say is, I guess you either get it or you don’t — I am certainly not trying to convince you to start hot yoga. But that hour at lunch time is like the eye of the storm of my life.

(Watch now as I deftly tie the topic of yoga to the spring minestrone recipe below.)

Making this spring minestrone is a bit like yoga...

(Impressive, huh?)

... in that it requires effort and commitment.

If, that is, you are going to be shelling farmer’s market peas and boad beans yourself, as I did. You could always just get the pre-shelled ones from Woolies if you like, I won’t judge you.

This minestrone is just so good for the soul — I mean, look how green it is. You can just tell it’s pure goodness. And it tastes even better than it looks. It’s the perfect way to combine all the lovely green things sprouting all over the place this time of year. (Feel free to add whatever you like — zucchini, beans, artichokes, or even chopped potatoes, pasta or cooked cannellini beans.) I'm sure I don't have to tell you that the success of this soup hinges on the quality of the stock.

Promise me you’ll try it.

Namaste.


Spring minestrone
Serves 6

Extra virgin olive oil
1 onion, finely chopped
2 cloves of garlic, finely sliced
1,5 litres good chicken, ham or vegetable stock
100g peas, podded
100g asparagus, chopped into 3cm pieces (separate tips from the woody stems)
100g broad beans, podded
100g spinach, chopped
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 small handful each fresh basil and parsley, finely chopped
100g Parma ham or pancetta, chopped & fried until crispy

1. Add a good glug of olive oil to a large heavy-bottomed pot and add the onion and garlic. Cook gently on a very low heat until the onion is nice and glassy (make sure it doesn’t brown), about 15 minutes.
2. Add the stock and simmer for 10 minutes. Add the peas and asparagus stems and simmer for 2 minutes. Then add the broad beans, spinach and asparagus tips. Cook for a minute, then stir in the ham. Season to taste.
3. Ladle the soup into bowls and top with a spoonful of chopped basil and parsley to stir through.

Broad beans, orecchiette, minty ricotta & anchovy croutons

I have a few strategies for cheering myself up when I feel a little blue, a little uninspired, or when I just want to plak a smile on my face.

The most effective is to sing Eminem songs to myself in a Punjabi accent (‘The Real Slim Shady’ is a favourite).

A stroll on the mountain is also a reliable way to lift my spirits. Summer arrived in Cape Town this weekend (and then swiftly departed on Monday), and since I’m lucky enough to live within walking distance of Rhodes Memorial, I took an amble on Sunday morning. And some pretty pictures. Mooi, neh?

Apart from warm weather and extra daylight, nothing helps summer hit home quite like the glut of greens that flood the farmers’ markets around this time of year, none of which I anticipate more avidly than broad beans.

These beautiful emerald nuggets are impossible to resist. Although, after podding about a kilo of them, I thought I might have a little more success resisting them next year.

I concocted this killer recipe over the weekend. You could leave out the mint, if you like, or the anchovies, but I liked the combination. It was a glorious plate of summer.




Broad beans, orecchiette, minty ricotta & anchovy croutons

The amounts for this dish are not all that important (i.e. I am too lazy to figure them out). Just cook enough pasta (about 450g for four people) and take it from there.

Pod a whack of broad beans, blanch briefly (like, a minute or two), then remove the tough outer skin. Boil orecchiette. Cut some nice, crusty ciabatta up into little bocks. Heat some olive oil and melt some anchovies (about 5). Fry the bread cubes until golden brown and crunchy.

Mix up some ricotta and finely chopped mint, and season to taste with salt and black pepper. (Add a tablespoon of yoghurt if the ricotta is a little dry.)

Divide the pasta and broad beans between plates/bowls, dot with blobs of  ricotta and top with croutons. Give a final sprinkle of salt and black pepper, drizzle with some good quality extra virgin olive oil and finish with a squeeze of lemon juice.

Et voilà!