This is NOT how life should be - Pasta

It's basically 2 years since my last post... yes, yes I know.... to gain attraction and popularity you should post frequently! But hey! I am a Professional in a global company, I've got two small girls, Corona came and fucked us over and work is hectic! Oh! And I'm an awesome wife to my just-as-awesome-husband.

It is Wednesday, I've started my day very early with a lot of important Viber messages from my colleagues in Singapore, and I have accomplished a lot today. What will we do tonight to wind down...? Braai? That is the South African way of relieving stress, but I am "gatvol"(fed up) for a braai (barbeque) so I decided that we should start a fire (it is winter in South Africa - well the last bit of it anyway) and we should make pasta. I am in the mood for something different, or like my sister Ilze will call it - "volksvreemd" (something unknown to our culture). I google, why? Because "they" say Google is your best friend.  But alas, I don't find anything that intrigues me, so I reckon, lets combine some of my favourite ingredients and see how it pans out!

So here goes............

Prosciutto Halloumi and Green Fig Preserve Pasta

Below you will find the pictures of this AMAZING delicious dish!................ and it is super easy.

Cut the Halloumi into squares and fry it in olive oil until golden brown

Take the Prosciuttos and fry it in olive oil until crispy

Cook the Penne Pasta until al-dente

Heat olive oil together with a small pinch of butter (to prevent the oil from burning) and fresh garlic, a hint of ginger and fresh lime until the garlic seems………….. well, cooked? LOL.

Combine all of the above and dress with quartered figs on top!

Voila! You have an amazing dinner – pair it with Tokara’s 2018 Shiraz and you’ve got yourself a gourmet dinner which would’ve almost break the bank in a “fancy-smancy” Italian restaurant.

Life is short! In the past month I have lost 3 friends, due to Covid. Young (well relatively young) individuals who was somebody’s – somebody. A void that can never be filled again, an energy which is forever lost, simply put, a life that can never be replaced. So, be grateful, live your life proudly, accept each new day as a new opportunity to love fiercely and appreciate deeply.

I leave you with this (and delicious pasta if you try out my recipe 😊)

“Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars” Kahlil Gibran

Be blessed, be healthy and be safe!

 

Jan Braai’s lekker braai

What is needed:

1kg Deboned Lamb Rib

2 Lemons

30ml salt

30ml pepper

1 red onion

Small tub of feta

1 pack of sun dried tomatoes

30ml capers

Butchers string

0.5 cup of white wine

0.5 cup of lamb / mutton stock

Clamp / hinged grill

Now kids, the reason you follow a recipe is because it gives you a set of instructions to succeed at dish that is new to you.

We did not read the recipe and things started going south almost immediately.

I really struggled to get my hands on some deboned lamb ribs. Apparently, it is not something widely available. Finally the good people at Pick and Pay Southdowns were willing to debone some lamb ribs for me.

Now, if you read Jan Braai’s recipe, the very first instruction is – phone the butcher and order deboned lamb ribs. So from step two onwards I read more carefully.

You start by laying out the lamb rib seasoning the lamb rib with salt, pepper and lemon juice to taste.

Then you spread the sun dried tomatoes, capers, feta and onions as evenly as possible on the rib.

The cut I got was a bit thick and it was hard to roll so I had to trim some of the meat in order to make a better roll. (Maybe an Amsterdam rolling professional could help here?)

Ensuring the filling stays nice and firm, roll the lamb rib into a tube and tie securely with some butcher’s rope. Butcher’s rope was another item I couldn’t easily find, luckily, the kind people from the PnP butchery saved me again here. They were kind enough to give me some when I asked nicely!

Now place the lamb in a potjie (pot) for a 90 minutes. (Another surprise since I apparently did not read the recipe thoroughly). Now, I had to explain to the head chef why we will behind with 90 minutes. So kids, if you want to avoid the head chef rolling her eyes at you – read the recipe before starting.

So now, quickly get your potjie ready put in white wine and lamb stock. 90 minutes or so in a potjie will make the lamb meat very soft but keep it juicy.

After 90 minutes, remove the lamb and cut it into nice equal size pieces. Since the lamb slices can be hard to handle it helps if you place them in a hinged grill.

On hot coals braai the lamb slices until they are a nice golden brown and the fat is nice and crispy. It would take +- 10 minus to complete.

For a side dish, these barbequed sweet potatoes in a cilantro vinaigrette comes highly, highly recommended.

The result? A soft succulent lamb paired with the smoky sweet potatoes. It is an absolute winner.

Lessons learned for the day? Read the recipe through at least once before starting. Even it is just a quick look see. It will help you to avoid surprises later on the recipe. And, if you told your wife – “yeah sure, I read the thing, now leave me alone,” then you absolutely have to read the damn thing.

Recipe is from the book Jan Braai Shisanyama. 

Mantou and Singapore Chilli Crab

And… we are back with a new blog entry. After the birth of our daughter we took a small hiatus (four years) but we are back!

At the start of every year my wife travels to Singapore for business meetings at their headquarters and it is company tradition – first night in Singapore it is Chilli Crab for dinner. This year she brought a kit back from Singapore and on Saturday night for the first time ever I got to experience Chilli Crab.

Well… not Chilli Crab. The recipe calls for a 1.2 kilogram live Sri Lanka crab, and around these parts, Sri Lanka crab (crab in general) is hard to find. So instead of crab we settled on prawns for a number of reasons. Biggest reasons – I do not have to kill a gigantic pissed off crab.

To accompany the Chilli Prawns we made Mantou. Also known as Chinese steamed buns, they are sweet, light and fluffy. Perfect for soaking up the chilli sauce.

Cleaning the prawns and getting them ready for the chilli sauce

Making the chilli sauce is easy since the kit provides you with everything you need - You can get this kit only in Singapore or Australia - darn, sorry fellow South Africans :( .

The tricky part is getting the Mantou perfect.....

To make the buns you need:

·         300 g all- purpose flour.

·         2 tablespoons sugar.

·         1.5 teaspoon instant yeast.

·         150 ml water.

·         Pinch of salt.

To get started with the buns, heat some water to +- 35 degrees and then melt the sugar in the water and mix in the yeast. Let the concoction stand for five minutes. 

During the waiting period you will see foam on the water. It is carbon dioxide being released as the yeast feeds on the sugar.

Next, the flour. Since we do not have all-purpose flour we took cake flour and added two extra tablespoons (more info on substituting all-purpose flour with cake flour).

Put the salt and flour in a bowl and then slowly add the water / yeast mixture. Stir the mixture while you slowly add the water.

Knead the dough until it is a nice soft and smooth consistency.

Now let the dough rest until it has doubled twice in size (more or less an hour). To see if the dough is ready, lightly touch the side of the dough. If your fingertip indentation remains, the dough is ready. For more information on testing the dough, see this post from Red Star Yeast.

Keep dusting the dough and knead the dough again until it is smooth. All the air must be punched out of the dough to ensure the dough is as smooth as possible, I repeat ALL OF THE AIR must be punched out, this might even be therapeutic if you are angry. Once again Red Star Yeast has a good post on this.

Helping mommy and daddy

Now roll the dough in a log and cut log in slices about 2 centimeters wide.

Using a steamer, steam the dough slices until they become fluffy which takes around 5 minutes in a microwave. Note to self: Don't wait until the day you want to make these buns to find a bamboo steamer, because Murphy will make sure that you won't find a bamboo steamer in any store in Centurion. So we used a plastic steamer, next time I will rather plan ahead and get us the bamboo steamer. 

For a final optional steps, you can deep fry the buns until they are nice and golden on the outside.

Now for the last step - eat the chilli prawns! Soak up the sauce with those delicious fried buns!

What a fantastic way for me to finally share some Singapore culture with my wife. Maybe someday I will be blessed enough to experience the real thing...

Yes we are still alive and cooking...

Well almost!

Since our last blog entry a lot of good shit and bad shit happened.  We got married, hoorah! We had a miscarriage :( that was pretty shitty and changed the direction of our life quite a bit. I changed jobs, I got pregnant again and now we have a beautiful little girl called Femke (she is already 17 months old)

 

 



Femke kept us busy! She has been sick a lot and me and the hubby really struggle to keep things afloat without a support system.
We bought our dream house and moved in on July 1st.  True to Femke's reputation she fell ill the Sunday thereafter and what we planned to be a lazy Sunday with red wine, good food and a afternoon snooze in front of the fireplace turned out into a trip to the ER and a night in hospital :(

Okay so we had a very bumpy start to this new chapter in our life, but this will not stop us.  We are back and will try out new recipes again (especially after Femke's tonsillectomy on the 19th of July) and blog about it, in the meantime, try out one of Woolworth's DIY indian meals. 

 

We love the Butter Chicken with poppadum's and naan bread, it is quick and easy to make and perfect for a cold winters evening.  Pairing it with a glass of Kanonkop Kadette Pinotage is a must!!

Review: Moyo Fountains Valley

Review: Moyo Fountains Valley

 

Image source.

 

Normal criteria to judge restaurants by are quality of food, the class of service and atmosphere. For Moyo I have to introduce another category – your ass. 

After sitting at Moyo for just half an hour you will be acutely aware of your ass and how much it hurts. Although the chairs have a rustic charm to them, they are uncomfortable as hell and your ass will be begging for mercy.

During this first half hour you will also get thirsty since waiters at Moyo is seriously a scare resource.

If you do manage to get a waiter and order something, the waiter will return 10 minutes later only to inform you that they don’t have that item in stock. That goes for the wine and food. 

Eventually we got so fed up with the waiter returning to tell us they don’t have stock that we asked him to find out what they do have and then we will order that. 

 

The restaurant looks stunning. Too bad the food is just average.

Image source.

We finally struck gold and ordered something they do have. Luckily the food wasn’t as shit as the service. However, that’s all I can say for it though.  Average at best. 

There are so many negative things to mention about Moyo in Fountains Valley which is really unfortunate. The Moyo in Melrose Arch are for many people the definitive measuring stick you use to measure other restaurants with. 

I assume that Moyo had an ‘off’ evening and that most of the time they must be on the ball. How else would they have survived this long? 

So maybe it is worth your time and money to go there. I would definitely not go back there. The amount they charge for the food and the service you get...not worth it.





I can summarise the experience with this:

MOYO = FAIL :(

Finding new restaurants in your area with Foursquare

Finding new restaurants in your area with Foursquare

 

Looking for something new to do on a Friday evening? Use Foursquare to help you find what is going on around you.

 

Foursquare is a social network that lets you connect with people around you based on what they have been doing. Foursquare is available on Windows Phone, Android, iPhone and Blackberry. Whenever you visit a restaurant or a club, open the Foursquare app and check in to the place. Your check in will help Foursquare determine what the popular spots in your neighborhood are. Based on the number of check ins and likes a place receive, Foursquare can rank the popularity.

 

Image source.

Business owners can take advantage of this by publishing their specials on Foursquare. When somebody is looking for a place to eat or something to do, Foursquare will display a list of specials that is available close to them.

Apart from using Foursquare as a means to find things to do, you can also play it like a game. Each check in you do rewards you with points. The number of points you get for a check in differs for each check in, for example, if you check into a place you have never been before you get 5 points. There are a whole bunch of different reward modifiers and each time you check in it is a kick to see what you are rewarded with.

The points that you win are tallied together and compared to your friends and you are ranked against them on a leaderboard.

Immediately when you talk about sharing your location with other people it raises some concerns regarding your privacy. Can other people use it to stalk you? Luckily they have a block user function that will block undesirable people from seeing your location.

Now that you have blocked all your previous ex-boyfriends, let’s get back to the fun. If you are the person to check into a place the most in a two month period, you will become the mayor of that place. Have fun trying to steal your friends’ mayorships.

On your quest to become the ultimate mayor you will also unlock different badges. There are badges for people that like to try different restaurants, there are badges for people that like the great outdoors and then there are a few badges for people that like to do weird things – like find a store that sells vinyl records or check into a library after 11 o’clock at night.

Foursquare is a fun way to make mundane travels around a bit more exiting.

 

Review: Wine and cheese tasting at Fairview Wine Estate

Review: Wine and cheese tasting at Fairview Wine Estate

Note: for today’s post I am taking over from my fiancé that is ill in bed. It’s her birthday but she is too sick to do the planned review of our visit to Fairview wine estate in the Western Cape. Any vet worth his salt will tell me it will be quicker and easier just to put her down.

During my life I have eaten some cheeses made at Fairview, so it was nice to finally be at the place where the magic happens. ‘Magic’, being the act of letting sour milk rot until fungus grows all over it. I wonder, who was the bright spark that had the idea to let milk rot up to the point that it becomes a solid block and then eat it?

That said, my fiancé and I, like most people, love cheese. Gouda, Feta, Brie, Camembert, Cream Cheese, etc. All the stuff Weight Watchers say you have to stay away from. Fairview produces a whole line of artisanal* cheeses at their cheesery**.

Located close to the idyllic town of Paarl in the Western Cape, Fairview is a dream come true for people coming from Mordor (Gauteng). Lush green fields and vineyards set a dramatic contrast to the Gauteng landscape of burning cars and police officers soliciting bribes from the people burning in the cars.

Driving into Fairview you are greeted by their iconic goat castle. A tall tower structure that only goats have the dexterity to climb. Cows will just fall off and roll into the parking lot.

Lounge in the wine tasting area.

 

Walk past the tower and into the wine tasting area. The wine tasting area is divided into two tasting areas – the casual tasting area and the exclusive tasting area. We headed straight for the exclusive area since you not only get to taste wine, but every wine is paired with a cheese that compliments the wine’s flavour. As a palate cleanser, you are served Ciabatta bread with olive oil produced locally at Fairview.

The waiters serving you are very knowledgeable in not only the wine making techniques used on the farm but also the cheese making process. Question them about anything regarding wine tasting and they will be able to tell you. Skin contact, maturing, oak barrel aging versus something something, honestly, thinking back, I can’t remember much. I assume the wine tasting was a great success.

Oak barrels used to age wine, next to the wine tasting area.

 

Stumbling out of Fairview I reflected how great it is to be in South Africa. The natural beauty, the people and the food makes this one of the greatest countries in the world.

*New word I just learned.

**Another new word I just learned. In fact, not even MS Word spell check knows what a cheesery is.