Bon Gusto

How many of you have had a go at goat? Yeah, my response exactly when Salvin Hirschfield, the Neighbourgoods butcher at the Biscuitmill told me he will be stocking it at a regular basis. Look, as a former afrikaans farmboytjie (or sort of, any way- enough weekends spent as a kid with scond cousins on their farm) my immediate reaction was an unpleasant grimace. Few who have experienced it would not remember the rather unpleasant, well “goaty” smell of what seemed to me to be the most foul of all domesticated animals. And having been headbutted by one into a pile of kraalmis made the memories even more unpleasant.

I went and did my homework, though, and found goat to be considered a delicacy throughout the Middle East, India, most Indian ocean islands and even so far as the Wes Indies. Even the Italians are on board and in the north of Italy, spring kid is seen as a real treat. So: when Salvin gave me a kilogram of baby goat forequarter, nicely butchered into  bone-in chunks, I swallowed my prejudice, went home and started trawling the net for a suitable recipe. Old Man Frost has laid claim  to Cape Town, and curry seemed just the thing to warm the cockles of any adventurous eater’s heart. I found a recipe for a MAuritian-style goat curre by Gorndon Ramsay. Not being a fan of the f-word man, I gave it a thorough look-over, and promptly adapted it in a way that I thought was needed, both for what was available locally, and to my own tastes. The results were spectacular- to such an extent that goat will be on my menu regularly from now on. Here goes:

You will need:

for the spice paste:

1 yellow onion

4 garlic cloves

4 small red chillies (don’t seed them unles you’re a chilie-wimp!)

a thumbsized piece of peeled fresh ginger

2 tablespoons of cooking oil

For the curry:

1.2-1.5 kg shoulder of goat or kid, bone in, cut into chunks

1/2 tsp turmeric

1/2 tsp ground cumin

1/2 tsp mustard seeds

1 cinnamon stick

2 star anise

a handful of fresh curryleaves

1 tin chopped tomatoes

400 ml stock- chicken or lamb

two large potatoes, peeled and cut into golfball-sized chunks

corianderleaves for garnishing

Pre-heat your oven to 150 degrees. Season the meat, then brown it in batches over high heat in a cast-iron casserole. Blend all the ingredients for the paste in a small food-processor or hand-held blender, untill you have a fine paste. Pan-fry it in the leftover oils and fat in the same casserole you used for the meat, for 2-3 minutes, then add the dried spices and the curry leaves, Stir for a minute, add the meat, stir well and then pour over the  tomatoes and the stock.  Put the casserole into the oven, and cook slowly for 2-2 1/2 hours. Take it out to stir every 45 minutes, and add the potatoes for the last 45 minutes. Serve it on steamed basmati rice, with lots of beer, and if you feel like it some sambals as a side dish: cucumber raita, or perssimons and red onion chopped finely and blended with a tad of fish sauce. ENJOY!

PS: Goat is trending, suddenly. I saw an article by Giorgio Locattelli in the newest Jamie magazine, featuring kid- and Ethan Stowell, Seattle’s top chef, has included a recipe for leg of kid with z’ataar in his newest book…  

It seems as if the weather in Cape Town changed overnight. This weekend was the equinox; we had a perfectly blissful two days filled with summer sunshine in Hermanus. Yesterday I woke at 4 a.m. with the peaceful sounds of rain on my tin roof, and a firm grasp of the autumn that we are overdue for. And thank goodness, I say. At the very least my water bill will come down, no more irrigation for the garden. But most importantly, the abrupt change in temperature holds a very welcome in the form of heartier food, and the popping of redwine corks, which is long overdue. Look, I love summer, I practically worship the 18-hour days full of daylight, the long evenings completed by freshly grilled food from the braai. But at some stage one tires of drinking more “refreshing” whites alongside dainty salads, puny portions of roomtemperature pasta, petite morsels of cold cuts and the like. Autumn stands up and blows its demands for comfort food like the sound of a thousand vuvuzela’s at soccer match: braises, stews, and the like. Here’s my kick-off: Bigbigjoe’s beef and carrots in red wine

You’ll need:

1.5 kg chuck, matured in the fridge for a day or two on the bone and then cut & trimmed to 4 cm squares

800g large carrots; peeled, halved, then cut in 4 cm cork-shapes

2 onions, chopped

4 french shallots, chopped

2 garlick cloves

10-12 baby leeks, well-rinsed and cut in 2 cm pieces

a bottle of fruity red wine (come on, don’t be stingy- use something decent!)

a cup of beef stock (Nomu’s beef fonds will do quite well, thank you)

2 tablespoons of the best dark chocolate you can afford, coarsely grated

A decent sprinkling of cinnamon

This is how:

Pre-heat your oven to 150 degrees Celcius. Sprinkle the beef squares with salt and grind some white pepper over. Heat a cast-iron casserole dish over a medium-hot flame, pour in 2-3 tablespoons of sunflower oil and brown the squares properly on both sides, in several batches as not to overcrowd the pot. Remove the meat, add a dollop more oil, and fry the onions, shallots and the chopped garlick for 3-5 minutes till soft and fragrant. Turn up the heat, add the carrots and leeks, and fry for 2 minutes more. Now add the browned beef squares and the whole bottle of wine (open a second bottle for the cook, please) and bring to a bare simmer. Cover tightly with a well-fitting lid or foil, and let it continue cooking gently in the oven for an hour. Take it out, stir in the cup of beef stock, the grated dark chocolate and sprinkle some cinnamon to taste- gently, you don’t want the cinnamon to dominate. Re-cover, and cook in the oven for a further 90 minutes. If you want to, let it cool and refridgerate it overnight; stwes often benefit from an extra day’s rest. Serve it over egg-tagliatelle, buttery mash, or on its own with a good chunk of fresh baguette to mop up. The start of your winter season can’t get much better… 

Need I say more?

Pleasure is the only thing to live for. Nothing ages like happiness.

Oscar Wilde

I must to my shame admit that when I first saw Gino d’Acampo on one of the BBC’s cooking show some years ago, I thought he was the poster-boy for STUPID. Yup: that beguiling little-boy act, the accent, the inability to spontaneously just get-on-with-it and perform, really didn’t impress. I googled him briefly, and found out that he was a native from Naples, too boot. And that he’d spent two years “at her majesty’s leisure” in prison for theft in the ’90s. My opinion changed fairly radically over the last month, though. I ran into his latest, Gino’s pasta, at Exclusive Books. Visually, especially for someone who has an incurable addiction to cookbooks, the book had the same atraction that a scampily-clad girl in the smallest of red bikini’s has on the beach- sort of a jaw-dropping, eyeball-rolling gape followed by an I-must-go-and-introduce-meself thought. Which is exactly what I did (to the book of course dummies,  not the girl!)

A few brief pages later I was at the till, forking out some hard-earned Rands for yet another book- on pasta nogal, a subject which I’ve pretty much thought I’d mastered some time ago. Gnocci, gnudi, homemade tagliatelle and paprdelle- been there and done that. But the man’s infectious enthusiasm, combined with the picture-perfect photo’s and the absolute accuracy when writing about sauces and their creation, made this a must-have. Pasta, schmasta, I hear you say. Go on, go have a look, promise you you’ll be impressed too. Truly great pasta sauces are all about the excellence and freshness of the ingredients, and the balance of blending them in just the right proportions to one another, and in proportion to the pasta itself. I’ve attempted about 12 new sauces (or then new variants of old favorites) from mr d’Acampo’s book, and my opinion of him has risen from pretty lowly to absolutely magnifico. My current favorite, considering the scorching weather in the Cape, and the long balmy evenings, is a simple room-temperature sauce: linguine with tuna, tomatoes and black olives: here’s my adaption.

You will need:

-500 g linguine (get the good stuff please: De Cecco, Delverde, etc- it’s only R2 per serving more and makes a world of difference!)

-200 g good quality tinned Italian or Spanish tuna in olive oil

-120 ml extra virgin olive oil

-2 cloves garlic, slivered finely

- a stiff pinch of chiliflakes

-two tablespoons of chopped Italian parsley.

-calamata olives: 100g depipped and quartered lengthways

-5 anchovy fillets, chopped

-12 to 15 flavoursome vine-ripened cherry tomatoes, quartered 

How?

Bring 5 litres of well-salted water to the boil, and cook your pasta in it.Gently heat the oil over low heat, stir the chopped anchovies and garlic in for a minute untill the anchovies have just dissolved into the oil. Add the chiliflakes, tuna(in large flakes), tomatoes, and olives, raise the heat to medium and cook for 2 minutes.  Set it aside. Drain the pasta when cooked, put it back into the pot and add the sauce to it. Stir through, sprinkle with the parsley, and serve.

Eat it outside, if you can, with friends and family, the sun just setting, and a glass of well-chilled sauvignon blanc. And then let your prejudices against mr d’Acampo go…completely. And of course, without a single shred of parmesan cheese, please!

(image from www.itv.com)

She-who-must-be-obeyed has a birthday next saturday. And being the good hubby that I am, I’ve been scheming some special treat, including a night out, and a spectacular dinner (family-in-law included, nogal.) But this is where I come undone: I’ve phoned two hotel restaurants, one of which reached Eat-Out’s Top 10 list, the other a brand spanking new restaurant in Cape Town’s Grand Dame hotel- and neither of them will allow children below the age of 13. I’ve been kindly offered babysitting services (at a premium of course) should we stay over- as well as a “child-friendly roomservice menu” for them.

For goodness sake, can restaurants still afford this type of behavior? I can understand the reservations many a maitre’d may have, but my 5-year old Princess has been taken to many a top fine-dining institution, knows her manners, and can eat her asparagus with a fork. As for her 10-year old cousin, he’s been to more gourmet joints on three different continents than I have, has much more of an adventurous palate than I do, and is known for his impeccable behavior We’ve never been part of the eat-in-front-of-the-tv crowd, dinners at home are seved at a table, with the applicable table manners, and I’ve encouraged the concept of long, slow meals relishing good food and good conversation. We often have friends for leisurely suppers even mid-week, and the children have always been welcomed and taken part with gusto. You would never, but never ever find this attitude in any of the good restaurants in France- children are part of life, part of family and part of any celebration, they are welcomed and encouraged, but also disciplined into good behavior which make their participation a joy- and it is exactly the same with the children in my own family.

So: to Bosman’s restaurant at the Grande Roche, and Planet restaurant at the Mount Nelson: go sniff some dishwashing liquid or snort some draincleaner. You will NOT see me or my money again. 

It’s difficult to choose a real favorite from all the cookbooks I added to my shelves this year: there were were so many focussing on specialist topics, styles an techniques- and yes, a multitude of visual gluttony. But the above is the one I cooked from most, adding new dishes to my repertoire. Food from Plenty, Diana Henry’s fifth book, is probably the most comprehensive bit of hedonism for the home cook that these trying economic times allow. She focuses on the cheaper cuts of meat: lamb shoulder, whole chickens, beef brisket. Fruit is used in abundance when in season- her upside-down apricot cake has become my new favorite dessert. And yes, there’s no lack of the imagination: at the bottom of each recipe is a couple of variations on the theme using very much the same main ingredients. Ms Henry demonstrates a versatility that I have seldom seen elsewhere, leaving one utterly sated and thoroughly content at the end of each meal. Pity, then, that the book is nowhere to be seen in our bookshops. I first browsed through a copy in Foyle’s, on Charing cross road in London in August. Unfortunately I had far too little space in my luggage for it, but I ended up ordering it via www.loot.co.za – I would suggest you do exactly the same.

So much for cookbook contents. What touched me most this year, from any cookbook, was the dedication written in the front of Sophie Dahl’s debut. Yes,yes- I know: her tv show was cancelled after the first series, she was slagged off in the British press for being an insubstantial cook and a Nigella-wannabee with nothing but her good looks to carry her. And I have to agree, in terms of cooking and writing abilities she has limitations. But the girl has heart: the book is dedicated to her new beau, jazz artist Jamie Cullen, and reads: “For Jamie, at whose table I wish to grow Old…”

Perhaps then a little introspection is called for, from all of us, at this crazy time of the year. Take a moment, become quiet, and ask yourself: at whose table do you want to grow old, and who should be growing old at yours?

Psssst.

Come’ere.

Wanna hear a secret?

My family would classify me as a full-blown carnivore: I celebrate most meat-free mondays by eating chicken. But I would push away the juiciest, most succulent piece of dry-aged rump for a properly-cooked piece of tuna. Trouble is, it’s easier to score some top quality crack-cocaine in this town (and sniff it off the back of a gorgeous blonde) than getting hold of decent quality tuna these days. And I’m so NOT a fan with the ladies, being monogamous and happily married to She-who-must-be-obeyed, anyway. Neptune’s treasure chest is slowly being emptied out around our coast, what with all the “Olla Senora” Spanish trawlers and the Taiwanese with their love-me-longtime longline fishingnets. So: when the lovely Julie at the Biscuitmill winks  me over with handsignals swinging like a windmill, I usually know there’s a special treat in store, and that I’m going to pop my wallet open quicker than a Campsbay Kugel would at the anual Waterfront Louis Vuitton sale.

The past saturday was just such an event. I hurried over to the Jewel of the seas expecting the big T, and sushi-quality at that. The surprize, however, was even better. She had swordfish… fresh, succulent, juicy vacuum-packed swordfish steaks. Yeah: I know. Swordfish is on SASSI’s Orange list. But I had a good look at what they had to say, and it’s evident that swordfish is listed there simply because data supporting it’s ongoing commercial use is lacking. They simply don’t have enough information regarding numbers, stocks and breeding to give it the green light for free consumption. Which is exactly why I cautiously bought a portion barely enough for two, and made some magic with it. A simple dish, pangrilled swordfish with vine-ripened baby tomatoes, salt-capers and lemon. This is how:

You will need:

2x 200g fresh swordfish steaks, trimmed 

75 ml olive oil

20-25 vineripened babytomatoes, rinsed and dried

two large tablespoons salted capers, rinsed and dried

a big, juicy lemon

Put a non-stick grillpan on your hottest gasflame. Dry the swordfish steaks carefully, then rub it on both sides with roughly a tablespoon of olive oil. Into the pan now, a bare two minutes on eitehr side. Take the swordfish out and cover it with foil. Switch the heat off, wait a couple of minutes, pour the remainder of the olive oil into the pan and add the tomatoes. Restart your flame at low heat, stir the tomatoes through for about three minutes till just hot and almost blistering, then add the capers. Grate the yellow peel off the lemon, winely, with a microplane. Cut the lemon into quarters, and squeeze the juice into the pan (hold the pips back with your hands please, they add an unpleasant bitterness. Now add th grated lemonpeel, sitr briefly, take the pan off the heat and put the swordfish steaks back in to heat through, for a bare minute. Voila. Serve it with some boiled baby poatoes (if you’re luck Woolies still has some left of that small crop of fingerlings) and a leavy salad. Salt? Nah- the capers have done that for you allready, but a quick grind of pepper may be beneficial. Enjoy!   

I see several comments in today’s issue of The Telegraph regarding the great divide in Europe, and it’s impact. Seems as if most of the affluence and the wealth lies in Northern Europe, and that with the ongoing financial woes they are essentially forced to bail out their poorer cousins in the South to keep the Euro afloat. If I had a choice between staying in Northern Europe, with all its monetary afffluence, And Southern Europe, with its wealth in food and lifestyle, I know which I would prefer. Antipasto is just so much more attractive than smorrgasbord…

How about you?

Elsewhere questions were raised about a signature dish, my knockout recipe. Well fiddle-me-faintly-felicity, by now you should know there’s many a kind of knockout recipe. Let me explain: there’s the “come over to my place, I’ll cook for you and seduce your socks off” knockout. Then there’s the “how-do-you-do, Mr Smith, yes I AM going to marry your little darling” knockout, the “softly now, you go rest after nursing the baby, love; I’ll cook” knockout, the “Whooha! The renovations are finally done” knockout, the “can you believe she’s five, we’re sane, and our lives are slowly returning to normal?” knockout. This one? Simple- it’s my lazy late-November knockout meal for friends, on a Saturday evening when the weather has not quite turned to summer yet, when you’ve put away the redwines, your palate itching for a decent glass of white and something substantial to go with it. So here it is then, stuffed roast shoulder of lamb with apple aioli, served with cannellinibeans and spinach.

 The recipe is a variant on pork with applesauce and has its origins in a similar dish from Diana Henry, one of Britain’s most underrated foodwriters- but I’ve made it my own with all the tinkering involved. It’s peasant rather than palatial; a rustic, hearty meal rather than an elegant plate of food. If you want elegance, go to Rust en Vrede or LeQuartier Francais- the dish carries enough depth and texture to punch in way above its looks. You will need what seems to be quite a bit of ingredients. Don’t fret; a lot of it involves the barest shake, pinch or sleight-of-hand with standard cupboard goodies. Foremost, of course, is the lamb. Shoulder is a cheaper cut than leg and if roasted to a barely pink it has better taste or texture than any other meat. I buy the best freerange Karoo lamb money can get you from the Neighbourgoods butcher at the Biscuitmill on Saturdays, it comes deboned and rolled (with the bones separate for stock, later) at less than supermarket prices. Ask for a cut that weighs 1.6-1.9 kg.

The stuffing:

125 grams of good-quality streaky bacon (Joostenberg’s is tops)

a small red onion, chopped

50 grams of pinenuts, carefully toasted to a medium brown (watch out, they burn quicker than you can blink!)

2 well-beaten eggs

100 grams of almost stale breadcrumbs (use the 2 day-old ciabatta in the breadbin before it goes completely stale; cut off the crust and whizz it to a coarse crumb in your food processor)

A variety of herbs: I like 4 sprigs of lemon-thyme, a good handful of flatleaf parsley, chopped; and a bare teaspoon of finely chopped rosemary.

Fry the streaky bacon to just crispy in its own fat, take it out and let it cool. Fry the onion gently in the rendered bacon fat till properly soft but not caramelized; if needed add a tablespoon of olive oil. Cut the bacon into 5mm strips, mix it into the breadcrumbs with the onion and the herbs, and bind it with the egg.  

Roasting:

Pre-heat your oven to 220º Celcius, or gasmark 7. Roast in a gas oven if you can, somehow the roasts allways turn out better. Roll the shoulder open; season it well on either side with salt and freshly ground whitepepper, then stuf it evenly. Roll it up, then tie using kitchen string and close both openings with toothpicks. Put it on a rack inside a roasting tin and cook for 20 minutes before reducing the heat to 160ºC/gasmark 3, then roast for another 13 minutes per 500 grams.

Apple aioli

2 ½ Granny Smith apples, peeled, cored and cut into chunks

3 fat garlic cloves (wrap them in tinfoil with a drop of olive oil, and roast them in the oven next to the lamb for the first 12 minutes)

½ teaspoon Maldon salt (even better if you can get some smoked salt)

½ tespoon Dijon mustard

¼ cup olive oil

1 teaspoon sherry vinegar

2 tablespoons runny fynbos honey

Whip this up while roasting. Cook the applechunks in water until properly tender, drain, and cook gently for another 5 minutes in the teaspoon of butter. Squeeze the roasted garlic from the cloves, add it to the the salt in a mortar, and crush it together. Now add it to the apples in a bowl, mash to a puree and mix in the mustard. Adding the olive oil drop by drop, carefully whisk it into a thick sauce. You may get by with a tad more or less oil, rather keep it on the thick side. At the very end, stir in the sherry vinegar and the honey, and taste for seasoning.Don’t be afraid to tinker with it; add seasoning, a tad more honey or vinegar as you think right- trust your palate. Chill it until it’s time to dish up. When the lamb is done roasting, take it out of the oven and cover the tin with a layer of tinfoil followed by at least two thick teatowels. Let it rest for 15-20 minutes.

Cannellinibeans with spinach

3 tins cannelinibeans, drained and rinsed

600 grams of English spinach

75 ml olive oil

2 peeled garlic cloves

a fingerpinch of dried chilliflakes

a large or two small lemons

Generous amounts of salt and pepper

A careful grating of nutmeg

Don’t knock canned beans- they’re cheap, tasty and healthy. If you really need to, get some dried cocos blancs in stead from the Chefs Warehouse- but I honestly believe canned is good enough.The beans are best prepared just before slicing the lamb. Wash the spinach well- there’s little worse than a mouthful of sandgrains mixed in with the softness of the beans. Wilt the spinach in a big non-stick fryingpan, without adding any water after the washing.- this should take 2-3 minutes at the most. Drain it in a colander, let it cool slightly and squeeze it as dry as you can. Heat the olive oil in the selfsame pan (no need to dirty extra dishes!) over a medium heat. Add the peeld garlic, and let it cook for barely a minute, and then discard it. Chop the spinach; add it to the oil with the chiliflakes, and the salt and pepper. Cook for a minute, and then carefully stir in the beans. Heat through until they’re hot, add a grating of fresh nutmeg and a good squeeze of lemonjuice. Taste and fiddle with the flavoring, as before. The beans may well need more salt that you think, but be careful with the lemonjuice; too much may overpower the other flavours.   

Serving:

Dish a generous ladleful of the beans, add a good slice of the by-now-wellrested lamb, and top the lamb with a good spoonful of aioli. Some crusty bread to mop up the sauces always adds pleasure to the meal, but little else is needed. If you have to, serve a green salad of cos lettuce with hazelnut vinaigrette alongside. To drink? A well-blended Bordeaux-style White. White wine with lamb, you ask? Yeah. Frown you might, but it works well, in part due to the lovely apple allioli that goes with it, the face-pulling hit of the lemon with a mouth-grab full of spinach and the earthiness of the beans. The Wowser with this dish would be Nico van der Merwe’s ’07 Sauvignon-semillion blend, readily available if you know who to ask. Despite its age it is drinking remarkably well now, showing the classic flavors and restrained minerality expected of an older wine. It’s good enough to pare as a mature companion to the dish- as a matter of fact, I started out specifically with this wine in mind. That, and the rollicking, lip-smacking, eye-rolling evening ahead, filled with friends and laughter around a dinnertable in the shade of summer- because in the end, that is what good food is about after all.