FairyDust*

Last week was rainy and a little bit cool, therefore I decided that soup was on the menu for Tuesday evening.

I got this recipe from a friend and it sounded so delicious that I simply had to give it a try.

I just added something extra (soup powder) to give it a bit more flavor. This was literally the easiest soup I ever made and it was divine.

I invited over two of my girl friends to also test the new recipe and they love it so much, I had to give them ‘doggie bags’.

Recipe

1 large Eisbein

3 Russians

2 Onions, chopped

6 Potatoes, cubed

1 packet Split Peas

3 ½ lt Water

½ packet Thick white onion Soup

½ packet Oxtail soup

250ml Fresh Cream

Salt & black pepper to taste

Method

Fill the slow cooker ¼ full of water and add the eisbein. Let it cook on low throughout the night.

Next morning remove the eisbein to debone it and take off the skin and fat. Leave the water of the eisbein in the slow cooker as it has all the eisbein flavor.

Put the eisbein (meat only) back into the slow cooker, add the Russians (cut in 3mm circles), potatoes, split peas, onions, salt & pepper and the rest of the water.

Let it cook on low for the day.

I added the soup powder only after work, as I thought it needed something and cooked it further.

Pour the cream over just before serving.

Serve with delicious fresh bread of your choice.

Bon Appétit!!

This is something I soooo adore and I’ve only eaten roti from one person who could really make it divinely. I’ve bought roti’s so many times and have always been very disappointed in the outcome as it tasted like cardboard, with not even a pinch of salt for taste.

This person showed me how to make it once, years ago, but I just never made it myself. I had a fear about making roti, not so much adding the ingredients together, but the kneading together to get the right texture and worse, rolling them out into perfect circles, I was afraid I just wouldn’t be able to do it. So I never tried. Kicking myself today as I made it on Wednesday (seeing that the breyani was already done), it came out great, except for the perfect circle part, but it tasted really really good and it wasn’t as difficult as I initially thought.

My biggest challenge though, was finding a roti recipe that didn’t taste like cardboard.

What I remember from this lady’s recipe, was real butter. But tried as I may, I couldn’t find a recipe with butter, except for the cooking part. So I went through a lot of recipes and decided to follow the basics more or less and replace the oil with butter and it worked.

So here is what I did…

Recipe

3 cups Flour

¼ tsp Salt

50 g Clover butter

Luke warm water

Clover butter for frying

Method

Mix the flour and salt in a mixing bowl.

Rub the butter into the flour, till it’s almost like fine crumbs.

Add the water bit by bit, till you have the proper consistency. (I’m not sure how much water I used, I just poured, around 100 – 150 ml about)

Knead the dough for ± 5 min.

Roll out the dough on a floured surface.

Brush the top of the rolled out dough with melted butter and roll the dough up like a swiss roll.

Cover the dough with a tea towel and leave to rest for 30 min.

Knead the dough again, break of pieces just bigger than golf ball size and roll out to very thin disks on a floured surface.

Fry in butter on both sides, make sure it bubbles before turning.

 My second ever roti (I couldn’t resist and ate the first one)

Some Tips

I couldn’t find my rolling pin, so I used an empty brandy bottle, it worked perfectly.

I also found that frying it in the electrical frying pan worked much better than the cast iron pan.

I didn’t brush each rolled out roti with butter before frying them as I rolled each one out while the other was frying.

Have a wonderful weekend all!!

Don’t you just love Indian Cuisine??

The delicious aroma of curry when walking into the spice shop…ahh… makes all my senses tingle. When the shop assistant takes the bucket and scoop and just throws in a scoop of this and that to make the perfect mixture of curry according to your taste…I just love it!!!

I love curry so hot that it makes my eyes water, but unfortunately, due to the rest of my household, that seldom happens.

Breyani on the other hand never appealed much to my taste buds, but taste change. A few months ago I just got this urge to try it again, I’ve never made it before and never cared to try, then I bought one of those breyani packs, it sat in my fridge for a few weeks before I made it, as it seemed like such an effort when reading the directions. Finally one day I decided this is it and I made it. There my love affair with breyani started.

I never bought the pack again, as I was gonna make it myself. I went to our local spice shop, spoke to the lady, got the ingredients and I started making my own. Best part is, it didn’t seem quite the chore it did when making the pack…

Then I discovered cooking in a slow cooker. I had one that I got from my dearly loved gran but I’ve never used it, it was stuck in a cupboard. On Monday evening I told the hub to get it out, time to experiment…Monday evening I used it for the first time, making a stew, impressive, Tuesday evening I cleaned it and prepared the ingredients for the breyani, yesterday morning before work, I layered the ingredients, set the cooker on low, went to work, returned home at 16:30 to the deliciously seductive aroma of breyani, cooked almost to perfection. The only thing I’ll do different next time is to pour less water over, as it was a bit saucy, but divine none the less.

Recipe

1 kg Tenderized steak, cubed

6 Potatoes, cubed

2 Onions, chopped

4 tsp wet Breyani Mix

4 tsp dry, whole Breyani Mix

3 tsp wet Masala

1 tsp Turmeric

1 cup Plain low fat yoghurt

250 ml Sour milk (didn’t have enough yoghurt, but this worked perfectly)

1 tin Chopped & peeled tomatoes

Salt

Oil

½ cup Water

1 cup Black Lentils

2½ cups Rice

1 tsp Turmeric

Method

Place the meat, potatoes and tomatoes into a large bowl and add salt to taste.

Mix the yoghurt, sour milk and the spices together. 

Pour over the meat mixture and mix, leave the meat to marinade for a few hours, I left mine overnight.

Parboil the rice (with turmeric) and lentils (in separate pots) for 15 min.

Braise the onion in oil till transparent.

Layer the ingredients in the slow cooker as follows, start with ½ of the lentils, then the meat mixture, rest of the lentils,

onions and ending with the rice.

Set slow cooker on low and leave overnight or while at work (as in my case).

The slow cooker will definitely be used on a regular basis from now on, especially with the breyani, as it gives me more time after work to do what I want.

Sorry guys, I forgot to take a pic of the finished product.

Ps. I’ll post the roti recipe tomorrow…