A blog that I have recently found and really like is Mimi Thorissons’s – Manger. Its achingly beautiful and instantly makes me yearn for Europe. Mimi lives in Medoc in France, and it kind of  looks like she has the perfect life.  Her recipes are lovely, and her photographs have an exquisite old world patina feel to them. Who doesnt want to be transported to another place when browsing the interwebs.

I fell in love with these gorgeous meringues the minute I saw them. Hitting my current love affair with pomegranates head on, I couldn’t wait to dive into my kitchen.

Meringues are tricky things to make. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. It was the recipe that took me the longest to perfect in my cook book, and after nine tests, I  finally got my mini pavlova’s exactly how I wanted them. The making of meringue is a combination of exact ingredients and ratios, as well as the temperature and time to bake them. These three variables when altered slightly here or there can have a big effect on your outcome.

How you like your meringue is a matter of personal taste. I like pavlova to be crispy on the outside and soft in the middle, but still firm enough to take a slice out of. I like meringues to have a firmer and crumbly texture.

I made 4 big meringues out of this recipe, and they were more like mini pavlova’s. Next time I will make several smaller ones and check out the result.

I adapted the recipe slightly by using large eggs (these are all I ever buy), and caster sugar instead of granulated sugar. I added the corn flour right at the end with a teaspoon of vanilla extract. I made my own version of pomegranate syrup, which I cooked for quite a while to reduce it to the syrupy consistency that I wanted.

Topped with generous dollops of whipped cream and fresh pomegranate seeds, this was an absolutely beautiful dessert and big texture adventure.

I gave one to a friend who served it at a dinner, and there were mutterings of ‘best meringue ever eaten’ etc.

Meringues | makes 4 large meringues

• Recipe on Drizzle and Dip

Syrup:

Bring the juice and sugar to the boil in a small pot, then reduce to a simmer and cook for about 10 – 15 minutes until it thickens. As it cools it will thicken more. Keep cooking it until its the thickens you like.

other recipes with pomegranate:

Pomegranate and ginger spritzer

Guacamole with pomegranate:

I look forward to connecting with you again in the future.

Visit my Drizzle and Dip Facebook page to get updates of all my posts.

I can also be found enthusiastically pinning beautiful food images on Pinterest.  

I love to use dried porcini mushrooms with fresh mushrooms when making this barley ‘risotto’. Or any mushroom risotto in fact. The  flavour adds such depth, and the water that re-hydrates the mushrooms makes a lovely intense stock.

This is one of the recipes I developed for Nomu for their May recipe mailer, and its perfect Winter comfort food.

I have used a selection of mixed exotic mushrooms to make up the fresh component of the dish. I love the meaty texture of shiitake, and adore the look of enoki. Use any mushrooms that you like, although I find white button mushrooms the least suitable for risotto. They are the dullest of all the mushroom varieties. They work brilliantly when pickled, but opt for brown, oyster or if you are lucky enough to have access to a few wild varieties, all the better.

I have used barley here because I love the nutty taste, but you can make a traditional risotto rice, just reduce the cooking time.

Dont be afraid to add butter, Mascarpone or cream at the end. It makes this more indulgent and creamy. I also add a lot of freshly grated Parmesan or pecorino.

Recipe | serves 2

• Drizzle and Dip 

I look forward to connecting with you again in the future.

Visit my Drizzle and Dip Facebook page to get updates of all my posts.

I can also be found enthusiastically pinning beautiful food images on Pinterest.  

American Gourmet magazine was one of my favourite food magazines, and a great source of inspiration to me in my early food styling career. I used to take back issues out from the Sea Point library, gaze at the exquisite images and hope that one day I would be able to create something that looked like them. The magazines were often well worn and dog eared, but I didn’t mind, the pages were filled with so much aspiration, I was transported to another far more glamorous world around food.

Gourmet was started in 1941, and was the first US publication dedicated to food and wine. The styling was unique and edgy and stood out from all other food magazines in the world.

I scanned a few of the images that I loved at the time so that I could refer to them later on for inspiration, and here are some that I found.

I was utterly devastated when I heard the news that the magazine was closing down at the end of 2009. A decline in advertising revenue, and a change in the way readers consumed food media are the reasons for its demise. Part of me still mourns this loss.

However Gourmet.com is still a food brand to be reckoned with, and along with Epicurious.com and Bon Appetite, they fall under the Conde Nast stable.

Conde Nast Independent magazines South Africa was established in 1997 under the licence of Conde Nast International and has multiple magazine titles under its banner including Glamour, GQ and House and Garden. Last year they launched the first edition of Conde Nast – House & Garden- Gourmet magazine -a bi-annual publication.

I was giddy with excitement when I was commissioned to style the food for the cover of the second edition - Autumn / Winter 2013.

The magazine is on shelf now and filled to the brim with inspiring food and lifestyle stories to keep you cosy through the winter months.

The cover features a whole cauliflower which speaks to a growing trend where vegetables are taking centre stage and becoming the feature of a dish. I have to say as a vegivore, this makes me extremely happy.

It was a privilege to work with the fantastic team on the cover shoot. Bernadette Le Roux- food editor, Martin Jacobs - art director, Juliette Arrighi De Casanova on props, and Russell Smith the behind the camera.

We shot this late last year when cauliflowers weren’t in season, so I had my work cut out trying to source one as big as the one that was needed. I was also rather proud of the bone in, trimmed beef roast I prepared, but this was given less of a starring role.

The shoot took place at the Gilles Botbyl gallery in Gardens where the team transformed a small corner to create this dramatic picture.

Looking back on the last 5 years of my new career around food creativity, this was indeed a highlight.

Dreams do come true.

And since we are celebrating vegetables, I thought I would include 2 nice recipes.

warm salad of roasted fennel and radish with lemon

in July 2011 I decided to round up a few of my favourite vegetable side dish recipes, and bizarrely this post has became and remained one of my most popular posts on this blog. I have decided to keep it updated with some of  my more recent  favourite side dish recipes, and here are two more.

I was keen to see how radish would taste when roasted. It goes so beautifully with fennel in a salad, so decided to give this a bash. I often find that in Winter a warm salad is preferable to a cold one. Its just more comforting.

To make this, roughly chop fennel and radishes to more or less equal thickness. This all depends on the size of the vegetables you have. Drizzle over olive oil, salt and pepper and bake in a 200 C / 400 F oven for about 25 – 30 minute until the fennel just starts to take on some colour.

Serve either warm or cold with another drizzle of olive oil, a spritz of lemon juice, salt and pepper and some finely chopped fennel / dill tips.

green and black bean stir fry with red pepper

This recipe comes from Jill Dupleix’s book - ‘good cooking’ (published by Quadrille 2005), and was sent to me by my friend Sonia as a good one to try using two types of beans. I had never used fermented / salted black beans before, so loved trying this recipe out.

Recipe | serves 4 as a side dish

• recipe on Drizzle and Dip

I look forward to connecting with you again in the future.

Visit my Drizzle and Dip Facebook page to get updates of all my posts.

I can also be found enthusiastically pinning beautiful food images on Pinterest.  

I was delighted to be asked to contribute to the Nomu May recipe mailer which goes out to their large subscriber base each month. My kitchen is loaded with their products (which I love and use all the time), so I didn’t have far to go to get what was needed for the recipe development.

This chicken dish is a twist on a recipe I have in my cook book for a marmalade chicken and sausage tray bake. And while we are on that, Nomu are giving away 3 copies of my book to anyone who subscribes to their mailer this month. Click here to do just that if you are not already subscribed.

How cool is that?

Recipe | Serves 4

• on Drizzle and Dip

I look forward to connecting with you again in the future.

Visit my Drizzle and Dip Facebook page to get updates of all my posts.

I can also be found enthusiastically pinning beautiful food images on Pinterest.  

I couldn’t resist these mushrooms when I saw them a the Hope Street market recently. The gills were dry and perfectly separated, indicating utter freshness.

I had dill and goats cheese (obviously) – so thought to make a sort of goats cheese butter with them. It needs a bit of fat.

While baking, the mushrooms generate a lovely sauce which is basically pure umami.

These would be fabulous as a side dish served with steak. Slapped between a toasted bun they would make a sensational vegetarian burger. Or just eat them straight up and on their own, making sure you have some bread to soak up the juices.

It really is this simple.

Recipe for 2 stuffed black mushrooms (serving 1 or 2 depending how greedy you are)

• on Drizzle and Dip

I look forward to connecting with you again in the future.

Visit my Drizzle and Dip Facebook page to get updates of all my posts.

I can also be found enthusiastically pinning beautiful food images on Pinterest.  

Cinco de Mayo is a mainly American celebration of Mexican culture that happens on the 5th of May, and I wish we did it here. What better way to celebrate Mexican heritage than through this delicious cuisine that I love so much.

I dream of travelling to Mexico to eat, but thus far have only got as far as the deep south of the USA, but I have been cooking and experimenting with this cuisine for many years, and in a country where its not at all mainstream. Its only about a year ago that chipotle chillis became available in South Africa thanks to Mexicorn.

My favourite Cape Town Mexican restaurant, El Burro, now also sells pickled chipotle chillies and a range of stunning sauces of varying intensities which I love.

This recipe for Huevos Rancheros, which quite frankly is amongst my all-time favourite ways to eat eggs, comes from my cookbook which was published last year.

Huevos Rancheros | serves 4

Recipe on Drizzle and Dip 

In my book I also included my recipe for salad nachos which is really all about adding fresh and crunchy vegetables to your nachos in place of some of the cheese and sour creme to make it even more delicious and healthier.

Then there is also my beer battered fish taco with a spicy chipolte slaw. A crowd pleaser.

And when it comes to Mexican drinks, there is only one word that comes to mind. Tequila. I have developed a taste for good quality tequila, and I sip and appreciate it as I a fine whiskey.

When it comes to drinking it in a cocktail form, my favourite is the Paloma.

I have created a board on Pinterest called ‘Mexican Fiesta’ - so will be pinning recipe that I discover and like there.

When a foodie friend on Twitter alerted me to this ginger scallion recipe, and said it was a game changer, I immediately wanted to know more. She sent me to this link on the Tastespotting blog and after reading the humorous post, I couldn’t wait to get to the shops to bulk buy ginger and spring onions (scallions).

This is David Chang – from Momofuku- Ginger Scallion sauce. Its more of a relish or condiment to me, and I initially made it to go along with a pork chop.

I tasted it on its own after making it and found the onion and ginger very abrasive, but it really does need to be eaten with food. I tried it on a fishcake and then knew that it was made to be eaten with seafood.

I bought a couple of fresh line-fish fillets from my fishmonger, pan fried them in a little olive oil, and ate them with this delicious relish on the side. A more simple and perfect meal is hard to come by.

This sauce definitely mellows and improves after a few days, and the flavours seem to integrate a bit better.

The recipe makes quite a large batch, and as you use very little, it may be worth cutting it in half.

Recipe | Ginger Scallion Sauce | makes 3 cups

From  Momofuku cookbook by David Chang

• Drizzle and Dip

Serve immediately with the ginger scallion sauce on the side and a couple of lemon wedges to spritz over the fish.

I look forward to connecting with you again in the future.

Visit my Drizzle and Dip Facebook page to get updates of all my posts.

I can also be found enthusiastically pinning beautiful food images on Pinterest.  

Mac n cheese has to be one of my favourite comfort foods, and when you add a hearty bolognese sauce into the mix, it becomes just that much more comforting.

Don’t you agree?

I never use a recipe when making a bolognese and just cook by instinct. I sometimes add celery and carrot, and other times I add bacon. I often use oregano as a herb, and generally like to include tomato paste to intensify the tomato flavour. Its always a case of a bit of this, a splash of that, and whatever herb I have lying around.

Here I decided to make it a bit differently to what I normally do, and I also wrote the recipe down. I happened to have parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme on hand, so decided to go with all of these. Why not? They wrote a song about them, so they must be good together.

Rosemary is not what I would typically add, but my mom used to use it in her bolognese, so this recipe brought back memories of her which kinda made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

Because I live alone I didn’t eat the whole thing and froze off a few portions for later consumption. The later consumption has already taken place (I did this a while ago), and was so thrilled to have written the recipe down. It is a dish I will definitely want to make again. Exactly like I did it here.

*A note on the herbs for this: I used a small bunch of parsley (the most out of the 4) , about 5 sage leaves, 4 – 5 sprigs of thyme, 2 small sprigs of rosemary (leaves removed). Apologies for no precise measurement here, you will have to wing it. I chopped them all up fairly finely.

* A note on the meat cooking:  here I followed a little technique I picked up from Gordon Ramsay on his ‘Ultimate Cooking Course’ – which is to fry the meat further than you would normally, until all the liquid has cooked off and the meat starts to caramelise. The browning that happens to the meat is called the Maillard reaction and is when the protein in the meat changes to sugar compounds and in the process a load of different flavour is created. It makes so much sense to me to make sure the mince gets to this stage, so when you add all the other sauce components, they build on the base flavour. I have taken to adding miso paste to a lot of my savoury and meaty recipes, it adds so much umamui and depth. As its fairly flavour neutral, it amplifies the other flavours in the dish.

Recipe | serves 4

• On Drizzle and Dip

A good hearty meal like this needs a hearty red wine to go with it, and after tasting the recently launched De Wetshof Thibault, this is one I could highly recommend.

De Wetshof is one of my favourite wine producers in South Africa and are well known for their beautiful Chardonnays. They are committed to site-specific vineyard management and wine making, and the Thibault is made from two of these specific blocks, Merlot block 8, and Cabernet Sauvignon block 11.

The grapes are picked in the cool mornings to capture their fruitiness, and this wine is robust, elegant and typical of a Bordeaux style blend. I absolutely love it.

The launch of this spectacular wine took place at the Planet restaurant at the Mount Nelson Hotel, with a knock out lunch cooked by chef Rudi Liebenburg.

This is a little look at the special lunch.

I look forward to connecting with you again in the future.

Visit my Drizzle and Dip Facebook page to get updates of all my posts.

I can also be found enthusiastically pinning beautiful food images on Pinterest.  

I was given a box of beautiful Abate Fetel pears from Tru-Cape recently along with a card with this intriguing recipe. I had never tasted nor considered pickling butternut before so immediately wanted to give it a go.

Lately I’ve been getting into more complex salad recipes with multiple ingredients, and I liked a lot of what was going on with this one. The pears were at their perfect ripeness, but still firm and very succulent.

I also happened to have all the ingredients to make this salad apart from the goats cheese feta in the recipe. I substituted this with goats cheese, which if you have been around here before you will know I love.

I’m not generally a fan of fruit in salads, but when they are paired with salty cheese and other contrasting flavour elements, they seem to work. My pear, blue cheese and walnut salad with a maple vinaigrette remains one of the most popular recipes on this site for some strange reason. Either people love pears in salad, or its a classic combination that never goes out of fashion.

So here is the recipe I tried out. * I may have made a bit more dressing and used more pumpkin seeds

Recipe: on Drizzle and Dip

I arrange everything separately because I am a food stylist and this is how we roll.

Two highlights of this salad were the pickled butternut which tastes so different to cooked butternut, but has the raw edge taken off, and the honey pumpkin seeds. These add a fabulous sweet and salty textural element to the dish and something I would make and use in other salads.

I didn’t like the red onion, I found it aggressive for this salad and would leave it out in the future, but this is a personal reference thing.

I hope I haven’t missed the granadilla (passion fruit) season totally by posting this too late. They were in full swing when I made this easy and delicious cordial a couple of weeks ago.

I had never made it before, and it really could not get any simpler. Sipping it poured over loads of ice and topped up with soda water, brought back floods of memories of my youth.

I kept the seeds in the mix, but if they bother you, simply strain them out once it has been made.

Recipe | makes about 750 ml

• on Drizzle and Dip

If you feel like turning it into a cocktail. add a splash or two of vodka.

Happy days.

I look forward to connecting with you again in the future.

Visit my Drizzle and Dip Facebook page to get updates of all my posts.

I can also be found enthusiastically pinning beautiful food images on Pinterest.