Pleasurable Eating

I have been missing from blog land for a couple of months. My life in that time has turned upside down and it is taking me a while to find my feet again. Cooking has been about feeding myself nutritionally, it turned into proteins, carbohydrates and fats instead of the art, adventure and pleasure that it should have been. I went from reading recipe books in bed to just trying to think of ways to get myself fed as simply as possible.  

My project took a bit of a dive as well and I was horrified to find that “How to eat” had been relegated to the shelves of my recipe books collection. My cleaning lady in her tireless effort to keep me tidy, moves it there every week but because it was a book that was delved into so often it was taken off the shelves just as quickly as it was placed. This time, dare I say, it got dusty, just little.

I have been more determined of late to get back into cooking and blogging. I bought the apples for this recipe a couple of times, only to find that by the time I wanted to cook they were either eaten or had gotten old; dried out, wrinkly skin, old. But as you can see, I finally did it with apples and blueberries.

The mixture is really rather easy to make. Using a food processor is easier but there is something soothing, therapeutic even, about rubbing the cold cubes of butter into the flour and sugar mixture.  

Nigella suggests adding orange juice to the fruit which I did and it does add a sweetness to it without it tasting of citrus. I also added some cinnamon to the flour mixture.   

A crumble is so simple to make but it is one of those desserts that remind me of mom’s cooking, and this one did taste fantastic.

This is the 18th recipe cooking through  “How to Eat” by Nigella Lawson.

My final course for the Ready, Steady, Cook challenge is Lemon Mousse with Liquorice Shortbread.

Lemon Mousse

3 eggs, separated
150ml castor sugar
250ml cream
zest and juice of 2 lemons

Beat the egg yolks with the castor sugar, lemon zest and the cream. When it starts to thicken add the lemon juice and keep beating till thick. Whisk the egg whites till stiff and fold into the cream mixture. Put in the fridge to set.

Liquorice Shortbread

I must warn you here that this is not a ‘proper’ shortbread recipe. It is however very yummy. It was the shortbread recipe that my mother made (and still does make) for me while I was growing up.

300g flour
200g butter, melted
100g castor sugar
50g liquorice bites chopped

Mix together all the ingredients and put in a 20cm x 10cm baking tray. Bake for about 30mins. Sprinkle over some more castor sugar as soon as it comes out of the oven. Cut into pieces after it has been allowed to cool for about 10mins.

For the main course of the ready steady cook challenge I decided to use all 7 ingredients. My friend, J, came over and we did the cooking together. This course is a mixture of the ideas we came up with.  We also had two reluctant tasters who did a lot of the testing of the food and helped me finalise the course.

Lamb meatballs with cashew paste, cheese sauce and red cabbage.

Lamb meatballs
2 lamb chops cubed
2 cloves of garlic
2 liquorice bites, chopped up
cayenne pepper
egg, beaten with salt.

The lamb chops have the bone cut out and the meat cubed. The cubes are put into a food processor with 2 cloves of garlic, 2 liquorice bites and a pinch of cayenne pepper. Process until it is all combined. Roll into balls and roll in egg and fry until cooked. Add some spinach close to the end of the cooking time to let it wilt.

Cheese sauce

½ cup cream

4 spoons mascarpone cheese

4 tablespoons flour

Heat the cream and mascarpone together. Then add the flour to make a thick cheese sauce.

Red Cabbage

2 cups of shredded cabbage boiled for 10 minutes, drained and sautéed with butter.

Cashew paste

½ cup cashews ground
about 50ml of reduced tinned tomatoes

Mix the cashews into the tomato reduction.

Layer all the different parts with the meatballs on top.

Lady Raven invited me to enter her Ready steady Cook competition. At no point have I thought that I am good at cooking. In fact I am working through “How to eat” to expand my cooking skills. So it is with a healthy dose of fear and trepidation that I give you what I have come up with.

The ingredients assigned to me are liquorice, spinach, cashews, cabbage, cream, mascarpone and lamb chops, along with a list of pantry ingredients which can be seen here.

My starter: Spinach and Mascarpone Roulade.

3 eggs beaten
3 egg yolks
200g spinach
1 tub mascarpone

Whisk 3 egg whites until stiff, fold in 3 beaten eggs. Pour into a lined baking tray and bake at 180 for 20 minutes.

Take it out of the oven and let it cool.

While the eggs are cooking in the oven, steam about 200g of spinach. Let it cool and mix in a tub of mascarpone. Spread onto the eggs and roll up.

Lemon Curd, the homemade version, has to be the one most fantastic indulgences after chocolate. Imagine chocolate with lemon curd…. Having had some real issues with curdling eggs in the recent past, I approached this recipe with a fair amount of hesitation. Loads of lemon, butter, sugar – everything that makes food luscious and good. So lemon juice, zest, eggs, sugar and butter is cooked together slowly. Nigella says that if it looks like it is going to curdle you plunge it into a sink of cold water and beat like crazy. It was necessary to do that a couple of times during the making of this. It worked! The lemon curd was so delicious, with a real tang. It is making me salivate just thinking about it.

Passion fruit curd is is a variation of the above. It requires 11 passion fruits, the seeds and pulp of 10 are put into a food processor and processed so that the pulp and the seeds separate. They are then strained and a curd like the above is made. I only needed to plunge it into the cold water once. The seeds and pulp of the last passionfruit is stirred in at the end, and gives it the passion fruity look.  The taste is a lot creamier and more intense. My husband actually cried, real tears, when he tasted it! I am not sure what to make with it, but I don’t think it will take me too long to figure something out.

I made some meringues with some of the egg whites. My freezer has too many packets of egg whites in it, so I thought that today was a day to do something about it.

So I am thinking, ice cream, passion fruit curd and some crumbled meringues for desert sometime soon.

This is the 13th and 14th recipe cooking through  “How to Eat” by Nigella Lawson.

The fancy cake requires a brioche tin. Do you think I could find one anywhere in Cape Town? I dragged my husband and father from place to place looking for one. Some places that specialise in baking or catering equipment had never heard of them. At one place I was asked to describe what they look like. I have no idea how to explain it, “well, it kind of looks a bit like a jelly mould” was the best I could come up with.  Eventually I found some tiny ones, so I thought I would do tiny individual ones.

The cake tasted good. There is no raising agent, only beaten egg whites, and it is made with almonds.  It was really difficult to get them out of the little tins. I was concerned that it was going to be dry and I ended up buying strawberries and crème fraiche to eat it with.  It was not at all dry but the strawberries did go with it nicely. It was light and full of subtle flavours.  This is definitely not a cake I would have thought to make if I had seen it in a recipe book

.

I would really like to try it with a bigger tin. I think it is time to go to ask google where I can find one. I wonder whether I will able to get a silicone one…?

This is the 12^th recipe cooking through  “How to Eat” by Nigella Lawson.

 Before this, I had never made a Black Forest Cake. I was asked by a friend to make a cake for her husband’s birthday Black Forest being his favourite. Very hesitant about the whole endeavour I decided to make a sample even if it was just for her to taste and tell me how I am doing.  It was supposed to be a surprise but saying he wouldn’t make the connection between the cake and his birthday she took it home and told him I was trying to perfect my Black Forest cake and had asked her to taste it.  She then took notes of his feedback for me. He is very particular about his cake: it has to be spongy in a certain way, it has to be moistened by the liqueur and have the right amount of cherries. Still nervous I then tried to perfect the cake. Apparently it was a success. I did not get to taste the final version.

This cake is my mom’s recipe; I don’t actually have a proper recipe, I have notes scribbled on a piece of paper, so I hope I manage to put it together legibly.

Cake

375ml Sugar

3 Eggs

125ml Water

62.5ml Milk

15ml Butter

375ml Flour

10ml baking powder

45ml Cocoa Powder

Filling

Cherry Liqueur

Tin of black cherries

Black cherry jam – or a home made cherry sauce

500ml Cream

100ml Icing sugar

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees. Beat together the eggs and sugar till pale. Heat together the milk water and butter. Sift the flour, baking powder and cocoa powder. Add the milk mixture to the sifted flour and then the egg mixture and mix well. Pour into two sandwich cake tins and bake for about 25 minutes.

When you are ready to put the cake together, cut the cakes in half (Using a piece of string or dental floss can help you get a straight cut). Whip the cream together with the icing sugar.  Pour over some liqueur (how much depends on you), spread a layer of jam or sauce, then top with about a third of your cherries and a good healthy layer of cream on. Then repeat until you get to the last layer of cake on the top. Cover with cream and decorate.

I made some chocolate shavings with a potato peeler to decorate the cake. Getting the chocolate shavings onto the side of the cake was not quite as simple as I thought it would be. I tried all sorts of ways to get it there. I poured it down the side, I tilted the cake slightly and tried to get it to stick. I covered my hands with the chocolate and then gently patted the side of the cake.In the case of the latter I ended up with melted chocolate and cream on my hands. Most of the time the chocolate just collected round the bottom of the cake. Ruffling the cream, and tilting the cake and sprinkling the chocolate on the sides seemed to have done the trick in the end.

I have a playlist on my iPod, it has all the songs that I am currently listening to in it. I update it regularly when I am listening to music a lot, other times it becomes old and stale and when I listen to it I feel tired and bored.  The last few days I have been looking at the music on my machine that I have not really been listening to. Thanks in part to my sister and in part to my husband, I have a wide variety of music on my computer.

This afternoon after spending some time at Kirstenbosch soaking up the sun and catching up on some reading, I came home to some cooking that needed doing: Lasagne for supper and a Black Forest cake for a friend’s husband.

I think listening to music makes me a little more creative. I kind of dance along to the music, and my mind is dancing with me. I am grooving to Black Eyed Peas and rocking with Adam Lambert, worshipping with Leeland and swinging with Michael Buble and some other crooners (thanks in part to my jazz training but I think my teachers will accuse me of having lost the plot). My dog thinks that that I have lost my mind and is standing next to me howling; she gets particularly upset when I start to bounce.  The music that I listen to, to some extent, shapes the food that I make, perhaps gives me a creative boost and the confidence to go with that creativity.

What does your playlist do for your cooking?

I have had a bad case of bloggers block. I know it has been a good few weeks since my last post. I have been busy with my dad visiting, my graduation and all the celebrations that went with this. Also, is it just me that wants to be curled up in bed with a cup of Milo and a good book? Every time I have written something that was intended as a blog post it has felt wooden and factual.

I graduated a couple of  weeks ago, my dad flew to South Africa for the occasion. I have been working and studying and I was so thrilled to finally get to do the walk across the stage, I did not think it would ever happen.

For dinner we went to Jonkershuis at Groot Constantia. The food was great, the desserts looked really interesting as well. I had some chocolate pie and my husband had a tart au citron that tasted divine. I don’t think I could have squeezed another gram of food into me.

The next recipe I cooked from “How to eat” was béarnaise. Béarnaise is made by chopping shallots, tarragon and chervil and cooking them with some white wine and vinegar until they reduce. Then the tiny amount of liquid remaining is used in the beginning with the eggs. Then, much like a hollandaise, the eggs get beaten and the butter gets whisked in one cube at a time. The béarnaise sauce flopped, it curdled. First time round, all went well till close to the end. It started to separate and it looked awful.

Second time round, another 3 eggs and another 200g of butter, we get to the end and it was looking good. I put it over a bowl of hot water to keep warm and put a cloth over it, just like Nigella suggested.  When we had cooked the steak and made the salad, I stirred it before I served it and….. it separated.

So considering the whole venture a failure, we set about to have steak without sauce. My dad braved it first, and had some of the curdled sauce. I have to say, it tasted amazing. It does not taste anything like hollandaise. I am keen to make it again. Does anyone know what I can do to stop it from curdling?

The next day I went into the kitchen and my cleaning lady had made herself egg on toast for breakfast and had béarnaise over the top. She thought it tasted amazing, even though by that stage it was a completely different consistency.

I can’t really cross béarnaise off the list, but hopefully next time I make it, it will be perfect.