January | 2012 |

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Year of the dragon …

January 23, 2012 in Uncategorized

Oy, a pitch is still ruling my life …! That means I am still (bow) tied to the PC but luckily the deadline of Thursday looms … Nina from My easy Cooking sent me a e-note yesterday asking if Sunday lunch is 2-minute noodles again and luckily I could report “no!” I have HAD to shop and the fridge looked like mini Woolies again!

Anyway, I just have to post this message as darling Caro, she of great grace, unflappability and professionalism, decided to tie my little bow-tie post to her story about the Chinese year of the dragon and hyperlinked it. It landed on my previous post, the most boring of all posts and a moaning one at that, so I decided to take a break and post this. It will quikcly link you to the recipes (there are more than one bow tie recipe on that post) but let me share the joke of the year so far with you: I received a few emails to tell me and without fail, they said more or less the same thing: “Don’t want to hint or anything, but you are mentioned prominently today on the same page as the Chinese ‘dragon’…”

LOL! It made my day – and Caro darling, I know you did not mean it like that and also see the funny in it! Must confess though, I always kind-of knew that I’d be a grumpy old woman but the truth is even scarier … I am born in the year of the Tiger … ! LUV it!! Thanks for the laugh, girls, you made my day! Now back to the pitches …

Here is the post and the recipes, dears. Click here to go to that post (you may need to scroll past ‘Basil’) and enjoy! If you want more recipes for easy desserts, go to I love cooking our most awsome website that we love and work with a passion!

by Michéle

Life’s a pitch!

January 10, 2012 in Fish & shellfish, Salads

13 Comments »

Right now and until the end of Jan, we’re involved with writing proposals for new television programs for later on this year. Pitching, it’s called. These things have deadlines and if you miss any of them, you’re financially dead for the rest of the year.

The amount of work and intellect and creativity that these pitches require is not a joke, nor is it for the faint of heart, or chancers or sissies. I can take a lot of stress, but even I suffer from nausea and what goes with it this time of the year. And needless to say, most daily routines have gone out of the window. It’s not unusual to find me still in my PJs in the late afternoon banging away at my PC! So right here and now, my apologies for not commenting or reading or replying to your comments. Not that there are many but still… I wanted to apologise.

Apart from time constraints, I am battling to get to grips with this new platform’s iniquities and my list of requests are mounting by the day: right now (what I regard as) a serious issue is: “Can we please receive email or sms alerts when somebody posts a comment on our blog?” It is not feasible or possible for us to go back and forth to our blogs to check if there are comments posted. Often, we post sporadically and days may pass before we get to our blogs and may only then notice that there are comments from readers. The person that posted the comment on our blogs may feel slighted or think that we are rude and if not, they wonder what the hell happened to that comment they posted!? If food24 is reading this, can we please get that going? Or tell us how to fix it ourselves on our own dashboards, please?

Now back to food … One drawback with pitching is that the gourmet variety of two-minute noodles have not yet been invented, so feeding the body is a challenge right now. The troble is not so much not having time for cooking. It’s not having time for shopping! So I dash into the nearest food store (an OK bazaar!) and grab whatever looks remotely edible. And then I do some slow cooking where everything is just thrown into a pot on a simmer for hours. That results in bland but lots of food. In between I eat so-so fruit from that source and make improbable salads from so-so salad ingredients from same source. Oh, and there is the daily stack sandwich, meaning whatever I can find in the fridge gets stacked between two slices of whole wheat or rye. If the bread is stale, it goes into the panini maker. Not very exciting or appetizing and very repetative and boring to say the least!

But this too will pass and then the season will still be strong so I can continue my love affair with the season’s produce for a while at least. However, on my mind is something that’s available all year round: grilled calamari with Sauce Vierge enjoyed as a cool salad. I love this sauce and can eat it like a soup but will have to wait a while before I can enjoy this – not because it takes time to make … I wil not be able to get to shop for calamari for a while as it is not a regular stock item in an OK Bazaar! But please enjoy it so long on my behalf!

The key to this classic light meal or starter is to keep it simple and not be tempted to add all sorts of unlikely ingredients. And we all know that simplicity calls for top quality ingredients. If you’re not sure of the taste and aroma of large tomatoes on the shelf, go for baby tomatoes. They consistently deliver more taste. And if you do, forget about ribbing and seeding them. The schlepp is not worth it – dice them insides and all and relish their heavenly flavour!

So back to pitching I go. Please hold thumbs for us! To get this delicious recipe, please visit I love cooking, our very lekker website bulging with loads of recipes for many occasions.

Grilled Calamari Salad with Sauce Vierge

by Michéle

Season’s A-List

January 5, 2012 in Eggs

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Hello 2012 and here is wishing you, my fellow foodster, a delicious year ahead with many memorable moments around your table, sharing food that speaks of love and gratitude and consideration for each other and the earth that has to sustain us. I’m rather tempted to include ‘endure us’ but this is a nice post, not a whinging one …

Here are my food affirmations for the year, in order of what’s real and practical: seasonal, sustainably-reared or -grown, and local.Unfortunately the ‘local’ bit is last in the row only because our entire food industry is still caught in the trap of ‘bulk buying is better’ so our food is bought and sold in a buyer’s offices in one city for the entire country’s stores. That means in all likelihood, most of what we eat travel vast distances to reach our kitchens to the detriment of the earth, the economy, our own pockets and the food quality.

But I am veering towards the grumpy old woman post and its only January! So let’s get back to being nice … :-) After all, it’s summer and our food says it all. In season right now are all those sweet, aromatic, colourful, juicy delights that we need in this heat: the berries, apricots, figs, granadillas, nectarines (have you tried the white-fleshed ones?), peaches, plums, litchis, mangoes, prickly pears, grapes, water melon, honey dew melons and kiwi fruit. This time of the year you’ll often catch me with a little dish in hand most of the time. In the dish will be little single jewels and some cubes of one or more of the above varieties of summer fruits. This is mouth-watering time, I tell you.

And then of course on the veggie side we have asparagus, baby butternuts, chives, brinjals, endives to-die-for (if you know how to cook them!), radishes, radicchio, Italian tomatoes, sweet peppers of all sizes, shapes and colours and a glut of earthy, meaty mushrooms in dittos shapes and sizes. And then of course, not to mention that every conceivable variant of herb is available right now … and from our waters, we have snoek, hake, kabeljou and trout. They are all on the Sassi green list at the moment, meaning they are not devoured into distinction (this is a valid gripe, not just being grumpy …)

So there is our summer offering of delicious produce … obviously there are still all the usual items like onions, and squash and banana and cabbage and this is not to say I do not love those foods also. But this is to say that this time of the year offers us the A List of Food as far as I am concerned and I for one, am taking full advantage of it – especially after the indulgent festive time … And also saying that it’s time for giving the body a rest from the best: the best chocolate mousse, best fruit cake, best terrine, best ribs, best leg of lamb, best potjie, best cocktail, best everything that the festive season so richly and relentlessly demanded from us.

Simplicity will be the rule in my house for a while and here is my idea of a simple, seasonal breakfast or light lunch on the patio – it’s summer after all, so celebrate her!

Boiled egg with asparagus and Parma ham.

You will need, per person:

1 jumbo free-range egg
75 g fresh asparagus, stalks trimmed
little melted butter
2 thin slices Parma ham (or any other ham of your choice)
good salt and milled black pepper

Boil the egg to your liking. Drain and dry the egg and position in an egg cup on a serving plate. Poach-steam the asparagus for a minute or so until just cooked. Drain and toss in some melted butter and season to taste.

Lay the ham in a single layer on a board and place the asparagus onto the ham. Roll up loosely and place next to the egg cup. Enjoy! (PS an afterthought: boil two eggs. Then roll small strips of ham around EACH asparagus and then diping them into the oozing golden yellowness of the egg. Can you see that in this case, one egg simply won’t do. Yummmmm…)