I love cooking

We have two seriously great diva events to celebrate this week: gracious and professional Caro de Waal’s appointment as the new editor for food24 and sweet, generous and talented Nina Timm’s winning the Eat In awards as best food blogger.

In my book Caro is just simply the best thing that could happen to a food blogger and Nina is the quintessential poster kid for blogs with her authentic voice, great talent, recipes that anyone can cook (and they work!!) and her delicious eye candy. Not to mention her sincerity. So, these events are well deserved in terms of merit. We do have more of those talents in our midst, but 2012 belongs to Caro and Nina. So far. (I have news that may interest you but that is for later … must just line up a few more ducks … )

If I were to host the party to celebrate the events with these two bright stars, I would start with dessert. It’s the most sensible thing to do in my opinion if you have a sweet tooth … and this dessert would be it. And I would be quick, as mangoes are just about leaving the stores for the winter already …

But now I am not hosting the party and I do not even have a great image (this one is straight off the video clip we made of the chef preparing it) but with all my best wishes and congratulations, here is the recipe.

The party will follow …  promise.

 Mango & Ginger Trifle

• 500 ml firm mango, thinly sliced (about 2 large mangoes)
• 125 ml preserved ginger (with syrup), chopped finely
• 500 ml prepared custard (go for a delicious store bought custard if you’re in a hurry)
• 400 ml plain low-fat cream cheese (not cottage cheese)
• 80 ml castor sugar
• 10 ml vanilla essence
• 500 ml shortbread biscuits, coarsely chopped
• 80 ml brandy or exotic fruit juice
• sunflower oil for frying
• 125 ml super-fine julienne strips of fresh gingerroot
• extra castor sugar
• 400 ml stiffly beaten cream

Spread the mango and ginger pieces with its syrup out on an oiled baking sheet. Grill to your liking then set aside to cool.

Spread a thin layer of the custard over the bottom of a serving bowl with straight, upright sides or in 8 attractive glasses. Top with the mango and ginger mixture.

Mix the cream cheese with the castor sugar and essence and drop spoons full of the mixture over the mango layer. Follow with a layer of biscuit pieces and sprinkle the biscuit pieces with the brandy or juice. End with a layer of the remaining custard. At this stage, you can cover the trifle with cling film and chill until required.

For an attractive, edible garnish, heat a little oil in a frying pan and add the fresh gingerroot julienne. Cook briefly until golden and crisp. Remove strips with a slotted spoon and drain on paper towel. Sprinkle generously with
castor sugar while hot.

To serve, spread the trifle with the whipped cream and garnish with the crisp ginger strips.

Serves 8

Chef’s hint: Ok, if you really want to go OTT, use mascarpone instead of the low-fat cream cheese. And obviously, as this is a rich recipe, I need not to remind you to go easy on the fats and sugars in the mains …

 If you want more delicious and easy dessert recipes, visit

I love cooking

and have a ball!

Many friends and colleagues have asked me what I thought of Masterchef SAs debut episode and since it’s the work that I do, it’s best to say something and get it over and done with…

What worries me most about the first episode is what seems to be the high volumes of negative comments from the viewers. The first surprising lesson I learnt in the business of making television series a reality is to never, ever underestimate the viewer’s ’feel’ or perception of actual production values. Nevermind their feelings about the actors and acting … So this is not a good start. Hopefully it will change – I can tell you that it is a tough one to launch with the episode that you shot first so give them a chance, guys!

The first few episodes for any new series are often a little below standard. The crew and cast need time to get into the groove and so do the editors. So, we producers often ‘hide away’ the first few episodes that we shoot as (say) episodes 9 and 16 and 22! By that time the series has attracted loyal viewers so the odd ‘bad’ episode will not send them migrating to another show on another channel. However, Masterchef SA runs in a sequence of events so the first episode was obviously hampered by nerves, teething problems and finding their way on set and around each other. I have no doubt that the series wil become stronger as the contestants and judges find their groove – for sure the art, set, styling, DoP and camera operators have found their groove. The look and feel is fabulous!

From the first episode it was clear that the contestants and especially the judges were directed to act and that is tantamount of asking a veld rat to play Micky Mouse! As the series has been recorded already, I sincerely hope that the director back then already realised his mistake to want to force a chef to act and allowed them to be.themselves in the shooting of subsequent episodes. All three judges clearly have much to bring in terms of personalities and their own wit and quirkiness so hopefully they wil be given more freedom from now to be themselves.

A big worry is the hype which borders on the vulgar, it is so OTT …: it created a specific viewer perception and here we now have the ironic rub that the pay channel can ill afford: many viewers now feel that in reality (pun unintended), the show is not a true reflection of the expectations created. The other big concern is the massive investment advertisers and sponsors made into the series. The series has to deliver a return on investment for those advertisers because despite the hype, the actual number of eyeballs watching DSTV arn’t as many as we think. And like it or not, somewhere down the line we consumers pay for ad spend gone wrong. And we who love food so much, pay the most! So hopefully all goes well for all concerned with MCSA because we are all affected by the outcome … big time.

That said, here is my latest obsession … blueberry crumpets. Can’t get it out of my head and I cannot make any right now as we are shooting from the crack of dawn tomorrow until mid-next week. So with some perverse delight about sharing, here is a recipe.

Blueberry Buttermilk Crumpets

• 250 ml cake flour
• 7.5 ml baking powder
• 2 ml salt
• 30 ml castor sugar
• 30 ml melted butter
• 1 jumbo egg
• 180 ml buttermilk
• a little oil for the pan
• 250 ml blueberries

Sift together the flour and baking powder and stir in the salt and sugar. Whisk the butter and egg into the buttermilk and add to the dry ingredients while stirring with a wooden spoon. Don’t over mix the batter. Let it stand for 30 minutes. If it thickens too much in this time, lightly whisk in a little milk or water – it should be like thick pancake batter.

Heat a heavy-bottomed pan, brush with a little oil and drop  spoonsful of the batter onto the hot surface. Drop a small handful of blueberries on top of each crumpet as soon as some bubbles appear. Now flip the pancakes with a spatula and cook the other side briefly, until golden.

Keep the cooked crumpets warm in a low oven while continuing to use up all the batter.  Serve warm alongside a tray of fresh blueberries, butter, mascarpone, honey or maple syrup.

Makes about 12 crumpets, depending on size

Chef’s hint: for a savoury variety, omit the sugar, add dried red chilli flakes to the mix and substitute the blueberries for cooked corn kernels and small dice of cheddar cheese.

For more quick, delicious and easy recipes, visit

I love cooking

Ever since the long shoot-on-location we’ve had, I have food cravings like a pregnant woman. The latest is lusting and frankly, obsessing after sweet, juicy fruit and thick, creamy Greek yoghurt. Whether I eat them jointly or separately, it does not matter – as long as it’s cold and juicy. And in my obsessive pursuit for the best quality juicy summer fruits and berries, I’ve discovered Woollies Vanilla Paste … so well … now, go figure….!

Needless to say, there is a glut of fruity recipes on its way to you!

Strawberry-Yoghurt Parfait

Take full advantage of the summer’s bounty of berries. This is one of those add-to-taste recipes which means you can make the strawberry sauce as sweet or as thick as you like. And as flexible the quantities, so variable are the uses. It can be enjoyed as a dessert, part of a dessert served warm with ice cream for instance. Similarly it can be breakfast, part of breakfast and even enjoyed as a snack in between.

600 – 750 g ripe and fresh strawberries, hulled
65 – 90 ml castor sugar (or to taste)
10 ml lemon juice
15 – 30 ml corn starch (or to taste)
750 ml Greek yoghurt (or even fat-free plain yoghurt)
a few squirts vanilla paste
mint leaves

Take at least two thirds of the strawberries and slice them coarsely. Place in a processor and process until smooth. If you want to remove all seedy bits, push the sauce through a sieve then transfer to a saucepan. Add half of the sugar and the lemon juice and bring the mixture to a boil. Mix the corn starch with a little cold water and add as much of it to the sauce as you like to thicken to your taste. Stir until thick and glossy then remove from the heat. Set aside to cool.

Just before serving, halve the remaining strawberries and sprinkle with a little sugar. Now, sweeten the yoghurt to taste with the remaining sugar and add a squirt or two of vanilla paste and mix well.

To serve, spoon a generous portion of the sauce into the bottom of suitable pretty glasses or bowls and top with a thick layer of sweetened vanilla yoghurt. Spoon a layer of the remaining sauce over and top with halved strawberries. Finish with a small mint leaf and serve.

Serves 6

Hint: You can omit corn starch from the sauce and rapidly boil the mixture until reduced and thickened to your liking

Another gorgeous berry offering I have for your is my Lite and Easy Strawberry Jam.

Can’t get enough of the stuff and the sauce in the recipe above, was inspired by this easy jam. It’s excellent with vetkoek !

Enjoy!

Who knows when the humble lava cake became a chocolate fondant? Who cares? Well, maybe the informed foodies and the winies who droo-la-la for a living do, but having now completed a thorough research amongst my run-of-the-mill chocoholic sisters and brothers, the general consensus is not good for refined choc fondants. Maybe we’re a hellofa common lot with little taste or finesse but it seems that the solid, humble good-old-fashioned self-saucing chocolate pudding is the one that brings water to the mouth and eyes around my part of town …

But nevertheless … read on …

So here I was until a few days ago (in spite of knowing my peeps’ preferences) obsessing almost daily about a chocolate fondant that delivers without the cost of that ever-so-refined Swiss chocolate zhooshness.

But as to a bit of background, I must tell you that I’ve always reckoned that chocolate fondant is a much-ado-about-nothing pudding and its main glory lies in the breaking open and observing the molten ‘lava’ being released. But I still obsessed about fondant even though I know that what oozes thrillingly from its belly is really just the still-raw-flour-egg mixture combined with melted butter and chocolate …  Ai tog, I even bought a chocolate recipe book that delighted me to no end before it was snatched from my eager hands by Anna my granddaughter who now, weeks later, informs me that my chocolate book is doing the rounds in her class …!

Anyways, here’s more background …

What started this new chocolate fondant obsession of mine (and a few other blog obsessions) was a recipe that nearly flopped. I downloaded it and let it sit in a folder a week or so until I was ready to tackle it. Had it not been for my daughter’s quick and keen observations during the preparation of it, we would have sat with a dog’s breakfast, I tell you. As I especially bought the very best ingredients as claimed to be the big secret of the recipe, I went screaming back to the blog to warn the writer to fix her recipe before somebody else may also face the same dilemma but too late – another reader had already suffered great misfortune with this recipe … And that was a defining moment because right there and then I realized that recipes were being copied verbatim and in this case, the copying did not go very well, shame … Some ingredients were left out of the method and although we spotted it at the time of making it, it was still too late to fix what was sold as the perfect fondant recipe …

Well, since then it’s gone downhill with me and chocolate fondants until finally after batch number 9 & 1/2,  I decided it’s the chocolate. It’s too dark, too bitter, to not-sweet, too precious, too intimidating for this cook. And in the process I also realized that one needs to be a highly evolved special soul to love bitter, highly refined chocolate where the percentage is higher than ones age. For those who love it, there has to be something in one’s chemistry and the chocolate’s innate enzymes that cause the alchemy that places one in euphoria. If that is you, lucky you! We mortals with slower frequencies vibrate slow and low on the level of American and South African chocolates like Smarties and Mars Bars and Cadbury’s and Beacons ‘cause they’re chewy and rough and sticky… like cousin Jackie’s voice: chocolate brown, as in milk chocolate’s brown. So, once I figured out the folley in the recipe, I did what I can do in my sleep: I panel-beat the recipe and added ordinary, plain common cheap local milk chocolate – the chewy, crude variety.

And here is the result of my re-writing and down-grading of the perfect chocolate fondant recipe. The milk chocolate taste is not as intense as the dark chocolate in the recipe, so I added some cinnamon for a warming, homely aroma and taste. And of course, a brandy-chocolate truffle (homemade) popped into the centre of each mould before baking was also not a bad idea. Perhaps I can now say that I have an everyday chocolate fondant recipe for everybody – esepecially those on a budget and for those will much less refined taste.

But in the end, sorry to say, it’s still a much-ado-about-nothing dessert for me. The bleeding centre is still mostly raw egg and flour oozed on with the help of melted butter and chocolate. Worst for me is probably that you cannot drink and chat as you want …. no, you’ve gotta drop everyhting (and everybody!) the minute it leaves the oven and start to slurp to enjoy the lava centre. Why? Becaue Miranda, the insides solidify as it cools down …! That melted butter and chocolate go back to their original state … sigh.  

So yes, I agree with my pals: give me the good old-fashioned self-saucing chocolate pud … But as lava cakes-of- old go, this one is worth a try. At least if it flops on you, it won’t break the piggy banks’ spirit like it did mine, silly girl. I should know better, after all to let such things upset me.

Hopefully my cheap chocolate fondant version has broken the spell it had over me and we shall see the end of the chocolate fondant recipe obsession! So far, so good.

Everyday Chocolate-Cinnamon Fondant

Click here for the recipe.

As I was looking for recipes to share with little Anna, my granddaughter, I came across one that brought a flood of old memories. You know those old recipes like the caramel-peppermint-crisp tart? Oh, how the festive tables groaned under the extra-large dishes of puddings and tarts that our aunties and grannies made! And biscuits always featured in the ingredients as any cook worth their name in society at the time, could take a packet of biscuits and make a table groan with the sweet products of her imagination …

Indeed, those recipes have become part of our culinary heritage. When today, we enjoy these

dishes created by our moms and theirs, we know that they did not merely leave us their recipes – they left us their hearts.

Still, every time I make one of those traditional recipes I cringe a little with embarrassment as I put the odd-coloured, huge, voluptuously-stuffed dish on the table. But when serving time comes, there seems to be something in the dish that satisfies on a level so profoundly moving that even the most snobbish of contemporary diners and winers are driven to take second, even third helpings. Then fortunately, when afterwards I look at the dish bearing only scraps of evidence that it once contained a fridge tart, my ego subsides as I become humbled by thoughts of days when life was special and occasions and people mattered and we cooked to show people that they were relevant to us in a way that was significant and respectful and sincere and never to showcase anything else but love and grace.

So here it is: another oldie. From the popular television cooking series we produced in 2008 and for a second season in 2009 with Tannie (Trix Pienaar), Boeta (Brendan Murray) and my dearest darling Lizz Meiring as herself, Take a Biscuit, here is our adaptation on the original as it was on the Bakers packs for decades.

And BTW, this was the recipe most downloaded on our website at the time and proof that cooks want simplicity but taste. This recipe ticks the boxes. Five ingredients. A few easy steps. Bliss!

Cara-Mint Tart

Click here for the recipe.

Chef’s hint: Buy double the ingredients – the requests for making this beauty again and again will not stop! On the other hand, halve the ingredients to make a smaller tart if you are just one who will enjoy this bliss … lol! Cooking is (like all art forms) flexible, so that you may present as well as interpret it your way!

Thanks to innovative and popular television cooking shows, handmade is making such a comeback! Anybody watching Masterchef Australia and having seen Gary’s (or was it George’s?) honeycomb has made their own batch. Even my granddaughter of twelve has made it with a bunch of her pals! And, at the same time they made sago pudding … what is more traditional than that?! So yes, it also seems that homemade and tradition are making a comeback to the youth … not only to the delight of us oldies.

Anyway, that was this past Sunday when she told me that they had a sweet cook-off a few days earlier. And asked for more recipes for their own ‘sweets’ as they call what we know as confectionery…

Anyway. Back home I scoured my recipe books and you know, one tends to forget what you’ve done in your life … Well, I do. Perhaps it’s the HRT stickers that I refuse to wear  or my age …? Anyway again… So there I found this recipe in a book I wrote, nogal but I cannot claim the recipe to be an original. A few years ago I was asked to write a recipe book for Bakers and Take a Biscuit  the recipe book was borne as well as a television series (2 seasons!). Can’t tell you how many of the recipes in the book are originals, but I did rework some of their existing recipes that they use on their packs. And I remembered from testing the recipes and shooting them that the Choco Mints were out of this world. Perhaps they can replace dessert in a future heavy-to-prepare meal as you can make these beforehand? Or, they will look very good and steal the show at your next tea party? (The tea party comeback is almost gone, sad to say.) Or you know, just to have something so deliciously homely in the house will be great.  It’s awfully nice to say ‘handmade’ so I try to do it as much as I can … yeah right ..!

The English version of the biscuit book is now sold out (I think we gifted the last 100 copies to the Bloggers Indaba for the delegates’ goodie bags) so I regard myself lucky to have a copy! Sigh. The real work beckons, so here it is, enjoy!

Handmade Choco Mints

Click here for the recipe

Yesterday’s post caused a flurry of reactions from local food bloggers. A couple of bloggers took it personally and lashed out at me while defending themselves against accusations they felt I made against them and their blogs. Astoundingly the rest loved and applauded the bold act to speak out and yes, I was glad. It’s been a while now that I have decided that fear will no longer feature in my decision-making and since then, I have experienced a valuable life lesson over and over: if you are true to yourself, you succeed beyond your own expectation.

To those angry bloggers who got hold of me privately by phone and email yesterday, here are a couple of clichés to chew on dears: ‘The lady protests too much’, ‘Madam your slip is showing’ and of course I will not go there … you know the one about the cap … or is it the boot..? But seriously, you have my sincere assurances that I had a few other blogs in mind and that your blogs were the furtherest things from my mind when I wrote that post! And take that as a clue to perhaps address the mental impact of your blogs by looking at ways to improve its memorability and ‘stickability’ by writing stronger copy. Ironically, I actually like your blogs for what it’s worth to you even though they do not linger in my mind after reading them. You clearly have talent and great ambition and therefore, you should consider one of the most valuable PR rules that major actors as well as corporations and their publicists have taught me: keep a low profile and duck out of range when the brownies are flying around. It’s sort of …: “Even if the story’s untrue, anything you say from this moment on will just make it look worse for you …”

Several bloggers wrote and asked for advice. Yes, gladly – as time passes and my hours permit I will blog and assist. However, I am also a relatively new blogger so I will look for and pass on websites to learn more from.

But in this post, I can already share this with you: when you are in the public’s eyes (bloggers are so out there) image and not power, is the symbolic ‘cash in your pocket’. Several bloggers brought an article Going to the Blogs to my attention written by shoot-from-the-hip journo Mandy de Waal in the M&G on the 8^th of July. I missed it at the time but was thrilled at the co-incidence and synchronicity. ‘Fraid it’s true, guys – that is how we are viewed by other media members and horrors, that is how some bloggers behave. So go kiss the author and don’t slate her or make excuses. Just read the article again and go figure that it’s about image sustained by content. From personal experience I know how the egos of some bloggers can give off the stench of pumped-up power borne from ambition and bolstered by gazillion visitors. But that is power, dears. Not image.

Probably the best advice I can give in general about our work and food passion is to learn, to improve, to keep at it until you deliver great content. Anette Human, SJA de Villiers and dozens other past great food editors and writers started small, out of love for food and people but they worked professionally, hard and egoless to create food pages (yesterday’s food blogs hosted in magazines) that to this day, we remember and treasure and cook from.

Today the new generation editors like Carmen Niehaus at Huisgenoot/You, Barbara Joubert at Sarie Kos, Louisa Holst at Ideas, Dorah Sithole of True Love and may others work consistently diligently and professionally at bringing us the best they can on their food pages. I have done loads of work with them including television shows which can be very taxing on the ego and never, ever have I seen an ego overriding professionalism. Just go and figure that one out and then, if you feel in your hearts of hearts that Mandy’s article and my post do not have valid points, write a good post with counter-arguments. That would be great experience if you want some. BTW, the majority of the print media food writers are self-taught like we bloggers so do not hold training as an excuse. Rather go scratch in the intention and ethos department and once you have sorted that out, be inspired to create content that you can be proud of and the rest of us can enjoy.

But back to responses from yesterday’s blog. I’ve had mostly great positive response from many miserable bloggers who have en masse zoned in on one thing: they feel that certain bloggers are being overly or unfairly or indicriminately favoured while their own blogs are seldom featured regardless of the content patently being much better than the one featured on the day. I will post some of the quotes tomorow morning on my Worpress blog with a link thereto on tomorrow’s post as I feel that this is not the forum in which to post those comments. Food24 needs to be made aware of the feelings of their bloggers first. Please be assured that even in front of a firing squad, I wil not reveal your names or your blog titles, ever. Honestly Scout’s honour. 

That said, I have to concede to harbouring some of those thoughts myself when I have seen poor work being splashed. It’s an obvious conclusion to make when one sees a really horrid post on the home page whilst a post that patently required effort and care and that contain great content, goes undeserved. Being just me, I questioned it a few times and the explanation was that everybody should get a chance which I  then accepted. However, now that it appears to be a much bigger issue with other valuable bloggers, we ought to deal with it transparently and properly. Part of the human experience is that merit and validation and plain old human acknowledgement cradle at the heart of creativity and inspiration and those elements come together as delivering better content! And I have to say as a huffing and puffing blogger yesterday implied, jealousy or resentment have (in my opinion) nothing to do with this issue. I think it’s overall and sincerely a matter of working hard, long hours forsaking many people and things (loved ones and hours of sleep to name a few) to write our blogs and our feelings about this are borne (I think) from lack of acknowedgement, validation (the very reasons why we do it dammit) and our human sense of fairness. I think also that our collective sense of fairness is aggrevated by the simple fact that most of us have the capacity to discern the difference between glistening strawberries and pap prickly pears! After all, we deliver the content that appear on all blog spaces and even though it may be bad at times, we need to feel that our blog space (what the hell is a place like food24 called please?) are run with integrity and fairness and consideration for what it takes from us to deliver content. There has to be a better way to manage deserving posts while encouraging lesser posts to do better through an incentive programme or something (give them freebies … lol!). I will  talk to the boss and will keep you posted as to my progress with these questions and qualms. (‘Post’ pun unintended).

Must mention that I have had significant mail from bloggers feeling not worthy because they are seldom if ever promoted which results in them not getting as many visitors as those blogs that are pushed, and they clearly felt even less worthy when they read yesterday’s post. Here is what you need to know: sharing is a noble, great human urge and a thing of great beauty. Without sharing our recipes and food ideas mankind would not have had food shops and restaurants and great meals. Keep doing it – that is the very heart of blogging. Just be aware at times, that passion can be a loose cannon and harm what comes in its way. So continue to check your post for content quality – just as you would check nd taste the food you cooked before serving it to your loved ones. When you write your blog use your own voice, be true to yourself without ulterior motives and let your sincerity and love for food, people and being you show!

I apologise for the length and often garbling tone of this post and the typos. Good writing means deep editing and tightening up of your narrative before you publish it but I am running out of time to do that. If I do not answer my phone or emails today, do not fret pet, I am in a heavy and big production with my real job – a high-powered 26-episodes of a teenager outdoors series for SABC3 and on that note, do not believe a bad word you hear about them. Not true! Never in my life have I had such joy and pleasure and professionalism from a television channel as this one with this project. So there.

Here is a beauty to share – after all the above and all the possible hate mail and calls I may receive today, I need something luscious and sweet today to dull my heart burn. Here I share my beauty with you … J 

Enjoy and be assured of my very best intentions and attention to our work. Keep doing it and keep enjoying it! Leave the issues to the oldies … lol!

Vanilla-poached Pears with Choc-Nut Sauce

Click here for the recipe