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TS Elliot said “April is the cruellest month” but that’s nonsense.
November is definitely the cruellest month.
We are all champing at the bit to head out of town on holiday and yet day after day we have to keep working.
And even when we do hit December, the economy is so dented that many of us are going to have to pull in our holiday horns and economise.
So what follows are some relatively cheap treats to tide us over between now and better times...
TREAT 1: Green Goose Organic Ficksburger Cheese is super cheering
- Anneke Sorour has an organic farm 20km outside Ficksburg in the Eastern Free State.
- Her semi-soft Ficksburger cheese is superb - it is an ivory coloured, raw, organic milk, washed-rind cheese (i.e. like a brie) which has a smooth creamy texture, a rich yeasty aroma and a sweet, almost nutty, flavour.
- It actually tastes like a Reblochon – creamier than a Brie because her cows are so happy.
- It’s lovely just as is on a hunk of crusty bread but given that it tastes like Reblochon why not do as the French do and make a gratinated potato, bacon and Ficksburger tartiflette
Where can you buy Ficksburger in JHB? The Cheese Gourmet, 011 888 5384, 71 Seventh Street corner 3rd avenue, Linden, Johannesburg Or via www.greengoose.co.za; (recommended sales price R80 for a 10cm wheel)
Tartiflette Recipe (Serves 4 -6 depending on greed)
750g potatoes
1 onion
6 rashers back bacon
250g Ficksburger or reblochon cheese
142ml cream
Salt and pepper to taste
- Preheat the oven to 200C.
- Peel and thickly slice the potatoes, then boil in salted water for 8-10 minutes, until just tender. Drain.
- Chop onion finely and fry in 25g butter and a drizzle of olive oil for 5 minutes.
- Snip bacon into pieces into 2cm cubes and add to the pan; stir well and cook for a further 5 minutes, until the onion and bacon are lightly coloured.
- Chop cheese into chunks, rind and all.
- Layer half the potatoes in a buttered ovenproof dish and scatter over half the onion, bacon and cheese. Lightly season with salt and pepper.
- Repeat layers, then pour cream evenly over the top and bake for 10-12 minutes until golden.
- Rest for 5 minutes and then serve with a salad and braaied quail (see below).
TREAT 2: Mother-in-law clams
- The fabulously named ‘mother in law clams’ were created by Micky Lui of SAI THAI (Shop 1, Cyrildene Centre, corner of Marcia Street and Derrick Avenue, Cyrildene. Tel 011 615 1339) who has kindly agreed to share her cheap, simple and delicious recipe.
- She says it is called mother in law clams because “you cook the clams then they will all open their shells, mouths open to talk, order and complain the whole day. They cannot be closed and the dish is spicy just like the words from the mother in law’s mouth”
- They only cost R89 at Sai Thai but if you want to do it at home here is the recipe…
Recipe SAI THAI Mother-in-law Clams
850g whole clams, cleaned (available at fish mongers or for next to nothing in Chinatown)
1 Tablespoon cooking oil
1 tablespoon crushed garlic
1 fresh red chilli, finely chopped
1 Tablespoon Thai chilli paste
1 teaspoon ground bean paste
4 Tablespoons oyster sauce
3 Tablespoons light soy sauce
1 Tablespoon white sugar
1 handful of fresh basil leaves
- Heat a wok or deep frying pan with cooking oil to a high heat then add garlic and stir for a few seconds then add the chilli, clams, chilli paste, ground bean paste.
- Stir well then add ½ cup of water and do the stir fry until the contents boil.
- Once it boils put a lid on the wok and reduce the heat and simmer for 1 minute.
- Open the lid and add the soy sauce, oyster sauce, sugar and basil and stir fry until the sauce boils and a delicious fragrance is emitted.
- Serve hot.
TREAT 3: Braai a quail
- Quail add glamour to a braai and unlike chicken (which is so hard to get right on a braai) they are super-easy to braai to perfection.
- Buy partially deboned quail (ie leg bones on, torso bones gone) at La Marina for R144.99 per kg (which works out to about R13 each – one to two will make a man sized meal. La Marina - 011 997 0500 in the Long Meadow Business estate, Modderfontein.
The dummies guide to a quail braai
NB. Braai’ing a quail is surprisingly simple you need to remember only a few things:
- Use deboned quail or spatchcock your quail – this makes them flat enough to cook evenly.
- 1-2 quails will feed 1person (1 quail feels like the equivalent of about 1 ½ chicken fillets in your tummy)
- Don’t let it get too hot – you want a medium heat – charred, dried out quail happens so quickly because they are so tiny. Plus your marinade has honey in it so that will burn if it’s too hot.
- An average quail needs about 4 minutes on each side on the braai BUT, the big trick now is to make sure you turn the birds EVERY 2 MINUTES. If you leave them longer they dry out on that side.
- Wipe the BBQ with olive oil and place the quail onto the BBQ. Don’t pull it up to turn until its seared because this will tear it,
Too tired to make a fire?
- If you are too tired to make a fire why not go to the marvellous Andrea Burgener’s Leopard restaurant in Parkhurst where she serves what she calls ‘Little Cough Maputo(ish) Quail
- She has kindly given the recipe if you want to make it at home. Although this is not a braai friendly recipe but rather a dish to do in the oven.
- But they call it ‘little cough’ because the spices make it quite hard to breath when you are cooking it so why not have it chez Andrea and let someone else get the tickle in their throat….
- The Leopard, cnr 4th avenue and 12th street, Parkhurst, JHB.
Andrea’s recipe for Little Cough Quail
For two partially deboned quail
STUFFING:
120g Roasted salted macadamias or more mozambiquely, cashews.
40g chopped coriander
160g coarse breadcrumbs from proper bread
30 or so grams chopped spring onion
Salt to taste
2 to 3 tbs ripe Portuguesey olive oil
½ tsp crushed garlic, optional
SAUCE:
1 cup pureed tomato
¼ cup port olive oil
1 tsp garlic chopped
Tsp sugar or to taste
Salt to taste
½ cup lemon juice
¼ cup halved black olives
½ tsn birds eye chillies, fresh or dried
- Simmer tomato puree for 30 mins or so, then ad all remaining ingredients.
- Add salt and sugar last. If tomato is too thick, add little water, it should be a loose slurry.
- Stuff quails being careful to keep breast meat flat against the skin. Depending on the quail, you might not use all the stuffing.
- Fasten opening with toothpick and bind legs together with string.
- Roast for 20 minutes. Pour sauce onto plate, you might not need it all. Place quail on top, serve with extra lemon and lots of leaves.
- If you want to skip the stuffing, the quails are great flat on the braai, basted with olive oil and salt, and served with the sauce and lots of bread.
TREAT 4: When the going gets tough the tough drink Jerepigo and eat cherry cobbler with amasi ‘mascapone’
- It’s cherry season so take advantage! The season is so short and they are so gorgeous at the moment.
- NB. People remember the cherry festival in FIcksburg is 17-19 November so there is still time to plan to go.
- WHAT EXACTLY IS A COBBLER? Cobblers are like pies for dummies – they are delicious and easy and are supposed to look rustic so you can’t be too butter fingered!
- The topping has the taste and texture of fluffy golden biscuit.
- This cobbler is so pretty because cherry syrup bubbles up and out of the baking dish with delicious purple rivers of ebullience.
- Plus I discovered by happy accident that when making a cobbler topping, the rubbing of vanilla-laden cream into the butter and flour base ensures that even once the chef has washed her hands, she smells utterly, seductive.
- WHAT IS AMASI MASCAPONE? Amasi ‘mascapone’ is just the drained curds of amasi – you drain off all the whey through a muslin cloth overnight and you are left with a cheap as chips alternative to mascarpone. It is actually called amasi ingqaka in isiXhosa. Available at every corner café for less than R10 – which is less than a third of the cost of mascarpone and it tastes much nicer (not got that icky almost sweet thing that mascarpone has its more like clotted soured cream).
- WHY SERVE IT WITH JEREPIGO – admit it we all love it. Carrie Adams once said to me ‘South Africans talk dry but when no one is watching they prefer sweet.’ So why not have a coming out of the closet soet celebration.
- Liking Jerepigos is nothing to be ashamed of. They have heady blackberry aromas and layers of silky smooth concentrated honey, raisin, barley sugar, candied peach and spice flavours to enjoy.
- Served chilled with a fruity cobbler it is heaven on earth. Plus they are ridiculously reasonable in price – partly because we think of them as wines for the indigent and unwashed. Go to the wino section of your bottle store and you will find them.
Peach and cherry cobbler recipe (serves about 6 – depending on greed)
4 medium stoned, peeled peaches (fresh is best but out of season canned will do just fine)
1 cup stoned cherries
¼ cup white granulated sugar
1 ½ Tablespoons corn-flour
1 teaspoon lemon juice
BISCUIT TOPPING
1 cup cake flour
1 ½ Tablespoons white granulated sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
2 ½ Tablespoons butter
1/4 cup milk
1/4 cup cream
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
Pre-heat oven to 180C
- Cut each peach into about 8 slices. Add the cherries, sugar, corn-flour and lemon juice. Toss gently and place in an oven-proof dish.
- Sift together cake flour, sugar, baking powder. Cut the butter into small cubes and rub it into the dry ingredients until the mixture resembles rough biscuit crumbs.
- Combine the milk, cream and vanilla essence and use your hands to gently add the dairy to the butter/flour mix. The result will be a gooey dough.
- Cover the fruit with dough. It’s okay if there are a few cracks because then the juices can bubble through prettily.
- Sprinkle with an extra 1 ½ Tablespoons of sugar.
- Bake until cooked through and golden (about 40 minutes).
Amasi ingqaka (serves 6)
- You want to separate the curds (in isiXhosa these are known as the ingqaka) from the whey (the inthoya).
- To do this put the amasi into a muslin bag and let the whey drip out. If you leave this overnight in the fridge to drip you will have a mascarpone like cream cheese in the morning.
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