Gazpacho – easy peasy!

This was not what was originally planned for today, but having shared pictures of the Gazpacho that we had this weekend, on Instagram and on my personal Facebook page, I was “inundated” with requests for the recipe.  I hadn’t made it for a while because our tomato crop last season was underwhelming.  To say the least.  This year, we’ve been deluged; it’s the time of the year when The Husband hears, “You can have anything you like for supper (or lunch or tea, or breakfast), as long as it’s tomato!”

We also have a surfeit of bell peppers and we have onions and garlic that were harvested late last year.

CucumPepperOnionTomatoJan2016
Basic ingredients for Gazpacho (tomatoes ready for skinning). Except for the cucumber, all our own produce.

The original recipe comes from Rose Elliot’s 1994 The Classic Vegetarian Cookbook, published by Dorling Kindersley, and which I bought from Exclusive Books at the Waterfront, not long after I moved to Cape Town a year after it’s publication.*

Gazpacho Recipe

What I do

Gazpacho is a no-cook dish.  The closest one comes to a hot gas stove (in my case, anyway), is boiling the kettle to skin the tomatoes.

I’ve followed that recipe to the word, but as you see from my notes, I’ve also altered things to make it my own.  Here are a few of my tips and what I’ve learned in the 20-odd years I’ve been making this:

  • unless you’re wanting to make a thick, heavy soup, leave out the bread;  I find that if tomatoes are really “beefy”, I still need to add water so that the soup is the right consistency
  • if it needs water, chill it first and be careful not to dilute it too much – add a little iced water and taste, repeating until you’re happy with the texture
  • in the absence of red onions, I have comfortably used white, but less because white onion is stronger than red.  Obviously, if you really like the stronger, raw onion flavour….
  • I’ve used red wine vinegar and Balsamic vinegar and my preference is for Willow Creek’s balsamic style Cabernet Sauvignon vinegar;  I use an extra 10ml.  Again, tasting as you go is important, bearing in mind how the flavours change and develop with chilling and standing
  • seasoning is a very personal thing, but I have found that leaving out the seasoning doesn’t detract from the flavour which makes this a very acceptable soup for people who have problems with both gluten and sodium
  • make it the night before, or at least a few hours in advance and refrigerate – the flavours meld and the soup benefits from being allowed to stand.  A good example of what my father would class as “second-day-soup”, i.e. better the second time round!
  • with the vinegar and the high vitamin C content of tomatoes, this keeps very well.  I make it in big batches, both for our own consumption or for the market

It’s pretty served in glasses or glass mugs:

GazpachoGlass2016

Gazpacho: easy, peasy, lemon squeezy.

A glut

It seems we’re not the only ones with a glut, so for those looking for other ideas of what to do with tomatoes, I’ll be sharing my bottling recipe and that for passata in a while.  It won’t be in the next two weeks as I’ll be travelling and will have limited time for “fiddling” in the kitchen…and on Fiona’s Favourites.

In the meantime, two other ways of using tomatoes:

Ratatouille which is great hot or cold, and uses loads of tomatoes and vegetables currently in season

A fresh tomato sauce that can be bottled or frozen

*No, it’s not on page 32…..

© Fiona’s Favourites 2016

 

Here today, gone tomorrow!

Here today, gone tomorrow just about epitomises last week.

Summer arrived with a vengeance on Monday and the thermometer hit 38 degrees Celsius (just over 100 Fahrenheit).  Overnight, a little swarm of bees took residence in our Cotoneaster.  We were delighted because a couple of months ago, a local beekeeper had put an empty hive on our plot and we’ve been waiting patiently for a swarm to occupy it.  Bee man said to leave them alone.  “They’ve already decided where they’re going….”

LittleBeeSwarm

Wednesday dawned:  cool and blustery and got progressively more blustery and cold.  By evening it was pouring with rain.  After Monday’s heat, this was all a bit much, so I persuaded The Husband to light the fire; I know he thought I was being extra dramatic.  Wonderful man:  he indulged me.

Firepot 1

When Pearli thundered home, bang-crash-wallop through the cat flap, she was very glad to discover a lovely warm fire.  And the sofa, with its pristine throw, was just the place to dry off.  Of course.

TigerPearlOct2014

I had planned omelettes and salad for supper, but with the cold, I thought that something more warming and stew-like would be in order.  But what?  Whatever I made would have to have egg or cheese as the protein, and whatever else was in the kitchen, garden, or the fridge.  Thursday is shopping day, so the proverbial pantry was rather bare.

Fortunately, and don’t ask me why, we had a large number of tomatoes and in the fridge I found courgette, sweet bell peppers and mushrooms (these we would have had in the omelette, anyway).  In the garden there is fennel, oregano and parsley, all of which go well with both eggs and tomatoes.  Fortunately we both like egg and tomato.  My dad didn’t, and nor do a few other people I know…

So, in the wok, I made a tomato stew with sautéd onions and garlic to which I added chopped peppers, mushrooms and courgette, with some fennel.  I let all of that brew for a little while – not too long so that the vegetables keep some crunch.  When it was all bubbling nicely, with a good bit of liquid, I made four “wells” in the stew, and broke an egg into each.  I put the lid on the wok and let the eggs poach in the tomato stew until they were ready.

tomato_egg_stew_platedBoy, did we need that warm stew.  It was a cold night and we woke to snow on Thursday morning – summer was gone – and our little swarm of bees had huddled themselves into a tiny little ball.

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And by Sunday, winter had retreated.  And our swarm of bees, still here yesterday, was gone.  Our empty hive is still empty.

© Fiona’s Favourites 2014

Anyone for eggs?

I have always loved eggs. As a little girl, I loved eating Dad’s scrambled eggs; of course I had had my own, but they were much nicer when I perched on his knee, eating them off his plate. He loved his eggs on buttery toast and topped with a good sprinkling of freshly ground black pepper. Another “egg” memory associated with Dad, and which I’ve mentioned before, is my (actually Dad….) bidding for the winning egg and succeeding, at the Gonubie Agricultural Show. I guess those eggs must have been quite expensive in the grand scheme of things. Why was I besotted with those particular eggs? I have no idea, except that they were generally a beautiful white, not the brown we are used to, now.  And always double yolkers.Double yolk eggs

Eggs feature quite a bit on our menu;  fortunately, we both could eat them for breakfast, lunch and supper!    There was a time when an egg-rich diet was considered potentially dangerous.  Not so, nowadays, and for two key reasons, it seems:  they don’t contain “bad” cholesterol, and it would appear that there are now even questions about whether cholesterol is the consequence of too much unsaturated fat.  Adding fuel to this fire is the move to a low carbohydrate, high-fat diet – people are Banting bonkers at the moment.  I’m not knocking it as I have been leaning in that general direction for a while…

Eggs are an essential ingredient in many things we eat, often without realising it, for example mayonnaise,  cakes and cookies, rich pastries and of course, in custards, including the savoury custard in a quiche. My home made pasta is egg-rich.  So, we eat eggs, often, and not just for breakfast.

Breakfast

Over the weekend, have sort of a ritual.  I loathe early mornings and am virtually non-functional, so what needs to be done must be done in “auto pilot”.  On a Saturday, because there is no alarm, things are a little more leisurely, but we still need to be at the McGregor pop-up market, and set up by nine o’clock,  so our day begins without breakfast.Speckeldy EggAfter the market, we get home and unpack the bakkie (also known, depending on where you live, as a pick-up or ute), and Tom does breakfast: soft boiled eggs, toast and coffee.  He’s a real egg-boiling pro, and if the batch of eggs contains a speckled one – it’s always mine!  The speckled egg is another throwback to my childhood and Alison Uttley’s wonderful stories about Grey Rabbit and Speckeld Hen;  stories that my granny read to us when she visited South Africa in 1969 into 1970.  A “speckeldy” egg always gets me clucking with childlike delight!

Sunday is a whole different ball game; breakfast is the full catastrophe! Fried egg, beautiful, homemade bacon, fried tomato, mushroom, brinjal, potato… And, needless to say, toast or croissant, and coffee. We love our Sunday brunch which, weather permitting, we usually eat on our lovely, sunny veranda.

Lunch

So, if that was breakfast, what about lunch, you ask.  Well, ever since I was a tot, a favourite sandwich was egg mayonnaise – it still is.  I even enjoyed the ones we got at boarding school!  There can be few things more delicious than lovely fresh bread, hard boiled egg, grated and mixed with home made mayonnaise, seasoned with salt and freshly ground black pepper.  Jazz that up with some fresh parsley, a lettuce leaf and some sliced tomato, and you have a feast!

But you don’t have to stop there:  firm, but not quite hard-boiled eggs (so that the yolk is not quite cooked and a lovely rich, orange colour), added to a green salad are delicious, on a hot summer’s day.

On a cooler day, here’s a thought:  poached eggs on freshly picked spinach, wilted, with tomatoes, topped with a dollop of cottage cheese, grilled.  Fresh fennel goes well with all of these components, so I use it both as a garnish and as an element in the meal – with or without lovely crusty bread.Poached eggs on spinachAbout poaching eggs:  make sure that your eggs are as fresh as possible, and add a little vinegar to the water when you cook them.  Once they’re cooked to your taste, remove them with a slotted spoon and place them on a cloth (not paper towel – it sticks to the egg and is hard to get off).  Allow them to drain for a little while – there is nothing worse than a poached egg that deposits puddles of water over your plate!

Supper

A regular supper, one night during the week, has egg as the main protein, in one form or another: an omelette, a Spanish Omelette, a frittata, or a quiche, accompanied by a garden salad.  A two-egg omelette, with a filling of your choice, which includes cheese, is a really filling and easy meal.100_3048If you’re nervous about folding an omelette, and other than practice, my technique is to make sure that I use a pan that is the right size, and I don’t believe anything is non-stick, so I always add a knob of butter and olive oil.  Don’t overheat the pan….  Once the eggs are in the pan, don’t fiddle with them until you see that the edges are cooking.  Then, with a small egg lifter, draw a little egg towards the centre and allow the runny egg to flow out to the edge.  Once the egg is mostly cooked, add your filling – on one side and then gently lift the other over it.

Another tip about folding omelettes over their fillings:  make sure that you have the pan handle at nine o’clock.  Put the filling on the same side, between twelve and six o’clock.  Then you can comfortably hold the pan and gently lift the other side of the omelette over the filling, and then slide it onto a warm plate.  If you’re left handed, do it the other way round, i.e. have the handle at three o’clock, etc…

Have a look at another supper that includes eggs, cooked in a tomato sauce….

 

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African Slow Cooking: North and South

100_3236It was cold this weekend – perfect weather for a slow cooked stew.  Stews are a fantastic, nutritious way to use inexpensive cuts of meat – and they are usually the most flavoursome.

On Saturday, after the market, I decided to make a traditional South African bredie.  A bredie is, essentially, a stew that was made by the Boer folk, and depending on the variation you make, also includes some Malay influences.  The Boers were descendants of the Dutch colonists, and who trekked to the hinterland of South Africa;  the Malay folk were slaves and religious exiles sent to Africa.  Much of the food in South African homes is a fusion of our rich history, so here is how I made a butternut bredie.

Butternut Bredie

You will need an appropriate quantity of lamb or mutton stewing meat (I used neck), one or two onions, a  green pepper (or a chilli if you like a bit of heat), a clove of garlic, a thumb-sized piece of fresh ginger and a stick of cinnamon;  butternut – cut into cubes or chunks and potato, similarly prepared.

100_3238If you are using a slow cooker, place half the raw vegetables along the bottom, reserving some for the time being. Sauté the chopped onion, pepper/chilli, garlic and ginger, and then seal the meat in the same pan.    Put the meat on top of the vegetables in the slow cooker and then deglaze the pan with a little water or stock to make a gravy.  Add the remaining vegetables and then pour the liquid over that and put on the lid.

“Fire up” the slow cooker and leave it alone to develop into a wonderful rich bredie – a good few hours.  The vegetables will be tender and the meat will be soft and fall off the bones!100_3239

A note about the fat:  for those who are Banting, it’s not a concern.  For those who don’t like it – there was much less fat than I expected.  Don’t shun fat – that’s where the flavour comes from!

Serve, either with or without rice or pap and other vegetables.

And now, this, for my first ever follower!

Moroccan Lamb Tagine

This is a Jenny Morris recipe – from the Giggling Gourmet newsletter, what seems like a million years ago, and which I’ve made successfully, often – also in the slow cooker.

Chris, I’ve put in brackets my substitutions for the “unusual” ingredients, and it serves 4.

1 tablespoon olive oil
8 small lamb shanks
1 Spanish onion. chopped (white or red)
2 cloves garlic, sliced
1 tablespoon grated ginger
1 teaspoon chilli powder
1 teaspoon turmeric
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon cardamom pods
1 cinnamon stick
2 tablespoons grated palm sugar (molasses sugar)
4 teaspoons fish sauce
4 large ripe tomatoes, roughly chopped
4 kaffir lime leaves (lemon or lime leaves)
2 cups chicken stock or water
2 potatoes, unpeeled and chopped

If you are doing this in the oven, preheat to 160°C.  Heat the oil in a frying pan over a high heat.  Add the lamb shanks and cook for 2 minutes on each side, or until they are well browned. Remove the lamb and place in a baking dish/crock for the slow cooker.  Reduce heat and add the onion to the pan. Cook for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the onion is translucent.  Add the garlic and ginger and cook for 1 minute longer, then add the chilli powder, turmeric, cumin, cardamom and cinnamon. Cook for 2 minutes, stirring constantly.  Add the sugar, fish sauce, chopped tomatoes, lime leaves and stock, and bring to the boil.  Remove from heat and add potatoes and sweet potato to the baking dish/slow cooker with the lamb, and pour the sauce over the top.  If using the oven, cover with foil and bake for 2 hours, or until the lamb falls away from the bone.   For the slow cooker, put the lid on and leave until you’re ready to eat and the lamb falls away from the bone.

Serve with steamed couscous or rice.

Two different African stews, one from the North and the other from the South.

Enjoy!