Avocado salad

My British friends and colleagues always looked nonplussed when I went on about how much I missed lovely fat, ripe avocadoes when we lived in the UK. Brits do not generally “get” avo. This could be because, mostly, they only seem to have those mediocre, mean-looking purple-skinned hass ones with their thick, knobbly skin, enormous pips and hardly anything you can actually eat. They’re neither worth buying nor bothering to peel.

Even in Cape Town we are relatively deprived – if you have ever bought a bag of those huge green, buttery avos on the roadside in KwaZulu-Natal you’ll doubtless agree. But we do get some pretty fine avos down our way, and they are in season again. They’re best right now when they have been sun-ripened to perfection and before time can jade them and fade their flavour.

An avo is a sublime prime ingredient for a salad, but it must be ripe. An under-ripe avo is rubbery and horrible, an afront to the palate. An over-ripe avo goes brown and ugly and is repulsive. Use it when it is soft and buttery yet still firm enough to hold its shape, and not at all discoloured.

My mind, off as ever on its wayward meandering path, somehow found its way to chakalaka while pondering the happy news that avocados are in season. Well, it is logical, Daisy, if you think about it (but not too taxing): avocados are nice when they go with something else, and chakalaka is best employed as a side dish or relish with other ingredients. So naturally I got to thinking about guacamole (still with me, Daisy?), and how it incorporates avocado, tomato, onion and chilli, and the next obvious thought was that chakalaka could team up with avocado in a similar way. (Go and put the kettle on, Daisy.)

Guacamole is hugely versatile. Authentically, it comprises avocado, minced onion, chopped tomato and red chillies, a pinch of ground cumin, what  Americans call ‘hot pepper sauce’, a dash of lime or lemon juice (it stops the discolouring of the avocado) and salt and pepper, and finished with some finely chopped dhania. Just chop, mash, mix and eat. The secret of it, for me, is the fresh tang you get from that mix of the avocado and ripe tomatoes.

So I made a few avo dishes, but also wanted to include one with a South African flavour (most of the best-known recipes being American or Mexican. They do ‘get’ avo.)

Like most things truly South African, you won’t often find chakalaka in the pages of our effortlessly garnished food magazines, although I don’t doubt that one of these days this South African workman’s dish will be ‘discovered’ by the diamante-swirled damsels of Posh Galore, with sundry instructions on how to change it into something else.

But first, some traditional ways to make quick and easy dishes with avocado.

Avocado salad offers a million possible variations. The centrepiece is the avo, peeled, halved, pip removed. Cut into thin strips or fan the avo by pushing the point of a small sharp knife into the flesh just below the narrow tip, then sliding it down to the serving plate. Repeat at intervals, then gently press down with the palm of your hand. Drizzle with lemon or lime juice and extra virgin olive oil or avocado oil (a lovely dressing for most salads). Scatter finely chopped spring onions over it, and halved baby Italian tomatoes. Peel slivers of baby cucumber, douse them in olive oil and lemon juice, and scatter them on top of the avo. Fresh basil leaves would be good with this too, or lambs’ lettuce if you can find some. (Help me somebody – why can I never find lambs’ lettuce?)

Avocado salsa

Avocado salsa is even easier. Just cube one or two ripe but firm avocados, peel and deseed firm but ripe tomatoes and dice them. Mix in a bowl with lime juice and chopped coriander leaves.

Finally, my chakalakamole. There is no tomato in traditional chakalaka, which was invented by South African miners who chopped and shredded vegetables and sauted them, added a can of baked beans and ate it with chunks of bread.

Avocado with chakalaka strikes me as being a fine thing for a simple supper or lunch. Make the chakalaka ahead of time: mince a whole onion and simmer in olive oil to remove its sharp flavour. Add grated carrot, chopped green pepper, crushed garlic and finely chopped chillies to taste. Simmer until the carrots have softened, add a can of baked beans in tomato sauce, season with salt and pepper, and set aside until it cools to room temperature. And the ‘mole’: Mash three avocadoes with a good squeeze of lime or lemon juice. Fold this into the chakalaka carefully. Serve with crunchy bread.

I do hope the scented scribes of Posh Galore don’t discover my chakalakamole, because some things are best left to us ordinary people to enjoy in the comfort of our own modest homes, with nary a roquette garnish in sight and nothing at all worth nestling anything on that you’d want to photograph.

I don’t think it honours the provenance of this humble dish to poncify it overly. So please don’t repose or drape anything on a bed of chakalaka. Please don’t emulsify chakalaka or make the finest chakalaka foam, or make chakalaka ice-cream or, heavens forbid, vegetarian chakalaka-tofu cake.

First published in Weekend Argus, Cape Town, April 2010

Fondant potatoes cooking slowly with thyme

The Incas worshipped them and buried them with their dead. They’ve been credited with curing warts and causing babies to be born with big heads.

The German Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche argued that a diet consisting predominantly of them “leads to the use of liquor”, which would be enough for some of us to stockpile them, just in case.

In France in the 17th century they were thought to cause everything from leprosy to rampant sexuality, and were outlawed lest they caused the general populace either to multiply madly or die trying.

Brillat-Savarin, the great French 19th century gourmand, considered them tasteless and charged that they were only good in a famine. Which wouldn’t have been much comfort to the Irish, given that they had a deadly famine for lack of them, and even today have a fairly sparse population as a result.

Even Mrs Beeton, in her 1862 Book of Household Management, urged caution, saying that the water in which they were cooked was harmful to the health.

Yes, we’re talking about the potato, perhaps most aptly described in this old Irish saying: “If beef’s the king of meat,potato’s the queen of the garden world.”

The Irish also have arguably the world’s best potato joke: An old man wrote to his son, who was in prison, saying he had become too frail to dig his garden so that he could plant his potatoes. The son wrote back, “For heaven’s sake, Da, don’t dig the garden up, that’s where I buried the guns!”

His bewildered father wrote back to say that a squad of English soldiers had turned up a few days later and dug for hours but hadn’t found any trace of the guns; they must be gone.

The son wrote back: “That’s fantastic, Da. Now plant the potatoes.”

You and I, if we are typical of our species, have eaten 330kgs potatoes in the past decade. There are few sane human beings who don’t love them, whether fried in the way the Belgians do them (no, not the French – it’s Belgium that perfected the frite), roasted in that quintesseintially British way, made into gnocchi as the Italians would have it, or grated and turned into a magnificent pan of rosti, as the Swiss prefer it.

Yet these are only the tiniest fraction of the myriad ways in which a potato can become one of the most tempting things ever put on a plate – as evidenced by anyone who has ever ordered a plate of chips between rounds in a pub and counted the seconds until they were all gone.

But there’s more to a potato than just chips or plain mash. For your next dinner party, make individual potato bakes in ramekins, use caramelised onion and garlic to turn mashed potato into something heavenly, make perfectly golden roast potatoes the best British way, or turn out fondant potatoes worthy of a top chef.

Potato bake in ramekins

Grease ramekins with butter. Thinly slice potatoes and trim to fit. Layer potatoes, dotting each layer with nobs of butter and seasoning with salt and pepper as you go. Sprinkle a little nutmeg over each layer. Pour cream over to just cover the top level, grate nutmeg on top, and bake in a 180ºC oven for an hour. Keep warm.

Golden Roast Potatoes

Pour sunflower or olive oil halfway up a bread tin, and put in a hot oven until the oil is piping hot. Peel potatoes, plop them in a saucepan of cold water, bring to the boil and boil hard for 10 minutes. Remove, drain, and return the potatoes to the empty saucepan. This bit is important. Put the saucepan back on the heat and shake carefully, tossing the parcooked potatoes to burn away any water. Carefully drop the potatoes into the hot oil and roast in a hot oven (at least 180ºC) until you could kill to eat them. I’ve roasted potatoes in several different ways, but this method is the best by far for classic roasties, perfectly soft inside and crisp and golden outside. The key: they must be parcoooked, and totally dry, when they go into very hot oil.

Garlicky mashed potato

Simmer finely chopped shallots (or spring onions) with finely chopped garlic in butter over a lowish heat until golden brown. Cook peeled potatoes in well salted boiling water until very soft but not falling apart. Drain thoroughly and dry with kitchen paper. Mash the potatoes until thoroughly smooth, add milk, plenty of butter and cream, stirring. Fold in the onion and garlic. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Fondant potatoes

Fondant potatoes

Most of us aren’t in the habit of making this at home, but it’s very rewarding, especially if, like me, you happen to have thyme growing in a pot. You need enough chicken stock to cover the potatoes in an oven dish or deep stove-top pan. The first thing about fondant potatoes is their shape. Peel and cut the potatoes into neat rounds 2.5cm thick. Trim the sharp edges to round them off, like the edge of a well-made table. So what you have is thick spheres of potato with curvy edges. Simmer them on all sides in butter for about 20 minutes to thoroughly brown them, shaking the pan to prevent sticking. Cover with chicken stock (use a cube, Daisy), about three tablespoons of butter and two or three sprigs of thyme and simmer for 20 minutes. Top up with stock and continue simmering uncovered until the stock has cooked away and the potatoes are soft and lovely. Season with salt and pepper. A similar effect can be achieved in the oven.

Now tuck in, and be sure to have plenty of wine to hand.

First published in Weekend Argus, Cape Town, February 2010

The menu: roasted garlic and red onion soup with a parmesan croute, followed by braised springbok shank with red wine and orange sauce served on red wine risotto, and a finale of Cape Brandy Tart.

To book, call 021 424 2100. The meal costs R180 a head and numbers are limited to 22.

Chicken covered with bacon rashers, ready for roasting

The chicken crossed the road because it wanted to escape us. The chicken fears us. The chicken was running away from you and me, fleeing for dear life. We are the enemy of the chicken. We are to the chicken what probity is to corrupt government and what mice are to cats. Chickens do not like us. For good reason. We eat them.

We like chicken. We love chicken. When we see a chicken preening its feathers, our mind quickly pops up an image of it defeathered and roasted to gleaming, succulent perfection. We see its breast removed, slit asunder, filled with something yummy, closed, wrapped up and baked. We see the bird splayed and basted with peri-peri sauce, bubbling over the coals. We do not see a cute, cuddly thing. They are not our friends.

Even vegetarians like chickens. Ask most ‘vegetarians’ what they really eat, and they will say, ‘Well, I eat chicken once in a while.” So it’s really bad to eat the meat of an animal you’ve killed, unless the meat is white. (Fish is OK too. Fish are like leaves; they don’t have feelings.)

In any supermarket, the fridge space given to chickens is several times greater than that awarded to lamb, beef or pork. And if ever you needed proof that the fight for free range is not working, is all but a lost cause, count the number of regular chickens – the serried, plastic-wrapped rows and rows of them – compared with the handful of supposedly free-range ones in a much smaller part of the fridge nearby.

So let’s face facts: the greater population eats chicken, almost daily, and plenty of it. It is a farmed animal, and that farming is done purely for purposes of making sure there is a plentiful supply of a staple part of the national diet. I would prefer it if methods of farming were improved, made more humane, less cruel, and yes, I will buy a barn-reared one if it looks good and is affordable. But I do buy the other poor bastards too, the ones that have lived in misery. And if you think this makes me a shocking exception to what you imagine to be the norm, take another look in theose fridges and see the truth staring back at you.

Which brings me to what this column is really about: good old-fashioned roast chicken. I have resisted writing about roast chicken for months now. It seems so obvious, so ordinary, so everyone-does-that. But Di, who knows my cooking best, keeps saying ‘you should write about your roast chicken’. So let’s dismember the art of roasting a chicken, reassemble it, and see where it takes us. To the table, one hopes.

Chicken livers with port and chilli

But first let’s whet the appetite with a chicken starter. Chicken liver, more precisely. I love the liver of a chicken. It is one of cuisine’s great delights and can hold its beak up high in the company of supposedly greater offal, like liver of duck or goose or, dare one mention, the goose whose liver has been abnormally fattened. That column will yet happen, but let’s not bring out all the shocking stuff in one go.

Livers are easy – the golden rule: do not overcook them, and don’t fling them round the pan, which causes them to disintegrate. I made chicken livers with chilli and port. Clean them and pat them dry. With a very sharp small knife, carefully cut away the nasty bits. (Don’t hack at them, Daisy. You won’t die if some of the uglies slip by.)

Melt butter in a frying pan. Sizzle some finely chopped onion and garlic until soft. Add a finely chopped red chilli or two. Add the chicken livers and leave for two minutes. Shake the pan and turn the chicken livers over, one at a time. Stir the rest of the pan so that the onions brown all over. After two minutes, add port. (I don’t know how much, Daisy, maybe a cup.) The port will quickly reduce down. Season with salt and pepper. Remove and serve immediately with crusty bread to mop up the juices.

Take your shop-bought battery-reared chicken from its plastic coffin and wash it inside and out under running cold water. OK, an admission: I did actually buy a free-range bird this time, so the one in the picture had lived a relatively happy life until it got the chop. Dry it inside and out with kitchen paper or a clean cloth (which you then need to wash or throw away, Daisy).

Using (clean) fingers, make a pocket between the skin and the membrane attached to the skin. You can put herbs in there, and/or garlic., or butter softened and mixed with any flavouring you like.

Season inside the cavity with salt and black pepper. It can be awkward trying to hold the bird down with one hand while grinding the pepper with your second and third hands. Since we don’t have a third hand, keep the top on the grinder, grind as much pepper/salt as you want, then shake it into the bird’s cavity.

There are loads of things you can put in the cavity, just do not leave it empty, which encourages the chicken to dry out. I often halve a lemon and put the wedges in. Or (as I did this time) quarter an onion and a ripe tomato, and fill as much of this as I can get into the cavity. It keeps the chicken moist and adds flavour. Tomato also greatly enhances the pan juices, becoming part of a lovely flavourful sauce. You can also add springs of herbs to the cavity if you like.

Season the outside of the bird, all over, with salt and pepper. Cover the entire top of the chicken with strips of streaky bacon, overlapping. Roast uncovered in a preheated oven at 230 for 20 minutes. Reduce the heat to 190 and roast until the bacon is done (crisp but not burnt, Daisy). Remove from the oven, remove the bacon, pour a little warmed olive oil all over the skin, and return to the oven to continue cooking without the bacon.

Eat the bacon, Daisy.

Cook until the skin is crisp and golden and the juices run clear when pierced with a skewer. Turn the oven off, leave the door ajar, and allow it to rest for 20 minutes.

I’ve been doing some more thinking about why the chicken really crossed the road. Or why the chickens – so many chickens – crossed the road. Maybe they are trying to get away from us. Or maybe they’re just resigned to their fate. It is a lost cause, and surely by now they must know it, the way a cat knows how to catch a mouse or a politician intrinsically knows how to pul the wool over our eyes.

They’re crossing the road because they know the kitchen’s at the other side of it. They’re on their way to the pot. Bless ‘em.

Porcini soup

I pictured it then, just nine years old. A giant stadium at night, blinding lights bearing down. The hungry roar of the crowd quietening into rapt tension. The crunch of a boot on green turf. Thwack! And the roar again, stronger this time as eyes watch, follow …

But it was one of those moments when you wake up and realise where you really are. On a soccer field, yes. But no crowd, no glaring stadium lights. Just a modest small-town soccer field on the edge of town, and it’s Sunday morning coming down on a boy’s wild imagination.

In my hand is a carrier bag. Next to me is my dad with a pocket knife in his hand, and he’s bending down, bothering the turf, looking for something. And he’s found it. A small, round white thing, and another, bigger, nearby. I start to scan the grass from corner to corner, post to post, and I realise that they’re all over the field, in little clusters, generally growing in the slightly longer tufts of grass. Mushrooms. White button mushrooms growing wild on a soccer field in Nowheresfontein.

We half-fill the bag and walked home. I follow dad into the kitchen and watch as he chops onions, simmers them in a big pot, adds the mushrooms, stirs them, adds cream and lets them simmer. He ladles some into a bowl for me and I eat mushrooms for the first time in my life. I’ve loved them ever since.

What he had made, really, was a mushroom sauce, lovely with a steak. Today I’d first add a glass of white wine to the onions and mushrooms and reduce that down, then a goodly dash of brandy, before adding the cream and simmering it for a while. To then simmer it in the pan in which the steak had been cooked, and collect all the juices, would be perfection.

But we’re not cooking steak today. Today is all about mushrooms. Not buttons either. Because I’ve found a source of fresh porcini, enoki, shimeji, shiitake and several varieties of oyster mushrooms.

What I love about mushrooms is how they take on other flavours without losing their own. It’s almost impossible to mask the flavour of a mushroom, yet all sorts of things, from wine and sherry to lemon, garlic and spices, happily blend with a mushroom’s distinctive, earthy flavours. Mushrooms can be turned into a soup or a sauce, can be the main event in a starter or a side dish with a main course. You can have them on toast, or fill an omelette with them. I haven’t, as yet, found a dessert containing them, but there probably is one, somewhere, and you certainly can incorporate them in a cheese board or for that matter by making the pate pictured on this page.

Porcini and oyster mushroom pate

The pate is made from fresh porcini and oyster mushrooms, and the lovely thing about it was that you could taste both the porcini and the oysters. In a small pot, simmer finely sliced orange (peel and all) over a very low heat with Van der Hum liqueur. This makes pretty much an instant marmalade, if a slightly tipsy one. Saute chopped spring onion and garlic in butter until soft, add roughly chopped porcini and oyster mushrooms (or just porcini) and sprigs of fresh thyme, and simmer, stirring frequenty, until the mushrooms are tender and all moisture has been absorbed. You could quite honestly use any kind of mushroom for this dish, so if you can’t find porcini, grab some buttons or browns at your local and use those.

Cool, then stir in only the syrup from the marmalade. (Retain the orange slices for garnish). Whizz it in the blender with several nobs of butter to make a soft but not runny pate. It is lovely with slices of lightly toasted garlic ciabatta. Scoop into ramekins, refrigerate to chill, then served topped with some of the orange Van der Hum marmalade.

For the porcini soup, gently saute finely chopped shallots and garlic in butter until lightly golden, add roughly chopped porcini mushrooms, simmer for five minutes, stirring occasionally, then add white wine and water, bring to a boil, reduce to a simmer, cover and and leave the flavours to develop for some 20 minutes, stirring now and then. Blend until smooth, stir a tub of creme fraiche into it, and reheat. If it is too thick, add a little more water and/or white wine, heat through, simmer for a few minutes and serve. The garnish in the picture, in case you were wondering, is a rocket flower.

Omelette with shiitake mushrooms

The mushrooms with the omelette are shiitake. They should really have been folded into the omelette, but not owning an intra-omelette camera I served it with the shiitake arranged with some panache, I thought (look it up, Daisy), in the centre. But omelettes are a whole column in their own right. The shiitake’s had been sauteed briefly in olive oil with garlic.

I do, by the way, get curious looks when I tell the story of the Sunday morning when my dad and I collected what looked like button mushrooms on the local soccer field. I don’t know how sure he was that they really were edible buttons and not some madly poisonous toadstool that might have prevented you reading this today. But he didn’t look too concerned and he’s not here any more for me to ask him.

Just please don’t follow his example unless you’re absolutely sure you know what you’re doing. And don’t eat them raw. Wonderful as a mushroom is cooked, it is horrible raw. Horrible.

Yes, I know – tell that to anyone who’s ever made a Seventies braai salad. That’s another column too.

Order these exotic mushrooms from Anya de Hart at Nouvelle Mushrooms 021 887 5593.

First published in Weekend Argus The Good Weekend January 2010

Raw salmon with avocado and salsa dressing

IT’S THE greed of many restaurateurs that really started to bother me in the mid-Nineties, when I was first in the thick of writing about the people who make and sell us food and the places they sell it in. Because that is what it really is all about, for too many of them – a shop where they sell stuff for as much profit as possible.

I interviewed a restaurateur last year who kept referring to his four restaurants as ‘my shops’. It was all I needed to know about the guy, apart from the too-much-bling and the smile that wasn’t really.

These are people with one foot in a Clifton penthouse and the other on a yacht in the Med. Best they don’t lose their balance.
The most visible yardstick of a restaurateur’s avarice is the wine list, where in too many cases the restaurateur is making more per glass or bottle of wine than is the producer of the wine. This has to be wrong. “Oh but we have to cellar it, temperature control, wash the glasses,” yadda yadda yadda. They’re still eking more profit out of the wine than the guys who have to plant the vines and watch them grow for years before even thinking of producing wine from the vine. Never mind barrel maturation, bottling, transportation. I wonder what a winemaker must think when reading a wine list somewhere and finding that he has to pay R250 a pop for a wine that cost him R20 to make.

I remember being shocked to the bone when I found Ataraxia chardonnay on a winelands restaurant a few months ago for R1800 a bottle. Yes, I thought it was a misprint too, or that my mind had added a zero. But I called the sommelier over and checked. Yip, R1800. I’ve just Googled this wine and found several price variations for different vintages, all of them under R200 a bottle. Retail. What the hell kind of a mark-up is that?

I’d like to encounter a restaurateur with the chutzpah to name his ’shop’ after what it’s really all about. Pity his poor waiter: “Welcome to Avarice. My name is Ambition and I’ll be your waiter tonight. May I offer you the Chicken Supremely Expensive and a nice bottle of Chateau Neuf du Rip-eauf to help it down?” Sure. And a couple of stiff gins to calm my bank manager’s nerves.

Bertus Basson, chef-patron of Overture, is quite unlike the unfortunately real stereotype described above. Bertus, not yet 30, has twice recently been voted one of the country’s top 10 chefs. Despite this status, he rails against the pricing practices of too many of his colleagues. At Overture you’re offered absolutely top-drawer cuisine, food with true finesse, for prices which elsewhere would cost you anything up to double.

This is not to say Overture is cheap – theirs is gourmet cuisine served with excellent wines. But compare these prices to others in the same league. There are no prices per individual course. You pay R250 for three courses, R300 for four, R360 for five. That means extra courses are added at just R50 and R60 each. With wines added per course, the prices are R300 (three courses), R380 (four) and R460 (five). With a glass of wine served with each course, that’s an average of R20 a glass. Try getting that at Chateau Rip-eauf. There’s also an eight-course tasting menu available to a whole table for R455 a head (R755 with wine – which means that in this instance the wine per glass price is R37.50, a big step up).

Overture is reached up a winding, narrow road at the top of which is a large, modern building containing the Hidden Valley cellar topped by the tasting room and restaurant, which is almost entirely al fresco (though there are plans to enclose it) and boasting one of the best views of any Cape restaurant, with Table Mountain clearly visible on a clear day.

A slatted ceiling casts dappled light on smartly-clad tables, and confident, well-trained staff flit here and there in a way that puts you at ease. You’re in good hands.

The menu is printed every day after a staff pow-wow at which the team, led by Bertus, assembles the menu and plans their making.

Shoulder of lamb

So, the lunch menu for February 2, that most auspicious of days for those of us who love Madiba and this lovely land, offered 10 dishes, of which we enjoyed five. The ones we did not have were almond soup with celery and truffle; geelbek with risotto bianco, pickled fennel and gremolata; crown roast free range chicken with chicken panzarotti and brussel sprouts; Tomme Obiquia, mulled apple, and mulled apple sorbet; and pistachio tart with chocolate sorbet and cashew praline.

We started with raw salmon, salsa and pureed avocado. Fresh and light as a summer’s day, delicately dressed. Then, a sliver of duck liver and foie gras parfait, with diced stone fruit. The parfait had good texture, not overly refined, the duck adding peasanty flavour to the unctuous richness of the foie. Not that I mind unctuous.

Creamed polenta, buffalo mozzarella

Wonderfully creamed polenta followed, with fried buffalo mozzarella and sauteed mushrooms. Sounds simple, I know, but it was one of the day’s best dishes. Bear in mind that we were having smaller portions of everything: we now had braised shoulder of lamb, riddled with lamby flavour and fall-apart tender, all but splashing around in its own moistness, with pumpkin, sage and a single pomme fondant which held its shape, though I would have liked more flavour of thyme.

And then, and then … an orange souffle of such gentle delicacy you wanted to kiss its cheek and lie with it all night. Served with a soupcon of orange ice-cream to melt into it so that you quickly grab your spoon before it melts away. If you want to know how good a chef is, order his souffle. Only thing is, Bertus was at the table with us. Which means that back in that tiny kitchen, there are some guys who seriously know their stuff.

I doff my cap to them.

Hidden Valley Estate, Off Annandale Road, Stellenbosch/Somerset West
021 880 2721 info@dineatoverture.co.za

First published in Cape Argus Tonight, February 2010

Grand Cafe Beach pictured from the water's edge - but wait till you see inside

Drinking from a traditional love cup during a wine estate picnic, doing some singularly un-African dance moves at a museum restaurant and sipping cocktails on a man-made beach under the moonlight were among the highlights of a visit to Cape Town by my eldest girl, Jessica, and her toyboyfriend Simon.

We almost missed one of these activities. We were on our way to picnic at Warwick wine estate when my Renault Scenic broke down for the second time this year. With smoke billowing through the dashboard into the car and us all clambering out and running away from the car for dear life, I swear I heard my brother-in-law Jules’ advice ringing in my ears: “I told you not to buy a French car!’. Oh shaddup.

But while the car was towed to Cape Town (again), Warwick’s owner, Mike Ratcliffe, came to our rescue, sending a car to take us to the picnic and returning us safely home to Cape Town afterwards. Now that is service.

A week earlier we had gone (in a taxi) to the new Grand Cafe and Beach, a gloriously decorated bar-restaurant in an enormous shed at Granger Bay. This is the hottest new tcket in Cape Town, a super-buzzing venue with en endless bar along one wall, vast tables thronging with good-time people, waiters run madly off their feet, cocktails whizzing this way and that on trays, a second smaller (but still big) room with more tables and a wildly eclectic shop and, outside, a beach that’s had a little help.
No way is all this going to come cheaply, but if you have visitors and want to impress them, choose a still night and get them to the grandest beach.

We indulged in the Grand Feast, a series of groaning platters of pizza, then calamari, tempura prawns and Caesar salad, followed by platters of linefish and tagliata (strips of wonderfully tender beef) and finally mini mountains of meringue draped with berries. This is truly La Dolca Vita, a spot in the Mother City where you can really have it all – sea, stars, beach, romance, great food, excellent vibe. Wow.

Gold, at the the magnificent Gold Museum in Strand Street, is another delight for visitors, although this one would not normally be of interest to locals. We had a great night out, and most impressive here is the fabulous entertainment. The best thing of all is that your waiters suddenly become part of the show, singing, dancing, drumming, then return to the more humdrum task of filling your wine glass and bringing your food.

Which is pretty good, although you may wonder what “African tapas” is. Why are restaurateurs in this country unable to find our own themes and names for things? Tapas is not African. Small portions aren’t either. And there is one truly glaring omission from this supposedly African menu: there is no red meat on the menu other than a tiny portion of bobotie. In Africa, land of the cow, the goat and the buffalo, there is no meat on a showcase  African menu. This is like not having soy sauce on a Chinese menu, or omitting the spices in a curry. Come on, we’re Africans, we eat meat.

What there is is quite nice. We started with a corn soup served with puri, the flat Indian light-as-air breads, ordinary but pleasant, and went on to dishes like vegetabe samoosas with chutney cream, potato skewers with a peanut coriander dip, chicken satay and a mini portion of excellent bobotie. All dishes are served to the whole table, and the mains that followed were a seafood curry, peri-peri chcken wings, vetkoek, dhal with roasted butternut and, to end, malva pudding.

For such a seemingly lengthy menu, all of it served, it was strangely unsatisfying. Maybe that was because of all the activity, which builds up an appetite. But do take your guests there – it’s nevertheless a great night out.

Warwick's intensely organic gourmet picnic hamper

So, some days later, to Warwick, sans car. The weather was (like the car) not overly kind to us that day, which meant that it was too windy to take advantage of one of their picnic “pods” down at the lakeside. But the interior of the tasting room is a lovely alternative, and it is not hard to imagine what an idyll the pod sites must be given the excellent fare you find in your organcally pure picnic hamper.

It was all put together by Mike Ratcliffe and award-winning chef Bruce Robertson. It’s a wine and food safari. You can climb into an ersatz game-ranging vehicle and trek up the mountain, through vineyards, with your ranger pointing out the Big 5 – a somewhat hokey and pun-ridden idea but it’s fun. The “penthouse” at the top offers a butler-served feast (or you could enjoy it in your “pod”) of biltong and brandy pate, quaity cold meats, poached chicken breast with truffle mayo, beautifully spiced frikkadels, taboule, wholegrain mustard potato salad, chocolate brownie, makataan preserve (it used to be called kaffirwaatlemoen) and a packet (Mike’s idea) of Maynards wine gums. I liked that touch especially. Sorry Bruce.

Gold 96 Strand Street Cape Town 021 421 4653

Grand Cafe Beach Granger Bay 021 425 0551

Warwick Gourmet Picnics Warwick Estate Stellenbosch 021 884 3144

First published in Cape Argus Tonight, January 2010

Savoy Cabbage restaurant is in a quiet side street in the Cape Town CBD

The longer you cover the restaurant business at the Cape, the more jaundiced you become as you see yet another supposedly brilliant flavour-of-the-month restaurant bite the dust while others somehow manage to survive without the glare of the media on them and the foodie glossy posse preening and purring over their every morsel.

Funny, that. Peruse the annual awards lists of the last 10 years and you’ll find many examples of restaurants that were once just the place to get to, dahlings, their chefs’ names thrown about as if the Gods had come down to save our palates. Then they slip down the lists until, in a year or two, they drop out of the top 10 and are often never heard of again. In some cases, their fame will be replaced by good old-fashioned hard work and solid business and marketing practices, and they’ll continue with respectable careers and happy patrons. In others, the promise will evaporate like a saucepan of jus left on the heat too long, and months later you’ll wonder, “Whatever happened to…?”.

There was a time when Savoy Cabbage, a lovely restaurant almost hidden in an inner city side street, was one of the dahlings of the gushy glossy set. It’s delightful to see that years later, the place is absolutely on form. No longer in the awards lists – and nor does it need to be  – this is a business that has always been run as just that: a damn fine restaurant where all the boxes are ticked, and ticked every night. This means the management pays attention to all of the details that need to be thought of, from maintaining the décor to keeping an eye on every table no matter how good your paid staff are.

Most of all, it means that what the menu promises is delivered to the plate and to your palate. And when you’re paying prices like these – where starter prices are what main course prices were not too long ago (Savoy Cabbage does not, shall we say, have a reticent pricing policy) – you have every right to expect a meal that would have a glossy missy clutching for superlatives, with service to match. That’s the price a restaurant pays for having the courage to set the price bar high – if the nosh was not up to scratch, well-shod feet would walk out and pad to a better option down the road.

Peter Pankhurst

Chef Peter Pankhurst has spent most of a decade at the coalface of this spacious double-decker venue where peeled redbrick walls are offset by glass and concrete with cute savoy cabbage touches in elemental designs. (Have I been reading too many designer design mags or what?)

But when all is said and sighed about, it’s what’s on the plate that really counts, no matter how high or low the price or how often or not the chef is mentioned in the pages of Posh Galore. Pankhurst’s menu is a considered affair, brilliantly executed, in a way that suggests he really ought still to be on those awards lists.

I adored my starter of white grape and salmon gazpacho with tomato gazpacho sorbet, from the texture to the icy thrill on the palate to sweetish, hottish flavours that washed over one another in a maddeningly moreish way – the only reservation being that the sorbet was too recent from the freezer, and consequently too solid. Di swooned over her terrine of Norwegian salmon with asparagus and dill salad. It had been hard to choose, with starter alternatives including chicken liver parfait with port-smoked figs, West Coast oyster custard with fried oysters, braised leeks and a beetroot and ginger emulsion (OK, they almost lost me there; I am no fan of most of these froths, foams and emulsions, though I have encountered very occasional delights) and a range of house-cured charcuterie which I’ll try on a future visit.

Serious gourmands may want to try the main course of veal sweetberads with mushrooms, lemon and chives, and I was sorely tempted, but I was in a really meaty mood so chose the “lamb three ways”, being roasted rack, braised shoulder and merguez sausage, served with a conical garlic flan (like a very delicate savoury pannacotta) and gratinated dauphinoise potatoes. It was good, though I would have liked the rack a teensy bit less rare, and I loved the red wine sauce so much that I asked for more. The rare chalmar beef fillet with boozy onions (nice), mushrooms and red wine sauce was no less of a great marriage.
The dessert menu is one of those where you’re scared to choose one in case the others are even better – fresh figs roasted with honey, chocolate marquise with coffee sauce, butterscoth pannacotta with berry compote – and also includes tempting cheesy options such as gorgonzola with almonds and port-soaked figs.

Great venue, lovely food, wonderful vibe, and all without being pandered to by the foodie floozies. What fun.

Savoy Cabbage
101 Hout Street, Cape Town
021 424 2626

First published in Cape Argus Tonight, January 2010

Tony Jackman's chocolate tart

Technology has its limitations, even in this webbed world of wifi and wii and apps for anything except the little things that really count. I mean, you can email me your CV, your virtual kisses, your letter of demand, or your promise that if I just send you a few of my personal details – date of birth, bank account number, sundry passwords – you will deposit 30 million euros into my account just because my name came up in your lucky draw.

But you can’t email me a chocolate. You can’t fax me a Toblerone. You can’t SMS me a mocha-cream centred truffle. You can send me an attachment of a picture of a chocolate and a note saying “Jane has sent you a chocolate!” but in fact what Jane has sent me is a thumbnail picture of a chocolate which is as much use to me as an email promising me 30 million smackers.

It’s not that I’m not impressed with technology and social networking – this is an extraordinary world we live in. But sometimes I think that the apps we are seeing now are just a scratching at the surface of possibiities. I can SMS you love, just as we did in the days of paper correspondence with a trio of kisses at the bottom of the page. But I can’t text you a spoonful of foie gras. I will be impressed with technology when I can be beamed to Paris for dinner somewhere in the Latin Quarter or a little place in a side-rue near Montmartre; when I can think I am on the old town square in Prague and suddenly be there. And if you could really email or text me a chocolate, I’d buy that app.

Chocolate is many things. It is mood elevating. It is soothing to the sore throat (containing theobromine, which is thought better than cough medicine). It has even been found to help prevent the decline of brain function as we get older. I must remember this when next I have one of those moments where you get up, wander off into another room, then wonder why you’ve gone there.

With your health in mind, therefore, I’ve been playing with chocolate in my kitchen. Here’s a duo of recipes sinfully laden with the richest dark chocolate of 85 percent-cocoa-solids strength. Just don’t eat it all yourself – it’s only in moderation (sadly) that chocolate has all of those healthy qualities.

It’s not that I don’t trust Heston Blumenthal or Gordon Ramsay, although I would’t work in the latter’s kitchen in a hurry. I’ve made Heston Blumenthal’s fabulous chocolate tart recipe before, and Ramsay’s is almost as good. But I wanted a tart that was even more chocolatey. Even creamier. And I can’t just follow recipes slavishly in my own column, so I broke out of the mould and devised my own recipe. The base: sift 125g cake flour with 20g cocoa powder and a generous pinch of salt. Beat 60g each of softened butter and caster sugar until creamy. Melt 30g dark chocolate in a stainless steel saucepan over a pot of simmering water. Mix the chocolate and an extra large egg into it. If this mixture is too runny, add sifted flour, a little at a time, until it resembles and has the consistency of a firm but pliable pastry. Round it into a flattened ball, cover with foil or clingfilm, and refrigerate for half an hour. Heat the oven to 190. Grease a deepish pie dish and place the pastry in the centre. Using your fingers, press it out to the sides and up the sides, evenly. Cover lightly with foil, and bake for 15 minutes. Remove the foil and bake for another five minutes. Remove to cool. If the centre has become convex, don’t worry, as it cools it will recede. Melt 300g dark chocolate. Spread a third of this evenly over the bottom of the tart base. Bring 500ml cream to a boil. Pour, stirring, into the remaining melted chocolate. Whisk two large eggs with 100g caster sugar and a teaspoon of vanilla essence or (as I did) hazelnut syrup, and whisk it into the chocolate cream. Pour this into the pastry case and bake in a 150 degree C oven for 50 minutes. Remove to cool thoroughly – the wobbly filling will set firmly as it cools. Only cut into slices once at room temperature or chilled. I prefer the latter.

Chocolate sorbet

Talking of chilled, try this amazingly easy but wickedly delicious chocolate sorbet recipe: In a saucepan, bring a cup of full cream milk to the boil with 3/4 cup sugar and 1/4 cup cocoa powder, whisking. Watch it – it boils over before you can blink. Reduce heat and simmer for 10 minutes. Set aside while you melt 150g dark chocolate in a saucepan and whisk it into the chocolate milk. Chill in the fridge for an hour, then pour into a suitable metal container, cover with foil and freeze.

And no, Daisy, I don’t have one of those ice-cream makers, nor do I know how to use one. If you feel all that strongly about it, fax me one.

First published in The Good Weekend, Weekend Argus, January 2010

Braaied deboned leg of lamb, lamb ribbetjies, lamb loin chops

You know you’re a serial braaier when you’ve moved to England and it’s midwinter but you fancy a braai, so you grab your friend Blaise, go to Sainsbury’s, buy a portable barbeque and head home to braai in the rain.

I might be a natural braaier, but neither Blaise nor I is, shall we say, mechanically minded. So while Di has been despatched to the kitchen to prep salads and wrap potatoes in foil, Blaise and I go out into the postage stamp garden – just two head-high walls on each side and a demonically smiling stone cherub beneath the hedge at the far end. Our home in Chichester was a three-storey Georgian terraced house, in that odd way the British have of living right on top of one another even though there seems to be plenty of available countryside in which to give everybody just a metre or two of extra space. So you get to know your neighbours rather intimately.

I was dismayed to find, on opening the box containing the new portable braai, that it was a kit. There were dozens of nuts and bolts and bits and pieces, and lengthy instructions in Japanese-English, saying things like “to make barbeque erection first place iron rod in upright pole” and “screw hard and fast assuredly”. An hour later, if a tad rickety, a portable braai we had, and the rain was merely a mist, so we lit a fire and billows of black smoke rose into the air and turned sharp left towards our architect neighbour Terry’s back garden. After some minutes we heard his conservatory door open and a second later Terry’s wide eyes appeared over the wall like Kilroy. “Oh, I’m sorry,” he said apologetically. “We thought you were on fire. Margeret,” he yelled, “tell the fire brigade not to bother. They’re just barbecuing.”

“Barbecuing!?” could be heard in the vague distance.

Braaing for Brits is something we did often there, and have been doing again in Cape Town for visiting family and the British boyfriend. Braaiing for us and Simon is like braaing for us and four extra people. He’s not greedy. He’s a discus thrower aiming to throw for Britain at the 2012 London Olympics. I feel it my duty to contribute to the cause, so when planning a family braai at the weekend I decided to do lamb on the braai three ways – deboned leg, marinated; loin chops with honey and mustard, and ribs doused in lemon and black pepper. I threw in an extra packet of chops, just in case. Good thing I did.

My favourite way of doing deboned leg of lamb on the braai is to marinate it for a day in equal parts of lemon juice and soy sauce with rosemary, mint, garlic and black pepper. Braai over very hot coals, turning every few minutes, until rare, then let it rest. Chops are too easily overcooked, hence burnt, dry and tough. Cook them over very hot coals, quickly, leaving them pink at the centre but with the fat nicely charred. I cooked them for a few minutes before basting them in honey and olive oil mixed with mustard and black pepper. And don’t be a wimp about eating the fat.
Ribs are best cooked for longer on the outer edges of the braai grid, as there’s denser, more compact meat, fat and tendon to be cooked through. Once they’re done, dip them in lemon juice and black pepper. With all of the above, salt the meat halfway through the cooking.

End a braai with my “cheat peppermint crisp ice-cream”. Buy a two-litre tub of vanilla ice cream, and five peppermint crisps.

Keep one peppermint crisp aside in the fridge. Bash the other four (use a rolling pin, Daisy) while still in their foil packets. This will create chocolate chips and shards of peppermint crystals. Soften the ice-cream for half an hour out of the freezer, pour into a large bowl, add the shattered peppermit crisp and stir thoroughly. Freeze.

Cheat Peppermint Crisp Ice-cream

To serve, place two or three scoops in a bowl, and garnish with the fifth peppermint crisp, similarly shattered.

It’s a bit like that meccano braai, I suppose – ice cream in a kit, and much more impressive once it’s been put together. I should package and market it. “Just add annihilated chocolate”.

First published in The Good Weekend, Weekend Argus, January 2010