Cookie (Not Cheffy)

Today, New York Times blogger Pete Wells set a challenge to rewrite this recipe as a short series of tweets. Here was my try at it:

TWEET 1: Prep 4 ‘chokes in water + lemon juice. Mix 1.5 lemonsZest, 750ml brdCrumbs, 80ml ParmChs, 80ml chpd parsly, 1tblsp chpd rosemry, #nytrc

TWEET 2: 6clv mncd garlc, 1 chpd carrt, 1.5tblsp capers, s&p. Baking pan: 1slcd onion, ‘choke stems, 4sprgs parsly, 2clv garlc, 1slcd carrt. #nytrc

TWEET 3: Stuff ‘chokes w mix > pan > drzl olive oil. Add bit water, 125ml wine. Cover w foil. Bake @ 400d 4 1.5hrs. #nytrc

Not easy! The queen of this format is cookbook. Follow me on Twitter at michelle_matt.

I’ve been getting a lot of requests lately from people wanting ideas for meat-free meals to make at home. They have health concerns, but also financial constraints. Arthur and I only eat meat once or twice a week and we cook every night: our weekly shop (excl. household and cosmetic products and including breakfast and lunch foods, which we make at home) is about R500. And we eat very, very well for that.

I first thought I’d just put together some of my favourite tried-and-tested recipes, but I’ve decided to make it a bit more complicated for myself :-). One of my friends asked me how I manage to cook supper when I know there’s “nothing in the house” and that made me realise the importance of the well-stocked pantry. Now, mine’s not nearly as extravagant as some, but it gets the job done and it could be a good blueprint for yours. So, here we go… (more…)

I’ve learned a lot about quinoa tonight (not least of all that it’s pronounced KEEN-WAH not KWUH-NOAH, which is what I’ve been calling it since I first heard of this “superfood” a couple of years ago). I also learned that, although it’s kinda like cous cous in that it consists of small spheres with a nutty flavour, it isn’t in fact prepared like cous cous (which is what the lady I bought it from at the market told me).

After staring balefully at the little hard grains that I was trying to steam cous cous-style, and finally coming to terms with the fact that they weren’t going to magically turn into the frog-spawny mass I knew it was supposed to look like, I turned to the interweb. Quinoa is, in fact, boiled for 10 – 15 minutes. It’s also imperitive that it be rinsed before cooking, to remove a bitter layer that covers the grains called saponin. Well, it was too late for that, as the quinoa was already mixed in with the onions, courgettes, broccoli and asparagus of my healthy quinoa salad lunch (it’s amazing how good I can be when Arthur is away).

So I added a bit more water and boiled it – ah, perfect, slightly al dente, translucent globes with a distinctive thin white germ running around their tiny equators. After all that, the veggies are not the crunchy green I initially planned, but some roasted pine nuts, chopped almonds, sunflower and sesame seeds have restored some toothsome salady texture and added a complementary nutty flavour. The quinoa isn’t too bitter at all (apparently a lot of the saponin has been washed off by the time it gets to the consumer) and I’m looking forward to a good three-weeks-to-go-until-the-wedding low-fat and nutritious lunch tomorrow!

*The picture of quinoa is from www.organicjar.com. My camera is broken :-(

The food market concept is really catching on around Cape Town. Yesterday I was at the opening of another one: the new Stellenbosch Fresh Goods Market. It was a typical first day: eyes were as shiny as the polished organic peppers on the Thyme to Rocket fresh veg stand, and the all stallholders were brimming with enthusiasm and advice.

Market co-ordinator Gail has organised a great group of producers: Rozendal yoghurts, Happy Chicks farm eggs, Earth Apple heirloom potatoes, Eureka Mills stone ground flour, Willow Creek olive oil and plump, yellow-skinned chickens direct “Vannie Plaas”. I found the best pistachios ever – huge, tasty and sourced from the Northern Cape – at the By Nature stall. Mark Farah of Honeyguide (expecting his fist child in April – congrats!) didn’t have to do much to convince me to buy some of his bitingly strong gingered honey, which I like to stir into boiling water with some lemon and mint for a refreshing summer tea. Today’s lunch was some smoked snoek pate from The Fish Deli, a family-run business: sons Mark and Stephan catch the fish and mom Maria sells it.

For supper last night, I took some Nouvelle shitake mushrooms that I’d bought at the Market (I chose a punnet of the tiniest ones) and very gently warmed them in a panful of good butter (I just wanted them to absorb the butter, not cook down). I added a finely chopped small clove of garlic, a few leaves of lemon thyme from the balcony garden, a couple of scrapes of fresh nutmeg and some salt and pepper to complement the sweet, nutty mushrooms. I also chopped up half a red pepper and roasted it slowly with the last of the cherry tomatoes from the balcony (sniff!), and stirred in fresh chopped basil as soon as I took the sizzling fruit from the oven. A bowl of ripe avo drizzled with lemon juice and sprinkled with cayenne pepper completed my trio of tapas, which we ate with some Fairview ciabatta from the Market.

This morning we had to go to Pick’n'Pay to buy those administrative things like toilet paper and 1kg boxes of Barilla spaghetti. Groan. A supermarket feels like a dentist’s waiting room compared to a market, but, like the dentist, you’ve just got to suck it up and go every once in a while (or at least until somebody at the market works out how to make well-priced artisan tins of baked beans).

I was going to start off saying that this post was tangental to cooking, but on a few seconds’ thought I’ve realised that the post is about the root of cooking. It’s easy to forget that our food actually grows, and maybe that’s why having even a tiny kitchen garden can make you truly joyful about the ‘bounty of summer’!

As you know, Arthur and I live in a really tiny flat. Thankfully part of the flat is a little balcony. On this balcony is now a herb and single-tomato-bush garden, in the full leafy green, juicy red riot of summer fruitfulness. I’d grown herbs before, but my basil in particular is lot more successful this year (give the guys a bit of space and a lot of water and they grow like crazy for months).

Somewhere I had read that cherry tomatoes ‘grow like weeds’. I couldn’t quite believe it (especially with my slightly wilted green fingers), but I thought I’d plant one and see what happened… Cherry tomatoes grow like weeds. I spent weeks pinching out the little new sprouts at the ends of the branches every morning – otherwise Arth and I would have needed a machete to get out onto the balcony for a sunset glass of wine!

I’ve gotten quite into gardening. I even found this awesome blog – You Grow Girl – which is the chirpiest chat about having a bounteous roof garden in Canada (that Gayla is like an heirloom tomato whisperer or something!). The only thing is, you’ve got to be far more patient than with cooking (think in months, not minutes), but I guess I’m getting older and that’s not such a bad thing.

The wait is worth it: I love going out onto the balcony to grab a few leaves for a tea or a pasta sauce. I’ve even made up a recipe or two on the spot… (more…)

We completely over-meated ourselves over the festive season and so we’ve spent the first weeks of the year going back to our veggie roots. One of the truths of cooking vegetarian regularly is that it can be difficult to find recipes that are a little different. While trawling through Epicurious one day a couple of weeks ago, I found something that sounded deliciously quirky – a mushroom and fennel bread bake.

Arthur was extremely sceptical, but – bless him – he said he’d trust my culinary instincts. My brother, who’d pitched up for a Sunday night supper windfall, looked positively crestfallen when he found out what he’d been landed with. But as you can see from the picture of Ryan happily tucking in… I was right! It was scrumptious (with a green salad with pears and toasted pine nuts). One of those I-don’t-even-miss-the-meat triumphs.

Of course, I’ve lost the link to the recipe, but basically you cook chopped porcini mushrooms and fennel (about 200g each), onion (one small) and celery (one stick) in a pan until soft. Whisk together a cup of cream, half a cup of stock and two eggs in a large bowl. Add about 200g of ciabatta (cut into large dice), a good lot of grated parmesan, some herbs (thyme and sage, or whatever) and the cooled veggies, to the custard. Let it soak for at least 15 minutes, and then put the bake into a bread tin, sit it in a roasting pan half full of hot water, and bake at 190° for nearly an hour until the custard is set and the bake is browned on top.

The people at Health for Life in the Gardens Centre ran a competition for vegetarian recipes recently. I pitched up with my recipe nicely printed out with photo attached, and was told that the “cook off” was happening that night (!) Maybe next year they’ll make the instructions a bit clearer…

Anyway, here’s the (vegan, nogal) recipe I created for them. I thought the chai was fun: tongue-in-cheek hippy-ish, but still functional (I would usually use the chai spices like cinnamon, ginger and black pepper in a butternut soup anyway). (more…)