One gemsbok sirloin, cut into thick steaks and marinaded in a mixture of oil, lemon juice, wooster* sauce, garlic and rosemary for about eight hours. Dredge in seasoned flour…
…fry in a hot pan with some oil…
…until done (in this case kids, so some of these are rather well done).
Mushrooms (and beer) on the side…
…and an egg on top. Nom.
* We were surprised to hear contestants on So you think you can cook pronounce it “wor-sez-tuhr-shur-shire”. Erm, no.
Where four fellows drive 900 kilometers on a quest for free-range hormone-free meat, forget their first-night braaivleis in the farmer’s deep freeze, and end up on the back of a bakkie with a spotlight and a shotgun looking for another source of protein.
We had some chicken fillets and my dietician told me I should eat lentils so google to the rescue.
Fry two finely chopped onions in a bit of oil, add chicken and fry for a few minutes.
Add 2 cloves crushed garlic, 20 grams ginger (I realised I only had pickled ginger left over from experiments in sushi, that worked fine), 2 teaspoons garam masala, and 1/2 a teaspoon chili powder (I used flakes).
Fry this for a bit then add a tin of tomatoes and some stock, and 100g lentils. Add two bay leaves (I get mine from my brother’s tree in Bellville) and cook for 3/4 of an hour.
I also added a quarter butternut, cubed, 15 minutes before serving. Serve with rice (dietician says I can eat Basmati, I’ve been avoiding rice for a while so this is a bonus).
Some hot chutney and yum.
A sosatie is a kebab. Meat onna stick.
Start with a gemsbok loin (rugstring), nicely matured, cubed. Bacon is good. Some dried apricots, soaked in water for a few hours (also soak the skewers so they don’t burn). Some blanched onion, and some cherry tomatoes (it helps to work things out ahead of time, I had 8 skewers, 24 cubes of meat, 16 apricot halves, 16 tomatoes and 10 rashers of bacon cut into thirds. Some sosaties got more bacon, some got less onion).
Drizzled with olive oil & rosemary sauce.
There was a bit of loin left, that got sauced up and braaied separately. Also braaied a kilo of gemsbok wors.
Add a green salad and half a butternut wrapped in foil and put on the coals much earlier, and call it Sunday night supper.
This Toyota bakkie is called “die Blou Nier” (the Blue Kidney). Gert is the fellow who drives it, and he drives it well.
Spend a day on the back, out in the dunes, and you will see where the name comes from.
The Blou Nier, BTW, had 750 000 km on the clock when the speedo broke. So nobody really knows how far it’s gone. And they don’t keep easy roads out in the Kalahari.
Cut line for sensitive viewers — we were not there to buy meat at the Pick & Pay.
Winter has hit Cape Town. Wet, cold and miserable. The perfect weather for staying indoors and cooking soup.
I found some whole baby clams at the Fruit & Veg. Just the thing for clam chowder (something I’ve been wanting to make ever since having the Real Thing in San Francisco. Problem being that Tanya doesn’t like fishy dishes, so I needed an alternative.
Enter General Tso’s chicken, another recipe that’s been keeping a tab open on Firefox for quite some time.
Basically, you dredge the chicken (breast fillet cubes) in cornflour and fry it, then it goes into a slow cooker with a Hoisin / soy / rice vinegar sauce for four* hours. Add some more sauce at the end and you’re done.
For the chowder, I used Christina’s recipe, except that I had whole clams which I first needed to steam open. I then incorporated the water / clam juice into the white sauce, boiled the potatoes (small cubes) and onions, and added the bacon and chopped clams at the end.
Now I need to figure out how to make a sour dough starter so that I can serve the chowder properly next time.
* Recipe calls for four hours. We were hungry well before the three hour mark, so that’s how much time we gave it. Worked well enough.
I made this game stew for the second time, and it was again great.
The original is from the Weg magazine and is in Afrikaans.
• 40 g dried mushrooms
• ½ cup warm stock
• 1 kg meat in 4 cm cubes. I used gemsbok.
• ½ cup flour
• 2 onions
• garlic
• 2 tablespoons brown sugar
• 2 cups stout (I used Guinness the first time and homebrew the second)
• 1 tin cherry tomatoes, drained (reserve sauce)
• 2 tablespoons Worcester
• 2 tablespoons soy
• 4 sprigs thyme
Chop the dried mushrooms and soak in hot water or stock (I added the stock powder later). Do this before prepping the meat and onions.
Coat meat with flour and brown in oil (I skipped the flour, it makes a mess and I am yet to be convinced). Keep meat warm.
Brown onion and garlic. Add sugar, add meat, fry for five minutes (I added the stock powder to the onion mix with the sugar)
Add beer, tomatoes, Worcester, soy, thyme, mushrooms.
Cook for an hour or so. Add the tomato sauce if it looks dry.
Serve with rice.
I didn’t bother with Weg’s baby onions at the end, but it sounds like a good idea.
A little restaurant called Satori.
Food is good (this is the Pork Belly – Beetroot Mash – Maby Marrow & Mushroom with Soya, Honey and Ginger dressing — apologies for crappy cell pic), waiters are excellent, the wine menu is above average for this kind of establishment, and the prices are not bad.
What is there not to like?
* Presumably Kalk Bay’s best kept secret is so well kept that I don’t know it. Yea I know, I’m a nerd.
Because it’s a bit like Beef Wellington but wrapped in pork.
It’s dead easy too. You start with a hunk of springbok rump, which you marinade in a mixture of Jimmy’s or similar and maybe some red wine. Whatever works for you. I didn’t get around to it for a while so the meat spent a week in the fridge. Remember to turn it once a day or so.
Then get hold of a large piece of pork skin. SPAR sells it as “pork spek”. It’s cheap. Liberally sprinkle the fatty side with pepper, mixed spice, herbs, garlic, maybe even some chopped mushrooms.
Wrap the meat in the skin, tie with string, stick it in the oven at 160 to 180 C for an hour to an hour an a half, and Napoleon’s your uncle.
I still had some gemsbok shin from last year. Started out with this allrecipes beef curry recipe, which ended up a bit watery — but that worked out fine, since I ladled all the liquid out of the slow cooker into a pan, and cooked some pumpkin in that, then added it all together.
And it was good.
So this is what you do. Get hold of some gemsbok shin. Or whatever. Cut into cube-like shapes and brown in the oil (with a lean meat like game you need to keep adding oil, don’t worry, it’s good for you). Meanwhile, slice an onion (or two if they’re small) into rings and put that in the bottom of your slow cooker. Put the browned meat on top, season with salt and pepper.
Cook two cloves of garlic, a teaspoon fresh ginger, and a chopped green chili for a few minutes, then add your curry powder (I used two tablespoons hot and one tablespoon extra spicy, but I suspect my hot curry isn’t, your mileage may vary). Add a tin of chopped tomatoes.
At this stage the recipe calls for stock, I mixed in two heaped teaspoons stock powder and added some water. Same thing. Spoon the mix over the meat, leave it to cook overnight.
If you use a slow cooker often, you’ll know that you need to add very little liquid. True, but for this recipe a bit more liquid is good. Because this is where you ladle off as much liquid as you can and cook about two cups of diced pumpkin in it until tender.
And then you add the pumpkin back into the curry and serve. Easy and pretty damn good. You probably want some rice on the side, sambals and raita can be good, poppadums always are.
