BANHOEK CHILLI OIL – ENOUGH SAID!

FOREVER! That's how long I wanted to buy Banhoek Chilli Oil, and low and behold, on our way back from Ballito at a quaint stop next to the highway, I actually discovered 2 bottles! Apologies to Yuppiechef - I really did mean to buy the oil, but I never got around to clicking the “check-out” button.....  Back home we couldn’t wait to try out our new Banhoek Chilli Oil.

After a long week of giving our souls to our daytime jobs, we were in dire need of some relaxation, and what better way than trying something new in the kitchen!  The hubster and I decided to make dinner using the Banhoek Chilli Oil. Being proactive, I went to their website and came across a recipe that looked delicious for this coldish Friday night in Centurion - Truffle Spaghetti. Done deal! This will be our Friday night dinner.

Inspecting the recipe at first, you might notice that it seems a bit “vegetarian-ary”.  A while back I did a fast, which mainly excluded all meat and all animal products from your diet. I learned a lot from this fast. Like, I REALLY, REALLY LOVE MEAT, no, seriously I LOVE MEAT and will forever LOVE MEAT and will FOREVER eat MEAT (and other animal products). 

The hubster and I are not rabbit feeders or mad at the world, so we modified the recipe. Why? 'Cause we can, of course! YAY! We added a little taste of meat, and you might ask what kind of meat? In the form of a little Peppa Pig – Prosciutto- of course. (Side note: If you are the parent of a 2-year-old, you will know that Peppa Pig is haunting you in your dreams currently because that is ALL your 2-year-old is watching.)

The recipe calls for a generous splash of the chilli oil, but we only added 3/4 of a tot. Be careful – we don’t want you to have ring sting tomorrow, now do we?!

The taste explosion in my mouth tonight was thanks to Banhoek Chilli Oil – ENOUGH SAID!

In hindsight, I told the hubster this dish needs something creamy, so next time we will be adding a few chunks of goat's cheese. If you feel bold throw in a couple of capers. I am convinced it will be exceptional.

Last thought: No offense to the vegetarians and vegans out there. I am very sad for your loss.

Free State Oxtail Potjie

 

There's a saying doing its rounds in South Africa stating:, "Wat is 'n vrou wat kan braai? Sy is kwaad" resulting from the typical behaviour of men at a South African braai who are drinking a lot of beer and just keeps on adding wood to the fire.  I would like to rectify this, "Wat is 'n vrou wat kan braai? Sy is 'n Vrystater"

Born and bred in the Free State with all the cattle and sheep farms surrounding us, we have a special love for meat. You can keep your "Meat free Mondays" or "Meat free May", thank you very much!

Winter is approaching and with the cooler weather we love to make our Bloemfontein Oxail Potjie.

The first time we made this potjie was about 12 years ago, in the middle of the winter in a very cold Bloemfontein. We drank alot of red wine and the pot were only ready at 11pm that evening. We froze our butts off in the cold Free Sate air that night, but we were younger and more interested in drinking wine.

Clearly from the pictures you can see, it was a party and only the wine mattered......

Now at almost 40 I must say, I am too old for that shit. So we start our oxtail pot really early so that it can be ready by 6pm. The wine still matters but we're unfortanetly to old to party -"like it's 1999" - because a hangover now lasts a week.

So here you go, the recipe for the Bloemfontein Oxtail potjie..... You're welcome ;)

1. Take fresh beef oxtail, (the quantity depends on the size of potjie that you are making, we usually use 12 oxtail pieces for our Size 3 potjie) dunk it in some flour and brown it on the stove in olive oil whilst you are frying celery, carrots, onion and garlic in your potjie.

2. Remove the celery mix and add your oxtails to the potjie and brown it in the potjie for another 5 minutes. Return the celery mix, add 2 cups of lamb stock and a cup of red wine, (and please don't use shitty red wine in food, if you won't drink it, we also don't want to eat it), simmer this for about 4 hours on a constant medium heat.

3. After four hours and copious amounts of red wine (well, copious is a relative description depending on your age, HA HA), add a packet of rich oxtail soup and a cup of coca-cola.  Simmer for another 3 hours.  In the last hour add baby potatoes (halved) and simmer for the last hour.

4. Serve with rice and some spring onion as garnish and ENJOY!

Jy gaan jou vingers af lek - you can thank me later ;)

This is NOT how life should be - Pasta

It's basically 2 years since my last post... yes, yes I know.... to gain attraction and popularity you should post frequently! But hey! I am a Professional in a global company, I've got two small girls, Corona came and fucked us over and work is hectic! Oh! And I'm an awesome wife to my just-as-awesome-husband.

It is Wednesday, I've started my day very early with a lot of important Viber messages from my colleagues in Singapore, and I have accomplished a lot today. What will we do tonight to wind down...? Braai? That is the South African way of relieving stress, but I am "gatvol"(fed up) for a braai (barbeque) so I decided that we should start a fire (it is winter in South Africa - well the last bit of it anyway) and we should make pasta. I am in the mood for something different, or like my sister Ilze will call it - "volksvreemd" (something unknown to our culture). I google, why? Because "they" say Google is your best friend.  But alas, I don't find anything that intrigues me, so I reckon, lets combine some of my favourite ingredients and see how it pans out!

So here goes............

Prosciutto Halloumi and Green Fig Preserve Pasta

Below you will find the pictures of this AMAZING delicious dish!................ and it is super easy.

Cut the Halloumi into squares and fry it in olive oil until golden brown

Take the Prosciuttos and fry it in olive oil until crispy

Cook the Penne Pasta until al-dente

Heat olive oil together with a small pinch of butter (to prevent the oil from burning) and fresh garlic, a hint of ginger and fresh lime until the garlic seems………….. well, cooked? LOL.

Combine all of the above and dress with quartered figs on top!

Voila! You have an amazing dinner – pair it with Tokara’s 2018 Shiraz and you’ve got yourself a gourmet dinner which would’ve almost break the bank in a “fancy-smancy” Italian restaurant.

Life is short! In the past month I have lost 3 friends, due to Covid. Young (well relatively young) individuals who was somebody’s – somebody. A void that can never be filled again, an energy which is forever lost, simply put, a life that can never be replaced. So, be grateful, live your life proudly, accept each new day as a new opportunity to love fiercely and appreciate deeply.

I leave you with this (and delicious pasta if you try out my recipe 😊)

“Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars” Kahlil Gibran

Be blessed, be healthy and be safe!

 

Jan Braai’s lekker braai

What is needed:

1kg Deboned Lamb Rib

2 Lemons

30ml salt

30ml pepper

1 red onion

Small tub of feta

1 pack of sun dried tomatoes

30ml capers

Butchers string

0.5 cup of white wine

0.5 cup of lamb / mutton stock

Clamp / hinged grill

Now kids, the reason you follow a recipe is because it gives you a set of instructions to succeed at dish that is new to you.

We did not read the recipe and things started going south almost immediately.

I really struggled to get my hands on some deboned lamb ribs. Apparently, it is not something widely available. Finally the good people at Pick and Pay Southdowns were willing to debone some lamb ribs for me.

Now, if you read Jan Braai’s recipe, the very first instruction is – phone the butcher and order deboned lamb ribs. So from step two onwards I read more carefully.

You start by laying out the lamb rib seasoning the lamb rib with salt, pepper and lemon juice to taste.

Then you spread the sun dried tomatoes, capers, feta and onions as evenly as possible on the rib.

The cut I got was a bit thick and it was hard to roll so I had to trim some of the meat in order to make a better roll. (Maybe an Amsterdam rolling professional could help here?)

Ensuring the filling stays nice and firm, roll the lamb rib into a tube and tie securely with some butcher’s rope. Butcher’s rope was another item I couldn’t easily find, luckily, the kind people from the PnP butchery saved me again here. They were kind enough to give me some when I asked nicely!

Now place the lamb in a potjie (pot) for a 90 minutes. (Another surprise since I apparently did not read the recipe thoroughly). Now, I had to explain to the head chef why we will behind with 90 minutes. So kids, if you want to avoid the head chef rolling her eyes at you – read the recipe before starting.

So now, quickly get your potjie ready put in white wine and lamb stock. 90 minutes or so in a potjie will make the lamb meat very soft but keep it juicy.

After 90 minutes, remove the lamb and cut it into nice equal size pieces. Since the lamb slices can be hard to handle it helps if you place them in a hinged grill.

On hot coals braai the lamb slices until they are a nice golden brown and the fat is nice and crispy. It would take +- 10 minus to complete.

For a side dish, these barbequed sweet potatoes in a cilantro vinaigrette comes highly, highly recommended.

The result? A soft succulent lamb paired with the smoky sweet potatoes. It is an absolute winner.

Lessons learned for the day? Read the recipe through at least once before starting. Even it is just a quick look see. It will help you to avoid surprises later on the recipe. And, if you told your wife – “yeah sure, I read the thing, now leave me alone,” then you absolutely have to read the damn thing.

Recipe is from the book Jan Braai Shisanyama. 

Mantou and Singapore Chilli Crab

And… we are back with a new blog entry. After the birth of our daughter we took a small hiatus (four years) but we are back!

At the start of every year my wife travels to Singapore for business meetings at their headquarters and it is company tradition – first night in Singapore it is Chilli Crab for dinner. This year she brought a kit back from Singapore and on Saturday night for the first time ever I got to experience Chilli Crab.

Well… not Chilli Crab. The recipe calls for a 1.2 kilogram live Sri Lanka crab, and around these parts, Sri Lanka crab (crab in general) is hard to find. So instead of crab we settled on prawns for a number of reasons. Biggest reasons – I do not have to kill a gigantic pissed off crab.

To accompany the Chilli Prawns we made Mantou. Also known as Chinese steamed buns, they are sweet, light and fluffy. Perfect for soaking up the chilli sauce.

Cleaning the prawns and getting them ready for the chilli sauce

Making the chilli sauce is easy since the kit provides you with everything you need - You can get this kit only in Singapore or Australia - darn, sorry fellow South Africans :( .

The tricky part is getting the Mantou perfect.....

To make the buns you need:

·         300 g all- purpose flour.

·         2 tablespoons sugar.

·         1.5 teaspoon instant yeast.

·         150 ml water.

·         Pinch of salt.

To get started with the buns, heat some water to +- 35 degrees and then melt the sugar in the water and mix in the yeast. Let the concoction stand for five minutes. 

During the waiting period you will see foam on the water. It is carbon dioxide being released as the yeast feeds on the sugar.

Next, the flour. Since we do not have all-purpose flour we took cake flour and added two extra tablespoons (more info on substituting all-purpose flour with cake flour).

Put the salt and flour in a bowl and then slowly add the water / yeast mixture. Stir the mixture while you slowly add the water.

Knead the dough until it is a nice soft and smooth consistency.

Now let the dough rest until it has doubled twice in size (more or less an hour). To see if the dough is ready, lightly touch the side of the dough. If your fingertip indentation remains, the dough is ready. For more information on testing the dough, see this post from Red Star Yeast.

Keep dusting the dough and knead the dough again until it is smooth. All the air must be punched out of the dough to ensure the dough is as smooth as possible, I repeat ALL OF THE AIR must be punched out, this might even be therapeutic if you are angry. Once again Red Star Yeast has a good post on this.

Helping mommy and daddy

Now roll the dough in a log and cut log in slices about 2 centimeters wide.

Using a steamer, steam the dough slices until they become fluffy which takes around 5 minutes in a microwave. Note to self: Don't wait until the day you want to make these buns to find a bamboo steamer, because Murphy will make sure that you won't find a bamboo steamer in any store in Centurion. So we used a plastic steamer, next time I will rather plan ahead and get us the bamboo steamer. 

For a final optional steps, you can deep fry the buns until they are nice and golden on the outside.

Now for the last step - eat the chilli prawns! Soak up the sauce with those delicious fried buns!

What a fantastic way for me to finally share some Singapore culture with my wife. Maybe someday I will be blessed enough to experience the real thing...

Yes we are still alive and cooking...

Well almost!

Since our last blog entry a lot of good shit and bad shit happened.  We got married, hoorah! We had a miscarriage :( that was pretty shitty and changed the direction of our life quite a bit. I changed jobs, I got pregnant again and now we have a beautiful little girl called Femke (she is already 17 months old)

 

 



Femke kept us busy! She has been sick a lot and me and the hubby really struggle to keep things afloat without a support system.
We bought our dream house and moved in on July 1st.  True to Femke's reputation she fell ill the Sunday thereafter and what we planned to be a lazy Sunday with red wine, good food and a afternoon snooze in front of the fireplace turned out into a trip to the ER and a night in hospital :(

Okay so we had a very bumpy start to this new chapter in our life, but this will not stop us.  We are back and will try out new recipes again (especially after Femke's tonsillectomy on the 19th of July) and blog about it, in the meantime, try out one of Woolworth's DIY indian meals. 

 

We love the Butter Chicken with poppadum's and naan bread, it is quick and easy to make and perfect for a cold winters evening.  Pairing it with a glass of Kanonkop Kadette Pinotage is a must!!

Review: Moyo Fountains Valley

Review: Moyo Fountains Valley

 

Image source.

 

Normal criteria to judge restaurants by are quality of food, the class of service and atmosphere. For Moyo I have to introduce another category – your ass. 

After sitting at Moyo for just half an hour you will be acutely aware of your ass and how much it hurts. Although the chairs have a rustic charm to them, they are uncomfortable as hell and your ass will be begging for mercy.

During this first half hour you will also get thirsty since waiters at Moyo is seriously a scare resource.

If you do manage to get a waiter and order something, the waiter will return 10 minutes later only to inform you that they don’t have that item in stock. That goes for the wine and food. 

Eventually we got so fed up with the waiter returning to tell us they don’t have stock that we asked him to find out what they do have and then we will order that. 

 

The restaurant looks stunning. Too bad the food is just average.

Image source.

We finally struck gold and ordered something they do have. Luckily the food wasn’t as shit as the service. However, that’s all I can say for it though.  Average at best. 

There are so many negative things to mention about Moyo in Fountains Valley which is really unfortunate. The Moyo in Melrose Arch are for many people the definitive measuring stick you use to measure other restaurants with. 

I assume that Moyo had an ‘off’ evening and that most of the time they must be on the ball. How else would they have survived this long? 

So maybe it is worth your time and money to go there. I would definitely not go back there. The amount they charge for the food and the service you get...not worth it.





I can summarise the experience with this:

MOYO = FAIL :(