Foooooood

This is a recipe from Jamie, which I scribbled down from a book my mom had. Simple, but great, especially if you have a vegetarian daughter who lurves mushrooms.

Thinly slice a punnet of brown mushrooms, fry in oil, add salt, pepper, maybe a bit of marjoram or rosemary, maybe a bit of chilli powder. Add one cup vegetable stock, bring to boil.

Meanwhile, boil a pot of water with a lot of salt, then slowly (as to not douse the boil) add gnocchi. When they float, remove with slotty spoon, add to mushroom sauce.

And that’s it. OK, you can add a couple of tablespoons of Creme Fraiche if you’re feeling decadent.

A.K.A. Mexican Chili, lime and chicken soup, straight from Lex Culinaria.

A while ago (actually, months ago) I cooked up a pot of chicken stock. I’d saved the leftover bones and bits from braai-ed marinaded flat chickens, three of them. Flat chickens are cheap and lekker, and the leftover bits make great stock.

I defrosted the pot (yea, I stuck the whole pot in the freezer, I was out of containers…) of stock, used it for the mushroom soup. There was about a litre left over, so last night I tried Lex’ recipe.

And it rocks.

A while ago (actually, months ago) I bought a polystyrene tray of mixed chillies. Yes, I stuck it in the freezer too. Gotta love a deep freeze. Out of this I pulled what looks a bit like a pimento, but completely round, and a little yellow triangular thing which looks a bit like a Santa Fe, but which might be Praire Fire, according to Chile Head. Gads, I need a book on identifying chillies. I also bought, last weekend, a long yellow something that tastes more like a sweet pepper than a chilli. Anyway, used half of one, half of the other, and the whole yellow thing, because Tanya also wanted some soup, and she’s not as accustomed to the hot stuff as I am. Removed the pips, of course.

For the rest, pretty much followed the recipe.

Now I need to try to propagate chillies from once frozen seeds. Because I really liked the taste of this mix.

We invited some people over, and with winter fast setting in, soup was on the menu.

Tanya felt like a mushroom soup, and I thought to make Irish Potato Soup with Bacon and Vegetables again (I found some more leftover turkey stock, yay!). But then Viv (visitor from PE) suggested three bean soup. So I climbed into the pantry cupboard and emerged with butter beans, small white beans, black eye beans, red speckled beans, and fava beans. OK, five bean soup then.

Viv having fun.

I made a mushroom soup recipe from RecipeZaar, using brown, portbellini and button mushrooms, and it was good. I also had lots of mushrooms left over, supper tonight is Mushroom Bourguignon (which I’ve made before — highly recommended).

Apologies to the houseblogs.net readers. My posts lately have been about anything except house DIY.

We had basically the first of many housewarmings-to-be last Saturday. Was a good party. 12 couples, we had snacks, and beer, and wine, and a good time was had by all.

A lot of things happened in the run-up week. My wardrobe moved from the living room to the bedroom, for one (more on that later, it’s related to the shower… will tell you later, once I’ve permanently fixed the problem).

So… basically… nothing house related happened subsequently. And there’s a lot that needs to happen. Ah well.

Today, Tanya felt like a nice hearty curry. Beef, of course, she doesn’t like mutton.

So I toddled off to the local Spar, got 700-ish grams of stewing beef. Bit of Worcestershire, bit of Tobasco, bit of time, cut it up, flour, slow fry, remove. Fry onions and carrots, “extra spicy” curry powder and turmeric, deglaze with my brother’s Pinot Noir (realise I need to register a domain for him so that I can link to it). Add stock, tomatoes, apple, bay leaf, meat back in, simmer for an hour.

Add dumplings (not a success, next time read the packet, you need *self raising* flour, idjit. Kick self).

Result: very lekker curry.

From somewhere on the web:

BASIC CURRIED STEW (‘Westernised’!)

750g boneless beef neck, cubed, or beef ‘curry pieces’
30 ml cooking oil
1 onion, chopped
15 ml curry powder
15 ml turmeric
1 chilli, seeded and coarsely chopped <- I omitted this
5 black peppercorns
2 bay leaves
1 apple, cut in wedges
1 tomato, skinned and cubed
3 carrots, sliced
200 ml meat stock
15 ml cake flour <- I omitted this. Or used 3x this to coat the meat before frying. Whatever.

Brown meat in heated cooking oil (remove). Add onion (and carrots) and sauté till transparent (obviously the onion not the carrots). Add curry, turmeric and chilli (or not chilli) and fry for 1 minute. Add peppercorns, bay leaves, tomato and heated meat stock (and apple, and meat back in). Lower heat, cover with lid and simmer for 1 ½ hours or till meat is tender. Thicken with cake flour and water paste if necessary. Serves 4. (serve on rice).

(Notes by me)

And there’s a trick to browning the meat. First, coat it with flour. Then, stick it in the pot, pieces not touching, in batches, and slowly brown. Turn with tongs. Brown some more. You want a coating of carcinogenic gunk sticking to the bottom of the Dutch oven. This kills you, maybe, but tastes good, guaranteed. Risk I’m prepared to take.

Kluitjies (dumplings)

Mix 175 grams *self raising* (kicks self) flour with 75 grams butter or marge, add water to make dough, add herbs and salt and pepper, make balls, float on stew/curry/whatever, cook for 1/2 an hour. Simple.

Note to self: your readers might have trouble following if you post after sampling the Pinot.

Last week sometime we bought a nice big avo. Not quite ripe yet, so I wrapped it in newspaper, stuck it in the veg basket and… didn’t forget about it, for once.

It was nicely ripe on Thursday, but we didn’t get around to it until this morning. Very ripe, extremely tasty, so I made guacamole. With a red onion from the market, a handful of cherry tomatoes… I licked the food processor clean :-)

Guacamole Recipe

Take one large very ripe avo, one small onion, 1 or two or (I used) 3 cloves garlic, a small tomato or a handfull of cherry tomatoes, the riper the better, 1 1/2 teaspoons lime juice, and some salt and pepper, maybe a teaspoon or two Tobasco sauce, and blend in the food processor.

There, you’re done.