Foooooood

We went to the Porter Estate Market, bought all kinds of nice things, including an aubergine, five or six heads of garlic, some spinach, and a bag of grenadillas, which are called passion fruit in most parts of the world, it seems.

The aubergine was for making pseudo-Baba Ghanoush. “Pseudo”, because I used hummus instead of tahini. I had to bake the aubergine, so I also roasted the garlic. Now to find some tahini to make the real thing, to compare.

Tanya felt like a vegetable bake, so we googled this recipe, added broccoli and cauliflower, tastes as good as it looks. I made Tanya do all the work, but she still claims I made it, because it came out well…

I don’t often see grenadillas for sale, so when I saw this I figured I could use them to top a cheesecake — since I had a tub of cream cheese left over from the last time I made cheesecake a few weeks ago (I finally found a recipe that works really well).

Before baking.

I then googled for what to do for the grenadilla topping. Turns out it’s easy, mix with gelatine and let it set.

Behold, bitchez! (Roughly translated, I think it came out rather well :-)

Meanwhile, Tanya was rooting in the freezer and found an unlabelled container of what I suspected was a meat sauce for pasta, made… can’t remember when or why. Defrosted that and added the five heads of garlic’s worth of roasted garlic. Since the topic under discussion was lasagne, that’s what I decided to make. Except I choose my recipes carefully (that is, IMO, the #1 rule for cooking — cheat!) I had the sauce already, mixed up the cottage cheese, sour cream and egg sauce, and layered meat, one layer lasagne sheets, spread some sauce, another layer lasagne, some more sauce, and repeat. Top with cheese.

No prizes for presentation, but it was goood. Had the rest for lunch today, I think we’re both flea proof for the next few weeks.

Oh, and I tried making a sourdough starter but it didn’t take. Fortunately I have a sachet a friend brought from Yellowknife, will try that next.

Christmas left me with a whole lot of tomatoes in the fridge. Half a container of small red cocktail tomatoes, most of a container of mixed red and yellow cocktail tomatoes, and a whole unopened bag of Roma plum tomatoes.

And with Tanya and the kids off to Knysna for a week, I figured I would make tomato bredie (Tanya hates mutton, Jessica’s a vegetarian, but Tamsyn might have liked it, except I put a whole lot of chili in).

Found an Ina Paarman recipe online, used a whole lot less mutton, and three whole green chillies from a packet that I stuck in the freezer a couple of years ago.

Used this nifty Christmas present to reduce the sauce. Ain’t it cute?

*burp*

We invited Tanya’s folks over for supper on Saturday. I had to do some tech support for a friend in Somerset West, then went back via Bellville to get an O ring from the hardware store and a bunch of supplies from the Fruit & Veg.

Found a rather large (it was still the smallest on the shelf) hunk of marinated pork loin roast. Which I had to cut in half to get it to fit my black pot.

I also went via the Constantia Aroma (for bubbly) and Pick & Pay, where I found a large bunch of beetroot for R5.99.

Tangent : As a kid, I didn’t understand why my mother liked asparagus from tins or beetroot from jars. Then I met fresh asparagus and beetroot, which both really rawk. I suspect my mother was searching for that taste, the canned stuff being a weak shadow.

So I cooked the beetroot according to the first recipe I googled. Topped and tailed them, rubbed the skin off, sliced and stuck them in the fridge. (First time I used the electric domino, works well).

Back to the roast. I followed a recipezaar recipe I’d used before, except that with the pork being pre-marinaded, I skipped step 3. I also made mustard-roasted potatoes, which were excellent. Persuaded Tanya to steam some veggies, and skipped making the braised sauerkraut (in hindsight, probably a mistake). But nobody noticed, because the pork was excellent. And then some.

I wanted to make gravy from the juice in the pot, but it was very fatty, so we skipped that in favour of the ready-made stuff. And I must say, the Denny brand gravy is excellent.

So, on to the reverse risotto. After the juice cooled down, I removed most of the fat (and threw it away, I should have kept it, but right now space is an issue — I need to get a chest freezer organised). Heated the pot up, and fried rice in the oil, added wine — you know, classic risotto recipe. Except then I added water only, figuring that all the tasty bits were in the pot already.

And they were. My oh my, this is good rice.

Jessica (the 13 year old) had a friend over, and they wanted to bake. Chocolate cake. So I found a recipe and let them loose in the kitchen.

I had to intervene to explain that 350 degrees was Fahrenheit and our oven works in Celsius/Centigrade, and I had to explain that “baking soda” is probably what we call “bicarb”, but for the rest all went well and nobody got poisoned.

If you found something this colour in the Amazon rain forest, you would do well to avoid it…

We had a black south easter blowing — lots of rain, from the south, which showed up at least three leaks that were not there with the prevailing rain from the north we’ve been having all winter. Soup weather.

Normally I would make snert, but I needed a quick recipe, and it also needed to be vegetarian.

Google turned up http://www.101cookbooks.com/archives/vegetarian-split-pea-soup-recipe.html

I added a turnip, and (vegetarian) bacon bits. And of course Worcester sauce.

The “add salt” hint works well. I put in at least four times the salt I normally would. Wow.