January 2009

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.

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*