Kitchen Vixen

Nobody’s ouma’s milk tart

December 9th, 2011 § 14 comments § permalink

To appease my acid levels after my bitch session in Do I look bloggered? and because I was feeling nostalgic, I decided to bake a milk tart for the first time in twenty years. Milk tart. That cornerstone of Boere culinaria and the absolute antithesis of newfangled confectionary. Even in our mothers’ era milk tart was considered a tad oudoos. It’s more of an ouma thing. It is currently enjoying a retro-cool revival but I have encountered a few pasty, gelatinous offerings in restaurants. Of course, always pimped as The Best Milk Tart Ever Made With Grandma’s Recipe. Did grandma have a rough time of it during the Great Depression… or are you just skimping on eggs and butter?

Mom's much handled recipe tome

I was convinced me and my grandma’s recipe could do better. And that I would find it in my mom’s big black book. Quelle horreur when a definitive family recipe was nowhere to be found! I found a milk tart crust on page 4 and further on my old neighbour tannie Evelene’s coconut milk tart, followed by aunty Elsabe’s regular milk tart towards the end of the book. All I know is I like my tart with a Tennis biscuit crust. And enough cinnamon on top. So I took Evelene’s crust and Elsabe’s filling and baked a tart that eclipsed any of my sepia-toned, butter and eggy custard memories. I will give you the recipe. If you don’t have a memorable milk tart recipe in your family, please adopt this one. Pretend. Copy and paste it any which way you like. Don’t bother with credits because this really is nobody’s ouma’s milk tart.

She's plain but all heart

Universal ouma’s milk tart recipe:

CRUST 1 packet Tennis biscuits, reduced to fine crumbs; half a cup of sugar; half a cup of flour; 125g soft butter

Cream butter and sugar together, add dry ingredients, mix well. Line a standard pie dish (pictured above), including the sides and press down gently to create an even crust.

FILLING 1 litre full cream milk; 125g butter; 1 cup sugar; 4 very heaped tablespoons flour; pinch salt; 4 eggs separated, whites beaten to soft peaks; vanilla (I used two vanilla pods but would guess a quarter teaspoon of vanilla essence should do it); cinnamon

Heat oven to 220 degrees Celsius. Pour most of the milk into a pot, leave a cup aside to add to dry ingredients. Add butter to milk and bring to the boil. Remove vanilla seeds from pods, add seeds and pods to milk. Let milk boil for a minute or three to absorb the vanilla flavour, stir to keep from burning. In a bowl, make a dough with the flour, sugar, salt, egg yolks and remaining milk. Once milk has boiled, strain through a sieve, pour over dough. Mix well and pour back into pot. Medium heat and whisk like hell otherwise you’ll have lumpy custard in no time. Allow to thicken, then add whipped egg whites. Pour into pie dish, sprinkle with cinnamon and bake for about 20 minutes until set and crust edge is golden.

I strongly recommend you have a slice while it’s still warm. Delicious. My neighbour Simon described it as ‘quite possibly the best milk tart ever’ and Lord knows Simon’s a tough dessert diva to please.

Do I look bloggered?

December 7th, 2011 § 15 comments § permalink

I haven’t blogged for so long I damn near forgot my password. So I went to Barcelona, ate at some fine restaurants, did the write-ups and stepped away from the machine. I could say it’s because I discovered I was totally iron-deficient and only ate liver, spinach, steak and almonds for a month. Or that I was hopelessly in love for the first time in centuries and turned into the oldest teenager on the block. Or maybe it’s just that I had the one under-whelming restaurant experience after the other.

How pretentious. Go overseas, eat at a couple of great restaurants and now nothing here is good enough? Not quite. It’s just that when I started this blog, restaurant reviews weren’t really going to feature. Due to my involvement with the Expresso Show on SABC3 that changed. The blog became restaurant review-driven. But successive mediocre over-priced meals started chipping away at my initial resolve to not bitch about other people’s efforts.

Now I feel like a cheap vacuum cleaner stuck in a corner. The following must be said.

I am totally gatvol of pseudo fine dining. It’s like a hologram of the real thing. Except for the prices. They are very real. An assemblage of decor, verbose menus, flavourless and overly engineered plated ‘elements’ that add jazz-hands visual appeal with no integrity. I feel so cheated when I eat this crap. It’s the food equivalent of Hong Kong Vuitton. And I don’t even like Vuitton. I know the South African public is gullible and tourists go far far away soon after they’ve been ripped off…

But enough of that. Unlike the predictable big five list of usual suspects that feature on too many mains menus. Hmm…. let me guess: duck, pork belly, springbok, linefish and steak. What do they do with the rest of that pig because everyone is so stuck on pork belly these days. With star anise and five spice? Now where have I seen that before…. EVERYWHERE!

Why is this getting to me now? Am I eating out too much? Probably. Which accounts for most of the bitterbek food critics out there. They’re just not hungry enough. For the record, I’m very happy with simple food, done well. The key is honesty. Walk your talk. Which brings me to my next point. Talk. I know food is bigger than sex these days and chefs are the new rock stars but try and be more like a drummer than a lead guitarist, okay. Just a thought. You never know when humble pie is served again.

Am I done, am I done? No. Dammit. It’s almost too easy to take potshots at waiters in this country but this deserves a mention. I recently ordered shrimp cakes with an avocado salad as a main. Cakes. That’s plural, right? Shrimp. Undefined multitude, maybe? I received one large family-sized viskoek. Shrimp are small, I know. And they come frozen and devoid of mega flavour. But they’re cheap so given the price of the koek (R95) I expected it to be packed tighter than a bulimic’s tuck box.

The koek consisted of kingklip and mashed potato with max 5 fingernail-sized shrimp. I was disappointed. When I inquired as to the whereabouts of the shrimp in my shrimp cake, I was told by a slow and overly-familiar waitress that I should be grateful for the abundance of fresh kingklip in my cake. This pearl of eschewed logic was delivered as she spun her weighty self around on challenged ankles. To illustrate how silly I am? THIS IS NOT A GAME OF WHOTHEFUCKAREYOU I felt like shouting at her. Bring the shrimp.

Exhibit A: half a cake splayed open to reveal its shrimp content

Another attempt at shaming her into admitting that the dish was a farce resulted in an explanation that the shrimp was chopped finely to ‘spread the flavour’. Micro-science is alive and well in Seapoint. No, I don’t want a complimentary dessert. Bring me a drink.

I first coined the term food fraud in Stellenbosch in the mid-nineties when I ordered a toasted baguette with mozzarella, sun-dried tomato and basil and got a floppy supermarket hot dog roll with cheddar cheese and tomato, microwaved to a radio-active pulp and then artfully wrapped in tin foil to resemble a giant metal sweetie.

I hate it when pretty words pimp nasty food.

Like a dessert I had at an otherwise nice establishment in Constantia recently. Don’t you think ‘Thyme brioche with lemon cream, blood orange jelly and meringue’ sounds nice? I did. An interesting departure from the usual dessert line-up which always includes some death-by-chocolate tart or fondant, pannacotta and/or crème brûlée and a berry mess.

Exhibit B: Trifle with borderline personality disorder

In the words of the late great Amy Winehouse, what kind of fuckery is this? Scatterlings of dry left-over breakfast brioche with not a hint of thyme, instant pudding-like custard with a limey twang, rock hard segments of blood orange jelly and the inexplicable addition of micro greens as garnish. Bwegh. As mentioned, this is an otherwise nice establishment so one can only hope this colourfast flavour-conundrum soon finds its way to the recipes-never-to-be-repeated file.

Does it feel good to get my bitch on? Not really. I’d rather have good food. I stopped blogging at about the same time Another Damned Food Blog appeared. It’s hilarious. An anonymous author rips into everything that’s fake, faddy and fraudulent in the food industry. No, it’s not me. I’ve been asked a few times and though flattered (bitch can write) I would never use the word fuck so much. Because I know like…you know, lots of words, like, adjectives and shit.

O where was I where was I… am I done? NO!!! How could I forget?! Cookbooks. Dear Lord! Please save us from the tsunami of mediocre google-cut-and-paste easy-as-microwave-pie bullshit books hitting the shelves roundabout now to fill the Christmas stockings of unsuspecting folk that really don’t need another potato bake recipe. I recently looked at a food author’s work and got the sneaky feeling a brief sleuth session on google would deliver most of her recipes, with minor adjustments. I didn’t bother. I did however bother to make a dish from a recently launched cookbook by one of our very own celebrity chefs. Much like Anthony Bourdain’s most recent literary offering Medium Rare, I got the feeling this chef was prompted by his handlers to produce a cookbook because it would be the money-savvy thing to do, rather than the expression of a soul brimming with culinary inspiration. I made a lamb knuckle dish that asks for 100g sugar to 600g of knuckle. What the… protein rich malva pudding? All I’m saying is people are gonna wise up. So surf this wave of indiscriminate consumption but just keep an eye on the rapidly approaching shoreline.

Funny how the guys at the top – apart from being really good because they are simply propelled to care more, try harder – usually don’t indulge add-on fuckery. Thanks David Higgs for creating a truly delicious and well-priced menu at your new joint in Joburg, thanks Bertus Basson for keeping it rock and roll real, thanks George Jardine for your individualistic flavour profile, thanks Richard Carstens for being the bravest food dreamer, thanks Luke Dale Roberts for spinning the funk into fine dining (your gourmand menu remains top of my bucket list), thanks Kobus van der Merwe for your articulate take on our orphaned food history, thanks to the Italian family who own Asta la Pasta because I eat there more than anywhere else, thanks Toerie from Umami for the best lunches in town, thanks Baker family from Wild Peacock for being real time food heroes, thanks Margot Janse for being the only woman to have truly given the boys a run for their money. There are many more… especially cooks rather than chefs, that feed us nicely.

Cheers to you

Your ever-lovin Kitchen Vixen

Two sticks happy face

October 1st, 2011 § 2 comments § permalink

Chopsticks and toothpicks. Food-handling tools in two different cultures. At Dos Palillos in Barcelona, Japanese cuisine is presented tapas-style. It’s the fusion of one cuisine with another’s way of eating, rather than a confusion of two food cultures. Owned by Albert Raurich who cheffed at elBulli for 11 years, you know you’re in for something special when you slide behind the bar at this voyeur-friendly kitchen.

Precision poetry in motion

I was damn near hypnotized by the measured, calm fluidity with which the chefs worked. If I ever had to fall prey to insomnia, I’d watch footage of Takeshi Somekawa (pictured above) working because it can only be described as kitchen Tai Chi. Yet the dishes appear at a rapid rate. The chefs at Dos Palillos are also known for their interesting hairstyles. » Read the rest of this entry «

La Vida Tapas

September 20th, 2011 § 10 comments § permalink

Expectation is the blow-up doll of idealist emotions but how can you approach the new restaurant of the past decade’s greatest chef without a few projections? I was nervous, excited and hungry when I walked through the door of Tickets in Barcelona. Tickets is the brain child of Ferran Adria’s younger brother Albert, owned by both, and with ex-elBulli chefs and staff in key positions.

Showtime menu and napkin holder

Located in the old theater district of Barcelona, Albert and his team went all out to create a vaudeville-style food fairground with witty detail and playful references to put you instantly at ease. So, there’s misconception number one cleared. You don’t have to get uptight about going to Tickets because they aren’t. After years of performing a tightrope act in the international culinary arena, Tickets is were the Adria brothers get to play. With La Vida Tapas emblazoned on uniforms, they’re going back to their roots and honoring the gastronomical heritage of Spain. Tapas is a way of life, of caring, sharing and savouring each bite.

Albert Adria

There are several service stations, each decorated to a theme and responsible for a different style of tapas. We sat in La Presumida that references the beach bars of Barcelonetta, the city’s beach front. » Read the rest of this entry «

Bavarian blitz

August 26th, 2011 § 0 comments § permalink

Touchdown! I like Germany, specifically Bavaria. To be exact, I like Kempten in the Allgäu. Because that’s where my sister Libby lives whom I last saw at my mom’s funeral fourteen months ago. This reunion was highly anticipated so a night out was in order, despite my near-zombie state after 24 hours in transit. My timing couldn’t have been better as it was festival week in Kempten. Everyone in high spirits, wearing Tracht (trad German clothing) and drinking tankards of beer.

I was an exchange student in Germany after school so it’s almost like a second home to me. My German is a fast-flowing grammatical calamity but who gives a kartoffel about grammar? We had dinner at the Altstadt Wirtschaft which, as the name implies, is in the old part of town, situated in a thick-walled underground cellar. They serve classic German fare made from scratch with only the purest local ingredients. Their veal schnitzel is legendary and everyone at the table had it. Served with cucumber and potato salad, of course.

Local is lekker all over the world

The welcoming posse with a thirsty gentleman in the background.

Libby, Rosi, Rita & Birgit

Owned by two brothers, Peter and Florian Geissler, the Altstad Wirtschaft is German hospitality personified. My inquiries about Riesling lead to Florian giving me a fine example of the wine to enjoy at home. Good man. In fact, they were so hospitable we only left after two… many pear schnapps later. Go ousus!

Plans for Libby and I to dress up in Tracht the next day didn’t happen. For obvious reasons. But I did make it to the town festival with my bro-in-law Bernd and nephew Paul. My sis says that when she arrived in Kempten twenty odd years ago, the town festival was a sad show. Not well attended and lacking in traditional spirit. Today, everyone is once again wearing Tracht. In this tech-savvy age of global culture I think it’s super cool that tradition is enjoying a revival. Besides, how can you look at someone in Lederhosen and not smile. I went off on Tracht-spotting.

Tracht made trendy with tattoos

» Read the rest of this entry «

Blommetjies & Braais

August 12th, 2011 § 1 comment § permalink

We had a day of winter last week so I bought a bag of waterblommetjies at the Spar. It felt like bredie time. And with such an oldskool dish I consulted my newly acquired C. Louis Liepoldt cookbook Kos vir die kenner, a book with over 1000 recipes that proves that at least one Afrikaner knew what mirepoix was in the 1930’s. Afrikaners, nay all white folk, may have benefited from Apartheid economically but culturally, it dumbed us down something awful. Like rocks on an island.

Savvy as Leipoldt was, cousin J warned that his book had to be taken with a pinch of salt. ‘Some of his combos are dreadful.’ Waterblommetjiebredie is a dish best prepared with restraint. Don’t innovate or deviate. It’s just blommetjies, lamb, salt, pepper and lemon juice. Maybe potato. She’s the queen bee of bredies. Leipoldt provides a few options and recommended the addition of anchovy, which I fell for. He advocates the use of suurings – those soft little wild stems with pink flowers that we used to eat as kids, before toxic sourworms hit the scene – to add zing to the stew. It rained cats and dogs so instead of picking suurings, I zested a lemon and added a bit of juice later.

But the blommetjies… Leipoldt wouldn’t have touched the gnarly old Spar blommetjies. My buds looked like cold-chain cadavers but at least they were picked early enough (pre-bloom). Soak them in vinegar water, rinse under a fast-flowing tap, top and tail the gnawed, tough bits and they should do.

Cap Classique

» Read the rest of this entry «

D-Day

August 1st, 2011 § 6 comments § permalink

Demo day arrived. Duck and Pinot Noir pairing for an audience of 30 at the annual Stellenbosch Wine Festival. Thanks to chef Mark Radnay and his ICA students I didn’t have much cooking to do. I prepared the beetroot relish and the jelly in advance (several times, as documented in The Jelly Olympics), which is a good thing as I had to interact with the audience for 45 minutes. I think the whole thing about women being such great multi-taskers is complete crap. Devised by men in the sixties to encourage us to do both paid and domestic work and not moan too much about the increased workload. I’ve worked in the film industry and publishing and can assure you that women in demanding positions are invariably… tricky. I for one lose my top lip when strung out. It’s a family thing.

But I gain a chin when baffled

I never went to the Stellenbosch Wine Festival as a student* because I only started drinking wine at the ripe old age of 27. I know. Missed out on years of booze cruising through the winelands. So I was ill-prepared for the onslaught of very young wine lovers. Fortunately my audience was mostly mature and sober. Even the young ones. I had the 12 o’clock slot. Here’s me pretending to read a Clover cookbook while they filed in.

» Read the rest of this entry «

The Jelly Olympics

July 29th, 2011 § 2 comments § permalink

Yes, I shall make a wine jelly… In fact, a pinot noir jelly! Paired with duck. And something earthy and seasonal. Like beetroot. I mean, what would you do for your first ever live food demonstration at a wine festival? Absolutely nothing else came to mind. I love Pinot Noir. And duck. So look no further.

Ever made a wine jelly? Me neither. Even as a kid I didn’t like jelly. Compared to malva pudding it’s a sad excuse for a dessert. In fact, jelly was the reason I refused to eat trifle. But a wine jelly… now that I could consider. All my recipes called for pectin. But somehow pectin has fallen out of favour and is nowhere to be found. ‘Wat gebruik al die boervrouens deesdae?!,’ my inner voice squealed. Leaf gelatine was also not to be found in the village so I opted for the powdered variety. My first attempt (made with Noble Savage, a lovely affordable Cabernet Sauvignon) looked like chopped liver. I didn’t bother straining it as it was just an experiment. I then bought a little sachet of agar agar from the health store and made a sheet of jelly from Stark-Conde Pinot Noir – my wine of choice for the demo at the Stellenbosch Wine Festival. Agar agar is derived from seaweed and with a 50g sachet you could build a tornado-proof two-bedroom dwelling, seal the cracks in a family-sized swimming pool or stop the flow of the Orange river in flood. Plus it has a nasty aftertaste. I was luckier the third time around with a mixture of leaf gelatine (kindly donated by Richard Carstens of Tokara just up the road) and half a teaspoon of agar agar but the jelly was still too sour. The aim was to retain as much of the Pinot flavour as possible but nobody wants to eat sour jelly. Behold, the first three attempts:

Three bottles down and still no strike

From right to left: chopped liver, the Fountainhead of jellies made with agar agar and on the left, getting there with a mixture of leaf gelatine and a pinch of agar agar. But then a road trip to the Swartland lead me to the kind people of Fynbos Foods, where I managed to score 50g of pectin! Serendipity or what? As I sit here, a container with pinot jelly is setting in the fridge… or not. I’ve added more sugar and am quite frankly too tired to care. That’ll be tomorrow’s little drama. My demo at the Clover Kitchen at the Stellenbosch Wine Festival kicks off at 1. The audience will enjoy a glass of pinot with their portion of duck breast, beetroot relish and pinot noir jelly , courtesy of the kind people of Stark-Conde. It’s a food and wine pairing session after all.

On Tuesday night I subjected a few friends to a trial run. After a terrible day, Katie really took to the wine jelly. Especially the first one. I suspect a fuller bodied wine like a Cab makes for better jelly, although I hate admitting it now with so much vested in Pinot jelly. Or maybe she just needed the sugar. » Read the rest of this entry «

El Bulli is Tickets

July 19th, 2011 § 2 comments § permalink

Yip, the great Ferran Adria is serving his last supper at the world’s most famous restaurant, El Bulli, on Saturday 30 July and to celebrate his massive contribution to modern cuisine, our own Richard Carstens will be hosting a tribute dinner at Tokara restaurant on the very same night. I’ll be there! And I won’t say a word about foams and skidmarks and blobs cause it’s going to be SPECTACULAR. Book now.

Am I the only one that thinks El Bulli is Tickets is funny? Ferran is closing El Bulli and he’s already opened a molecularly inclined cocktail and tapas bar in Barcelona called Tickets. Riiight?! Maybe all that safety dancing at the 80’s party I crashed last night has caused a humour regression of sorts… right back to about 1986. Any event, I’ll be visiting Tickets when I hit up Barcelona in September. My friend Guy sent me this pic of their dessert plate.

Ferran slumming it at Tickets

Richard Carstens, fresh from Hong Kong

Richard is buzzing after a two-week cooking stint in Hong Kong. He says the veins of influence between the East and Ferran’s wizardry run deep. So expect to be blown away by his tribute dinner. From where I sit, I can see little tufts of smoke rising from his lair above the Tokara kitchen… inspiration distillation in progress.

I’m reviewing Tokara and my epic ten-course meal on Expresso Show next Wednesday 27 July. Or click here for the blog review.

Also on the 30th of this month, yet on a slightly less accomplished note, I’ll be doing a food demonstration (my first) at the Stellenbosch Wine Festival (massive culinary events colliding, I know – El Bulli closing, my demo, the Tokara tribute – aeish!) to an audience of about 80 unsuspecting folk. I’ve chosen food and wine pairing as a topic and am marrying duck and Pinot Noir shotgun-style. Which is why I spent my weekend boiling wine to make jelly. I hate wasting good juice but I have to get it just right. My first attempt resembled chopped liver.

Check out the Festival website here.

King of Zing at The Test Kitchen

July 12th, 2011 § 2 comments § permalink

I love freshness. In everything. Wine, food, people. The opposite of stodgy and staid and stuck in a rut. With food, it’s about more than the newness of the produce. That elusive fresh element has to do with a balance of flavours and a certain zing most commonly defined as acidity. Don’t let the word put you off. It’s when food hits your tongue and your mouth waters for more.

Chef supreme Luke Dale-Roberts talks about umami. That elusive fifth taste that fuses flavour to create a mouthfeel greater than the sum of its parts. It’s like a natural MSG that leads to unbridled plate scraping. And my meal at The Test Kitchen in Woodstock’s Biscuit Mill was laced with it. In The Test Kitchen, Luke has created the perfect playground for his imaginative East-meets-West flavour combinations to shine.

Keeping it tight - LDR and his team

I’m a sucker for cheese and tomato combos. From the humble braaibroodjie to this: home dried tomato, pickled tomato, miso cream cheese, wood fired aubergine dressing and jalapeno and apple puree…

Did I mention the parmesan crispy thingies?

It was incredible. Saliva inducing flavour bursts, with every item distinct yet in perfect harmony. You just want more. Conceived to make fine dining more accessible, The Test Kitchen is small, informal and very trendy. Beautiful hand-stitched chairs by Casamento next to metal-topped tables with felt lamps overhead. The lunch menu is compact with starters in the Asian flavour range and mains leaning towards Euro cuisine. I opted for the wood fired pork belly, coco bean and bay leaf jus, TK kim chi and pak choi.

Pork belly with asian greens

I noticed a neighbour’s perfect vegetables popping with colour. All done sous-vide at 85 degrees for 50 minutes, thereby retaining just-plucked colour and texture.

Bags of goodness, sous-viding away

Confession time – my lunch made one thing very clear. I have to return for the 11 course gourmand tasting menu – The Fantastic Eben, Adi and Luke Show – served evenings only. Luke goes all out to knock your flavour socks off, with wines by Eben Sadie and Adi Badenhorst of Swartland fame. Like the foie gras, red cabbage and fig ‘mi-cuit’ (semi cooked), rabbit ham, braised chestnuts and gently pickled quince paired with Sequillo White Port 2010. Eben Sadie has been called the Baby Jesus of the wine industry (he can do no wrong) and Adi as the Elvis Presley (cause he rocks) and together with the King of Zing, this is probably the most profound food experience to be had in this country. And it belongs on every foodie’s bucket list.

The Fantastic Eben, Adi and Luke Show

Time magazine agrees. Read about it here. Or visit The Test Kitchen’s website for full menus and images. Or catch my review on SABC3 Expresso Show tomorrow morning at about 7.40am’ish, give or take a few minutes.

I daresay, I think I’m back in the fine-dining saddle… thanks Luke. I needed to be reminded. And I’ll be back for the big show.