Banana and mango sorbet

I found these photos lurking in a folder on my machine – I think we made this sorbet a year ago (thanks Brad for the recipe suggestion). It was definitely pre-baby, because the quality of the pictures had deteriorated somewhat by dessert… probably had nothing to do with the several bottles of wine consumed… It is a super easy and delicious summer dessert (although the banana can get quite snotty when it melts too much, so eat it quickly).

Ingredients (for 4 people):

• 2 bananas
• 1 mango

Chop the fruit and put it into the freezer. The smaller the pieces the better (we discovered through trial and error). Depending on your freezer, the freezing could take anything from a few hours to a day. The fruit has to be frozen solid. Only liquidize the fruit when you are ready to serve.

The mango sorbet is perfect as is, but next time I am going to mix honey and pistachios with the banana sorbet. Please let me know if any of you try any other fruit. I have a feeling that grape sorbet is going to be amazing!

Lemon roasted chickpea, baby marrow, red onion and feta pasta

I have a bit of a backlog of easy pastas. It is easier to cook and take the pics than it is to find time in a day to process the images. I used to have a fridge overflowing with vegetables, but I quickly realised that a lot of food was getting wasted, as a cheese sandwich or beans on toast is much much easier. Also, since the birth of the giant child, I have been addicted to creamy pastas (like creamy broccoli pasta or creamy pesto pasta). Preferably double thick cream. When I say addicted I mean several nights in a row addicted. Must-have-run-to-the-shop addicted.

This is a much healthier option, but only includes one green vegetable, because I am only buying one vegetable at a time to avoid mouldy puddles in the corner of the fridge. You could add any other vegetables as well.

Ingredients:

• 8 small/medium baby marrows
• 2 small red onions
• 1 tin of chickpeas
• handful of roasted seeds or nuts
• 2 cloves of garlic
• 2 red chillies
• Juice of a lemon
• Olive oil for roasting and a dash for the end
• half a round of feta per serving
• pasta

Chop the baby marrows and onions into largish chunks. Drain the tin of chickpeas. Finely chop garlic and chillies. Throw all of the ingredients into a roasting pan and douse in olive oil and lemon juice. Roast in the oven until the onions are soft. Cook the pasta – I wouldn’t recommend the shape we used. Some may say pasta is pasta, but for me the shape makes a lot of difference and I really didn’t like the caterpillar pasta. Mix the pasta through the vegetables. Add the feta when serving and garnish with seeds/nuts and a drizzle of olive oil.

Vegan version: leave out the feta and make sure you have vegan pasta or use rice instead

Astrid’s birthday lunch c/o Salad Lovers

I was due to pop on my mother’s 60th birthday so there was no chance I was going to be cooking for 60 people with a belly the size of half of previous me, tacked onto the front. My sister was in a conference so she wasn’t going to be cooking either. Thankfully, these guys exist: Salad Lovers. Cape Town people may have encountered them at one of the markets they sell their food at. The women in my family are all vegetarian (sometimes fascistly so), and it was a pleasure to be able to get someone else to cater delicious veg food. I was a bit out of it on the day, so forgot to take pictures of everything, but here is the menu as some food porn for the imagination:

Nibbles and dips:

• Aubergine puff pastry twirls
• Sundried Tomatoes & ricotta mini phyllo cigars
• Spinach, pea & feta Fritters
• Felafel balls
• Hummus
• Turkish tzatziki
• Pita

Salads:

• Confetti Cabbage salad with sesame seeds & caramelised almonds
• Marinated courgette & chickpea salad with Harissa dressing
• Aubergine & Lentil Salad with Crème Fraiche & herbs
• Roasted butternut, carrot & sweet potato couscous salad with poppy seed dressing
• Smoky corn salsa salad
• Decadent Green Salad with Everything

The food was delicious. Check out their website if you are looking for any catering to make vegetarians happy. They also do some meat dishes so everyone would be healthily stuffed.

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Wholewheat pasta screws with pesto, fresh tomato, danish feta and almonds

It has been a while since I had a chance to cook, or play on the internet with any real conviction, what with having a baby and all the madness that comes with the first 8 weeks of parenting (we have managed to keep him alive and fatten him to a healthy +6kgs, so all good so far). Now that my time and priorities have shifted, a quick meal has become not only essential, but the only kind of meal that will have the hope of happening, so please excuse me if the next few posts are all about haste. Most of them will probably be pasta as I try and quell the insatiable hunger from breastfeeding. Like seriously, I have a healthy appetite normally, but I have not been able to eat four filled croissants and still be hungry since I was a kid (when I, most memorably, ate 9 slices of toast with Nutella that German relatives had sent, in one sitting).

But back to the meal before the dude sleeping on my chest wakes up…

Ingredients:

• 3 tomatoes
• 1 clove garlic (or more if you want)
• Leftover pesto (or make some fresh)
• Danish feta
• Wholewheat pasta screws
• Almonds

This dish came about when trying to make the most of a relatively bare fridge, leftover pesto, and some not-so-great-looking tomatoes. Pour boiling water over the tomatoes to loosen the skin. Peel and chop. Finely chop some garlic and fry. Add the tomatoes. Scoop out the leftover pesto and add. While the sauce is cooking, put the pasta on to boil, and toast the almonds.

When the pasta is ready, crumb the feta through the sauce. Mix in the pasta and add the almonds. Eat really quickly while you have a gap…

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Brigitte’s Käse Spätzle (Kaese Spaetzle)

I can’t remember where I first had käse spätzle, but I have come to associate it with family friends in Durban. Despite my mum being German, it is not something I grew up with, but it is a dish I do so love very much. It reminds me of humid summer nights, in a wood-iron house in Manor Gardens; of drinking far too much red wine and smoking far too many social cigarettes, and talking intensely until far too late. So on our last visit to Durban I asked Brigitte to make it so I could document it and share it on the gibber. It was a summer night, but a much more demure wine-and-cigarette-less evening, what with being-knocked-up-ed-ness and general healthery.

There are not many vegetarian dishes in the stereotype of German cuisine, which is probably why I grew up with more of the mediterranean, middle eastern, and asian food I usually post. Cheese and wheat (the captain’s favourite food combination) was not something we regularly had. Macaroni cheese was something we ate at other people’s houses.

My mother recently tried to make käse spätzle, but she is not into rules (which is why, although a phenomenal cook, she is not a good baker either). ‘Recipes are for sissies’. She doesn’t have the patience for the science of cooking, and prefers improvisation – which is how I learned how to cook. So, with only a vague sense of a recipe, she whipped up the batter and pushed it through the traditional press she had inherited, but as soon as it hit the water it disintegrated. The result… a swampy puddle of diluted flower and egg mix and a good half an hour of weeping with laughter as we tried to think of uses for the sludge so as not to waste food. I think the best use was as a form of wallpaper glue.

Ingredients:

• 250g normal flour (cake)
• 5-6 eggs (depending on consistency – see instructions)
• +/-100g emmentaler
• 4 smallish onions / 2 large onions
• A decent knob of butter
• salt and pepper to taste
• spätzle press

Slice the onion and fry slowly in the butter, allowing them to go glassy and soft.

While the onions are frying slowly, prepare the spätzle. Put a pot of water on to boil with some salt. Measure out 250g flour and pop into a bowl. Crack 4-5 eggs into the flour and mix with an electric mixer (see pics for the appropriate attachment). Depending on the consistency, add another egg or two (again, have a look at the pics to see how the batter should form little worm poo shaped mounds).

Once the water is simmering, put the batter into the press and squash through, allowing +/-15-20cm strands to go through. The strands should break off, but you can gently encourage them with a knife as well. Allow to boil until white foam puffs up all around the spätzle. Scoop out with a slotted spoon and drain in a colander. Repeat until all the batter has been cooked.

Add the cooked spätzle to the onions and return to a medium heat and mix through so the spätzle keeps warm in the pan. Grate the emmentaler and mix through the warm onions and spätzle so it melts into gloopy strands.

I am sure there are all sorts of things to serve it with (which I plan to experiment with once I have enough guts), but we had it with a simple green salad, which was perfectly delicious. Thanks Brigitte!

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Mushroom, brinjal, lentil, pea and fresh basil lasagna

Veg lasagna used to be one of the only veg meals you could find on most restaurant menus. It has always been the go-to safe option for meat eaters cooking for vegetarians. Often soggy and tasteless. A good lasagna can be amazing though. My vegetarian cousin has been visiting from Germany and made a really delicious lasagna and it got me thinking… I realised I have not made a lasagna in over 10 years. Luckily this realisation came at the same time as lasagna sheets being on special at Fruit & Veg City. Instead of getting too fancy, I decided to use cheap and readily available ingredients (and that was all I had in the fridge…).

Lasagna Ingredients:

• 1 brinjal
• 1 punnet of mushrooms
• 1 onion
• 2 red chillies
• 3 cloves of garlic
• 1 tin tomatoes
• 1 sachet of tomato paste
• juice of half a lemon
• oreganum
• 1 tin of lentils
• 1 cup of peas
• handful of fresh basil
• lasagna sheets

White sauce ingredients:

• 2 Tablespoons butter
• 2 Tablsepoons flour or maizena
• Milk
• Grated cheese (we use uncoloured cheddar)
• Mustard powder

For brinjal layer: Slice the brinjal and roast in the oven with olive oil and salt until browned and soft.

For mushroom layer: Wash and slice the mushrooms. Fry in butter with white and black pepper, and a dash of wine if you have some lying around. If I had more cash, or it was cheap mushroom season, normal button mushrooms could be replaced with shmancy mushrooms.

For spicy tomato and lentil sauce layer: Finely dice the onion, slice the chillies and finely chop or crush the garlic. Fry the onions until they are glassy and golden. Add the chillies and the garlic. When the garlic softens, add the tin of tomatoes. Add the tomato paste and the juice of half a lemon. I still have the most amazing dried oreganum from Cyprus, but other fresh herbs are also delicious. I would have used fresh rosemary if I didn’t have the oreganum. Add a dash of balsamic and salt and pepper to taste. Drain the lentils and add. Let the sauce cook together and reduce slightly.

For the pea and basil layer: I only had frozen peas which I defrosted in some boiling water and then drained. I then picked a generous handful of fresh basil from the garden. I am very pleased that the basil seems to be fighting the wind and the bugs.

For the white sauce layer: I would make the sauce however you feel comfortable. I asked the captain to make quite a thick sauce so it wouldn’t leak through the whole lasagna. In case you are not sure how to make one of these sauces, this is the way I think he made it… Melt the butter and mixed through the maizena to make a rue. Slowly add the milk and allow it to thicken on a low heat. Once it is ready, add mustard powder, salt and pepper, and melt a handful of cheese. Grate extra cheese for the top.

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees. While the oven is heating, start layering the lasagna:

1. tomato sauce
2. lasagna sheets
3. tomato sauce
4. mushrooms
5. pasta sheets
6. tomato sauce
7. basil and peas
8. pasta sheets
9. last of tomato sauce
10. brinjal
11. white sauce
12. cheese

Bake in the oven until the cheese is browned and the pasta is soft. It was actually a lot quicker than I thought it would be. I was very surprised that the lasagna retained its form when sliced and you could taste the different flavours in the layers.

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Beetroot, red onion, bean and dill salad

Beetroot is not everyone’s favourite, but I am a sucker for the colour. They are somehow gory. I love the way they unashamedly stain everything. I do also like the taste.

This recipe was inspired by a beetroot salad my dear friend Gwyn made once. I would recommend checking out her cook book East Coast Tables for delicious food from KZN. It is not all vegetarian food, but there are a lot of veg dishes. The book showcases largely unpretentious recipes made with a plethora of local ingredients from the east coast of SA. We always eat so well when we stay with Gwyn and her husband Cameron.

I can’t remember which parts were in the original salad, and which parts I added.

Ingredients:

• 4 beetroot
• 1 red onion
• 1 tin beans (I use small white beans as they get stained the most satisfactorily)
• palmful fresh dill
• dress with olive oil, salt and apple cider vinegar
• sesame seeds (optional)

Boil the beetroot with the skin until they are soft. Drain and let cool, and the peel should come off really easily. Cut them into thin slices. Drain the beans. Slice the red onion relatively thinly as well. Chop the dill. Mix everything together and season with olive oil, salt and apple cider vinegar. I usually use about 3 tablespoons olive oil and about the same vinegar. Sometimes I add more vinegar as I am a bit of a junkie, but it depends on how everything tastes together. If you have sesame seeds, they also taste delicious in the salad and absorb the beetroot blood nicely too.

I like serving it with a range of other salads including potato salad, as it stains the yoghurt dressing so gruesomely.

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