Picture credit: thanks brother K

I haven’t written in ages, mostly because my camera died of old age and humidity (does anyone want to donate a Canon Powershot G10/11/12 to the cause? Thanks). This post has only been possible because someone took pictures on my sister’s camera, and my brother took pics with his larney phone.

In February, suddenly our kid’s one year birthday was upon us. Suckers for a good theme, we decided to have a bit of a gory birthday, and asked everyone to wear red and black (purely for the photos of course… that barely ended up happening in the chaos that is 30 adults and around 15 smaller humans). Although the general advice is not to bother with anything until the kid is at least 2/3, it makes it so much more fun for us. Even for our not-a-baby-shower picnic in the park in Durban we had cupcakes with plastic maggots and flies crawling out of them.

On the actual birthday a few days before, as Z and I were dancing around the lounge to the Cramps, he did a spin-and-run and rebounded off the side of a wooden chair, leaving him with a massive shiner. Worst black eye I have seen on anyone in a while. And of course then there is the shame of it happening on my watch. But it somehow fitted with the gore theme and I almost painted a black eye in solidarity for the party (but forgot at the last minute, armpit deep in icing).

These were the main grossnesses we constructed.

The cake was adapted from this recipe. We doubled the recipe and then added blueberries so the inside would look more like pink mushy brains, with a possible clot or two. We cut the skull out with a homemade stencil and filled the sockets and surrounded the skull with bleeding cooked mixed berries. Licorice for the nose and mouth. The table cloth was from our wedding.

The cupcakes were all simple chocolate cupcakes. Then we turned them into stitched up wounds and blood shot eyeballs with different coloured butter icing and licorice.

The severed fingers were all the captain’s doing. He fried up some Fry’s veggie sausages and broke them gruesomely, and used pieces of raw onion as finger nails. All Gold tomato sauce for blood.

The token meat was a pile of ‘scabs’ (biltong). There were also some beautiful biscuits brought by a cookie fiend we know. I will try and track down someone who took photos of them because they were beautiful. In keeping with the red and black theme, we also had a bucket of sangria to keep the parents sane amidst the mayhem.

Now to start planning number 2…

Ingredients:

• 3 roasted sweetcorn cobs
• half a chopped red onion
• 1 clove fresh garlic
• 1 green chilli
• handful of chopped parsley
• 2 tablespoons sour cream
• lots of salt and pepper

Roast the sweetcorn in a 180 degree oven for about 20-30 minutes. They can go in straight on the rack. Cut the kernels off the cob. Crush the garlic and finely chop the chilli and onion. Rinse and finely chop the parsley. Add the sour cream and mix. Season with a lot of salt and black pepper.

I made this as part of a bigger meal of salady things to stuff into pitas. I also made brinjal and yoghurt, and baby spinach salad.

Before I get on to how I compiled the delicious mush presented before you, I wanted to respond to something someone said to me recently. I was asked whether I have ever considered food styling for the blog. The answer was oh god no. Imagine having to painstakingly prepare not only the food, but each shot… I get tired thinking about it… I would hate cooking in an instance. So to avoid any confusion, the purpose of this blog is not to make food that can only be prepared in a well lit studio by the rich and well resourced (although wealth is relative and I am still comparably wealthy and suggest checking out where you are on the richness scale for a bit of perspective). Although I do love a bit of good food porn, gibberlicious  aims to share the kinds of vegetarian food me and my friends and family throw together with whatever we have at hand.

For the most part the veg I buy is whatever is seasonal: from markets, stall traders or fruit and veg shops like Madeira and Balmoral in Woodstock (which stock the same veg as Fruit and Veg City but cheaper, and since our car was stolen we have to go for the walking distance, and whatever can be squished in the pocket underneath the pram).  Occasionally, like with this recipe, the ingredients are somewhat fancier.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup quinoa
• 1 punnet fancy pants (or any mushrooms)
• 2 handfuls green beans
• half a big garlic / 2 cloves garlic
• 1 handful parsley (this could be a handful of dhanya or basil or any other fresh green herb)
• 2 generous tablespoons creme fraiche
• toasted sunflower seeds

Cook the quinoa as per instructions. This packet said 1quinoa:2water. I still feel like I am making it a bit clumsily so any suggestions most welcome. I didn’t add any salt so I could take some out for the dudeguy, so I had to salt everything later. I then steamed the green beans. I coarsely shopped the mushrooms and fried them in the garlic with some butter and seasoned with a lot of black pepper and salt. I then chopped the herbs and toasted the sunflower seeds. And then when everything was done I mixed everything together and stirred in the creme fraiche.

It is nice to serve with something like this beetroot salad, so the quinoa gets dyed all gory-like.

Vegan version: leave out the creme fraiche and fry in olive oil instead.

On my birthday in Cyprus I requested one of my favourite meals of all time: fresh louvi. It is one of my family’s staples and was my first post on Gibberlicious so I thought it was fitting it was also my 100th.

Before my yiayia died we would gather on their balcony in the evenings as the day cooled down and we would do things with our hands. Sometimes it was threading lavendar into these bulb like things for the linen cupboard. Sometimes it was crocheting or knitting. And sometimes it was shelling black-eyed beans. It became a ritual of sorts, especially seeing as we don’t really get fresh black-eyed beans here. It became such a thing of pleasure that my 90 year old grandfather tried to bring several kilos of unshelled beans through customs when he came to visit. Needless to say they were confiscated (along with several pieces of village haloumi).

So on my birthday, my mum, sister, cousin and I shelled the blackeyed beans in the 35 degree heat. In South Africa we usually cook the beans with spinach, but in Cyprus you get these massive marrows which we used instead. I can’t find the rest of the photos of the meal, but needless to say it was amazing. The fresh beans and marrows and the delicious olive oil…

I miss my yiayia.

Ingredients:

• green beans
• about 10 baby tomatoes
• 10 olives
• feta
• almonds
• balsamic vinegar

Steam the green beans. Halve the tomatoes and put into a pan with salt, pepper, olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Take the pips out of the olives and cut the pieces in half and add to the tomatoes. Roast the tomatoes and olives until the peels are popping and browned. Put the tomatoes into a salad bowl. Add the steamed green beans. Crumble the feta into the salad bowl. In this case I used black pepper feta. I am not usually a fan of flavoured feta, but these were off-cuts which were ridiculously cheap from the Foodlovers Market. Roast and add the almonds (you could use any nut here). Mix through. The tomatoes pop a little when the salad is stirred which creates a very flavourful dressing.

Vegan version: exclude the feta

In Cyprus we would often eat the butter, mint and anari with ravioli stuffed with haloumi and herbs. One day I will take on that challenge, but for now I am very pleased with such a quick meal. It meant the little dudeguy and I were in bed, him asleep and me with my novel, by 8pm (the meal took way shorter to make and eat than this blog post took to put together).

Ingredients

• 150g spaghetti
• 2 tablespoons of butter
• dried mint from Cyprus
• grated anari (Cypriot cheese that is like dried ricotta)

Boil the spaghetti in water with salt and some olive oil. Drain the pasta. Melt the butter through while the spaghetti is still hot. Sprinkle the dried mint and grate the anari.

Cupcake batter ingredients (adapted from this recipe):

• 2 eggs
• 125g sugar
• 125g butter
• 125g self-raising flour
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 4 heaped tablespoons cocoa powder
• enough milk to make a dropping consistency

Pre heat the oven to 180 degrees.

Ideally you should cream the butter and sugar before adding the eggs. I was in a rush so I just chucked everything together and mixed. Sieve the flour and cocoa together and mix through. I added red food colouring as I was interested to see how red velvet cupcakes get their colour. Add milk until the batter is soft enough to drop nicely when added to the cupcake cups. The batter should make exactly 12 cupcakes. The next time I make them I will add a bunch of good quality chocolate chips so there are gooey melty bits in the middle.

Bake for 15-20mins depending on the kind of oven you have. Let the cupcakes cool before icing.

Icing ingredients:

• 300g icing sugar
• 2 tablespoons cocoa
• 2 tablespoons butter
• milk
• chocolate vermicelli for decoration

Sieve the icing sugar and cocoa and mix through with the butter. Add milk until the icing is a good spreading thickness.

I was also misdiagnosed with a wheat allergy, so for years I had to think of ways to throw loads of vegetables at rice dishes so they were way more tasty. Generally this means looking at what is in the fridge (and these days finding things that aren’t rotting) and improvising. Luckily enough I had been staying with my lovely friend Gwyn (Eastcoast Tables) and had eaten some of the food she had prepared for her daughter. I didn’t know what it had in it, all I knew was there was rice, and fresh herbs, and creme fraiche. So when I got back home, and I happened to have something akin to these ingredients, I tried to replicate the dish in some form.

I served this rice dish with a brinjal, tomato and feta bake.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup of brown rice
• 1 leek
• 1 green chilli (I had a huge one so use 2 if you have smaller ones)
• half a cup of peas
• 2 heaped tablespoons of creme fraiche
• two big handfuls of wild rocket
• dried mixed seeds

Boil the brown rice with some salt. While the rice is boiling, prepare the peas. Fresh peas would be better, but all I had was frozen ones. I soaked them in some boiling water to defrost them. Slice the leek and chop the chilli and rocket. Roast the seeds in a pan.

When the rice is almost ready, add the peas to the top of the rice to steam with the last evaporating water. If you want to avoid extra pots and pans to wash, remove the rice from the pot and keep aside in a bowl. Fry the leeks and the chilli. Add the rice back into the pot with the heat on medium to reheat it. Add the creme fraiche and mix through. Switch off the heat and add the rocket and the seeds.

Vegan version: leave the creme fraiche

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!

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