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.

Ingredients:

• 3-4 generous tablespoons of sundried tomato pesto (you could use commercial pestos, green or red)
• Half a tub of cream
• Spaghetti
• 3 baby marrows
• Juice of half a lemon
• Parmesan, salt and pepper to garnish

Boil the spaghetti in water, olive oil and salt. In a pot, pour the cream and pesto and let it thicken and reduce on a low heat. At the same time, griddle baby marrow and season with the lemon juice while they are cooking.

Mix the pesto sauce through the spaghetti and garnish with the baby marrow, grated parmesan and salt and pepper to taste.

In the meantime, I thought I would start the year with some pesto. As I have mentioned before, pregglingtonville has made me very food lethargic, so quick fixes have been my saviour. This generally involves foraging for things in the cupboard and fridge and hoping they ultimately all work together. This pesto takes very little time to make and can be turned into many things, like this creamy pesto pasta.

Ingredients:

• Sundried tomato quarters (I used one Ina Paarmans sachet, including the juices)
• 2/3 cloves of garlic
• 1 red chilli
• Handful of basil (very excitedly from the garden)
• 100g pistachios (I have also used almonds, sunflower seeds and cashew nuts in previous incarnations)
• Handful of grated parmesan (I have used mature cheddar as effectively in the past)
• Salt and pepper
• Heavy handed dashes of olive oil to keep it lubricated

Shell and dry roast the pistachios. Then all you basically do is put everything in a blender. I like to keep the pesto a little crunchy so I don’t blend it until it is completely smooth.

Vegan version: just leave out the cheese.

We decided to try and have a braai. I say ‘try’ because braaing is not something we do all that often, especially unaccompanied by ‘real men’ (braais are still often sexist affairs). We are more on the scrabble end of the entertainment spectrum. Braais are quintessentially South African, but generally we are at braais where other people are in charge. We may throw on a Frys veggie sausage or two, but generally end up indulging in more of the dop than the dead things. So I think this was something like our second unassisted braai in 10 years.

Being ‘in the family way’ (I am collecting pregnancy myths and phrases if you have any), and unable to drink beers and eat as an afterthought, I decided to make some parcels of things to put on the fire. They were pretty simple concoctions.

Baby potato parcels

Ingredients:

• 8 baby potatoes (4/parcel)
• 4 cloves of garlic
• 2 green chillies
• butter and/or a dash of olive oil
• salt and pepper

I was only making parcels for 2 of us, so each parcel contained 4 baby potatoes, 2 whole cloves of garlic, and 1 chilli. Wrap these in tin foil with butter and a dash of olive oil (for vegan version leave out the butter) and a heavy handed grind of salt and pepper. Roast in the fire until the potatoes have browned. The garlic is the best! Mushing it all over the potatoes is amazing.

Baby tomato and olive parcels

Ingredients:

• Baby tomatoes
• Packet of calamata olives
• Finely chopped garlic
• Chopped herbs (in this case I had dhanya, but parsely would work really well as well)
• Dash of balsamic vinegar

Double the tin foil up so the juices don’t spill. We had also doubled up the tinfoil on the potatoes, but it is less important than for this parcel as this one gets really juicy. Pop all the ingredients together and roast on the grill or at the edge of the fire so it doesn’t burn. The tomatoes should start popping open. One of my favourite dishes at South African braais is stiff pap (mielie/corn meal) doused in tomato relish. These parcels would be delicious with pap. I still have to learn how to make really good stiff pap.

The best thing about braais is you can take relatively simple ingredients, and the smokey fire flavour makes them seriously delicious. Another thing we love doing is just putting a whole onion in the fire to roast. They go all soft and squishy and sweet and smokey.

We served the parcels with a rocket, feta and spring onion (thanks again Alex) salad, with an olive oil and lemon juice dressing.

I used to live in the same flat building as a friend of mine and every now and again, to my pleasure, she would make sweetcorn fritters. So, when we went away to hang out in a log cabin next to a river for a weekend, I asked her for the recipe (thanks Sarah, I hope you don’t mind me sharing!).

We had some fresh chillies from Durban and some dhanya which we added. Sarah’s recipe called for half a finely chopped onion, but we had some red spring onions from another friend’s garden (thanks Alex).

Ingredients:

• 1 tin creamed corn
• 1 egg
• 2/3 cup flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 giant red spring onion (or 1/2 onion – finely chopped)
• a couple tablespoons of milk to get a runnyish consistency
• finely chopped green chilli
• finely chopped dhanya
• grated parmesan

Finely chop the onion, chillies and dhanya. Crack the egg into a bowl. Add the tin of sweetcorn. Mix the egg and sweetcorn together. Add the flour and baking powder and mix through. Add the greens and mix.

Fry a large tablespoon at a time in oil and drain on a piece of newspaper. Grate parmesan on the top.

Its not quite the same as a proper bean and potato curry, sugar beans curry or mixed bean curry, but in the absence of time and desire, I reckon its a balanced and tasty enough meal…

Ingredients:

• 1 or 2 cloves garlic
• 1 or 2 green chillies (depending on how much heat you want)
• 1 heaped tspn Gorima’s leaf masala
• 1 tin of baked beans
• 1 slice of toast
• Grated white cheddar
• Sprinkling of dhanya

Finely chop the chilli and garlic and chuck in a little pot with some oil. Add the leaf masala. Open the tin of beans and cook with the garlic, chilli and masala while you make the toast. I seriously didn’t cook it for long. Grate white cheddar (or any other cheese) onto the toast. Add the beans and sprinkle some fresh dhanya on the top.

Vegan version: leave the cheese and make sure you have vegan bread.

But there have been so many strawberries about. It was bound to happen.

I was also feeling a little calcium deficient so I bought some fancy pants organic free range milk. I have struggled with drinking milk straight – especially thinking of all the cows being kept in perpetual fake pregnancy (hypocritically, cheese doesn’t make me think of the rows and rows of immobile and confused cows).

Double whammy – calcium for me and fruit for the captain.

Ingredients:

• Strawberries
• Dash of honey / sugar
• Milk

Wash and scalp the strawberries. Add a bit of honey or sugar (optional). Add milk. Blend. Drink.

The above pictures are from a lokmades feast we had. We had a mountain of the delicious balls and gibbered until we got hysterical. Basically they are pastry balls, deep-fried and then soaked in syrup.

And then there’s Wiltons – a chain bakery that specialises in local delicacies. Leaving my niece with the grandparents and great-grandfather, we (captain, me, sis, sis’ man-meat and girl-cousin) went on a road trip and bought a box of these and gibbered them in the car, dripping syrup down our chins and dusting icing sugar on our cleavages.

This is one of the places we went to on our trip. Maybe thinking warm Cypriot thoughts will defrost my fingers in the coldness of Cape Town.

I always thought that chocolate brownies were really difficult to make, but a few years ago Zoe gave me her mum’s recipe, which I have been making as a quick and impressive dessert ever since. I like that it is a recipe that doesn’t need a lot of expensive ingredients to taste great.

Brownie ngredients:

• 100g butter
• 6Tbps cocoa
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup sugar
• 3/4 cup flour
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 cup / 100g chopped nuts (in this case I used pecans, but you can use walnuts or almonds or a combination of all three)

Icing ingredients:

• 1 Tbsp butter
• 2 Tbsp hot water
• 1 heaped Tbsp cocoa
• Icing sugar to make a runny icing (+/- a cup)

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees. Place a bowl over a boiling pot of water and melt the butter. Sieve the cocoa and mix it into the butter. In another bowl, crack the eggs and add the sugar. Beat them together until fluffy. Mix the egg and sugar fluff with the butter and cocoa. Sieve the dry ingredients into the bowl and fold through. Coarsely chop the nuts and fold through. Pour into a greased dish and bake for 20-30mins. Be careful not to bake it for two long. It should be moist. The brownies are done when you an imprint remains when lightly touched by a finger.

While the brownies are baking, make the icing. In a bowl, melt the butter with the hot water. Sieve the cocoa and about a cup of icing sugar into the butter. I know the amount for the icing sugar sounds vague, but I kinda wing it until I have a relatively runny icing. Pour the icing over the brownies while they are still hot. The icing will stiffen as the brownies cool.

Cut the brownies into squares and serve with cream, ice cream, fresh strawberries, custard or all of the above. I so wish I had brownies for breakfast right now.

Ingredients:

• 2 onions thinly sliced
• Chilli flakes
• 6 hard boiled eggs
• 2 Tbsp tamarind
• 2 Tbsp chilli flakes
• 1 Tbsp sugar
• Dhanya to garnish
• Oil for deep(ish) frying

Finely slice the onions and fry them slowly in oil until they are browned and crispy. Soak the 2 tablespoons of tamarind in a cup of boiling water. Squash the tamarind between your fingers to get all the juice bits off the pips. Strain the tamarind juice through a sieve into a pot and add the chilli flakes and sugar. Cook and let the sauce reduce until it has thickened and become syrupy.

Hard boil 6 eggs and heat the oil until it is really really hot. Cut the eggs in half and place them yolk side up in the oil to fry. Turn them over carefully so the yolk doesn’t fall out. Sometimes it does, but when you fish the fried eggs out of the oil you can pop the yolk back in.

Place the eggs yolk side up on a plate. Pour the tamarind sauce over the eggs. Sprinkle the fried onions on next and finally garnish with the dhanya.