South African Baking Recipes and World Cup Fever

South Africa is exploding in a fervour of flags, vuvuzelas, rainbow wigs and World Cup paraphenalia in the lead up to the big day on Friday. We’re slightly out of it here on the farm, but every time we go to town we get absorbed into the fever. The children are asking to go shopping in Spar on Friday to see all the staff in their crazy hats and wigs and feel some of the atmosphere. As a phlegmatic Britisher, I watch all this excitement over what is really just another sporting event (please don’t shoot me, I am flying the flag in the car, honest!) with slightly bewildered pleasure .

I don’t remember any of this national exuberance when Britain hosted a World Cup… or maybe we never did, it would have passed me by completely. (edited to add: My husband tells me I'm wrong, that there was great excitement and gees over the European Football cup when Britain hosted it. I must have been in Italy at the time, enjoying the emptiness of the roads and wondering where all the people were!) Here though, even people who are not remotely interested in soccer as a game are thrilled by the whole event. Perhaps it is because South Africa was so isolated for so long, that to be the centre of the world’s attention and entrusted with the honour of hosting the World Cup, makes us all feel proud and happy (I do feel proud of my adopted country too). Perhaps it is just that we need occasions like this to bring our diverse rainbow nation together in a common opportunity for hope, goodwill and celebration. Here's an article on what the World Cup means to South Africa that expresses it way better than I ever could.

So in honour of the occasion, I'm posting a round-up of my most searched for, authentically South African recipes: all baking recipes and learned from my in-laws or adapted from South African cook books when we moved here. After all my South African gees (spirit) manifests best through food!


Malva Pudding Recipe: Number one on the list of my most searched for recipes is Malva pudding, which seems to capture the hearts and taste-buds of so many visitors to South Africa. The restaurant version is soaked in a rich creamy sauce at the end of baking and is delicious and heart-stoppingly rich, but my home version is just the pudding itself, spongy and slightly caramelley with the apricot jam and served with custard. It's the kind of pudding you can throw together from store-cupboard stand-bys and still make the family happy.

South African buttermilk rusk recipe: A lot of people come to my blog looking for a rusk recipe. They fall in love with Ouma’s rusks when they come here and want to re-create them back home. Or else they are ex-pat South Africans desperate for a proper South African rusk, for which there is no substitute abroad. I can’t promise that my buttermilk rusks are exactly the same as Ouma’s, but they have been a staple in my family for eleven years now and are essential to mid-morning tea in our house.

South African Milk tart recipe: Milk tart is another dessert that you never see abroad. Our family crustless milk tart version is a whole lot easier to make than the traditional tart, as there is no pastry case and it can be whizzed together in the processor in no time: ideal for a calcium rich snack for the kids, or just comfort food for the whole family.

South African Crunchies: Last but not least the South African crunchie: I have got in a lot of trouble, both in the family and with patriotic readers for comparing it to the English flapjack, but it is true that the flapjacks (not pancakes at all) that I grew up baking in England were just like these wonderfully South African crunchy oat and syrup biscuits, except that they didn’t used to have coconut in. I make huge batches for class camps now and they always go down well.



So stock up the biscuit tin in time for the Fifa World Cup opening ceremony and then, even if you can't be here in SA yourself, it will taste like it!

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An Empty Weekend... with Chocolate Brownies

A weekend with nothing planned is a gift. When you wake up on a misty Saturday morning, knowing that there is no soccer match to rush to, no shopping still to do, the day stretches out invitingly with myriad possibilities beckoning, most of them centred around food.

Those oranges and knobbly lemons brought straight from a friend's farm are desperate to be turned into marmalade, with a little support from a jewelled pink grapefruit for extra tanginess.

The winter sun breaks through the mist, tentantively banishing the chill of morning and soon citrus smells waft out to greet it. The pot bubbles throughout an impromptu outdoor picnic lunch, preserving sunshine in pots for my personal delectation through the year. This year's first batch is now ready to fill up the yawningly empty shelves in the larder. Just in time. I was down to my last jar, an unthinkable state of emergency.

While the marmalade simmers there is plenty of time for a sortie to the orchard and veggie garden. The sun is afternoon hot now, what would pass for summer in England, so Middle Daughter comes prepared.

Our two guava trees are surpassing themselves this year, bearing the most glorious golden globes, the largest guavas I've seen before, with unblemished skins and fragrant fruit. We pick all the ones approaching ripeness, fill the basket to the brim, and still the boughs of the trees bend under the weight of more green fruit, promising to provide enough guava puree to fill our freezers over and over. We leave the heavy basket under the tree and continue on to the veggie garden, where Youngest and her aunt are busy spraying bugs with a garlic spray, checking for out-of-season strawberries (they found three!) and harvesting carrots.

The sunshine slowed our footsteps, no hurry to return to the semi-darkness and cool air indoors. We wandered back to collect the guava basket, up over the rise to our house, welcomed by the fluttering of laundry rapidly drying on the line on the stoep.

I tore myself away to the kitchen to hobnob with the marmalade and a brownie recipe and left the children to stock up on Vitamin D till sunset chilled the air once more and they had to be dragged inside from trampoline and garden.

Today the promise of more sunshine was never fulfilled, the clouds stubbornly blanketed the sky and a light drizzle hustled the kids back inside from the trampoline to find refuge on the sofa.

The importance of having a big sofa is never so apparent as on cold cloudy winter Sundays. I was getting Sunday lunch ready, but could have squished in if necessary... right in the middle of the card game.

I got busy working on my food photography instead, trying to style my precious brownies according to the advice from the Food Bloggers Conference. The clock approached closer and closer to lunch time as I went backwards and forwards between the computer and the kitchen checking out the latest shot and eventually getting what I was after, while the potatoes got crispier and crispier.

The joy of having an empty weekend stretching ahead to fill, now concertina-ing to a close with a flurry of playing Pit, hairwashing and walking dogs, but still time left to blog as my husband makes cheese on toast for supper.

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Natural Firelighters

If we were truly environmentally friendly, then we probably wouldn’t be lighting fires just to warm ourselves and brighten up cold winter nights. After all wood cooking fires are one of the many contributors to the familiar murky brown line of smog that sits over Cape Town on fine days in winter, snuggling up to the mountain, after a run of fine winter weather, with sunny days and oh so cold nights. A spell of windy, wet weather blows it away and it is gone and forgotten till next time.

Sitting here on the farm the hazy tendrils of smog reach us too and yet we’re not ready to give up the joys of a roaring log fire to toast backs and warm hands before bedtime. Bedtime stories move to the sofa, so we can enjoy the fire a bit longer, before braving the chillier air of bedrooms and tucking up with a hot water bottle, bed-socks and extra blankets.*

All the kids, from an early age, have learned how to build and light a fire safely and take turns in the evenings. Our eco conscience is salved by the thought that we are only burning the wood from trees cleared from our farm as alien invaders. Our logs are Port Jackson, a tree from Australia brought to control the shifting sand dunes of our coast, which is now out of control and taking over fallow farmland at a rapid rate in our area. Our firelighters are also gathered from our property – the best natural firelighters in the world – dry pine cones. They really are the secret of lighting a good fire: two or three open cones nestled in the centre of a nest of newspaper with a tower of logs built around them will coax even the most sluggish of logs into action.

Every so often we lead a mission to the top of the farm, armed with bags. It takes no more than twenty minutes to collect all the cones we can carry and the pine trees are still loaded with more cones that will come down the next time the wind blows. The pine trees too are alien invaders, threatening to take over our top camp, but at least if we collect the cones we are slowing them down. We’re unwilling to clear them completely as they are the only full sized trees we have and they also provide us and our friends with Christmas trees. And where would we be without our incredibly effective natural firelighters?


Today I dragged the two boys unwillingly up the path to collect a sack-full, R. complaining loudly about the girls left ‘relaxing’ back home (Youngest with a sore knee and Middle daughter with a cough). I’d offered the services of our patent firelighters to the school for their St John’s festival bonfire next week, on the last day of term before our extra-long, soccer-world-cup winter holidays. Last year an immense heap of dead wood had been collected for the bonfire, but it wouldn’t burn, as the fire had been heaped higgledy-piggledy rather than built. It only really got going, (with the help of flammable liquid applications) after the kids had finished singing and throwing their wishes on to the sullenly smouldering fire, which was a bit of an anticlimax. So, this year I hope that our pine cone donation will do the trick and send those wishes merrily circling up into the air for the angels to read!


*Note for overseas readers - central heating is a rare luxury in South Africa, where houses are built for hot summers and we tough out the winter months dressed as Michelin men in the mornings and evenings. The kids often emerge from school in T-shirts at midday on sunny days laden to their eyeballs with shed layers of fleeces and jackets. The houses however stay fridge-like from May to September.

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Cocoa

I have just had a cocoa revelation. Not all cocoas are equal.

I have to admit to blithely ignoring Nigella’s instructions to use the best quality cocoa in her recipes for years. Not because I didn’t think it would be better, but when feeding a family on a budget it seemed to be wanton extravagance. After all if my standard Nestle cocoa will do the job, why spend a whole lot more on another variety?

This parsimonious attitude was helped by the fact that our local supermarket only stocked two basic cocoas anyway, so in my once-a-week whisk round the shelves there was no temptation to splash out… until recently. Our Spar has been creeping up in the world. Exotic items have been finding their way onto the shelves over the last year, upmarket brands with understated packaging politely inviting the garish mass-produced goods to 'shove over, make room for your betters'. It has been harder and harder to resist impulse buys of gourmet food-stuffs. I've done pretty well, until today... when my usual brand of cocoa seemed to have run out and sitting next to its empty space there was a cool and trendy tin of Nomu cocoa. More expensive of course.

If you’re forced to try a new brand what can you do. Buy the one that is even cheaper (undoubtedly nastier) than your trusted standard brand, or buy the quality alternative that promises to be even more chocolatey? I succumbed to the lure of the good stuff. It was for my sister-in-law’s birthday cake so the choice was doubly justified. But would we be able to taste the difference?

I am proud to announce that we could. The cocoa itself was darker, finer and denser than the usual stuff. Even the cake mix of my favourite chocolate birthday cake recipe taster deeper and richer. The cake had a different texture, more crust to it and a bigger crumb, it wasn’t as sweet as usual, but deeper in flavour, much more of a grown up chocolate cake, (though the kids devoured it happily as usual) and the butter icing made with the cocoa was a chocoholic’s addiction in itself.

I’m afraid my budgeting habits are blown. I’m going to have to upgrade myself to Nomu cocoa on a permanent basis, or else start shopping in a less tempting supermarket.

Disclaimer: I wasn't asked to review this product, paid my own hard-earned cash for it in fact, so the views expressed here are completely genuine... but I'd more than happy to receive free cocoa, chocolate or other delicious goods to review here at any time in the future.

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Cook Books, Chefs and Fridges

We finally watched Julie and Julia a couple of weeks ago and loved the story of Julia Child. Meryl Streep portrayed all her quirks, warmth and life so fantastically that we were left wanting to know more. I was left with no desire at all to emulate Julie and blog through a seminal cookery book, but the movie did push me to explore some of the long neglected books on my kitchen shelf.

I was given the Constance Spry Cookery Book when, in my early twenties, I asked for a proper cookery book. I’d outgrown Delia’s One is Fun and wanted a point of reference. In the end I dipped into it but rarely, its old-fashioned insistence on doing things properly and cordon bleu methodology sending me thankfully into the arms of Nigel Slater who promised a good meal in 30 minutes.

On Sunday I found myself leafing through its pristine pages, unsplattered by flour and sauce, not so much for the recipes themselves, but reading all the introductions and prefaces. Her voice was so reminiscent of Julia Child’s, that I realised they were probably contemporaries, Constance Spry grappling with the shortages of everything after the Second World War in an England only just letting go of rationing, at the same time as Julia explored the cuisine of a France that seemed far less worried about lavish use of butter, eggs and cream than dreary old post-war England.

Constance was a flower arranger with a renowned school before the war – her knowledge of cooking was limited to the domestic, but after the war she teamed up with Rosemary Hume, who headed the Cordon Bleu cookery school, to write this book and she took on the role of making the recipes and methods accessible to the British domestic cook, just as Julia did for American cooks. Their book is an encyclopedia of the British take on cordon bleu, with over 1000 pages of recipes and advice all aimed at de-mystifying good food after many years of palates dulled by war-time austerity.

One thing that must have lodged in my subconscious was a passage about fridges quoted from a letter from a Frenchwoman to a new chef entering the service of friends of hers:

“A good cook is economical. He goes to endless trouble to turn out his best efforts without wasting a crumb… To make sure of using up everything to good effect it is absolutely essential for him to plan ahead.
As soon as the washing up is done each evening he should run his eye over his provisions. Opening the door of his Frigidaire, he stands in front of it and thinks. He thinks rapidly, but that moment’s reflection is absolutely necessary…. His kitchen companions should be made to understand that he is the absolute master of the Frigidaire, and he must insist that everything in it shall be kept in absolute order. A chef proves his worth by the scrupulous order in which he keeps his refrigerator, for which he is solely responsible…”

Today I opened the fridge and was dismayed at the state of my sole domain. Usually the week’s shopping fills it to capacity: five or six 2 litre bottles of milk cram the top shelf, yoghurt crowds into another, bowls of leftovers tussle with half filled jars of olives for the best place on the shelf. It is only when the next weekly shop looms that the true state of the realm is revealed. Thriftily saved butter papers crammed in corners, out-of date medicines stuffed in the door, build-ups of gunge threatening the condensation drain thing… nothing was actually threatening to walk out by itself, no blue fluffiness breeding new strains of antibiotic, but still way short of the chef’s nirvana pictured above.

So instead of making bread and doing the laundry, as planned in my self-inflicted hour of housework before approaching the computer, I micro-cleaned the fridge, and realized that never in its life had I actually removed the shelves to clean properly, they were still firmly attached with sticky tape, just as when it was delivered.

Slightly horrified by this proof of neglect, I did manage to conjure up some memories of cleaning it in the past, just not in quite such saintly detail as I was now attempting. I wielded the vinegar spray liberally and made sure my husband was aware of these unprecedented goings on, so that my halo could be acknowledged. Not to be outdone, he got out the gaffer tape (duct tape - fixer of all things, from tents to fridges) and stuck together the plastic shelf in the door that is threatening to resign its position as holder of full milk and juice bottles.

So now I have righted my fridge in the eyes of Constance Spry’s French friend, I wonder if I dare approach some of her recipes. Flipping through now I see a recipe for croissants that looks manageable… mmmm… tempting.

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The Bookshelf

A funny asymmetrical book shelf, bought in a antique/junk shop long ago, before I had a house, before I’d found my man, before I had children, way back in that misty time when the nesting instinct was starting to take hold, feathers and twigs busily collected, the ingredients of a home put together in a hotch potch, ramshackle way without a recipe.

Once we met, we found we had a love of books in common, a shared history of favourite children’s books to explore: a list that often overlapped, but also brought each of us great new stories to explore. Any second-hand bookshop was a magnet. We’d dive in and head for the children’s section, finding old favourites and starting a collection for children that weren’t yet born. Unthinkable that our future offspring should grow up without the joy of exploring Narnia, Pridian, Green Knowe and Earthsea. We were eager to share the treasures of Susan Cooper, Ursula LeGuin, Geoffrey Trease, Cynthia Harnett and so many more.

By the time our first child was born we had assembled a fine library, re-read most of them more than once and filled the book-shelf to capacity and beyond.

My memory of our son’s first introduction to the library we’d so painstakingly assembled for him is set in our rented flat in South London. The bookshelf stood just inside the sitting room door. He was fascinated with it. For weeks his favourite activity was to pull all the books joyously off the lower two shelves and distribute them around the doorway. His first lesson in appreciation of fine literature was to learn how to put the books back on the shelf again.

A toddler view - no wonder the books are irresistible.

We were encouraged that he was an avid listener to stories. The very hungry caterpillar was succeeded by Herb the Vegetarian Dragon as prime favourite by the time he was two. The bookshelf moved house with us and took up a less precarious position out of the firing line by the time our daughter was born. She cut her literary teeth on the well chewed edges of the hungry caterpillar and his ilk, with only the occasional incursion into the gems awaiting her on the Bookshelf.

Yet another move and a third baby saw us in South Africa with the bookshelf. It stayed swathed in packing materials for a year, its books in boxes, while our house was built. Then it took up its rightful position in the centre of our living room to be raided in turn by the Youngest toddler of the family, following her brother’s earlier example of pulling books off shelves.

All this time it was patiently awaiting the time when it could share its stories. It began slowly. Bed-time stories for the oldest child took him to Pridian, battled the Dark with Will Stanton in The Dark is Rising series, while the girls were still listening to fairy stories. He was selective though when choosing books for himself to read from the book shelf. Fantasy worlds and adventures were his preference. All those stories set in historical times so beloved of his mother were overlooked. They waited their turn.


In this last year, the pace has picked up for the book shelf. The same bed-time stories now enthral all three children. Victor Canning’s The Runaways trilogy was so absorbing that evening DVD watching was frequently abandoned, to have a longer reading of the story each night. Some choices are more magnetic than others. Oldest often has his own book in hand, especially if he’s read the story we’re reading before or thinks it’s too young for him, but the good old classics can lure him back into the story fold. A Little Princess, ostensibly being read to the girls, had him asking questions to be brought up to date whenever he’d missed a bit. Heidi had them all glued despite its simplicity. So now I’ve slipped in my own choice, a Geoffrey Trease set in Ancient Greece that I’d tried to interest our son in a while back when he was looking for something new to read, but which he’d never taken to. Two chapters in and he still seems to be listening.

The bookshelf is now regularly despoiled of its contents, no longer the random pulling off the shelves of toddlerdom, but a focussed raid by Youngest and Middle Daughter, competing for the easier books to read to themselves. At the moment they still go by the size of the type, anything too small is rejected as too difficult. Any minute now they’ll discover that they can actually read anything on the shelf to themselves, a world of stories, adventures, poignant tales, humour, history, fantasy and old-fashioned moral tales all theirs to explore at will.

A visiting toddler looks set to repeat the pattern

What are your old childhood favourites? Any other essential reading we should add to the bookshelf?

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A Season of Soups and Mellow Fruit

Autumn is well installed here on the farm. The last vestiges of late summer are gone, a few tomatoes left clinging on the vine, but no longer bursting with ripeness, rather sulkily deciding whether to make the effort or not. A few early guavas have ripened on our trees, too fragrant and sweet to be cooked, they were eaten long before thoughts of guava parfait came to anything. But more are ready to harvest, enticing with crystal scent of fruit and flowers.


The patchwork blankets, knitted by my mother-in law, are back on the beds, after a summer of sleeping under sarongs and ceiling fan. Slippers and dressing-gowns are dug out of cupboards and soup at lunch time has become a life-saver after a morning spent with sluggish circulation labouring at the computer. Warm sun outside never quite banishes the chill from inside the house in the day time and, though we haven’t yet been desperate enough to light our first fire of the year, there is wood stacked by the front door in case. The time is getting nearer.


My two old faithful soups were getting a little jaded even before we really got into the cold weather. The kids aren’t too fond of soup anyway and can only tolerate a few basic recipes: the clear one with the pasta and the lentil one, though that is fast falling from favour. This year, all three of them are at school with sandwiches for four lunches a week and I felt inspired to make soup just for us, getting more adventurous with flavours.


So with a glut of tomatoes still to be processed last week, I came upon this South African tomato and onion soup recipe of Juno’s. Roasting the onions and tomatoes gives a far richer and more intense flavour than your average tomato soup, and with the addition of some Tabasco sauce, it was warming and suitably grown-up. I have to confess to not following all instructions and quantities to the letter and ended up creating a huge mess in the kitchen, as I used both food processor and mouli to get the texture I wanted. I didn’t leave everything softening in the oven quite long enough, as I had bread impatiently queuing up to go in at a higher temperature. The end result was superb though and kept the two of us happy and warmed for three weekday lunches.

Inspired by this success I put some white beans on to soak, intending to find a new exciting recipe for them. Google didn’t come up with just the recipe my tastebuds had in mind, so I ended up putting together elements from several, and my new creation is bubbling on the stove for lunch today. Now I’ve just got to taste it and decide whether it’s worthy of entering into Taste magazine’s soup competition in which case it might have to stay a secret… except that now you know it’s got beans as an important ingredient!


This afternoon, spring bulbs need planting, it’s a still, sunny, warm day, the first oxalis are peeping out of the dry looking earth, the watsonia leaves way ahead of the rest of the pack of spring bulbs, even though they won’t flower until September and the sun birds are merrily flitting between the wildedagga flowers and the tekoma, glittering iridescent as their wings catch the sunlight, making time to play in between the busyness of living.


Autumn on the farm is pretty good.

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