Sunday Night Bacon and Eggs
You get people who are perpetually cheery. I’m not one of them. I truly am not something you want to be near until at least two cups of morning coffee have gone down the gullet. After that I can face the day, and manage a passable Little Miss Sunshine to boot – most of the time. Mondays? Hmmm, no, not [...]
Baby toffee apples
Little finger food morsels and I simply don’t get along. My aversion to the bite-sized party snack is, to put it mildly, considerable. I blame the seventies and eighties for this. Tooth-picked blocks of Gouda with red cocktail onions. Floppy mini sausage rolls. Teeny, tiny Vienna sausages with a sweet mustard dipping sauce – naturally served with, you guessed it, [...]
leg of lamb on the braai
I’m as fond as the next South African of boerie on the braai. Nothing beats the smell of all that fat and gorgeous coriander hitting the hot coals. I’m rather partial to a plump lamb chop too. But National Braai Day isn’t just any day. It’s an occasion. Approaching it the way I would any normal weekend braai seems… well, [...]
broad bean, pea and mint spring salad
Cats, sadly, do not tolerate lazy lie-ins hy humans, not even on weekends. Which is rather surprising, given that they sleep away something like 80% of their lives. No matter what time I poured myself into bed or how fragile I may be feeling, come 6am on Saturdays, it’s showtime. Let Me Out. Cuddle Me. Feed Me. In that order. [...]
roasted fennel and pork burgers
I have a thing for sweet with meat – it’s a particularly South African thing. Take sweet potatoes. They aren’t sweet enough the way nature made them. Oh no, we have to add truckloads of butter and sugar, and roast them slowly to glistening, treacly perfection. So I’m constanty looking for new sweet-with-meat combinations. My latest obsession is fennel. [...]
red velvet pasta sauce
There are few foods I find sexier than pasta. Possibly because images of a youthful Sophia Loren, clutching a bowl of spaghetti to her quite delightful bosom, come to mind whenever I think of pasta. Unlike us, Italians don’t drown their pasta in sauce. One of my 5-minute favourites is just garlic, red chilli and tons of flat leaf parsley, [...]