Waterblommetjie and Pepper-Feta Quiche

I didn't grow up in the Cape, so I'm not a big buyer of waterblommetjies, and nor am I a keen eater of waterblommetjie bredie. This traditional mutton stew, a treasured winter dish here in the Cape and a great classic of South African cuisine, has as one of its chief ingredients Aponogeton distachyos, a pretty aquatic plant also known as Cape Pond Weed and Water Hawthorn (see pictures below).

I'm not mad about them in stews because they tend to collapse into a muddy green heap when cooked for any length of time, but they are lovely stir-fried, with an intriguing crunchy texture and a taste that has been described as reminiscent of young green beans and asparagus.  (If you'd like to try a traditional waterblommetjie bredie, you cannot go wrong with my friend Michael Olivier's authentic recipe.)

There isn't much you can do to prevent waterblommetjies from losing their vibrant green colour after you've heated them - even plunging them into iced water, which I have tried, has little effect.

But please don't be put off trying them, because I think you will like them a lot.

With the pack of very fresh buds I bought at Woolies this week, I made a simple quiche, adding plenty of peppery, creamy feta, which I thought would contrast well with the slight astringency of the waterblommetjies.

The sweetly scented flower of Aponogeton distachyos.
Photo by J.F. Gaffard, via Wikimedia Commons 

Usually I test recipes a few times in order to improve the dish, but I don't think this recipe needs any tweaking.  It's substantial, yet light in texture, and the waterblommetjies add a most interesting and pleasant crunch.  Some little sautéed cubes of smoky bacon might add an extra layer of luxury, should you wish to go the whole hog.

I have given quite detailed instructions for making an easy, light and crumbly shortcrust pastry, because a good pastry can make the difference between an okay quiche and one that knocks your socks off.  If you're a dab hand at pastry, skip these paragraphs.

Here are some of my top tips for making shortcrust pastry.

If you're not in South Africa, try this recipe with fresh asparagus or broccoli.

And if you can't find peppered feta cheese, add plenty of extra freshly ground pepper to the quiche filling.


This quantity of pastry and filling is suitable for a 20 x 30 cm rectangular non-stick metal quiche pan.

As you probably don't have one of these beauties (I bought three at my local Chinese supermarket for a paltry R35 each) I asked the maths boffins in my house to figure out the equivalent sizes in other shapes:  this is enough for a shallow 25 x 25 cm square dish, or a shallow circular quiche pan with a 28-cm diameter.





Waterblommetjie and Pepper-Feta Quiche

For the pastry shell:
300 g white flour, sifted
180 g cold butter, cut into cubes
½ tsp (1.25 ml) salt
1 egg yolk from an extra-large free range egg
a few tablespoons of ice-cold water (see recipe)

For the filling:
300 g fresh waterblommetjies
2 Tbsp (30 ml) olive oil
the juice of half a lemon
150 g peppered feta cheese, roughly crumbled
1 cup (250 ml, fairly loosely packed) grated Cheddar
4 extra-large free-range eggs
½ cup (125 ml) milk
½ cup (125 ml) cream
1 tsp (5 ml) Hot English Mustard Powder or prepared Dijon mustard
salt and milled black pepper

Heat the oven to 190 °C, fan on,  and put a large metal baking sheet in it to heat.

First make the pastry.  If you have a food processor with a metal blade, place the sifted flour, butter and salt into the processor jug and whizz until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs.  Add the egg yolk, then trickle ice-cold water - a teaspoon or two at a time - into the chute of the jug, pressing the pulse button in short bursts until the mixture just comes together in a ball.

Once it's formed a ball, press the pulse button again once or twice so that the ball makes five or six turns around the processor jug, but no more.

If you don't have a food processor, put the sifted flour into a large bowl and add the salt and butter cubes. Using your fingertips, lightly rub the butter into the flour until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs. Add the egg yolk and iced water, as described above, and very lightly knead the mixture for a minute or two until it holds together. Tip the ball of dough on to a sheet of clingfilm, wrap it up and place in the fridge for 15-20 minutes to rest.

Roll the dough out on a floured board (or between sheets of clingfilm, which makes the whole process so easy) to a thickness of 3 mm.  It should be about 5 cm larger than your quiche dish, all the way round.

Use the pastry to line a quiche dish (again, tips here).  Let the pastry drape generously over the edges of dish - you'll trim it off later once you've baked it blind.  Prick the base of the pastry all over with a fork, cover it with a sheet of kitchen paper and weigh that down with dried beans or baking beans. Slide the dish onto the heated baking sheet and bake at 190 °C for 10 minutes.

Remove the paper and beans, and put the dish back into the oven for a further 10-15 minutes, or until the base feels dry to the fingertips and is a light golden colour all over.  Remove the pastry shell from the oven, on its baking sheet, and turn the heat down to 180 °C.

In the meantime, prepare the filling. Roughly slice the waterblommetjies, leaving any smaller buds whole.  Heat the olive oil in a wok and stir-fry them over a high flame for 3-5 minutes, or until they are bright green and just tender-crisp. This is a critical stage of this recipe, because the buds must be cooked, yet still retain a slight crunch.  Splash in the lemon juice and cook for another 30 seconds, or until the juice has evaporated.  Season with a pinch of salt and set aside to cool for a few minutes.

Arrange the cooked waterblommetjies all over the pastry base, and scatter over the crumbled feta and grated Cheddar. Firmly run a rolling pin over the edges of the quiche pan, to remove any overhanging pastry.

Put the eggs, milk, cream and mustard in a bowl and, using a balloon whisk, beat together for a minute or two, until well combined and slightly aerated. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Pour the egg mixture into the prepared pastry shell and bake at 180 °C for 30-40 minutes, or until the filling is puffed and golden.  If the pastry edges look as if they're browning too quickly, cover them lightly with strips of tin foil.

Serve warm (I don't know why this is, but to me all quiches seem best warm, while they're still wobbling gently) with rocket or watercress leaves dressed with lemon juice and olive oil.

Makes 1 x 28 cm quiche; serves 6. 

Knock the overhanging edges off the quiche by
running a rolling pin all over the edges of the pan.

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Smoked Snoek Chowder, Cape Town style

Any chowder purist who wants to sniff at this recipe may feel free to sniff away. Look here, dear purist, this is an African chowder. I wish you could taste it, because it's very good: thick, creamy, comforting and full of goodness. In short: everything I ask of a soup.

Creamy Snoek Chowder: comfort in a bowl.

Oak-smoked snoek from my local Hout Bay harbour plays the starring role in this quick and easy dish. Properly smoked South African snoek isn't an ingredient you'll find on many supermarket shelves outside of the Western Cape, but you could substitute any similar firm-fleshed smoked white fish.

If you're lucky enough to be living in South Africa, ask your fishmonger to order you a box of smoked snoek from Mariner's Wharf in Hout Bay.  This is a versatile ingredient that keeps well, and you can use any leftover fish in a snoek pâté, or in a quiche. Here's a recipe for Smoked Snoek Quiche, from Carmen Niehaus, and it's part of a very good article about snoek by veteran journalist Hilary Prendini Toffoli.

It's important to choose the right potatoes for this soup: if they're too waxy, they won't thicken the soup, and if they're too floury, they'll break up before the soup is ready.  You can add a little cream to this soup at the end, but it's really not necessary: it's creamy enough as it is.

Please take the greatest care removing the bones from the snoek. Most of the bones are large ones, but there are also small ones that can lurk undetected among the fish flakes. Use your fingertips to shred the fish, and check it for bones three times.

Smoked Snoek Chowder, Cape Town style
300 g oak-smoked snoek
3 large leeks, white and pale green parts only
4 Tbsp (60 ml) butter
a small clove of garlic, crushed
3 Tbsp (45 ml) flour
4 Tbsp (60 ml) white wine
4 cups (1 litre) milk
2 cups (500 ml) water (or fish stock)
2 sprigs of fresh thyme
salt
300 g peeled, raw potato, cut into 1-cm-square cubes
a pinch or two of white pepper

To serve:
the juice of half a lemon
4 Tbsp (60 ml) finely chopped fresh parsley
Tabasco sauce
extra-virgin olive oil

Pull the skin off the snoek and, using your fingertips, carefully remove all bones (look out for the little ones). Flake the fish and set aside. With a sharp knife, make a long length ways cut through each leek, slicing only half way through. Gently fan out the 'leaves' and rinse well under running water to remove any grit. Finely slice the leeks.

Heat the butter in a large pan, add the leeks and cook over a moderate for three or four minutes, until softened (but do not allow to brown). Stir in the garlic and fry for 30 seconds - just long enough to remove the 'sting'.

Tip in the flour, stir well, and cook gently for another minute, stirring all the time. Whisk in the white wine (the mixture will form a thickish paste) and bubble for 60 seconds.  Then tip in all the milk and water, stirring briskly to break up any lumps.

Add the thyme sprigs and a three-quarters of the flaked snoek. Season to taste with salt and bring to a gentle boil, stirring constantly.

Tip all the potato cubes into the soup, turn down the heat and simmer for 20-25 minutes, or until the potato cubes are cooked through, but not falling apart. (Don't worry if the soup looks a little thin to begin with: the potato cubes will thicken it up).

Add the remaining smoked snoek and heat through for a further five minutes. If the soup seems a little too thick, thin it down with more milk or water. Season with a pinch of white pepper, and more salt if necessary. Remove the thyme sprigs.

Just before serving, and after you've removed the soup from the heat, stir in the lemon juice and fresh parsley.

Serve with a few dabs of Tabasco sauce and a swirl of olive oil.

Serves 6 


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Quince Jelly: how to make a delightful old-fashioned preserve

Image source: Wikipedia Commons 

Do you remember all those juicy ripe quinces you ate as a child? Me neither! The first time I held a quince in my hand was in my twenties, on lovely weekends away in the historic Cape village of McGregor, where the dusty streets, with their burbling water-furrows, are lined with many ancient quince trees.

Although the fruit has fallen out of favour in the last hundred years in South Africa, many old quince trees still flourish on Cape farms: judging from the number of fresh quinces I've seen in greengrocers over the past few years, it's still considered viable as a speciality fruit.

You can't easily eat a ripe, furry yellow quince; it's too hard and too tart. A quince needs to be gently stewed or jellied before it reveals its rosy and perfumed soul.

Beautiful clear quince jelly

This is an old-fashioned fruit with a long and noble pedigree, and it makes a most delicous preserve. (I hesitate to use the word 'jelly', because that word means different things in different parts of the world. This recipe is for jelly in the British sense - a crystal-clear, wobbling gel.)

It's excellent with ham, turkey or venison, stirred into a gravy, or melted and brushed over the top of a fruit tart. Or try blobbing the jelly onto a piece of sharp Cheddar or a wedge of oozing camembert or brie (see Cook's Notes, below).

---

Quince Jelly
6 large, ripe quinces water
white sugar
juice of 2 lemons, strained to remove pips and bits

Rub the quinces with a tea towel to remove excess fluff, and then, using a cleaver or heavy knife, chop them roughly (and I mean roughly - they can be rock-hard) into pieces. Put the chunks, peel, pips and all, into a large saucepan and add enough water to cover. Set over a high heat and bring to the boil.

Turn down the heat and allow to cook at a gentle rolling boil for an hour or so, or until the fruit begins to break up and is softened and mushy. Top up with more water every now and then so that the fruit is always covered.

Get a large basin or bowl ready. Place a jelly bag (I use an old, clean, cut-down pillowcase) into the bowl, and ladle the hot fruit and liquid into the opening of the bag.

Tie the mouth of the bag closed with an elastic band or a piece of string, then lift up the bag and suspend it above the bowl, so the liquid can drip downwards. (Tie the twisted mouth of the bag to the knob of a top kitchen cupboard, or turn a chair upside down and suspend the bag between its legs, with the bowl place below).

Leave to drain for at least six hours, or overnight. Don't be tempted to squeeze the bag - you might end up with a cloudy jelly.

Untie the bag, toss the quince pulp into the bin (or on the compost heap) and rinse out the bag for future use.

Measure the quince liquid using a jug or cup measure, and strain it, using a kitchen sieve, into a large, clean saucepan. Add an equal quantity of white sugar. (ie, if you have 500 ml of quince juice, add 500 ml of sugar). Stir in the lemon juice. Set over a high heat and bring to the boil, stirring gently now and then so that the sugar dissolves. Boil briskly for 30-40 minutes, using a flat spoon or skimmer to remove any grey scum that rises to the top of the pan.

The mixture will look dull and cloudy at first, but after a while will clarify into a beautiful pinky-amber colour. If you have a sugar thermometer, bring the mixture up to a few degrees below jam point. Or, much easier, take an ice cube from the freezer and drop a large blob of the mixture on to it. If the mixture, once it's cooled for 20 seconds, slides enthusiastically off the ice cube, you're not there yet - carry on boiling it for a little longer. If the sauce sets to a wobbly, trembling gel within 20 seconds of hitting the ice cube, it's ready.

Skim off any remaining foam and ladle into hot, sterilised jars. Screw on the lids tightly.

Keeps for up to a year; opened jars should be kept in the fridge.

Makes 3 jars.

Postscript: I've used a teaspoon of this jelly in all sorts of gravies, and it makes such a difference to the taste (don't use more than a teaspoon, though: it's very sweet.) It is also makes a delicious base for a mint jelly: finely chop and handful of fresh mint. Melt a big blob of quince jelly in a saucepan, stir in the fresh mint, and add a little squeeze of lemon juice. Good with roast lamb.

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