#RealFood For Kids: Low-Carb 'Grannies in Blankets'

This is a new twist on a beloved South African dish: Ouma Onder Die Komberse. Big, juicy meatballs are flavoured with nutmeg, onion and lemon zest, wrapped in soft cabbage ‘blankets’, then baked in a creamy lemon sauce.

The paragraph above comes directly from just-published Real Food: Healthy, Happy Children, by Kath Megaw (Quivertree, 2015), and I'm honoured to have been asked to contribute some of my low-carb recipes to the book.

South African paediatric dietician Kath Megaw is a leading fundi on low-carb and ketogenic diets for children. "Wait!" I hear you cry. "Low carb for kids?" Yes, that's right, but I can assure you that this is not some faddish, irresponsible book leaping onto the banting bandwagon. It's a painstakingly researched, well-informed, sensible guide that advocates a return to real, 'living' food using the wholesome unprocessed ingredients so familiar to our grandparents.

If you're looking to banish sugar, stodge and boxed foods from your family's diet, you've found the only guide you'll ever need, whether you're pregnant, or feeding a baby, or a coping with teens who have hollow legs. If you still need convincing, click here to listen to a podcast of Kath talking about her book, and here to read more about her low-carb philosophy.  

When I first picked up my copy of this hefty 300-page book at last week's launch, I was astonished at how much detailed information is packed between the pages. It's bursting with tips, tricks and accurate nutritional info, with lovely photographs and illustrations adding whimsy along the way. Journalist and cookery writer Daisy Jones, who wrote the text, has a chatty yet precise style, and she's brilliantly conveyed Kath's 20 years of clinical experience in this field.

What's pleased me so much about contributing to this project  is seeing my name on the same line as Phillippa Cheifitz's.  Phillippa, who wrote many of the gorgeous recipes in the book, is one of the grande dames of South African cookery writing, and I have greatly admired her since I cooked my way through her inspiring Cosmopolitan Cookbook in my twenties.

I hauled my tattered, cake-spattered copy of that book to the launch, and my day was complete when Phillippa graciously signed it for me, 29 years after I bought it.

I'm so looking forward to trying the recipes on my own family - specially the mouth-watering treats from the party food section.  (My beloveds feel so deprived of puds these days.)

Nutty Exploding Apples with Vanilla Custard: another of my recipes
from  Real Food: Healthy, Happy Children

Now to the recipe. I've used a Swedish-style creamy sauce to cloak these cabbage-wrapped meatballs, but you could also bake them in a fresh tomato sauce.  Meatballs tend to be a little dense when they don't contain breadcrumbs, but I've found that a big dollop of natural Greek yoghurt helps to tenderise them. This #LCHF recipe is suitable for diabetics.

Low-Carb 'Grannies in Blankets' 

12 outer leaves from a cabbage (or baby savoy leaves)
2 lemons
salt and milled pepper, to taste
1 large onion, peeled
900g beef mince
1 extra-large free-range egg, lightly beaten
2 cloves garlic, peeled and finely grated
3 tbsp thick Greek yoghurt
1½ tsp nutmeg
1 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp white wine vinegar
1 cup cream
4 tbsp finely chopped parsley
butter, for greasing

1. Preheat the oven to 170°C (fan off).
2. Trim away the thick lower ‘ribs’ of the cabbage leaves. Bring a large saucepan of water to a
rolling boil, then add a wedge of lemon and a pinch of salt. Plunge the leaves into the water,
partially cover with a lid and blanch for 7 to 9 minutes, or until the leaves are wilted.
3. Drain (reserving the poaching water), then run the leaves under cold water for 3 minutes and
set aside to drain further.
4. Grate the onion on the fine tooth of a grater to create a soft, juicy pulp. Tip this into a large
mixing bowl and add the mince, egg, garlic, yoghurt, nutmeg and the zest of 1 lemon, plus
seasoning. Combine the mixture well using your hands., then roll the mince into 12 balls, each
about the size of a golf ball.
5. Heat a little olive oil in a non-stick frying pan and brown the meatballs on all sides, in batches,
over a medium-high heat – this should only take a few minutes per side as they should be nicely
caramelised, but still raw on the inside. Set the meatballs aside on a plate.
6. Turn up the heat and add the vinegar, plus half a cup of the cabbage poaching liquid. Let this
mixture bubble vigorously for 3 to 5 minutes, or until it has reduced by half.
7. Remove the pan from the heat, wait a minute, then stir in the cream. Return the pan to a
medium heat and let the sauce bubble for 1 minute, stirring now and then, until it has slightly
thickened. Now stir in the juice of half a lemon and the parsley and set aside.
8. Pat the cabbage leaves very dry on kitchen paper. Tuck a leaf around each meatball and arrange
in a buttered baking dish. Pour the sauce around and over the cabbage parcels and cover the dish
loosely with tin foil. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, or until the ‘grannies’ are cooked right through.


Serves 4-6 Per serving: energy: 514 kcal protein: 33g fat: 39g carbs: 7g ratio: 1.0 :1

Recipe courtesy of Quivertree Publications. 

More of my meatball recipes:

• No-Carb Lemon Turmeric Meatballs in Lettuce Cups 
• Low-Carb Swedish-Style Meatballs in a Creamy Lemon Sauce
• Meatballs in a Spicy Tomato and Yoghurt Gravy
• Mini Pita Breads with Spicy Meatballs and Hummous
• Quick Oven-Baked Meatballs with Tomato & Spag

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Whisky and Orange Dark-Chocolate Truffles

Dusted with cocoa powder and chilled for an hour or two, these truffly-looking nuggets of orange- and whisky-scented dark chocolate make a lovely finish to a meal. You can add any type of liqueur or flavouring agent to this basic recipe: try it with Frangelico and toasted hazelnut chips, or with a dash of good almond extract and a coating of finely chopped toasted almond flakes.

Good-quality, 75-percent-cocoa- solids chocolate is important for this recipe. I use Belgian chocolate chips which I get from my local baking shop. These truffles freeze well, so it's worth making a double batch and keeping them for future pudding emergencies.

The only really tricky part is keeping your palms cool enough to prevent the truffles getting sticky as you roll them. A good tip is to fill a jug with iced water, and to press your palms to the glass to cool them (scraping any chocolate residue off your skin first). It's quite difficult, also, to judge when the mixture is firm enough to be formed into balls. If you've let it get too hard, use a stout-bladed knife to cut it into chunks, and leave at room temperature for a hour or so.

I always melt chocolate in the microwave because it's so quick and effortless, but if you feel like faffing around with a double boiler or a glass bowl set over a pan of boiling water, be my guest.

This recipe is adapted from Phillippa Cheifitz's The Cosmopolitan Cookbook (1986) which, 20 years after I bought it, is still one of my most treasured recipe books (Phillippa used Cognac in her truffles).

Whisky and Orange Dark-Chocolate Truffles

350 g good dark chocolate (see notes, above)
1/2 cup (125 ml) cream
3 T (45 ml) whisky
the finely grated zest of 1 small orange
3/4 cup (180 ml) icing sugar, sifted
1/4 cup cocoa powder, sifted, for coating

Place the chocolate, broken into pieces, in a glass bowl and melt in a microwave oven or over a pan of simmering water (see notes above). Stir well until smooth and glossy, and then mix in the cream, whisky and orange zest. Now tip in the sifted icing sugar and mix until smooth. Press a piece of clingfilm onto the surface of the mixture and place it in the fridge for about an hour, or until firm enough to handle.

Tip the cocoa powder onto a plate. Dig out spoonsful (each about the sized of a large marble) of chocolate paste and roll quickly between your palms to form balls (or ovals, to resemble real truffles). Place the balls on the plate of cocoa powder and roll them about so that they are thoroughly coated. When you've made all the balls, place them in a sieve or colander and shake gently to remove any excess cocoa powder. Cover and place in the fridge for two hours, or until firm.

Makes about 35. Print Friendly

How hard is it to write a clear recipe?

I'm pernickety about the way recipes are written (everyone has a monkey, right?).  Is it too much to ask that cookery writers measure things accurately, give clear instructions and, occasionally, test the recipe before they send it to print?

I can't tell you the number of times I've eagerly rushed out to buy expensive ingredients, and then had to throw everything away because a recipe writer has omitted an ingredient, given a wrong measurement, or failed to mention some some vital step in the cooking process.

Look, I'm not saying my recipes are perfect, but at least I've actually made them, and accurately measured the ingredients, in a rounded-off and sensible form. I recently came across a recipe that called for 47 ml of crushed garlic, and another that wanted 58 g of sugar. Fine if you have a microscopic measuring spoons or a digital scale, but useless for home cooks.

I was freshly annoyed reading a soup recipe in The Times yesterday ('An easy soup for TV night'). Like so many of the recipes in The Times, it's lousy. It's badly edited, ungrammatical, vague, and contains no seasoning at all. (In fact, most of the recipes published in The Times specify neither salt or pepper in the ingredients list.) The recipe calls for a total of one litre of liquid for a soup to serve six people. Even making allowance for the 600 g of leeks and potatoes, each slurper of this soup would end up with a serving of around 180 ml each - that's a teacup!

And what's this 'allow to cook off' nonsense? What's wrong with just saying 'simmer until tender'? Why are the ingredients not listed in order of use? Why's 'sauté' got an accent on the e, but not 'puree'?

It seems to me that the cleverer and more creative the cook or chef, the sloppier their recipes are. I wouldn't dream of mentioning names here, but Braam Kruger, who writes in The Weekender, springs to mind. I can forgive Braam's disorganised recipes because he writes so knowledgeably about food, but I would like The Times to pull up its stocks. (How about smaller photographs and headlines, and interesting, new recipes that are tested, precise and unambigious?) I suggest that the people who choose the recipes for The Times take a good look at the fastidious, well-tested and original recipes of brilliant non-cheffy home cooks like Lynn Bedford-Hall, Hilary Biller (Angela Day), Ina Paarman, Carmen Niehaus and Phillippa Cheifitz.

Here's what I expect of a perfect recipe:

1. Make sure it works. You've actually made it, preferably more than once, and during that time you've improved and then - even better - perfected it.

2. Give us your own recipe. If it's not yours, acknowledge who you've nicked it off, or who inspired it. Believe it or not, there are many cookery writers who, under pressure from deadlines set by magazines or publishers, don't actually test their recipes. More than a decade ago, I worked for a leading Cape Town publisher with a thriving cook-book department. I will never forget being given the task of reading a cookery book sent in by a famous local cook. The 'manuscript' included several photocopied Martha Stewart recipes that were liberally plastered with Tippex. The 'author' had metricated these American recipes using her trusty white-out kit, changed the recipe titles, and was passing them off as her own.

3. List the ingredients in order of use. This is an established recipe-writing convention for a good reason.

4. Convert the quantities with care and good sense. It's just annoying to be told to measure out 28 grams of flour. Yes, I know that's the metric equivalent of 1 ounce, but are two extra grams of flour really going to break the back of your sponge cake? Say 30 grams, and be done with it. And please don't ask me to add '55 ml' egg yolks to a sauce. One, two, or three yolks?

5. Give clear instructions. Please don't specify that should I 'braise or fry or sauté' the lamb pieces in oil, or butter, or the eyelash greasings of Andean sacrificial virgins, for about 5 to 60 minutes, over a hot or cool heat, until they are 'done'. Don't ask me to put a tembling wobble of beaten-by-hand-for-45-minutes mixture of egg, flour and sugar into a hot oven, without asking me to preheat the oven first. I want precise, unambigious instructions. I felt very grumpy yesterday making the sainted Simon Hopkinson's Lemon Chicken Soup when he forgot to say what I should do with the chicken bits he'd told me to set aside in a bowl. Blend them with the rest of the soup? Tip them in at the last moment? Knit them into a jersey?

6. Be realistic about serving sizes. A chicken cut into eight joints, fine - if you're serving four people. But if you have six over for dinner, does that mean that two unfortunate guests get only a chicken wing each?

7. Don't specify ridiculously exotic ingredients. Or, if you must, remember to tell me where to buy them. Recently I read a long, pretentious feature in a local South African foodie magazine that called for pomegranate seeds in virtually every dish. When last did you find a glistening packet of pomegranate seeds in your local Pick 'n Pay? Look, I appreciate a new and exotic ingredient as much as the next chap, but please spare me the shaved white truffles.

I could go on forever, but I'm off to drink my 180 ml of soup. Print Friendly