Roasted Grapes with Blue Brie, and frozen grapes as a snack

Grapes are in high season here in South Africa, and for the past two weeks I've experimented with different ways of serving this glorious fruit.  Sure, the best way to demolish a bunch of grapes is to eat them very cold and fresh on a sweltering summer's day, but still I'd like to draw your attention to two lovely alternative ways of using grapes: slow-roasting them to a gentle collapse to draw out their perfumed juices, and freezing them to create crunchy little flavour bombs.

Roasted Grapes with gorgeous Blue Brie from Dalewood Fromage. 

The recipe in the picture above - roasted grapes with blue brie - is inspired by a sublime dish of gently stewed sweet grapes with thick Greek yoghurt. My friends Michael and Michelle Karamanof, who own a house in Kythera, Greece, made this for me a few years back, and it's a dish that has stood out in my memory.

I've served this version with both the roasted grapes and cold fresh ones, for a pleasing contrast.

Pressed Cheese with Roasted Grapes and Caramel-Dipped Fresh Grapes.
Plate by David Walters. 

In this second picture, above, I've whipped together crumbled blue cheese, mascarpone and chopped-up blue camembert, then pressed this sinful mixture over a layer of stewed grapes in a clingfilm-lined dish.The first time I made this, it was very tasty, but lacked texture, so in the second version I served it with fresh grapes dipped in a thin, brittle caramel. If I make this again, I will probably add some toasted macadamia nuts to either the cheese mixture or the caramel-dipped grapes.

Frozen grapes: crunchy little flavour bombs. 

Finally, the frozen grapes. These have a wonderful, refreshing, sorbet-like texture, especially if you leave them to stand for five minutes after you take them out of the freezer. They are very good served piled on a platter alongside thin shavings of good Parmesan, or - if you are feeding children - with chips of dark chocolate.  This is an excellent way to preserve grapes for future fruit smoothies, and you can also use them instead of ice cubes to chill a glass of white wine in a hurry, without diluting the wine. In this picture I've rolled the grapes in sugar, because they were rather acidic, but this isn't necessary if you've chosen a nice sweet grape.

To roast grapes:

Heat the oven to 160 ºC. Place a few bunches of sweet seedless black or red table grapes on a sheet lined with two sheets of baking paper. Roast for 30-40 minutes, depending on the size of the grapes, or until they have just collapsed, are slightly shrunken, and the juices are running. Pick up the edges of the baking paper and tip the grapes and their juices onto a platter. Serve with cheese.

To freeze grapes:

Wash a few whole bunches of seedless grapes and set them aside until they're dry. Put them in a freezer bag or lidded plastic container and freeze for 3 hours, or until solid. Take them out of the freezer 5 minutes before you serve them, or they'll crack someone's teeth, but don't leave them on the counter for too long as they defrost and soften quickly. These keep well in the freezer for up to a month.

For the pressed cheese: 

Wet a small mould and line it with a sheet of clingfilm, letting the edges drape down over the sides. Line the bottom of the mould with a single layer of roast grapes, and a little of their juice.  In a separate bowl, beat together equal quantities of mascarpone, crumbled blue cheese and finely chopped brie or camembert.

Season generously with black pepper and pack the mixture into the mould on top of the grapes. Flip the clingfilm edges over the top of the cheese and press down firmly to level the surface. Chill for an hour or two, or until firm.  If you'd like a (marginally) lighter mixture, use fat-free cream cheese instead of mascarpone.

For the caramel grapes:

Set a piece of baking paper on a board. Put a cup (250 ml) of caster sugar and a third of cup (80 ml) of water into a small, deep saucepan. If you have a saucepan with a white lining, use it, as this will allow you accurately to judge the colour. Bring gently to the boil, then turn the heat up a little and let the syrup bubble vigorously until it turns pale gold. At this point, watch it like a hawk, as caramel burns in an instant. Don't be tempted to stir - rather give the saucepan a gentle swirl. When the caramel is a beautiful rich golden colour, remove it from the heat. Don't wait too long: it will continue to darken by several shades after you take it off the heat, especially if you are using a thick-based saucepan that retains heat.

Stick a thin skewer deep into a grape, tilt the saucepan and dip the grape into the caramel. Now lift the grape high above the saucepan, allowing the caramel to run off and form a fine strand. Hold it there until the strand has hardened a little, then snip through it with a pair of kitchen scissors.  Place the grape on its side on the baking paper and repeat the process with the rest of the grapes.

If the caramel runs too reluctantly off the grape, you will need gently to rewarm it over a low flame. If it refuses to coat the grape or form a strand, you will need to cook the caramel for longer.

Serves 4-6 as a snack, with crackers

Roasted Grapes with Pressed Cheese. 

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SA Food Fundis II: Michael and Michele Karamanof

Say I had a choice: indulge in an exquisite meal at the finest restaurant in the city, or enjoy a home-cooked Sunday lunch, under a whispering tree, at the home of Parkview couple Mike and Michele Karamanof. No contest: I would head over to my friends' house with a bottle of wine and no regrets.

Maybe I'm getting old and crabby, but I'm fed up with restaurant food in Johannesburg. I can't afford to eat out often, and when I do, I almost always end up feeling ripped off. I do enjoy a slap-up meal at a good family steakhouse or pizza joint, if it's good value for money, but I really resent forking out R800 to R1000 - which is about what it costs to take five people to dinner at an upmarket restaurant these days, excluding wine - for a meal with absurdly stingy portions, pretentious stacked towers of food, dabs of this, drizzles of that, and shriekingly disgusting 'foamed' sauces that look and taste like spit.

All I want is a full plate - or several plates, for that matter - of honest, gutsy, delicious home-cooked food. I want it hot, I want it fresh, and I want it made in a home kitchen by a friend.

Chemical engineer Mike Karamanof and his wife Michele Botha (a graphic designer) have, for many years, and in their spare time, run a small home industry supplying several Johannesburg restaurants with top-quality home-made products, notably superior home-made pesto and tiramisu.

The Karamanofs are small fish in the Johannesburg-Foodie nibbling order: they're not caterers, chefs, restaurateurs or food professionals, but they are still among the best cooks I know. They have an instinctive love of food, they care about fine ingredients, and they understand simple combinations of brilliant flavours.

Welcome to the second of my new series about local South African food fundis!

Michael Karamanof is an ebullient, warm-hearted Greek with a passion for food that borders on obsession. His knowledge of food and ingredients is encyclopaedic: there are few butchers, greengrocers, fishmongers and wine merchants in Johannesburg with whom he isn't on first-name terms. He loves food, he adores wine, and Michael's idea of heaven is whipping on his apron and spending countless deliriously happy hours cooking for friends and family.

Actually, Mike is a complete know-it-all about food, and the only reason he gets away with this insufferable attitude is because he does actually know an enormous amount about food, and especially Mediterranean food. Mike speaks fluent English, Greek, German and French, and can hold a conversation in Italian and several other languages.

Michele Botha, the thoughtful, organisational, highly creative wing of this partnership, and a talented cook herself, is frequently maddened by Mike (the Karamanofs cannot prepare a meal for friends without having a good argument before everyone arrives).

But, back to the food: although they can cook anything, it's simple Greek food that Mike and Michele really adore. And this passion has accelerated since they bought, a year or two ago, a beautiful, tumbledown old house on the Greek island Kythera. The Karamanofs and their son, Leo, try to get back to the old house twice a year. Most of their time there appears to be spent arguing with builders and architects and each other, while they figure out how to to renovate the place, but they also do manage to spend a lot of time finding, eating, and thinking about food. One of the gorgeous desserts featured here - thickened yoghurt with sweet stewed grapes - is a speciality of Kythera.

For weeks, I've plagued M&M, as they are known among friends, for recipes for my SA Food Fundis section of this blog, and as they haven't produced the goods, on the grounds that they 'don't really have proper recipes' (and they genuinely don't, preferring to cook from their hearts) I'm giving you what they made me for lunch a Sunday ago. This represents a tiny portion of the wonderful food I've eaten at their home over the years.

Our meal started off with beetroot greens - the top leafy portion of beetroots, with their crimson stalks - simply cooked and dressed with olive oil, vinegar and salt, and a loaf of yeasty home-baked bread. Thin-crusted, crispy pizzas, freckled underneath with the black spots you get only from a proper wood-fired pizza outdoor oven (manned by Michael in his apron) and topped with gorgeous mozzarella, anchovy, tomatoes, herbs, mushrooms and the best salami, came next. Then, when we thought it was all over, two earthenware dishes of youvetsi - a dish consisting of rice-shaped pasta (orzo) combined with the tender rippings of lamb cooked for many hours with tomato, and topped with feta. And then, to crown it all, the yoghurt and stewed grapes.

All this around a wooden table, under a tree, in glowing autumn sunshine, and the scent of lemons drifting from a nearby tree in Michele's organic vegetable patch.

Does food get any better than this?

Want to go for dinner at Chez Auberge de La Mon Repose in Poshville, Sandton, for a Tower of Scottish Salmon with Rooibos Jus and Biltong Spit?

I thought not.

Here are the recipes:



- Stewed Sweet Grapes with Thick Yoghurt and Mascarpone, Kythera-style
- Beetroot Greens with Olive Oil
- Mike's Youvetsi


This post is the second in my series about South African Food Fundis. To see the first post, about Gilly Walters of Wedgewood Nougat, click here. Print Friendly

A delight from the Greek islands: Kythera-style Yoghurt with Stewed Sweet Grapes

I never, ever, ever, ever, ever eat pudding, but I darn well ate this. Here is a most unctuous and intriguing dessert: sweet, late-season grapes, stewed in a light syrup, and served with a combination of thick, creamy Greek yoghurt and mascarpone.

 Stewed Grapes with Mascarpone & Yoghurt.

This unusual recipe comes from my dear friends Michael and Michele Karamanof, a Johannesburg couple who are superlative cooks.

Mike and Michele first tasted this dish on the island of Kythera, in Greece, this year. 'It's a distinctive dish of this island,' says Michele. 'The recipe uses the very last grapes of the season, which are very sweet, and just beginning to shrivel.'

She adds that the original recipe she and Mike tasted used only thick Greek yoghurt: 'But the yoghurt you get on Kythera is sweeter and richer than South African Greek-style yoghurt, which tends to be slightly sour. So I added a little mascarpone to the recipe.'

Kythera-style Yoghurt with Stewed Sweet Grapes

3 bunches of late-season sweet seedless grapes, such as Sultana grapes
2 cups (500 ml) water
300 ml white sugar
2 cloves
one x 2-cm-long stick of cinnamon
2 cups (500 ml) thick, full-fat Greek-style yoghurt
1/2 cup (125 ml) mascarpone

Pull the grapes from their stalks, rinse well in cold water, and drain. Heat the water, sugar, cloves and cinnamon in a saucepan and heat gently, stirring, until the sugar has completely dissolved. Bring to the boil, tip in all the grapes, and turn down the heat. Cook, uncovered, at a low simmer for an hour to an hour and a half, or until the syrup has reduced by a third. Remove from the heat, set aside at room temperature, and allow to cool completely.

Just before serving, whisk together the yoghurt and the mascarpone. Pile the mixture in a big billowing mound into the centre of a large flat serving platter. Using a slotted spoon, arrange the stewed grapes around the edges of the platter. Pour some of the syrup over the grapes, and splash some of it over the yoghurt mound.

You could dish this into individual pudding bowls, but I think you should do as Mike and Michele did, which was to pass it round the table, with some small teaspoons.

Serves 4-6.

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