Amasi Cheese Pops with Herbs and Spices

This recipe has been loafing in my drafts folder for weeks, waiting for me to find a chance to blog it, but I whipped it out yesterday after receiving a call from the producer of Jenny Crwys-Williams' show on Talk Radio 702.  Could I, the producer asked, suggest an iconic dish that might be adopted by South Africans in memory of Nelson Mandela?  And could I talk about this on the radio in 50 minutes' time?

Amasi Cheese Pops with Herbs and Spices. Plate by David Walters.

After yet another outburst of weeping (I'm still, like many South Africans, swollen-eyed about the passing of this extraordinary soul) I applied my mind, and this idea popped up.  As I sifted through the pictures I took a few weeks ago, it occurred to me that these little bites contain ingredients that could symbolise many aspects of the life and spirit of one of the greatest leaders of modern times.

To be honest, I felt a bit silly telling Jenny about my idea on air, not least because chattering about a snacky little recipe seemed irrelevant, even inappropriate, at such a sombre time. Then again, there are scenes of jubilation, dancing and singing all over the country as South Africans honour the life of their beloved leader, so why not celebrate his legacy with food?

And, besides, I felt most honoured to be asked to contribute.  I never met Nelson Mandela, but I feel  privileged to have stood as a young woman in front of Cape Town's City Hall on 10 February 1990 to hear his historic speech, delivered hours after his release from prison.

So, I mused, the amasi cheese in this recipe (made from drained, soured milk) represents Madiba's humble beginnings and his happy childhood in rural Qunu, where he became a herd boy at an early age, looking after his father's cattle.

The lemon represents his great zest for life, and the smoked paprika the dust of Africa, from which all humankind arose. The black pepper recalls his struggle on behalf of the black majority in South African, and his warmth and spicy sense of humour.

The chillies represent his verve and fiery revolutionary spirit, while the white pepper recalls the limestone dust from Madiba's years of back-breaking work in a quarry on Robben Island.

Sprinkle the spices on a piece of paper and roll
the balls around so they are lightly coated.

Parsley is is a symbol of renewal, rebirth and redemption (especially on the Jewish Passover Seder plate, where it is dipped in salt water, recalling the tears shed during Egyptian enslavement).  This, I thought, was a fitting nod to his close relationships with many Jewish activists of the apartheid era.  The aromatic cumin is a nod to his love of Indian food and his fellow Indian-South African activists.

And the cake glitter? Well, I had to scratch my head about that, but then it came to me: the playful spangles refer to his twinkling sense of humour, his profound love of children, and the global celebrities who attached themselves to him like homesick limpets.

One flavour missing here - oh, so missing - is sweetness, but you could make a dessert version of these pops by sweetening the cheese with honey, then dipping them in crushed pistachios or almonds.

Or perhaps fresh pomegranate seeds, which symbolise prosperity, abundance, fruitfulness and, in ancient Israel, the fertility of the promised land.

Amasi Cheese Pops with Herbs and Spice

For the pops:

• 250 g amasi cheese (click here for the recipe), or a good, dense cream cheese if you don't have access to amasi
• the finely grated zest of a small lemon
• salt and white pepper, to taste

For the coatings: 

• smoked paprika
• cake glitter
• finely chopped fresh parsley
• crushed pink peppercorns
• coarsely cracked black pepper
• finely chopped fresh red chillies
• cumin

Lightly knead the fresh cheese on a board together with the lemon zest, salt and white pepper. Go easy on the white pepper, as it has a powerful taste.

Cover your chopping board with a sheet of non-stick baking paper or clingfilm.

Pull the cheese into pieces and roll them between your palms to create neat balls.  Lightly roll each ball in the coatings for your choice, push a lolly stick or slim wooden ice-cream stick into each one, then refrigerate until firm.

Serve with a sweet chilli dipping sauce, or a fruity chutney, or pomegranate syrup.

Makes about 12 cheese pops. 

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Drained Maas Cheese Roll with Lemon, Pepper & Smoked Paprika

I've had a lovely response to my recipe for drained maas [amasi] cheese - thank you for the emails and messages!  I'm so excited by this method for making gorgeous soft white cheese at home that I've made three more batches this week, experimenting with a variety of flavours. Here is my current favourite: a 'salami' of cheese with lemon zest and white pepper, rolled in cracked black pepper & smoked paprika.

Drained Maas Cheese flavoured with lemon and pepper.
 Plate by Master Potter of Franschhoek David Walters.

This cheese is so inexpensive to make at home - the two-litre bottle of full-cream maas it takes to make two of these will set you back around R20. A huge saving, considering that a single, smaller (100g) 'salami' of this sort costs between R19 and R23 at upmarket stores.

I am smitten by white pepper, so tend to use it with abandon, but as it has a strong, rather 'dusty' flavour, I suggest you add it to the cheese in pinches, tasting as you go.

This home-made cheese is also good with sweet chilli jam (see Cook's Notes).

Another wonderful flavouring for this cheese is horseradish (see my Cook's Notes at the end of this blog post).

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Drained Maas Cheese Roll with Lemon, Pepper & Smoked Paprika

a drained maas cheese, made from 1 litre of full-cream maas
the finely grated zest of half a lemon
½ tsp (2.5 ml) white pepper
salt, to taste
freshly milled black pepper
1 tsp (5 ml) good smoked paprika

To serve: 
fresh radishes, or crunchy accompaniments of your choice
Salticrax or similar salted crackers, to serve

Tip the cheese into a bowl. Add the lemon zest, pepper and salt, to taste, and knead well with your fingertips. It's quite a sticky cheese, so you might want to use a sturdy spoon instead.

Roll the cheese into a tight salami shape.

Form the cheese into a ball and then roll it into a neat salami shape between the palms of your hands. Place a piece of clingfilm or baking paper on the counter and grind over it plenty of black pepper. Gently roll the cheese back and forth so it is coated all over. Now dip the two ends in the pepper. Repeat the process using the smoked paprika.

Place the cheese on one end of a new length of clingfilm and roll it up, as if you are making a Christmas cracker.  Grasp the two ends of the 'cracker' and continue roll the cheese away from you to form a neat, tight cylinder. Twist the two ends together (see picture above), and refrigerate for 4-5 hours, or until firm.

Unroll the cheese, slice it into discs (see Cook's Notes) and serve with crackers and radishes.

Makes one cheese; serves 4 as a snack, with accompaniments.  

Cook's Notes

• The best way to slice this cheese is with a length of unscented dental floss or similar thin, strong thread.   
• If you're not in South Africa, you can make this with yoghurt, using this recipe.
• This is also good with sweet chilli sauce, tomato jam, wine jelly, quince jelly, and so on.
• Try using the maas cheese in my recipe for Smoked Venison with Horseradish & White Pepper. You can serve this pressed into a mould, or formed into dear little 'lollipops' (see below, right.)

Smoked Venison with Horseradish & White-Pepper Cream Cheese, served two ways

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Easy Maas (Amasi) Drained Cheese with Capers, Radishes & Herbs

A creamy, delicate white cheese that's incredibly easy and inexpensive to make. I'm excited to share my recipe with you, and hope you'll try it, because it's so versatile and delicious. I've used a beloved Southern African staple ingredient - amasi, or maas, a soured/fermented milk - to create this drained cheese, and combined it here with some spiky contrasting flavours.

Radishes, capers, lemon zest, olive oil and salt contrast with the
delicate milky flavours of the maas cheese.  I've used rocket and parsley
 seedling leaves from my garden to strew over the cheese. 

If you're fed up with paying through the nose for cream and cottage cheeses, you'll love this method of making your own soft white cheese at home. A two-litre bottle of amasi retails for around R25, so the cheese shown in the picture above, made from a one-litre bottle of maas, will set you back about ten rand.

I can't understand why amasi doesn't feature more prominently in restaurant dishes or, for that matter, in workaday South African recipes. Full-fat maas is a superb local ingredient: it has a light, tangy taste, it's pleasingly creamy, and it has many well-documented health benefits. 

The shiny slick visible at the top of this beautiful plate is not
 olive oil, but a brush-mark of fired-on, glassy glaze, placed there for a
 specific reason by my uncle, master ceramicist David Walters. More about
 this towards the end of this blogpost!  

Amasi also has multiple uses in the kitchen. You can use it in place of natural yoghurt (my obsession this year!) in many dishes: it's a good tenderising agent in marinades for chicken and red meat, it's lovely in raitas, salad dressings and creamy dips, and it's useful for dolloping at the last minute into curries and similar spicy stews. I always add maas to fruit smoothies, and often whizz it up with frozen cubes of fruit to make instant ice cream.

It's also an excellent alternative to buttermilk and/or yoghurt in scones and quick breads: the best scones I've ever tasted are made with maas: you can find the recipe for Irene Ngcobo's legendary feather-light scones here, on my Scrumptious Facebook page.

If you're wary of maas because it sometimes has a slightly lumpy texture, don't worry! The long draining process produces a beautifully creamy, smooth-textured cheese, all on its own, without any need for stirring.

You can lightly knead this cheese (once it has finished draining) with salt, pepper, garlic, herbs and any other zippy flavours you fancy, but I think it's best just as it is, with all the bells and whistles served on the side of the plate. I love the contrast of the delicate milky-bland flavours and a few crunchy/sour accompaniments, mashed together under a fork with plenty of fruity olive oil and flaky sea salt.

Try it, also, with ribbons of honey and a scattering of toasted flaked almonds or pistachios, or with stewed grapes or baked figs.  Or roll the cheese into balls, coat them with pepper and marinate them in olive oil, rosemary, garlic and similar sunny Mediterranean flavours (see picture below).

Maas-cheese balls rolled in pepper and smoked
paprika, and marinated in olive oil, garlic and rosemary.
  Plate by David Walters. 

There's nothing mysterious about this recipe: it's a basic drained cheese, similar to a Middle-Eastern labneh. If you're not in Southern Africa, you can make this using Greek yoghurt (here's my recipe for a garlicky, herby yoghurt cheese).

Finally, a note about the beautiful black plates in the pictures above. My uncle David Walters, master potter of Franschhoek, works closely with some of South Africa's top chefs to produce bespoke dinnerware for their restaurants. He's designed these matte black plates with great care and attention, brushing a slick of shiny glaze right across its middle  Why? Because he doesn't want your fork to make a nasty scraping fingernails-on-blackboard noise as you clear the plate.

Which brings me to a little grumble. As I may have mentioned on this blog before, I can't bear good food served on rough slate roof tiles, a gimmick that has spread like a black fungus all over the restaurant world. (I was annoyed to see this fad eagerly reproduced by contestants on the latest series of South African Masterchef, along with the ubiquitous spoon-dragged 'swoosh' of sauce, or what I like to call a Plate Skidmark.) There are many studio potters in South Africa producing the most beautiful hand-made dinnerware, and I wish restaurateurs would support them, instead of buying their 'crockery' at builders' yards.

My feeling is this: if you're going to spend a lot of time and effort making exquisite, flavoursome food, please dish it up on a spotlessly clean, unchipped, smooth piece of porcelain, preferably a shining white or black plate with a lip  - or crafty concave surface - to prevent your jus from sliding off the edge.

Easy Amasi Drained Cheese with Capers, Radishes & Herbs

a litre of full-cream maas (I use Inkomazi brand)
baby herb leaves, to garnish
finely grated zest of half a lemon
Maldon flaky sea salt
freshly milled black pepper
1 cup (250 ml) small radishes, halved
4 Tbsp (60 ml) baby capers
4 Tbsp (60 ml) fruity extra-virgin olive oil
a squeeze of lemon juice, to taste

Line a large sieve with a closely woven cloth. I use a fine, clean cotton dinner napkin, but a brand-new J-Cloth (one of these) or a laundered dish cloth/tea towel will do just as well. Avoid waffle-textured cloths, however.

Place the cloth-lined sieve over a big bowl and pour in the maas.  Let it sit, undisturbed, for about 10 hours, or overnight.

The clear whey will drip into the bowl below, and it will also soak right to the edges of the cloth. Don't stir or scrape at the cheese: let it drain at its leisure.

Gather up the edges of the cloth, twist them tightly together and secure with an elastic band.

Hang the bundle over a bowl, or suspend it from a tap over the sink, for another 12-16 hours, or longer, if you'd like a firmer cheese. The longer you leave it, the dryer and denser it will become. If you don't have a tap like the one shown in the picture below, hang your cheese from a broomstick placed across the backs of two facing chairs, or a similar rig.

Hang the cheese up until you're
 satisfied with its texture.  

If you're going to hang it for longer than two days, or the weather is very hot, it's best to finish the draining process in the fridge. If your fridge has wire racks, clip the knot of the cloth to the rack with clothes pegs, and place a bowl underneath. If your fridge has glass shelves, you will have to hang the cheese in the coolest place in your house.

Tip the cheese out of its cloth onto a plate. Alternatively, you can press it firmly into a mould of some sort - a little bowl, or perhaps two small ramekins - a few hours before you serve it, and then unmould it onto a plate.

Scatter over the baby herb leaves and lemon zest, and season generously with salt and pepper. Arrange the radishes, capers and any other accompaniments around the cheese. Generously douse the cheese with olive oil, and finish off with a good spritz of lemon juice.

Serve with melba toast or crackers, or with celery and carrot sticks if you're on a low-carb eating plan.

Serves 4-6 as a snack.



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Buttermilk Cheesecake with a Fresh Strawberry Topping

This delicate fridge cheesecake is perfect for a light finish to a summer meal, with its creamy, barely-set filling and zingy topping of fresh strawberries. I made this cheesecake a few months ago, and have been itching to share it with you ever since, but I held it back because I created the recipe specially for the fourth issue of South Africa's ground-breaking digital food & wine magazine Crush! Online, which went live yesterday.  Now that the December edition of Crush! has been released into the wild, I feel I can let my little cheesecake out of its cage.

Buttermilk Cheesecake with a Strawberry Topping

I'm very tickled to have been invited by Michael Olivier, editor and owner of Crush!, to contribute five of my original recipes to his regular 'Which Wine? Which Food?' feature. Michael - whom I first met less than a year ago, at the first South African Food Blogger's Conference - is an esteemed and well-loved elder of  the Cape's buzzing food and wine community.

When I say 'elder', I don't mean some sorry old fart or has-been, but someone who has earned the genuine respect of  his peers - and his many younger protégés  - by spending decades honing his pen, his palate, his knowledge and his exceptional people skills.

I've used buttermilk in this recipe because I think it's a most under-used ingredient, and because I love its taste: cultured buttermilk is tart, with a slight sweetness, and has a nice creamy consistency. And - agree with me please - it has a delightful name.

 [Postscript: Try using fresh maas in this recipe!]

Use a knife dipped in boiling water to cut perfect slices of this cheesecake.

A challenge with an unbaked cheesecake like this one is getting it out of the tin in one beautiful piece. My method is to line the base of the pan with clingfilm, which allows you easily to loosen the crust. Use a microwaveable hot-pack, or a cloth dipped in boiling water, to warm the sides of the tin before you unmould it (see Cook's Notes, below).

You can use any seasonal fruit as a topping: this cake is very good with granadilla (passion fruit) or mango. Use the same ratio of fruit pulp to gelatine, as laid out in my recipe, below.

Buttermilk Cheesecake with a Fresh Strawberry Topping

For the biscuit crust:
one packet (200 g) Eet-Sum-Mor biscuits, or similar shortbread biscuits
80 g (80 ml) unsalted butter, softened or melted

For the filling:
⅓ cup (80 ml) water
4 tsp (20 ml) powdered gelatine
one x 250 g tub of cream cheese
1 cup (250 ml) cultured buttermilk or maas [amasi]
1 cup (250 ml) caster sugar
1 tsp (5 ml) pure vanilla extract
finely grated zest of a small lemon
1 cup (250 ml) cream

For the topping:
a punnet (about 250g) of fresh strawberries, hulled
2 Tbsp (30 ml) water
1 tsp (5 ml) powdered gelatine
lemon juice and caster sugar, to taste

Break up the biscuits and process them to fine crumbs in a food processor (or crush them with a rolling pin). Place in a bowl, add the soft or melted butter, and stir well to combine. Butter the base of a non-stick 24-cm springform cake tin, cover with clingfilm, and butter again. Tuck the edges of the clingfilm under the base, and place it in its ring. Press the biscuit mixture evenly onto the base of the tin and place in the fridge while you make the topping.

Put the water in a little heat-proof bowl and sprinkle the gelatine on top. Set aside for a few minutes to sponge. Place the bowl in a pot of simmering water (the water should come half-way up the sides) and stir occasionally as the gelatine melts. When the liquid is clear, remove the bowl and set aside to cool for a few minutes. Alternatively, you can melt the gelatine, in its bowl, in your microwave, but be sure to do this in 7-9 second bursts, on high.  Don't allow the gelatine to boil, or its setting properties may be affected.

Put the cream cheese and half the buttermilk into a large bowl and, using a whisk, beat until quite smooth. Beat in the remaining buttermilk, the caster sugar, the vanilla extract and the lemon zest, until you have a smooth mixture. Strain the warm gelatine into the bowl and mix well.  In a separate bowl, whisk the cream until it has formed thick, soft peaks.  Gently fold the cream into the cream cheese/buttermilk mixture. Pour the mixture over the crumb crust and refrigerate for 2-3 hours, or until firm.

Now make the topping. Sponge and melt the gelatine and water, as described above. Put the strawberries in a liquidiser, add a few tablespoons of caster sugar (depending on the sweetness of your strawberries) and blitz to a purée. Measure out a cup (250 ml) of this purée and to it add a few drops of lemon juice. Strain the warm gelatine into the purée, stir well and pour it evenly over the top of the cake. Refrigerate until set.

Warm the sides of the tin (as described below) and release the cake. Slide a palette knife between the crust and the clingfilm, turning the cake as you go, and then slide the cake onto a platter. Slice the cake using a knife dipped in hot water.

Makes one 24-cm cake

Cook's Notes

There are various methods of loosening a gelatine-set dessert from its mould. Professional chefs use a blowtorch, which is briefly flicked over the outside of the tin, but this is a risky business, as a few seconds too long can liquefy the outside of the cheesecake and, besides, it's useless if you're using a plastic jelly mould. A better way is to dip a kitchen cloth in boiling water, and press it to outside of the cold tin for a few seconds. But the best way of all, I've found, is to use a hot pack designed for soothing acheing muscles.

If you don't have a Happy Hugger, here's how to make one yourself. (I keep one of these in my kitchen drawer for the sole purpose of loosening jellies!). Steal a long cotton sock from someone's drawer. Fill it with rice or barley, and tie a firm knot in the open end. Place the sock in a microwave oven for 2-3 minutes, or until very warm to the touch. Press the hot pack around the edges of the tin, for 30 seconds at a time, moving it around the edges as necessary. At the same time, release the spring-form lever (or lift the cake ring)  in small increments.

 When you cut the cheesecake, use a hot knife (heated over a flame, or in a bowl of boiling water) for slicing. Print Friendly