Salad of Smoked Chicken, Persimmons and Cashews, with a Cumin Vinaigrette

This salad features that rather rare and old-fashioned fruit, the persimmon, or sharon fruit. Have you ever tasted a persimmon? It's not the most perfumed of fruits, but it has a nice fresh astringency and, with its glowing orange tones, looks beautiful in salads.

Here, I've combined it with shreds of smoked chicken breast, cos lettuce, spring onions, baby corn, chives, cashew nuts and balls of spiced cream cheese to make a substantial winter salad. A vinaigrette warmed with cumin and smoked paprika gives this salad a poke in the eye.

I always buy persimmons when I see them, because they're so exotic, and because I so love their melodious name.  Please read my post about what a lovely word 'persimmon' is, and about poetic food names in general.

If you can't find smoked chicken in your local shop, how about making your own? It's really easy to smoke chicken breasts in a wok. Here's a great recipe for tea-smoked chicken from my pal Nina at My Easy Cooking, using, as a smoking agent, South African Rooibos tea.  If you can't find Rooibos tea, use ordinary tea, or wood chips sold for smoking purposes.  And if you can't find persimmons, try this with cubes of mango or peach.

Salad of Smoked Chicken, Persimmons and Cashews, with a Cumin Vinaigrette

cos lettuce, enough for six people
4 smoked chicken breasts
4 ripe persimmons
4 spring onions, finely sliced [scallions]
8 baby mielies, finely sliced into disks [baby corn]
150 g block of full-fat, firm cream cheese
a little paprika or chilli powder
a handful of  roasted, salted cashew nuts
a bunch of fresh chives, finely snipped

For the dressing:
a small clove of garlic, peeled
4 tsp (20 ml) fresh lemon juice
4 tsp (20 ml) white wine vinegar
½ tsp (2.5 ml) Dijon mustard
a pinch of sugar
1 tsp (5 ml) powdered cumin
½ tsp (2.5 ml) smoked paprika
90 ml olive oil
2 tsp (10 ml) water
a pinch of salt
freshly milled black pepper

First make the dressing. Crush the garlic and place in a small bowl. Add the lemon juice, vinegar, mustard, sugar, cumin and paprika, and stir to combine. Now whisk in the olive oil and water. Season with salt and black pepper and set aside.

Arrange the cos lettuce leaves on a large salad platter. You can leave them whole, if they are small and neat, or if they are large you can tear them into bite-sized pieces. Pull the smoked chicken breasts into large shreds and scatter over the lettuce. Remove the stalks from the persimmons and cut into small cubes.  Sprinkle the cubes over the salad, along with the spring onions and finely sliced 'daisies' of baby corn.

Pinch marble-sized pieces off the block of cream cheese and roll them into balls between your palms. Now roll them in paprika or chilli powder. Arrange the cream cheese balls on the salad, and scatter over the cashew nuts and snipped chives.

Just before serving, stir the dressing and pour it over the salad.  Dust the salad with a little more smoked paprika and serve immediately.

Serves 6. 


Like this recipe? Try my Fresh Persimmon Salsa.

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Seared Peppered Tuna with Fresh Oregano, Radishes and Verlaque Dressing

Seared fresh tuna is often served with oriental-style dressings, and it's certainly good this way, but it's not often you see it combined with the singing flavours of Mediterranean

Plate by David Walters

herbs. Fresh, pungent oregano, in particular, is just lovely with almost-raw tuna, as are thyme and basil.

The trick here is to use the herbs quite sparingly so that they don't overwhelm the delicate tuna: I raided my recently planted herb-garden-in-pots and pinched off just the tiniest new leaves.

In this dish, tuna is rolled in crushed black pepper, seared in a blazing-hot pan, sliced, and combined with fresh herbs, a little chopped red chilli and crunchy radishes.

You can use any salad dressing you like - this is good, for example, with a zingy lemon vinaigrette - but I cut corners and dressed the tuna using a local bottled dressing: Verlaque Sweet Basil, Sundried Tomato and Olive Oil Spash.

I seldom buy bottled dressings (they are always too salty and creamy and they taste so... well... so bottled. And, besides, it's so easy to make your own dressings).  My attitude has changed, though, since I asked my friend, Adrienne Verlaque, to bring me a few bottles from her Verlaque range.

I'd admired Adrienne's beautifully labelled bottles of balsamic reductions, infused olive oils and salad 'splashes' in my local Woolworths, but had thriftily (and rather snobbily, I'm afraid) passed them over.


After eagerly tasting my way through several bottles, I have learned the error of my ways (that is, don't judge a dressing because it's bottled). Adrienne is a wizardess in the flavour department, and has incorporated into her dressings a range of  wonderful exotic ingredients  that I don't have a chance of procuring locally:  Persian pomegranates, Turkish figs, cranberries, white truffles and porcini mushrooms among them.

 Exotic ingredients aside, it's Adrienne's clever use of distinctive South African flavours that really appeals to me:  these include Cape gooseberries, Cape rough-skin lemons, guavas, passion fruit, mangos, marula, wild garlic, fynbos honey and Rooibos tea.

These ingredients are not merely waved over the dressings, either: using her particular magic, Adrienne has managed to distill the essence of each flavour, giving each product in the range a distinctive and authentic South African punch. Click here to find out where to buy Verlaque dressings.

This recipe serves four as a starter but is easily doubled.

Seared Peppered Tuna with Fresh Oregano, Radishes and Verlaque Dressing

one 400 g loin of fresh tuna
a little olive oil
2 tsp (10 ml) coarsely ground black peppercorns
8 little radishes
1 small red chilli [optional]
a few young sprigs of fresh oreganum, thyme and basil, or any combination of Mediterranean herbs
a pinch of flaky sea salt

For the dressing:
Verlaque dressing of your choice (see notes, above)
OR
4 T (60 ml) fruity olive oil
4 tsp (20 ml) good vinegar, or fresh lemon juice

Heat a non-stick frying pan until it is blazing hot.  Trim the tuna loin of all raggedy bits and coat generously on all sides with olive oil. Strew the crushed black peppercorns on a chopping board, and roll the tuna loin firmly over the pepper, pressing so that it is well coated on all sides. Open the windows in your kitchen - there will be some smoking.  Place the tuna in the ferociously hot pan, press down hard with a spatula, and cook for 45 seconds on one side, or until about 1 mm of flesh on the cooking side turns opaque.  Flip over, then cook the remaining three sides for 45 seconds each. The fish should be remain a rosy, raw pink in the middle, with a thin outer crust.  Remove from the heat and allow to cool for a minute.

Cut the tuna into thin slices using a very sharp knife (this is easiest if you squeeze the loin tightly to compress the flesh).  Arrange the slices on a platter. Top and tail the radishes and cut them into paper-thin slices using a mandolin or sharp knife. Cut the red chilli in half horizontally, scrape out the seeds and cut into a very fine dice. Strip the baby herb leaves from their stalks. Scatter the radish slices, chilli and baby herb leaves on top of the tuna.  Sprinkle the dressing over the tuna slices, and scatter over the flaky salt.  Allow to stand at room temperature for 15 minutes, then serve.

Serves 4 as a starter. 

PS: Have you noticed how foodie photographs of seared tuna show perfectly round or - ludicrous! - square slices of tuna? Cheffy cooks achieve this by wrapping the raw tuna in clingfilm - in a tight salami-like sausage for round slices, or pressed into a rectangular mould for square ones - and then refrigerating the fish until it holds its shape. I sincerely hope you won't be tempted to do this. Print Friendly

Iced tea with Rooibos, Apple and a bit of spice

Here's my recipe for a refreshing iced tea made from South African Rooibos tea and clear apple juice, with spices adding a delicious fragrance. I make up this brew in four-litre batches two or three times a week, and, to my astonishment, my kids have stopped begging for Coke and Sprite and Oros and are eagerly glugging this healthy elixir. And I, too, have given up my unhealthy habit of craving Coca-Cola, Tab, Coke Lite, Coke Zero and all the other synthetic, dark-reddish-black fizzy drinks to which I have been hopelessly addicted since I was ten.

I am grateful to my aunt Gilly Walters for this lovely idea.

This may seem like a complicated recipe, but it's not, if you make up one big batch of spiced sugar syrup, and keep it in the fridge. The beauty of this method is that you can adjust the sweetness of the tea according to your taste. Since I switched to the sugar-free version of Coca-Cola and its devilish ilk a few years back, I have found most juices and cool drinks too be far too sweet for my liking. This recipe allows you to adjust the sweetness at will.

Spiced Iced Tea with Rooibos and Apple

For the spicy sugar syrup - enough to make up several batches:

2 cups (500 ml) white sugar or caster sugar
2 cups (500 ml) water
2 sticks cinnamon
2 whole star anise
6 whole cloves
the thinly pared skin of one lemon

Put all the ingredients in a saucepan and bring slowly to the boil, stirring now and then to dissolve the sugar crystals. Boil rapidly for five minutes, then turn down the heat and allow to bubble very gently for fifteen more minutes until the mixture is clear and starting to get a little syrupy. Remove from the heat and allow to cool completely. Decant the mixture into a glass or plastic jug or jar, spices and all, cover, and refrigerate. The longer the mixture steeps, the spicier it will become.

For the tea:

You will need a bucket or very big jug or basin to mix this up.

8 rooibos teabags, or the equivalent in loose tea
2 litres boiling water
1.5 litres clear apple juice, chilled
about 2 cups (500 ml) cold water, to taste
the juice of one lemon
spicy sugar syrup (see above) to taste

Put the teabags or loose tea into a bowl or sturdy glass jug, and pour over the boiling water. Allow to steep for a few hours, or until completely cooled. Pour the tea into a large jug or basin and add the apple juice, the water and the lemon juice [optional]. Now add a glug of the spicy sugar syrup. How much you add depends on how sweet you like your tea - taste it, and decide. Stir well and refrigerate.

Serve with plenty of ice. A slice of lemon, or a sprig of mint or lemon balm will add a bit of zing.

Makes four litres.

Note: This is lovely with peach or apricot juice.

Postscript: I threw a whole vanilla pod into a recent batch, which added a special fragrance. Today our iced tea was made from rooibos teabags with an Earl Grey flavour. 
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Rooibos Tea Ginger Beer

This is a scrumptious variation of old-fashioned ginger beer. The idea of adding rooibos came to me while I was waiting for my ginger beer to cool while drinking a cup of rooibos tea. It has a delicate rooibos taste (add more teabags if you like a strong brew) and a wonderful apricot-orange colour.

Rooibos Tea Ginger Beer
Make the ginger beer according to this recipe, but add 4-6 teabags of rooibos tea (or 4-6 tablespoons of loose rooibos tea) along with the lemon juice and rind. Leave the teabags to steep in the mixture while it ferments, and remove only just before bottling the mixture. Print Friendly