Low-Carb Tomato, Mozzarella & Chorizo Salad with Caperberries and Basil

It's food heresy to tinker with the three perfect elements of a Caprese salad, but I felt I had to, because the tomatoes I bought yesterday weren't very alluring. Although they fell short of being mealy on the inside, they were neither sweet nor acidic, but somewhere in between, with a top note of tasteless. So I dollied up the dish with some paper-fine chorizo slices, a handful of caperberries, salt, pepper and basil oil, left it to stand for an hour so the salt could draw out the juices, and then fell on it like starving wolf.

Tomato, Mozzarella & Chorizo Salad with Caperberries.
Plate by David Walters.

I'm going to make this again because I love the smoky taste of the chorizo with tomatoes, basil and cheese, and because it's so easy to fling together.

Use ordinary capers if you don't have caperberries and, if you can afford it, an authentic milky-soft mozzarella, not the bog standard supermaket variety. If you can't find pre-sliced chorizo leaves like the ones in the pictures, buy a whole sausage and asked the staff at the supermarket deli counter to cut it very thinly on their magic slicing machine.

Leaving the salad to sit for an hour allows the flavours to mingle

I am going to make a vast platter of this as a starter next time I have friends over for a feast. I haven't thrown a long, lazy weekend lunch since... well, I can't remember when last I cooked for a crowd. It's been such a cold and wet winter here in Cape Town, and I haven't felt in the mood. It's not that I mind spending a lot of time in the kitchen preparing a feast - it's the clearing up and the staggering price of food and booze that puts me off.

How often do you have lunch parties? How much do they cost you? Tell me in a comment!

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Tomato, Mozzarella & Chorizo Salad with Caperberries

4 large, ripe tomatoes
12 large, thin slices chorizo sausage
12 slices mozzarella
16 caperberries, or 4 Tbps (60 ml) capers
a small bunch of young basil
flaky salt
6 Tbsp (90 ml) extra-virgin olive oil
half a lemon
milled black pepper

Arrange the tomato, chorizo and mozzarella slices on a platter in overlapping circles, and strew the caperberries and half the basil over the top (use the smaller leaves).

Put the remaining basil leaves  into a mortar and add a pinch of flaky sea salt. Pound the leaves to a paste, then stir in 3 Tbsp (45 ml) of the olive oil.

Place little dabs of the basil oil all over the salad.  Sprinkle with the remaining olive oil, and spritz the salad with lemon juice, to taste.  Season with more salt and plenty of black pepper, and set aside, covered, on the counter top for an hour.

Serve with bread.

Serves 4 as a starter; 2 as a salad.

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Paprika Pork Fillet with Greek Yoghurt, plus top tips for cooking with natural yoghurt

When you spend a lot of time cooking and thinking about food and writing new recipes, you can't help but develop ridiculous fascinations for particular ingredients.  You scatter these ingredients all over your blog, hoping your readers will find the flavours as compelling as you do, and then all of a sudden your tastes swerve in another direction and you move onto something new.

Over the years I've been writing this blog, I've fixated on a number of ingredients, among them nasturtium leaves, white pepper, paprika, fennel, capers, quinces, fresh horseradish, dried mint, pork neck and prickly pears. This year, it's Greek yoghurt: not necessarily eaten thick and cold with fruit or honey or nuts, but as a brilliant substitute for cream or coconut milk in piping-hot savoury dishes and curries, and as a cool and calming note in chilled mayonnaisey ones.

Before I give you this recipe, may I warm to the topic of Greek yoghurt? I don't like fruit-flavoured commercial yoghurts, but for many years I've been an ardent fan of tangy Greek yoghurt so thick you can stand a spoon up in it. Mixing glorious natural yoghurt with fresh garlic, herbs and lemon juice to make a low-carb, low-fat smothering sauce has become a habit whenever I go on any sort of diet (about twice a month, and to no avail, I'm afraid).

Postscript, 15 March 2014: Here is my foolproof recipe for home-made Greek-Style Yoghurt.

My particular interest over the last few months has been in cooking with yoghurt, and specifically using it as a substitute for sinful dairy cream (and butter, and fatty coconut cream) in soups, stews, sauces, curries and casseroles.

Full dairy cream wins many glittering prizes when it comes to taste and mouth-feel because - along with its cousin, glorious salty butter - it adds superb silkiness, savour and luxury to so many of the world's best-loved classic sauces. Restaurant chefs all over the world make use of scandalous amounts of cream and butter to make sauces taste heavenly, and who can blame them for that?  A white-wine reduction designed to be draped over fish would be rubbish without a splash of cream to round it off,  and what would a trembling emulsion such as Hollandaise or Béarnaise be without butter?

I haven't much cared, over the years, about using dobbles of cream and cubes of butter in family dishes because I vehemently reject the notion that there are 'bad' and 'good' foods ('Everything in moderation', as Granny used to say).  I always keep a carton or two of cream in the fridge, for dribbling into sauces, scrambled eggs and soups, and when I brown chicken or fish or red meat in olive oil I will always pop in a knob or two of cold salty butter for basting purposes.

But recently I've given thought to cutting extraneous dairy fats out of our family meals, and so my interest has turned again to Greek yoghurt as a 'creamifying' and enriching agent.

Anyone who has tipped a carton of Greek yoghurt into a seething pan filled with lovely ingredients and seen it curdle in an instant to nasty white lumps may give a sympathetic nod at this point.  But please don't give up hope.

After some experimentation, I've figured out how to use yoghurt to enrich hot dishes. If you follow these steps, you'll find you can very effectively enrich soups and stews with Greek yoghurt in place of cream.

In my experience, there are two things that yoghurt hates: 1. Acidity and 2. Fierce heat.  Or a fatal combination of both.

I've found that it is possible to add fairly large quantities of Greek yoghurt to dishes containing much acidity - in the form of fresh or tinned tomatoes, for example, or freshly squeezed lemon juice - without ending up with a curdled mess you wouldn't feed the cat.

Here are my three golden rules:

1. Add the yoghurt in small quantities, at the last minute, dollop by slow dollop, and never in one big go.

2.  Never add yoghurt to a dish that's energetically boiling, or bubbling briskly. Turn the heat down to the lowest it can go, or turn the heat off.

3. Mix the yoghurt with a small amount of cornflour - just a teaspoon, or less, depending on the dish  - to stabilise it, before you add it to the hot pan.  This isn't strictly necessary, but it is a great help.

But on to the recipe, which is a good example of how you can use yoghurt to add lovely softness to dishes traditionally enriched with cream.  This is a quick and easy dish that takes some short cuts (not browning the onions, for example), and it's a good choice for a family meal. Pork fillet isn't expensive compared to chicken or beef fillets, and it's exceptionally lean if you trim off every bit of fat.  Although this dish is quite acidic because it contains fresh tomatoes, it accepts the yoghurt gracefully, and is - I reckon - the better for it.

A top-quality paprika makes all the difference to this dish. I'm not saying you can't make it with ordinary supermarket paprika, but what a difference a beautiful Spanish paprika makes.

One or two tablespoons of cream will help to round off the flavours (sorry, I just can't resist it). See my Cook's Notes at the end of the recipe.

Paprika Pork Fillet with Greek Yoghurt

1 kg pork fillet (about three fillets - or tenderloins - of 300 g each)
4 Tbsp (60 ml) cake flour
salt and milled black pepper
2 Tbsp (30 ml) olive oil
2 Tbsp (30 ml) butter
2 medium onions, peeled and roughly chopped
500 g ripe cherry or Rosa tomatoes
3 cloves garlic, peeled and roughly sliced
1 tsp (5 ml) white granulated sugar
1 Tbsp (15 ml) tomato paste
a large (10 cm) sprig of fresh thyme
¾ cup (180 ml) dry white wine
¼ cup (60 ml) water
the finely grated zest and juice of one lemon
1 Tbsp (15 ml) mild Spanish paprika, or more, to taste
1 tsp (5 ml) good quality smoked paprika [optional]
1 cup (250 ml) thick natural Greek yoghurt
a handful (125 ml) finely chopped fresh parsley

Trim the pork fillets of any fat or sinew. Cut into slices 3 cm thick. Put the flour into a big mixing bowl and season it generously with salt and milled black pepper.

Heat a large frying pan and add the oil and butter. While the fat is heating, put the fillet slices into the bowl of seasoned flour and toss them around so they're well coated.  Pat and shake the slices energetically to remove the excess flour - they should be just lightly dusted.  When the fat is very hot, brown the slices on both sides (in two or three batches, and without overcrowding the pan) until they have a nice golden crust, but are still somewhat raw on the inside.  Set each batch aside on a plate while you finish frying the rest.

In the meantime place the onions, tomatoes, garlic and sugar into a food processor, or similar liquidising device, along with any remaining flour left over in the bowl in which you dredged the meat slices. Whizz the mixture to a fairly fine coral-pink purée, but don't over-process it, because it will become foamy.

Once you've browned the final batch of pork slices, tilt the pan over the sink to drain away any excess fat, turn down the flame and add the tomato paste. Cook the tomato paste over a gentle heat for a minute, then pour in the white wine to deglaze the pan, stirring and scraping energetically to release any golden sediment clinging to its base. Add the water and the puréed onion/tomato/garlic mixture, along with the thyme sprig. Turn up the heat again and cook at a lively bubble for about 10 minutes, or until the mixture has slightly reduced and thickened, and has darkened in colour.  It's ready when you drag a spoon across the mixture and your spoon leaves a narrow channel that closes reluctantly.

Add the yoghurt patiently, a dollop at a time, stirring carefully between each addition.
 Don't boil the sauce, or the yoghurt might curdle. 

Put the browned pork slices back into the pan and add the lemon zest, paprika and smoked paprika. Turn down the heat and gently simmer the pork slices in their sauce for 4-5 minutes (turning them over once or twice during that time), or until they're cooked right through.

Stir in the lemon juice, to taste, and bubble the sauce for another minute. Now turn the heat down to the very lowest it can go and add the yoghurt, tablespoon by tablespoon, stirring well between each addition. When all the yoghurt has been incorporated, remove the thyme sprig and taste the sauce. Add more salt and pepper if you think it's necessary, plus an extra spritz of lemon juice to add some pleasant acidity. Stir in the chopped parsley and serve immediately, with mashed potatoes and steamed green beans, or a pile of fresh rocket, beetroot and watercress.

Serves 4-6 as a main course.

Cook's Notes

• Two or three tablespoons of fresh creamed stirred in at the end will beautifully finish off the flavours.
• I've found that ultra-low-fat yoghurts are more unstable in the pan than full-fat yoghurts.
• You can use tinned tomatoes in this dish, if you are in a hurry, but please bear in mind that tinned tomatoes are often extremely acidic, and that they may cause your sauce to curdle once you've added the yoghurt. A pinch of bicarbonate of soda added along with the tinned tomatoes may prevent this.

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Effortless Fennel, Sausage & Tomato Tray-Bake

No one in my family likes fennel.  Or at least they didn't until last weekend, when I set out to change their minds by making this tray-bake brimming with lovely fresh fennel, snappy pork chipolatas, shallots and dear little carrots.

Roasting vegetables concentrates their flavours and brings out 
the sweetness in shallots, carrots and fennel.

My husband, who loathes the taste of aniseed, demolished his plateful - 'But the fennel is so sweet and delicious!', he cried - and so did two of the teens.  So there you go: you can bend your family's tastes to your will if you persist.

I added the pork sausages because they taste wonderful with fennel, but mostly because everyone in my household adores them. If I sprinkled them cunningly around the dish, I reasoned, they'd make the medicine go down, and they did.

This is an absolute breeze  to make, and (as is the case with all wonderful, abundant tray bakes) you can add anything else you might fancy - black olives and feta at the end, for example. I've used a simple dressing (I like to think of veggie tray-bakes as cooked salads) of lemon juice and olive oil, with just a little garlic and white wine, but feel to experiment with other ingredients, plus herbs of your choice. I'm very fond of rosemary with fennel, but this would also be good with plenty of fresh thyme.

If you can't find shallots - which are still like hens' teeth in Cape Town; these ones are from Woolies - use onions, quartered lengthways, or whole pearl onions.

Top-quality veggies make all the difference here.

Fennel, Sausage & Tomato Tray Bake
4 large fennel bulbs, trimmed
500 g cherry tomatoes, halved
350 g shallots, or 4 onions, quartered lengthways
a large sprig of rosemary, leaves stripped
250 g baby carrots
300 g pork chipolatas (If you can't find tiny ones, buy the finger-length ones and twist each one into two)
flaky sea salt and milled black pepper

For the dressing: 
4 Tbsp (60 ml) olive oil
3 Tbsp (45 ml) white wine
2 Tbsp (30 ml) fresh lemon juice, plus extra for sprinkling
2 cloves garlic, peeled and finely grated
1 tsp (5 ml) brown sugar

Heat the oven to 190 ºC.  Cut the stalks off the fennel and slice the bulbs lengthways into quarters (or sixths, if they are very large). Use a paring knife to chip away any tough pieces of white core.

Put all the ingredients for the bake in a large, deep roasting tray.  Season generously with salt and pepper, and scatter the rosemary leaves over the top.   Whisk together the dressing ingredients, pour this over the contents of the tray. Mix well so every piece is coated - I use my hands for this.

Cover the dish tightly with tin foil and bake at 190 ºC for 30 minutes.  Now remove the foil, turn the oven up to 200 ºC (fan on, if your oven has one) for 25-30 minutes, or until all the moisture has evaporated, the fennel is tender and sticky, and the sausages are a rich brown.

Sprinkle a few drops of lemon juice over the tray and take it hot to the table.

Serves 4 as a generous main dish; 6 as a side. 

More of my fennel recipes:

• Wine-Braised Baby Fennel in Crisped Prosciutto
• Salad of Shaved Baby Fennel, Apple and Smoked Mackerel
• Egg and Fennel Salad with Nasturtium-Leaf Mayonnaise
• Spring Salad of Edamame Beans, Fennel, Avocado and Pancetta
• Fennel Salad with Caramelised Pears, Walnuts and Blue Cheese

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Moroccan-style Tomato and Preserved-Lemon Salad with a Tomato & Paprika 'Broth'

Made with red onion, preserved lemons, capers, radishes and green olives, this Moroccan-style salad is not for shrinking palates. But I love these boisterous flavours, and would be happy to eat a bucketful. The picture below, taken in fading light, doesn't do justice to the brilliant colours of this salad.

If you're not sure your family will go for this, treat it like a rough-cut salsa and serve each person just a dollop to pep up grilled chicken, spicy fish or steak. Cubes of mild creamy feta cheese (look, Greece is not that far from Morocco) might entice kids and teens to try it. If you're presenting it on its own as a starter or snack, provide plenty of hot pita bread to soak up the juices.

Perfectly red, ripe tomatoes and fresh paprika and cumin are essential if the dressing is to taste like the knees of the bees (and there should be lots of dressing; it should be like - without wanting to sound poncy - a cold broth). The pips and pulp are scooped out, but they are squished through a sieve to make the dressing (British chef Heston Blumenthal recently proved that the wobbly inside bits of tomatoes are packed with the elusive fifth flavour, umami; see my notes about this here.) If you don't have preserved lemons to hand, leave them out.

Tomato, Onion and Preserved-Lemon Salad with Tomato & Paprika Dressing

6 ripe, very red, but not mushy tomatoes
1 red onion, peeled
half a preserved lemon (or more, to taste)
6 radishes
12 green olives
a small bunch each of fresh coriander, mint and flat-leaf parsley
3 T (45 ml) capers

For the dressing:
2 red, ripe tomatoes
about 4 T (60 ml) olive oil
the juice of half a lemon
one and a half tsp (7.5ml) fresh paprika
1 tsp (5 ml) freshly ground cumin

First make the salad. Cut a cross on the stalk end of each tomato and cover with boiling water. Leave for a minute or two, and then, as soon as you see their skins begin to furl and loosen, scoop them out of the hot water and slip off their skins. Set a sieve over a separate bowl.

Cut the tomatoes in half, scoop out the pulp and pips with a teaspoon, and place the pulp in the sieve to drain. Cut each tomato half in half again, or into thirds, if you are using big tomatoes. Halve the onion lengthways, place the halves cut-side down onto a board, and slice finely into crescent-moon shapes. Rinse the preserved lemons under running water to remove any excess salt. Using a sharp knife, held parallel to the chopping board, slice away any pulp and white pith. Cut into fine slivers. Slice the radish into thin discs. Depip the olives and cut them in half.

Finely chop the coriander, mint and parsley. Put the tomatoes, onion, lemon slivers, radish, olives and chopped herbs in a salad bowl, add the capers and toss gently to combine. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

To make the dressing, quarter the two tomatoes, place in a liquidizer or food processer and whizz to a chunky pulp. Pour the pulp into the sieve containing the reserved tomato pulp and pips. Using the back of a soup ladle, press down on the mixture to extract the juice. Discard the pulp. To the tomato juice, add all the remaining dressing ingredients. (You may need to add more olive oil, depending on the size of the tomatoes you've used.) Whisk well and pour over the salad. Toss well, cover, and set aside for 30 minutes for the flavours to mingle.

Serves 6.

This recipe was inspired by a salad from Moroccan: A Culinary Journey of Discovery by Ghillie Basan. Print Friendly

Tomatoes Baked with Garlic Butter and Cream

Glorious tomatoes in cream,
sequinned with butter.

A wickedly indulgent yet simple dish that is excellent with bacon and eggs, or with a cheese omelette. A first baking with garlic butter allows the garlicky, herby flavours to permeate the tomatoes; a second baking with cream produces a heavenly sauce spangled with little sequins of butter.

You can use any combination of fresh herbs here; good dried herbs are also fine, but use half the quantity as dried herbs are far more pungent than fresh ones.

If you like, you can bake these in individual ramekins, but you will need to shorten the cooking time by about 5 minutes. Don't cut the bottoms off the tomato halves, which will cause them to collapse.


Tomatoes Baked with Garlic Butter and Cream

8 ripe, sweet tomatoes
3 Tbsp (45 ml/45 g) softened butter
1 fat clove garlic, peeled and crushed (to taste)
a pinch of finely chopped fresh rosemary
1 tsp (5ml) finely chopped fresh oreganum
salt and freshly milled black pepper
2/3 cup (160 ml) single cream

Preheat the oven to 180°C. Halve the tomatoes and place them, cut-side up, in a single layer in suitably size oven-proof dish. In a little bowl, combine the butter, garlic, rosemary and oreganum. Place a dob of the garlic butter in the centre of each tomato, and season well with salt and pepper.

Bake the tomatoes in the hot oven for about 20 minutes, or until just softened. Pour the cream over and around the tomatoes, resisting the temptation to stir, or to disturb the garlic topping. Turn the heat down to 160°C, and bake for another 10 minutes, or until soft right through, but not collapsed.

Serve with plenty of toast or fresh bread for mopping up the juices.

Serves 4. Print Friendly

Hot Caprese Salad on Phyllo Pastry

This tart, with its crisp phyllo base, ripe tomatoes, basil and mozzarella, is dead easy to make and quite delicious as a light lunch or quick snack.

The idea for this tart came to me because I am trying to convince my 9-year-old daughter to like tomatoes. She usually picks them out of a salad, or off the top of a pizza, although she tolerates them in sandwiches. But I don't want her merely to tolerate them; I want her to adore them, as I do!

Caprese Salad is, I think, one of the world's greatest salads, least of all because it's so incredibly simple, and because the combination of flavours is, in a word, sublime.

I knew my daughter wouldn't go for the raw tomatoes, so I thought I'd pizzafy the salad. The pizzafication worked: she ate the tomatoes.

The mozzarella in this photograph isn't real Italian mozzarella but the South African equivalent, which is rubbery and, when melted, super-stringy.

The only producer of authentic Buffalo milk mozzarella in this country is Wayne Rademeyer of Buffalo Ridge in Wellington. His cheese is just gorgeous, but at around R70 for a small tub, way too pricey to eat often. Buffalo Ridge mozzarella is available from Cheese Gourmet in Linden, and also stocked by Melissa's and by Giovanni's in Cape Town.

If you can find vine-ripened plum tomatoes (unlike the supermarket tomatoes I used here) use those. This is also good with sweet cherry tomatoes.

I don't think this salad needs anything else but a glass of crisp and very cold white wine. Definitely no rocket or garlic.


Hot Caprese Salad on Phyllo Pastry
6 sheets of phyllo pastry
a little melted butter or olive oil, or a mixture, for brushing
8 ripe tomatoes
500 g mozzarella (I used Simonsberg, which comes in a cylinder shape)
fresh, small basil leaves
olive oil
flaky sea salt and milled black pepper

Preheat the oven to 160° C. Using a pastry brush, brush the bottom and sides of a shallow baking tray with the butter or oil. Add a sheet of phyllo pastry, allowing the edges to drape over the rim of the tray. Use your fingers to press the pastry into the corners, and brush the sheet generously with butter. Continue layering and brushing the pastry sheets until you have used up all six. Gently press the pastry to squeeze any air pockets towards the edges. Cover with a damp tea towel. Using a razor-sharp knife, top and tail the tomatoes and slice thinly. Cut the mozzarella into thin slices (if you're using a cylinder-shaped piece of mozzarella, cut it in half lengthways first. Slice, then use your fingers to ease each slice back into a semi-circle (the cutting will have squashed it).

Set out layered stripes of the tomato, mozzarella and basil on the phyllo pastry base, as shown in the second photograph. Sprinkle with sea salt and a good grinding of milled black pepper, and sprinkle with olive oil. Bake at 160° C for 10 to 15 minutes, checking every five minutes to make sure that pastry isn't catching. Remove from the oven and cut into squares using a sharp knife or a circular pizza-cutting knife.

Serve immediately.

Serves 8-10 as a snack or starter; 6 as a main course.

Notes:

- Another way to serve this tart would be to bake the case for about 10 minutes, then arrange the uncooked ingredients on top. To prevent the pastry from puffing up too much in the oven, bake it blind: cover with a piece of greaseproof paper or tin foil and weigh down with lentils or beans for the first five minutes of cooking.

- You can use a pair of scissors to trim the edges of the pastry (or round the corners; see photo above) if they look too scruffy.
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Meatballs in a Spicy Tomato and Yoghurt Gravy - with toddler variation

About 12 years ago I saw this brilliant recipe - little meatballs simmered in a rich, fragrant gravy - demonstrated on TV. I jotted it down on the back of an envelope, which sat in my recipe file for at least a decade, and then the envelope vanished and I had to make the dish from memory. It's probably changed a bit as a result - and I've added onions and brown breadcrumbs to the meatballs, to make them healthier and more economical - but it's still one of my all-time favourite family meals. I'm sorry I can't recall whose recipe it is, because I'd like to shake her by the hand. I still use her basic formula for family meatballs; it's the yoghurt, I believe, that makes them so tender.

This is a fabulous meal for toddlers, if you omit the onions and coriander from the meatballs and add just a wee hint of spice to both meatballs and gravy. As time goes on and the kids get addicted to the dish, you can increase the amount of spicing in tiny increments so that, by the time they're nine or ten, their palates will be begging for spicy food, and you will have given them the fine gift of a life-long lust for curry!

The original recipe called for lamb, but I usually make it with minced pork, which - if you have the right butcher - is lean, clean and inexpensive. Beef works just as well.

There are lots of ingredients here, but it is quite quick to make if you have a food processor fitted with a strong metal blade. My instructions presume that you have such an appliance: if you don't, you'll need to chop everything finely by hand (or grate the ingredients).

Meatballs in a Spicy Tomato and Yoghurt Gravy

For the meatballs:

3 slices brown bread
a handful of fresh coriander leaves
1 small onion, roughly chopped
2 cloves garlic, peeled
1 kg lean minced pork, lamb or beef
10 ml (2 t) ground cumin
10 ml (2 t) ground coriander
5 ml (1 t) garam masala
a fresh green chilli, finely chopped [entirely optional]
45 ml (3 T) plain white yoghurt
1 egg
salt and freshly ground black pepper

First make the meatballs. Tear up the bread, place in the food processor and whizz to fine breadcrumbs. Add the fresh coriander and pulse until finely chopped. Tip into a large mixing bowl. Put the onion and garlic in the food processor and process until very finely chopped, but not slushy. Tip this mixture into the bowl containing the breadcrumbs, and add all the remaining meatball ingredients. Using your hands, squish and squash the mixture so that it is thoroughly combined. Form into small round balls - bigger than a litchi; smaller than a golf ball - place on large plate, and place in the fridge for 30 minutes to firm up.

For the gravy:

2 T (30 ml) vegetable oil
two onions, very finely chopped
1 thumb-sized piece of ginger, finely grated
3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
10 ml ground cumin
5 ml ground coriander
2 cardmom pods
1 stick cinnamon
8 ripe tomatoes, peeled (see note below)
400 ml water
1/2 cup (125 ml) plain white yoghurt
salt and freshly ground black pepper

Heat the oil in a large pot and add the onions. Cook over fairly high heat, stirring often, until they are a rich light brown colour. Add the ginger, the garlic and all the ground and whole spices, and allow to sizzle for two minutes, without allowing the garlic to burn.

In the meantime, roughly chop the tomatoes, put them in the food processor and whizz to a purée. Don't over-process them: you want a slightly textured purée, with not too much foam. Add the tomatoes to the pot and cook over a high heat for five minutes, stirring often. Add the water. Bring to the boil, then turn down the heat and simmer for 30 minutes. Skim off any foam that rises to the top. Now add the yoghurt, a tablespoon at a time, stirring briskly between each addition, to prevent curdling. Season with salt and pepper.

Remove the meatballs from the fridge and place them one by one, using a large metal spoon, into the simmering gravy. Don't be tempted to stir or poke, which will break up the meatballs. It doesn't matter if some of them are sticking up above the gravy line: give the pot a very gentle shake so that the gravy coats each ball. Cover the pot and simmer for 20 minutes. Now take the lid off and give the pot a good shake - the meatballs will have firmed up. Simmer for another 25 minutes, uncovered, or until the gravy is slightly thickened and reduced. Check seasoning and serve hot with rice, plain yoghurt and chopped fresh coriander.

Serves 6 to 8.

Notes:

* Peel the tomatoes by dipping them in boiling water until their skins begin to split. Or halve the tomatoes, press the cut side against the coarse teeth of a grater, and grate vigorously until the empty tomato skin is flattened against your palm.

* You can fry the onions for the meatballs first, if you like, but I love the subtle crunch of onion.

* You can use chopped tinned Italian tomatoes instead of fresh ones if you are in a hurry, but... oh, hell, use fresh tomatoes, or it just won't taste the same. Print Friendly

Blend-Ahead, Deeply Delicious Spicy Mince, Bean and Tomato Soup

Blend-Ahead, Deeply Delicious Spicy Mince, Bean and Tomato Soup

This is a great recipe for feeding a hungry horde of teens on a shoestring, because it uses only 500 g of lean mince and is thickened with nutritious (but cunningly concealed) tinned beans, which are the perfect fibre and energy food for teens.

If you're a vegetarian, leave out the mince - it's just as good without it. It's called Blend-Ahead because it's puréed before it's cooked.

There are a lot of ingredients, and a longish cooking time, but the soup takes less than 15 minutes to prepare. Oh, and did I mention that it is delicious and addictive? I've made it three times this week.




Blend-Ahead Spicy Mince, Bean and Tomato Soup

2 Tbsp (30 ml) vegetable oil
3 onions, peeled and roughly chopped
500 g lean minced beef
6 large, ripe tomatoes, roughly chopped
1 tin good tinned tomatoes, and their juice
3 cloves fresh garlic, peeled and roughly chopped
1 tin butter or kidney beans, and their liquid (see notes)
1 tin baked beans in tomato sauce
2 Tbsp (30 ml) mild curry powder
2 Tbsp (30 ml) powdered cumin
1 Tbsp (15 ml) powdered coriander
1 tsp (5 ml) Tabasco sauce
1 tsp (5 ml) chilli powder [optional; to taste]
4 Tbsp (60 ml) tomato sauce [ketchup] or 30 ml (2 Tbsp) tomato paste
1.25 litres (5 cups) vegetable stock, chicken stock or water
salt and freshly ground black pepper
200 ml coconut milk

To serve:
a dollop of plain white yoghurt, chopped coriander and a few dabs of olive oil, plus anything else you fancy: grated cheddar, chopped spring onions, fresh green chillies, etc.

Heat the oil in a large saucepan. Put the onions in the goblet of a liquidizer fitted with a metal blade and whiz until very finely chopped. Fry the onions in the oil until they are softened and beginning to turn golden.

Turn up the heat and add the mince, stirring with a fork to break up any lumps. While the mince is browning, put the tomatoes, the tin of tomatoes, the garlic and the tinned beans and their liquid into the liquidiser. Process until fine.

Tip the cooked mince and onions into a metal sieve set over a bowl and press down with a fork to drain off excess fat. Now tip them back into the pot and add the ingredients you've just liquidised. Add all the remaining ingredients, except for the coconut milk, and use a balloon whisk to combine everything and break up any stubborn lumps of beef.

Bring to the boil, and then immediately turn down the heat. Cook over a moderate to low heat for about an hour and a half, stirring now and then to prevent sticking, and skimming off the foam as it rises. If the soup seems too thick, add a little more stock or water to thin it down. It's important not to rush the cooking: the beef should melt into tender granules and the soup needs time to thicken. Stir in the coconut milk and serve very hot, with the cool and crunchy toppings.

Serves eight.

Cook's Notes:

- Any tinned bean and its juice will do, but this is my favourite combination
- Add a tin of sweetcorn kernels or chickpeas, or lentils, if you'd like to add even more bulk.
- You can use an equal quantity of tinned tomatoes instead of fresh ones, but the flavour somehow isn't the same.
- You can also use dried beans in this recipe, but you will need to soak them and boil them in advance. Remember not to add any salt to the boiling water, which will toughen the beans.

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Roast Red Pepper & Tomato Soup

I've got such a deep, greedy need for piping-hot, peppery tomato soup at the moment - what could my soul be craving? The colour red? A bit of acidity to balance out my natural sweetness, har har? Or perhaps a hefty dose of healthy lycopene? Woolies and Pick 'n Pay both make very tasty tomato soups, and variations thereof - with basil, with sun-dried tomatoes, with red peppers - but they are somehow not quite peppy and zingy and livid enough for my starved tastebuds. So this is what I made:

Roast Red Pepper and Tomato Soup
5 big, ripe red peppers (capsicums)
10 ripe, sweet tomatoes
a little olive oil
a tin of Italian peeled tomatoes
2 cloves garlic, peeled and sliced
1 tsp (5 ml) white sugar
2 T (30 ml) tomato paste (or 4 T, 60 ml, tomato sauce/ketchup)
water or stock to thin
2 tsp (10 ml) Tabasco sauce (to taste)
1 tsp (5 ml) paprika
1/2 cup (125 ml) cream (optional)
a handful of fresh basil leaves
salt and freshly milled black pepper

Preheat the oven to its highest setting (my oven goes up to 220°C. ) Halve the red peppers, remove the stalks and seeds, and any really huge bits of white pith, and arrange, cut side up, on a baking sheet. Halve the tomatoes and place, cut side up, on another baking sheet.

Brush the peppers and tomato halves with a little olive oil and sprinkle with salt and a grinding of black pepper. Place the baking sheets in the oven (if they won't fit side by side, put one sheet on the top rack, and the other on the bottom, and swop them over a couple of times during roasting). Roast until they are soft and beginning to blacken on the edges (about 30-40 minutes, depending on the ferocity of your oven)

Now turn the heat down to 140° C and allow to bake for another 20 minutes or so.

This is how mine looked after a thorough roasting:
Rub off any deeply blackened bits of skin off the peppers (don't worry about flecks of black) and tip them and the tomatoes into a food processor fitted with a metal blade (you might need to do this in batches). Add the tinned tomatoes and their juice, the garlic, the sugar and the tomato paste. Whizz at high speed until you have a thick, slightly chunky purée. Tip into a large saucepan and bring to the boil, skimming off any foam as it rises. Thin to a soupy consistency with a little water or stock (I like soup quite thick and chunky). Turn down the heat and simmer for 20 minutes.

Now add the cream (very slowly, in a trickle; very acid tomatoes may curdle the cream), Tabasco sauce and paprika. Season with salt and pepper and serve very hot, topped with torn fresh basil and a swirl of olive oil.

By the time I'd remembered to take a picture of the finished soup, I'd eaten it all. Sorry for that.

Serves 6.

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Easy Power-Failure Sweet Chilli Jam

I bought a gargantuan box of sweet, deep-red tomatoes from my greengrocer yesterday, for a mere thirty ront (R30). What a bargain, I thought as I staggered to my car. Every household needs 5000 tomatoes that promise to reach a pinnacle of ripeness within the next 20 minutes. It only hit me when I got home, and had to hire a forklift to get the box of tomatoes out of my car boot, that perhaps not everyone would appreciate gazpacho for supper for the next six weeks. So all the scarlet lovelies ended up in a Sweet Chilli Jam.

Here's a pic of the finished product
 (I think pictures might enliven this blog a bit,
don't you?)

I didn't have a recipe, and couldn't look for one on the Net, because there was yet another power failure in our area (luckily I have city gas, so I can at least use the hob) so I improvised a quick cheat's recipe, using some old chutney recipes as a guide.

 Stirring and scraping a cauldron of spitting red goo was a good way to while away the hours until the lights finally came on just after darkness fell. I've scaled this recipe down so it makes about 3 jars of sauce.

Excellent on a Cheddar sandwich, in stir-fries, or poured over a disc of ripe Camembert.

Power-Failure Sweet Chilli Jam

12 large, ripe, red tomatoes
2 big red peppers (capsicums)
4 (or more, depending on how hot you'd like your sauce) fresh red chillies
1 thumb-size piece fresh ginger, coarsely grated
2½ cups (625 ml) white sugar (or more, depending on the wateriness and acidity of the tomatoes)
4 Tbsp (60 ml) Balsamic or white wine vinegar
salt to taste

Roughly chop the tomatoes, peppers and chillies (skin, seeds and all) and place in a liquidiser, or a blender fitted with a metal blade, together with the grated ginger. Whizz on the highest setting for a minute until processed to a foamy, thinnish liquid: don't worry if there are pips, or bits and pieces of pith and peel bobbing around. Pour into a large, deep pan and tip in the sugar and the vinegar. Add salt, to taste. Place over a medium heat and bring to the boil, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon to dissolve the sugar. Now turn the heat right up and boil vigorously for 30-45 minutes, stirring frequently to prevent the mixture from catching. Use a large flat metal spoon to skim any foam or scum from the surface of the sauce.

In the meantime, rinse three small glass jars (or bottles, or Tupperware blikkies) in very hot water. If you're fastidious (which I am not) you can sterilise them first by microwaving the wet jars on high for three minutes, or by placing them, and their lids, in a clean saucepan of rapidly boiling water for five minutes. Drain upside down on a paper towel.

Taste the mixture - if it's too sweet, add a little more vinegar. When the mixture darkens a little, becomes syrupy and spits angrily when you stir it, it's nearly ready.

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.

Remove from the heat and allow to cool for five minutes.

Put a sheet of newspaper under the hot jars and use a ladle to fill each jar almost to the brim. Screw on the lids tightly. If the jars are sticky on the outside, give them a quick rinse under the hot tap before you put them away.

Makes about 700 ml.

POSTSCRIPT: Store the jam in the fridge once you've opened it. I left two open jars in the cupboard and they lasted a month before they started to ferment, and I had to chuck them in the bin. This is probably because I neglected to sterilise the jars properly. Print Friendly

Fettucine with Warmed Tomatoes, Garlic and Rocket

Four out of five members of my family think rocket rocks, so we eat it every day, if it's in the shops (in summer it grows like a weed in the garden). I don't know what made my teens start liking a leaf as strong and peppery as rocket (taking them to Italy last year where pizzas arrived piled with fresh rocket helped), but I'm determined to convert my seven-year-old too, as Google tells me it's full of vitamins C, A and K, and that it's a superfood for bones

This is a winter version of that lekker summer pasta dish which involves tipping cold chopped tomatoes and crushed garlic into hot pasta.

Fettucine with Warmed Tomatoes and Rocket
1 box fettucine (fresh is better, from Woolies)
5 T olive oil
3-4 cloves garlic, peeled and crushed
5 ripe tomatoes, chopped
3 large handfuls rocket leaves
1 cup finely grated Parmesan or Grana Padano
1 tsp chilli flakes (optional)
salt and milled black pepper

Boil the fettucine in plenty of salted water. Heat the olive oil in a large deep saucepan and stir in the crushed garlic. Saute the garlic very gently (it shouldn't brown) for five minutes. Add the chopped tomatoes, stir to coat, and simmer very gently for another few minutes so that they are warmed through but nowhere near collapsing. When the pasta's cooked, drain well and tip it into the warm garlic and tomatoes. Add the whole rocket leaves and chilli flakes and toss well to coat. Turn off the heat, toss in the grated cheese and season well with salt and pepper.

Top with fine shavings of Parmesan and another lashing of olive oil.

Serves 5.

Recipe rating:

My rating: 8/10
Teenagers' rating: 8/10
Small-daughter rating: She didn't try it. Print Friendly