Dried Naartjie Peel, and a South African Milk Tart to go under it

During naartjie season, you might be forgiven for thinking my house has been invaded by swarms of starving monkeys, so many blazing-orange peels are draped over cushions and tossed in spirals on the carpets. I exaggerate, of course, but my kids do love naartjies [a South African word for tangerines or clementines] and they eat them by the bucketload in winter.

Dried naartjie peel adds a lovely old-fashioned fragrance to milk tart.

I've no doubt that a similar surfeit of naartjie peels led early cooks at the Cape to dry these fragrant skins and pound them to a powder to use in both savoury and sweet dishes. References to dried, ground naartjie peel abound in old South African recipes:  'No well-stocked 18th or 19th century kitchen was without a jar of dried naartjie peel,' write Magdaleen Van Wyk and Pat Barton in their book Traditional South African Cooking (2008).

In her esteemed cookbook Traditional Cookery of the Cape Malays (1959) Hilda Gerber gives a recipe for koesisters that contain 'a little stamped dried naartjie peel'.  A similar recipe for koesisters appears in the Cape Malay Cookbook by Faldela Williams.

A recipe for 'Krapkoekies' [literally, 'scratch biscuits'] in The Imperial African Cookery Book: Recipes from English-Speaking Africa by Will Sellick contains both dried naartjie peel and cardamom.

Dried naartjie peel was also used in oublietjies (light, crisp wafer-like biscuits bought to South Africa by the French Huguenots; these were cooked in a special waffle iron and rolled to form a cylinder) and in sweets.

In his book Tavern of the Seas, famous raconteur Lawrence Green wrote, 'For the children there would always be tameletjies, the sweets made of sugar, water, eggs, naartjie peel and dennebol pits.' What Green calls 'dennebol pits' are denne pitte, or pine nuts. Tameletjies are a type of nutty, sticky toffee, also known as stick-jaw or sticky jaw. According to Van Wyk and Barton, tameletjies have been eaten at the Cape since the early days of the French Huguenots: 'Years ago, these sweets were sold by Malay street vendors but these days they seem to be made only for special private feasts.' Here's their recipe for tameletjies.

Dried naartjie peel - along with fresh - was probably used in early versions of Van Der Hum (a famous South African liqueur made of brandy, spices and naartjie peel) and it's also occasionally used as a flavouring in savoury dishes, including bobotie, spicy dish of custard-topped mince that is regarded by some as South Africa's national dish. Here's a contemporary recipe for a lamb potjiekos (pot-stew) containing dried naartjie peel.

I oven-dried a whole lot of naartjie peel recently and have had great fun experimenting with this unusual  ingredient. It has a lovely pungent aroma and is delicious combined with other spices such as nutmeg, mace, cardamom, cinnamon and cloves. The ground peel does have a fleeting bitterness (no doubt due to the fact that I dried it without removing its white pithy underside) but it is not at all unpleasant. I suppose you could use a potato peeler to shave off pithless flakes of the peel, but this is a laborious business because naartjie peel is so oily and flexible.

To dry naartjie peel, place the peels - torn into big strips -  on a rack in a sunny place and allow to air-dry naturally. Or, if you're in a hurry, put them on a rack set over a baking tray and place them in the oven. Turn the oven to its lowest setting and allow them to dry out overnight, or until they are quite crisp. The peels will dry out faster in a fan-assisted oven.  Store the peels in an airtight jar and use a coffee grinder or a mortar and pestle to blitz a few pieces to a powder whenever you need them for a recipe.

By far and away the most famous dish using dried naartjie peel is milk tart, or melktert. Most modern recipes call for a piece of fresh naartjie peel to be placed in the milk to infuse, but older recipes incorporate the dried, ground peel into the mixture.

I like a delicate, wobbly, custardy milk tart, but my kids do not; their tastebuds have been ruined by flabby white supermarket milk tarts containing not a trace of egg and far too much cheap cinnamon.  This recipe is a compromise (and I've added some cream and a vanilla pod for extra decadence).

Milk tarts are traditionally made with flaky or puff pastry, but I prefer a shortcrust pastry. You can make your own - recipe here - or use a good frozen pastry of your choice.

---

South African Milk Tart with Dried Naartjie Peel 

a deep 23-cm pie dish lined with shortcrust pastry, and baked blind

For the filling:
1 litre full-cream milk
125 ml (½ cup) pouring cream
a strip of fresh naartjie (tangerine) peel
a vanilla pod, halved lengthways
a 5-cm quill of cinnamon
2 extra-large free-range eggs
6 Tbsp (90 ml) cake flour
2 Tbsp (30 ml) cornflour [cornstarch]
200 ml caster sugar
1 Tbsp (15 ml) dried, ground naartjie peel

To top:
caster sugar
dried, ground naartjie peel

Put the milk, cream, naartjie peel, vanilla pod and cinnamon quill in a large saucepan, place over low flame and bring very slowly to the boil. As soon as the milk begins to seethe and rise in the pan, remove it from the heat, cover and set aside for 15 minutes to infuse. Strain the milk into a jug or bowl and discard the peel, vanilla pod and cinnamon.

Break the eggs into a mixing bowl and whisk them lightly. Add the flour, cornflour, caster sugar and one-third of the warm, strained milk. Beat together, using a wire whisk, until quite smooth. Pour this mixture back into the saucepan and add the remaining two-thirds of milk.  Cook, over a low flame, stirring constantly, until the mixture is thick and smooth; it should have the consistency of a thick white sauce. Don't allow the mixture to boil. Pour the mixture into the prepared pie dish and bake at 160ºC for 25-35 minutes, or until the filling has set, but is still rather wobbly in the middle. Remove from the oven and allow to cool.

Put the ground naartjie peel and caster sugar into a tea strainer and sift this mixture all over the top of the tart.

Makes one 23-cm tart

Print Friendly

Panko-Crumbed Calamari with Black Salt & White Pepper, and Lime Mayonnaise

Indented sauce bowl by master potter David Walters of Franschhoek

I've been scratching my head for a few months now wondering what to do with the bottle of Hawaiian black lava salt I bought at a food emporium (Giovanni's Deliworld) in Cape Town, and after some deliberation have come to the conclusion that this is an ingredient that must be used tongue in cheek. As a feeble culinary joke, I mean. I can think of no other use for this salt.

Sure, it's an interesting product, with its large, crunchy, jet-black, rather greasy-looking granules, but when push comes to shove, it's just salt, and it tastes, well, salty.  It's no use for dishes containing liquid, because the colour runs from the crystals, making sooty streaks in sauces and dressings.

So I reckon the best way to use black salt is as a cheeky novelty.

In this, my take on that popular dish salt-and-pepper squid, I've reversed the colours of the two starring seasonings, combining the black salt with one of my favourite spices, white pepper.  If you can't find black salt, use a good brand of flaky sea salt, such as Maldon.

Japanese panko breadcrumbs aren't essential for this dish - you can use ordinary fresh or dried breadcrumbs - but they are well worth hunting for because they have a feather-light texture that creates a beautifully light, crisp whisper of a crust.  They're available at specialist Oriental food shops and some delicatessens; I bought mine at the Spar in the Cape Quarter.

These are good with a salty-sweet Asian dipping sauce of lime juice, soy sauce and chilli but, because I don't often make deep-fried anything, I went the whole hog and served them with a zesty mayonnaise with fresh lime juice and rind. In for a penny, in for a pound, I reckon.

The only tricky aspect of this recipe is getting the oil temperature just right. If it's too cool, the crust will soak up oil and become soggy. If it's too hot, the calamari will overcook. If you have a candy thermometer or digital thermometer, use it to keep the oil at between 160º and 165º C.  If you have no such thing, follow these instructions for deep-frying.

Finally, do use small, tender, good-quality calamari tubes for this dish. Fresh calamari is sometimes available at good fishmongers and at Woolworths. If you can't find fresh calamari, look out for packs of frozen Patagonian squid, which is now being sold in South Africa.  Avoid, at all costs, the rubbery pre-cut frozen rings you see in the supermarket.

If the calamari you buy comes with tentacles, dust them with a little seasoned cornflour and deep-fry them in the same oil to use as a crisp garnish.

Panko-Crumbed Calamari with Black Salt and White Pepper, and Lime Mayonnaise
  
700 g clean, small calamari tubes
1 cup (250 ml) flour
1 tsp (5 ml) finely ground white pepper
1 tsp (5 ml) Hawaiian black lava salt (or flaky sea salt)
2 eggs
2 cups (500 ml) panko breadcrumbs, or ordinary breadcrumbs
2 cups (500 ml) sunflower or similar light vegetable oil, for frying

For the lime mayonnaise:
1 cup (250 ml)  home-made mayonnaise, or genuine Hellmann's mayonnaise
3 T (45 ml)  thick natural Greek yoghurt
the finely grated zest of a lime
the juice of two small limes
a pinch of salt

To serve:
Hawaiian black lava salt (or flaky sea salt)
a little extra white pepper
lime wedges

First make the mayonnaise. Mix the mayonnaise, yoghurt and lime zest together in a small bowl. Add just enough fresh lime juice to give the sauce a good 'bite'.  Season with salt and refrigerate.

Turn the oven on to 140º C and place a big platter in it to warm.  Rinse the calamari tubes, pat dry with kitchen paper and slice into rings about 7 mm thick. Put three medium-sized bowls on the counter. Put the flour, white pepper and black salt into the first bowl, and mix well. Put the eggs into the second bowl and whisk until combined. Put the panko crumbs in the third bowl.

Pour the oil into a small saucepan or a wok. Heat the oil to 165º C, or until a crumb dropped into it sizzles furiously (see my notes above).  Place several layers of newspaper or kitchen paper on your counter.

Prepare the calamari in four batches. Take the first quarter of rings and toss them in the seasoned flour. Shake well to remove any excess. Dip them into the beaten egg, and then place them in the bowl full of crumbs. Using a fork, toss them lightly so that they are just coated with crumbs.  Drop the rings into the hot oil and fry for a minute, or until they are a light golden brown. Remove from the hot oil with a slotted spoon and drain on the kitchen paper. (And, once they're well drained, put them in the oven to warm.)  Remember that the calamari will carry on browning after you've taken it out of the hot oil, so fish the rings out of the pan long before they begin to darken.

Repeat with the remaining calamari rings.

Pile the hot calamari on a platter and dust with a pinch of white pepper (exercise caution here: it's a very pungent spice) and a scattering of black salt. Serve piping hot with the lime mayonnaise, and a few lime wedges.

Serves 6 as a starter Print Friendly

Double-Craggy Garlic Bread with Herbs, Lemon and Peppered Cream Cheese

Garlic bread was one of the first eating sensations of my childhood, and I hold it personally responsible for my life-long addiction to both garlic and melted butter. It's not something I make often (I make weak stabs at keeping my family's diet wholesome), but I do think this great classic of the Sixties and Seventies needs to be given the respect it richly deserves. I've called my new version 'double-craggy' because the bread is sliced in a grid formation, and I've done this - licking my lips as I slice this way and that - in order to maximise the surface area to be basted with garlicky, herby butter.
 

Double-Craggy Garlic Bread with Herbs, Lemon and Peppered Cream Cheese

The first time I tasted garlic bread was when I was six or seven, at a birthday party, and I have never forgotten that first heavenly bite. Our friends, the Spences, lived not far from our house, near Swartkop in Muldersdrift, some 30 km north of Johannesburg. Situated close to the famous Sterkfontein Caves and the Cradle of Humankind, Swartkop is a twin-peaked hill that was a distinctive feature in a landscape of rolling golden grassland, or veld. It probably has townhouse developments gnawing at its lower slopes nowadays - I haven't been there for years - but when I was a child, it was the closest thing to a mountain I'd ever seen. In our family, it was always called 'Bosom Mountain'.

Anyway, the Spences lived just under Bosom Mountain, in a big house thatched with shiny grass the colour of a lion's pelt. Malcolm Spence (who died this year, at 73) was an interesting and clever man who - according to his obituary - had the distinction of winning the 400m bronze medal at the 1960 Rome Olympics,  in what has been billed as 'one of the greatest sprint races of all time'. Malcolm apparently didn't like to talk about his triumph, but on this occasion I remember him showing all the kids a jumpy black-and-white movie of his famous sprint (projected onto a white bedsheet nailed to the wall, which was how we watched movies in those days). After that, we watched an old and terrifying film about a sabre-toothed tiger that lived in a cave. Petrified, I crawled under a blanket and stuck my thumb in my mouth, vowing never to go to a birthday party at the Spences again.

But all was made right when Naomi Spence called us to the table. She'd made three or four loaves of garlic bread, tightly wrapped in foil and packed with garlic, chopped fresh curly parsley and lashings of farm butter. There was a cake too, strewn with little silver balls, and iced Marie biscuits with hundreds-and-thousands, and orange-skin wedges filled with red jelly, but all these delights paled when I tasted the garlic bread. I ate a lot of it, and threw up on the back seat of the car on the way home. This may have been the bumpy farm road, but it was probably the butter.

I can't eat garlic bread without remembering that party, and here's my attempt to recreate a special food memory. I've used a flat-topped, poppyseeded potbrood here, but any big loaf of good, fine-textured white bread will do. Don't worry if stalagmites of bread fall off when you've cut it in a grid pattern: tie everything loosely together with a piece of string or raffia, and remove the string just before you serve the bread.

A fabulous crowd-pleaser for a braai.

Double-Craggy Garlic Bread with Herbs, Lemon and Peppered Cream Cheese

a large, circular loaf of bread, a day or two old
1 cup (250 ml/250 g) salted butter
8 large cloves garlic, peeled and finely grated
the finely grated zest of a lemon
1 cup (250 ml) chopped fresh herbs (parsley, rosemary, oregano, rosemary, thyme, or whatever you have to hand)
freshly milled black pepper
125 g pepper-crusted cream cheese or goat's milk cheese

Heat the oven to 190 ºC. Place the loaf of bread on a board. Using a very sharp serrated knife, cut the bread, to within a centimetre of its base, into thick (2 cm) slices. Now turn the loaf the other way, and cut across the slices to form a grid. Take your time about this, and use quick, light, sawing motions, pressing the slices you've just cut firmly together.

Melt the butter in a pan set over a medium heat (or in your microwave oven) and stir in the garlic, lemon zest, fresh herbs and pepper.

Squeeze the base of the loaf gently to splay out the 'fingers' of bread and, using a pastry brush or a turkey baster, liberally coat each finger of bread with the flavoured butter.

Brush the top and sides of the bread with more melted butter. Tie a piece of string or a strand of raffia firmly around the loaf. Put the bread on a baking sheet and place in the oven. Cover lightly with a sheet of tin foil and bake for 10 minutes. Remove the foil and bake for a further 10 minutes, or until it's beginning to crisp and turn golden. Take the loaf out of the oven, and crumble the peppered cream cheese over and around the 'fingers' of bread. Bake for a further five  minutes, or until the cheese is hot and just beginning to bubble.

Serve immediately.

Serves 6-8 as a side dish.

Print Friendly

Chicken 'Saltimbocca' with Emmentaler and Lemon

'Chicken breasts' is one of the most frequent keyword searches that lead to this blog, and I suppose that's because people are always on the lookout for quick, easy recipes using this family staple. Here's a dish I love, similar to saltimbocca (an Italian contraction meaning 'it jumps in one's mouth'), but in place of veal I use deboned chicken breasts, and I deglaze the pan with a little lemon juice instead of the traditional marsala.

The idea for sticking some cheese between the Parma ham and the chicken comes from one of Jamie Oliver's programmes (one of his Food Revolution series, I think), and what a good idea it is, although you can leave out if you're counting calories (not that this will make much difference: this is a dish laden with butter).

The lemon slice, as it caramelises in the pan, imparts a lovely zesty perfume to the dish.  I always tie the lemon slice and sage leaves on with raffia or string, because the thought of a sharp toothpick in a meal a child's going to be eating gives me the creeps.

Don't let the butter get too brown in the pan, or the sauce will have a burned taste. Serve with a pile of fluffy parsleyed mash.

(By the way, chicken breasts on the bone are considerably cheaper than ready-prepared ones. Skinning them and whipping out the bone takes seconds, and saves you a lot of money.)

Chicken 'Saltimbocca' with Emmentaler and Lemon
4 skinned, deboned chicken breasts
eight thin slices of Emmentaler, or similar
4 slices of Parma ham
two thin slices of lemon, halved
16 small fresh sage leaves
1 T (15 ml) olive oil
3 T (45 ml) butter
the juice of small lemon
milled black pepper

Put the chicken breasts between two sheets of clingfilm or baking paper and, using a rolling pin, gently flatten them so that they're of an even thickness. Cover each breast with two slices of cheese, and then a slice of ham. Place the lemon slices and sage leaves, as shown above, on the top, and secure with a piece of kitchen string or a strand of raffia.  Press down firmly on the top of the breast with the palm of your hand.

Heat the olive oil in a large non-stick frying pan. Add the breasts, lemon-slice down, and fry over a brisk heat for two minutes. Flip the breasts over, and fry the other side for another two to three minutes, or until the breast is cooked right through. Add the butter to the pan a minute before the breasts are ready, and use it to baste the tops of the breasts. Season with black pepper (you shouldn't need to add any extra salt). Remove the breasts and place on a warm platter.  Turn up the heat slightly and add the lemon juice, swirling to release any bits of golden sediment. Allow to bubble for a minute, and then pour the sauce over the breasts.

Serve immediately, with mashed potato.

Serves 4 Print Friendly