Easy Strawberry Ice Cream: a taste of my childhood

The taste of home-made strawberry icecream can bring bring tears to my eyes, because it is such a sweet reminder of my childhood.

The heavenly frozen mixture of mashed, sweet strawberries, fresh cream and a zip of lemon juice is so much more than the sum of its parts: it has another taste, which is all its own. Every time I eat this I think of sitting, bare-legged, under the blossoming syringa trees that overhung our farm swimming pool.

The problem with making ice cream at home is that (unless you have an ice-cream machine), you have to keep beating the stuff every half an hour, as it freezes, to break up the ice crystals. With this mixture, you can get away with just two beatings during the freezing process, and although it might not taste as silken as shop ice cream, and may even have a few crunchy flakes, I promise you it will taste delicious.

This recipe uses shop-bought custard because I can't be bothered to make my own. You can use long-life custard, but you'll get a better result if you use a proper egg custard, such as Woolworths ready-made vanilla custard.

Strawberries have come into season in South Africa, and you can buy several punnets for a very good price at local greengrocers. The only important thing here is to use really tasty, perfumed strawberries: a gigantic, deep-crimson strawberry is of no use if it tastes like bath water. Really ripe, flavoursome strawberries have a distinctive, sweet, almost dusty fragrance.

Easy Strawberry Ice Cream

about 30 ripe, small strawberries, or 25 big ones
½ cup (125 ml) white granulated sugar (or more, if you like a really sweet ice cream)
1 cup (250 ml) ready-made custard, chilled
2/3 cup (160 ml) fresh cream
a squeeze of fresh lemon juice

If you don't have an ice-cream maker, put a big metal bowl into your deep freeze. Pull or slice the green tops off the strawberries and cut them in half. Put them in a bowl, sprinkle with the sugar and set aside for three-quarters of an hour, stirring once or twice. Put the strawberries and the syrup that has formed into the goblet of a liquidiser, or into a food processor fitted with a metal blade. Process to a fine purée.

(If you'd like some fruity chunks in your icecream, reserve a few halved strawberries for dicing and adding to the mixture just before you freeze it). Add the custard and the cream and blitz until well combined (but don't over-beat the mixture). Squeeze in just enough lemon juice - a teaspoon or so - to give the mixture a slight zip.

Pour the mixture into an icecream maker and process in the normal way. If you don't have such a gadget, tip the mixture into the chilled metal bowl and place in the deep freeze. Freeze for three to five hours (depending on how arctic your freezer is), whisking the mixture every hour - or more often - during that time.

Serve soon; this is best eaten on the day it's made.

Eat, straight from the dish, bare-legged, in the sun.

Serves 6 - 8

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Leg of Lamb with Lemon, Garlic and Rosemary Stuffing

The idea for roasting lamb this way comes from a photograph I cut out from a foodie magazine. Foolishly, I didn't keep the recipe; nor did I make a note of which magazine I took it from, so I had to make up the ingredients for the stuffing using classic lamb flavourings: lemon, garlic, rosemary, oregano and anchovies. If this is your recipe, thank you very much: I love it.

I slashed the lamb crossways, instead of lengthways (as it was cut in the picture I had), thinking this would make carving a breeze, which it did. Next time I make this, though, I am going to make the slashes shallower, because I found that the stuffing that was resting close to the bone was rather mushy and sticky. Another mistake (and this is what comes from not having a recipe to hand): I undercooked the lamb, presuming it would need a shorter cooking time due to the slashes. I was wrong, so I had to put it, half-carved, back into the oven to finish roasting.

My suggestion: use a meat thermometer to test for doneness or, if you don't have one, turn the cooked lamb over, cut a deep slit into its underside, and peek inside to make sure that the meat close to the bone is not raw and bloody, but very hot to the touch and a pale rosy pink (or a brown, depending on how you like your lamb done).

This would be very nice with a deboned, butterflied leg of lamb, but you will need to reduce the cooking time accordingly: ask your butcher.

Finally, please don't be hesitant about adding the anchovies, even if you loathe them. You will not detect a single fishy whiff in the stuffing: instead, there will a deep savoury note that will make your visitors cry out: 'But, darling, what did you put in this delicious stuffing?'

Leg of Lamb with Lemon, Garlic and Rosemary Stuffing

1 large leg of lamb (2.5- 3 kg)
3 slices day-old bread
1 10-cm sprig fresh rosemary
1 10-cm sprig fresh oregano (or 30 ml dried)
grated zest of a lemon
3 T (45 ml) olive oil
2 anchovy fillets, mashed to a paste
3 cloves garlic, peeled and finely choppped
salt and milled black pepper
2 carrots, sliced
a whole onion, sliced, skin and all, into 1 cm slices
the juice of a large lemon
a glass of white wine

Preheat the oven to 200°C. Wipe the lamb with a clean, damp cloth and cut off any large chunks of fat. Using a very sharp knife, make a series of crossways slashes about 6-7 cm deep. Put the bread into the bowl of a food processor fitted with a metal blade and process to crumbs. Add 1 T (15 ml) fresh rosemary needles and the same amount of fresh oregano leaves and whizz until the herbs are finely chopped. Tip into a bowl and add the lemon zest, 1 T (15ml) olive oil, the mashed anchovies and the chopped garlic. Season with salt and pepper.

Using your fingers, mix the stuffing so that it just holds together (like the mixture you'd stuff a chicken with). If it seems too dry and crumbly, add a little more olive oil or some lemon juice. Press the mixture loosely into the slashes you made in the lamb, and then tie up the joint with individual lengths of string, as shown in the picture. Don't worry if a little crumbly stuffing pokes out: it will cook to a lovely golden crunch.

Sprinkle the remaining olive oil and the lemon juice over the joint and season with salt and pepper. Arrange a small bed of sliced carrots and onions in a roasting tray and top with the rosemary and oregano twigs. Place the lamb on top and pour the wine around the lamb. Roast at 200°C for 35-40 minutes (or until it is beginning to crisp and brown on top), then reduce to 180°C and roast for a further hour and a half, or longer (see my notes, above, about doneness). Top up with a little white wine and/or lemon juice every now and then, so that there is always a little liquid in the pan. Remove from the oven. Place the joint in a ceramic dish, cover loosely with tin foil and allow to rest for 10 minutes.

Heat a platter in the still-warm oven. Snip off the strings. Carve the roast: first, holding your knife blade parallel to the leg bone and starting at the thick end of the leg, make a long sideways cut to separate the entire top section from the bone. Now make vertical cuts to separate the slices. Do the same on either side of the bone (a little reckless hacking may be called for here). Arrange the lamb on a platter and pour the pan juices over. Or use the pan juices to make a gravy (instructions below)

Lovely with a plain green salad and crispy roast potatoes.

Serves 6

To make a gravy:

Put the roasting pan, vegetables and all, on the hob and turn the heat onto high. Sprinkle 4 t (20 ml) flour into the pan and stir well, scraping to dislodge any golden residue. Cook for two or so minutes, or until the mixture is golden brown. Now pour in a cup of stock or stock/wine combination, and, using a whisk, stir vigorously until the sauce thickens and bubbles alarmingly. Thin the gravy with more stock, water or wine to the desired consistency (I know it's old-fashioned, but I like a thickish gravy), whisking hard. Turn down the heat to very low and and allow to bubble gently for five minutes. Season with salt and pepper and strain into a gravy boat, pressing down on the roasted vegetables with the back of a soup ladle. If the gravy seems a bit pale add a dash of soy sauce or liquid gravy browning. Print Friendly

Spring Salad of Edamame Beans, Fennel, Avocado and Pancetta

I was intrigued to pick up a packet of edamame beans at my local Woolworths yesterday and, never having seen such a bean sold in the snowy tundras of South Africa, let alone tasted one, I bought them, chomped on them on the way home in the car, and hurried to my desk to Google them.

To my surprise, Google couldn't product a single decent description of them, until I realised I was ignorantly searching for 'endamame' with an N.

Once I'd amended my keyword to 'edamame', I learned that this beautiful jade-green beanlet is a green soybean, picked young in its pod.

The Woolworths package label told me that the beans are delicious quickly sautéed in butter, but I really liked the taste of them raw, so I made them into this salad, which has fennel for an aniseed crunch, avocado for silkiness, and a crumbling of frizzled pancetta for salty crispiness. If you can't find edamame beans, try this salad with shelled fresh peas. (And if you can't find pancetta, use streaky bacon instead.)

You can dress this salad with anything you like, but a light dressing of lemon juice and olive oil with a little garlic and a whisper of soy sauce was just right for me.

At the last minute I added a handful of young mustard greens (grown, tenderly, from seed, by my daughter in her little vegetable patch). Have you tried growing your own mustard greens? They sprout like weeds, mature quickly and have a lovely mustardy zing. The ones in the picture are the Florida Broadleaf variety.

This salad is delicious, but very filling, and very fart-producing: if you're serving this to friends, give them just a teacup each.

Spring Salad of Edamame Beans, Fennel, Avocado and Pancetta, with Lemon and Garlic Dressing

6 rashers of pancetta (or streaky bacon)
2 young bulbs of fresh fennel, plus a few of the feathery fennel leaves
1½ cups (375 ml) edamame beans (or fresh peas from the pod)
2 spring onions, white parts only, finely sliced
a handful of flat-leaf parsley, finely chopped
1 perfectly ripe, firm avocado
mustard greens [optional]

For the dressing:1 clove fresh garlic, peeled and crushed
3 Tbsp (45 ml) fresh lemon juice
1 Tbsp (15 ml) white wine vinegar
1 tsp (5 ml) Kikkoman soy sauce
100 ml olive oil
a pinch of white sugar
salt and freshly ground black pepper

First prepare the pancetta. Heat a non-stick frying pan over a high flame. When the pan is really hot, add a lick of oil and add the pancetta or bacon strips. Allow them to fry, undisturbed, until brown on the underneath. Flip them over, and cook for another minute or so, until they are brown and crisp. Remove from the pan, drain on a piece of kitchen paper, crumble into pieces and set aside.

Now make the dressing: whisk all the dressing ingredients together and set aside while you make the salad.

For the salad: Slice the fennel bulbs away from their stalks and peel off the tough outer leaves. Slice the bulbs in half, lengthways, and chip out the fibrous core, if there is one. Slice finely, as if you are slicing a leek. Finely chop one or two of the feathery fennel fronds. Put the fennel slices and chopped leaves into a bowl and add the edamame beans, chopped spring onions and chopped parsley.

Peel the avocado, remove the pip and peel, slice into neat cubes and add to the bowl along with the mustard greens. Tip over just enough dressing to coat all the ingredients and toss gently to combine. Sprinkle over the crumbled pancetta and add the mustard greens. Check the seasoning (this salad needs more salt than you would imagine).

Serve immediately.

Serves 4, as a starter or side dish.


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A wild craving finds its cure: Beetroot, Cumin and Garlic Dip

I don't often feel like plunging my face into a bowl of food and inhaling it like a starving piglet, but when I tasted the glorious scarletness of this beetroot dip for the first time, the taste pathways in my brain went beserk. There were sighs, there were low moans of pleasure, and there were showers of cortical sparks.

I don't know why my tastebuds (and my brain) were so excited and astonished by this addictive combination of earthy blood-red baby beetroot, warming ground cumin, crème fraîche and garlic, but what I can say is that this is the best dip I've tasted in many years, and that I intend to eat it every day - spread on toast, or over a baked potato, dobbled over a soup, or spooned directly from the bowl - until my body says it's had enough, and it's time to turn to horseradish or bitter chocolate or orange peel, or whatever my brain's flavour-du-jour is.

I first tasted this dip in Hout Bay, Cape Town, last week, when my sister Sophie casually whipped it up as a starter to be served before a delicious Cape-Malay style chicken curry made in advance by her nanny/au pair.

Sophie gave me the basic ingredients, although she couldn't, off-hand, remember the quantities.

So here is my version. If you don't feel like buying and baking fresh beetroot, use pre-prepared cooked fresh beetroot chunks, available in South Africa from Woolworths. But please, don't use pickled or canned beetroot, which tends to be so vinegary. This dish is best with freshly ground, toasted cumin seeds, but you can use pre-powdered cumin if it is very fresh.

Beetroot, Cumin and Garlic Dip

4 small fresh beetroot [or a pack of Woolworths beetroots chunks]
1 t (5 ml) cumin seeds
1 fat clove garlic, peeled and finely crushed
4 T (60 ml) crème fraîche, or sour cream or Greek yoghurt, or a combination
2 T (30 ml) olive oil
a squeeze of lemon juice
salt and freshly ground black pepper

Preheat the oven to 200 C. Trim the leafy tops off the beetroot (but don't peel, or cut into, the bulbs), wrap tightly into a parcel of tin foil (or put in a lidded ceramic dish) place in the oven for an hour, or until completely tender when pierced with the point of a sharp knife. Remove the parcel from the oven and allow to cool for half an hour. In the meantime, put the cumin seeds in a frying pan and set over a medium-high heat. Toss the cumin seeds until they are just warmed through and toasty, and then grind them to a fine powder in a mortar or coffee grinder.

Rub the skin off the beetroot with your fingers, cut off the tops and tails, chop roughly and place in a liquidizer or blender. Add the toasted cumin powder, the garlic, the crème fraîche (or yoghurt) and the olive oil and process to a fine puree (or a chunky one, depending on your preference). Taste the mixture: if it seems bland, add a tiny squeeze of fresh lemon juice. Season well with salt and pepper.

Tip the mixture into a bowl and top with a shower of cumin, a lick of olive oil and perhaps a little yoghurt.

Serves 6, as a snack Print Friendly