Manna from Mamsie

I met a very interesting lady recently at a friend's house. Quite a colourful character who told stories that would make one fall in love with African history, culture and heritage. She entertained us for a while with her childhood stories and experiences - I felt like I'd known her forever. The highlight of our conversation though was when she told us of her family bread recipe. As she gave a detailed account of the method, she would occasionally pause to describe how soft and tasty it is...she pulled a face and closed her eyes as if she had had a mouthful moments before. I had to try it out myself so I tried my best to memorize everything she said. I winged the rest and was quite delighted with the outcome.

Ingredients

• 2 cups maize meal
• 2 cups plain flour
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 4 tablespoons oil
• 1 packet intant yeast
• Approximately 1 cup water

Method


You first need to make uphuthu with the maize meal. Add maize to approximately 1.5 cups of boiling water in a large pot and use a fork to mix. Add approximately ½ cup of water and continue mixing – it should make little balls or crumbs. Add more water but only a little at a time while mixing. Make sure that you don't add too much water. Reduce heat to low and cover with the lid on. The steam will cook it though
Keep checking it every 5 minutes or so. You only need to cook it for 30minutes as it still needs to be baked/steam. Put it in a bowl and allow to cool

• Add the flour,sugar, salt and yeast to the cooked maize meal and mix wel
• Add the oil and about 1/2 a cup of water and mix with your hands
• You need to keep adding water until the dough is stiff but easy enough to work with
• Kneed for approximately 30 minutes (I only managed about 7 minutes!)
• Form the dough into a bread-like shape, place in a greased pan, cover and place in a warm spot for it to rise for approximately 20 minutes
• Bake in a pre-heated oven at 200 ̊c for about 45 minutes

Imagine that...

McHome-made

I have a new obsession. Oreo McFlurry. It's gotten so bad that I consumed 5 of them in just 1 weekend. I'd like to say that I'm ashamed and will never do that again but I'm not...and I doubt I can stop...so I decided to make my own - because I can... :-)

McHome-made

Ingredients

• 300ml full cream milk
• 1 tsp vanilla essence
• 3 egg yolks
• 4 Oreo cookies (be sure to scrape off the cream in the middle)
• 3/4 cup icing sugar
• 300ml double cream

Method

• Put the milk and vanilla into a pan and bring to the boil. Remove from heat and allow to cool
• Once cooled, add egg yolks and whisk. Return mixture to the stove and heat. Stir until custard thickens. Pour into a bowl, cover with cling film and allow to cool
• Meanwhile, crush Oreo cookies (I put mine in a blender because I wanted the ice cream to be smooth)
• In a separate bowl, whip cream until stiff, gently fold in the milk and egg mix and sugar
• Pour into a bowl and freeze (mine took more than an hour to set)
• I shaved some milk chocolate to make it look pwetty

The recipe is originally made with strawberries from one of my cook books - I just substituted the strawberries with Oreos

Cooking with sole

My good buddy Victor bought me an awesome set of cookbooks for my birthday and in there is an interesting phyllo pastry and trout recipe. Besides making prawns and mussels, I’m generally scared to make fish because I can never get it right. So I decided to step out of my comfort zone and try it out the other night. I substituted the trout with sole and it turned out…ok…I think...considering how I generally fair in that department. J

The recipe is as follows:

Ingredients

·         Butter

·         1 small onion

·         Handful of chopped parsley (this is from my very own little garden)

·         Grated rind of 1 lemon

·         1 medium sized trout/sole (the head bothered me a little so I chopped it off)

·         12 sheets of phyllo pastry

·         Salt and pepper

·         Lemon slices and parsley to garnish

Method

·         Preheat oven to 200 ̊c

·         Fry onion in butter until soft. Add parsley and lemon rind. Season fish and gently stuff the cavity

·         Melt butter. Cut phyllo pastry into strips and brush with butter. Wrap strips around the fish and place in greased baking tray

·         Bake for approximately 30 minutes

·         Serve garnished with lemon slices and parsley

I’ll be trying it again soon to make sure I get it right…and maybe with its head intact this time… J

Dirty dozen

Would you still eat them if they looked this horrified?? TOO funny!

Source: Cool hunting

Dessert for Carol

Sometimes the happiest moments are the simplest ones...like sharing a fuss-free, 5-minute sweet delight with a dear friend while watching my favourite soapie.

Recipe

• 2 ginger biscuits - crushed
• 1/2 cup of  double cream Greek yoghurt
• 2 table spoons of honey
• 2 table spoons of chocolate chips
• 1 table spoon of milk
• 1 Martini glass(because they are so sexy)

Method

• place crushed biscuits in the glass (you may mix them with some butter to form a more steady base but I I prefer them as they are)
• mix the honey and yoghurt and spoon carefully into the glass
• melt the choc chips and milk in the microwave for approximately 30 seconds
• pour melted chocolate over the yoghurt

This is how much she enjoyed it... J

All of my children

I went shopping for tools for my new mini garden yesterday and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I got a mini spade, gardening gloves and various herbs and roots to grow. It was almost as exciting as buying a new pair of sexy heels – strange I know.

I decided some time ago that I wanted to grow my own veggies and herbs and prepare dishes from that. [I think Jamie Oliver was the inspiration for this but he did  it on a more grand scale, of course - I live on the 1^st floor and don’t have a garden so they’ll have to grow in pots.] I got lettuce, chilies, carrots, spring onion, spinach, basil, parsley and thyme. They need to be watered everyday and need to be fertilized every 4 to 6 weeks. I don’t have children but I think this task is very similar to raising little ones. On that note, here they are...all of my children...

May they grow big and strong...