Cooking fresh food and drinking divine Cape wines in Melkbosstrand Cape Town
I recently got my hands on wild boar and seeing that cider and sage are commonly used with pork, I decided to improvise and use an apple and beer with a browned sage sauce instead to contribute to the rustic flavours and image of the wild boar.
I recently got my hands on some very good quality warthog stewing meat. While searching for a suitable recipe, I stumbled upon this recipe by Nico Verster – Slow-roasted warthog potjie with dukka spice – which had me instantly intrigued. Dukka (or dukkah or duqqa) is an Egyptian seed and nut condiment where warthog is a venison meat often used in South African cuisine and cooked in a potjie which is a traditional way of cooking food in a cast iron pot. Fusion food indeed!
I recently got hold of some good quality springbok knuckles on my travels and decided to make this dish. The way the meat is prepared is based on Jamie Oliver’s Insanely Good Oxtail Stew Recipe and the pilaf is based on Nagi Maehashi’s Rice Pilaf with Nuts and Dried Fruit recipe. Jamie’s recipe I tweaked a bit and turned it into a one-pot dish while adding some ingredients like garlic and onions. Nagi’s recipe I pretty much kept standard, but I decided to work with ingredients at hand.
For those of you that are not familiar with springbok, it is a medium-sized antelope found in South Africa and also the national animal of this country.
Preheat a large casserole pot with lid in the oven at 220 degrees Celsius.
Remove the pot from the oven, add the meat, season it with salt and pepper, add a good lug of olive and mix it well.
Put the casserole back in the oven (with the lid) for about 20 minutes.
Remove the casserole from the oven and put it on low-medium heat on the stove. Turn the oven down to 170 degrees Celsius.
Add the leeks, carrots, garlic, onion, celery, rosemary, thyme, and bay leaves to the meat, stir well and cook for about 20 minutes with the lid on.
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Add the flour and cloves, and mix well.
Add the muskadel or wine, tomatoes and stock and mix well.
Turn the heat up and bring to boil.
Put the casserole (with lid) back in the oven for about 4 hours, turning the food over every hour or so.
Remove the casserole from the oven, add a good dash of Worcestershire sauce and let the dish settle for about 30 minutes before dishing up.
Dry fry the nuts in a pan over medium heat. Be careful not to burn the nuts and note that the almond flakes will toast quicker than the whole pistachios.
Melt the butter in a large sauce pan over medium heat, add the onion and garlic and saute until translucent.
Add the rice and fry until mostly translucent.
Add the cinnamon, cardamom, pepper and cumin and stir.
Add the stock, and dried fruit and stir.
Cover with the lid, bring to simmer and then immediately turn the heat down to medium low or low.
Cook for 15 minutes until the liquid is absorbed. (Try not to open the lid while cooking). Remove the pot from the stove and leave for 10 minutes undisturbed.
Crush the pistachios slightly, add most of the nuts and toss.
Serve with remaining nuts as garnish.
We served the springbok and rice pilaf together with a bottle of Jacaranda Wines No. 47 2018 which is a Shiraz and contributed very well to the spiciness of the dish.
We recently got our hands on some eland steaks and decided to make some venison schnitzel and prego rolls.
We got our hands on some tenderized eland steaks and decided to make some prego rolls. (We also used some of the steaks to make schnitzels). This is our first stab at making a prego sauce so we had to Google a bit to get some ideas.
As date night and Women’s Day were on the same day this year, I decided to make a three course meal for Tanya. The three meals consisted of sticky chicken wings, kudu sosaties and bread pudding.
We’ve had a beautiful springbok loin in the freezer for a while now, just begging to be cooked. I could not decide on just one sauce to make for it, so ended up making four. My choices were a blackberry, chocolate, gin and juniper and whiskey cream sauce.
Here in South Africa we tend to be creatures of habit when it comes to making curry. Chicken, lamb and beef are usually the meat of choice, whether we are making an Indian or a traditional South African curry.
As goat curry is a very popular dish in India, we decided to make a curry with some of the springbok that we have in our freezer. Now I know that springbok meat and goat meat are not the same thing, but finding goat meat in South Africa is a bit of a challenge. To take the fusion food thing a bit further we decided to make a potjie (a traditional South Africa dish cooked in a cast iron pot over an open fire).
As we try to stick to a fairly low carb diet most of the time, I haven’t made fresh pasta for ages. This was a great excuse to make ravioli for date night.
As every date night is a special occasion I decided to push the boat out and make 3 different types of ravioli with 3 different sauces.
Veal & Spinach Ravioli in a Walnut Sauce, Ostrich & Pancetta Ravioli in a Porcini Sauce and Venison & Butternut Ravioli in a Sage Butter Sauce.
Café de Paris butter was first served in the 1940s at the Café de Paris restaurant in Geneva. There are many different variations but the key ingredients are usually citrus, herbs, curry powder and anchovies – not a combination that sounds very compatible but this flavoured butter is delicious.