Cooking fresh food and drinking divine Cape wines in Melkbosstrand Cape Town
Moussaka is a traditional and flavorful dish that originates from the Mediterranean region, particularly Greece and the Middle East. It is a delicious and hearty casserole-style dish that features layers of eggplant, ground meat, and a rich tomato-based sauce, all topped with a creamy béchamel sauce.
I recently went on a charcuterie course hosted by Richard Bosman and one of the sausages we made was an Italian sausage called Salsiccia. Being quite a hot day and looking for something light, I decided to use this sausage for this Italian sausage salad.
This is an extremely easy recipe which can be prepared in minutes. The original recipe uses skinless chicken breasts, but I opted for pork fillet. Don’t be shy with the sage and serve with your starch of choice.
This is a bit of a fusion Mediterranean dish with a whole, deboned chicken stuffed with a thyme bread crumb filling, layered on prosciutto and then covered with sunflower seeds and Parmesan cheese. It is served with some grilled tomatoes and aubergine covered in a thyme and honey yoghurt sauce.
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 was looking for a leg of lamb recipe after I got a very nice piece of lamb from our local butcher in Melkbosstrand. Not wanting to go the traditional oven baked route, I decided to look for something more exciting and opted for this Ottolenghi’s Barbequed Leg of Lamb with Almonds recipe.
This Easter I decided to make a lamb shawarma using a recipe I found in Yotam Ottolenghi’s book, Jerusalem.
A recent heat wave in Cape Town had us running around looking for a dish that would suite summer. I stumbled upon a sausage and pasta dish on YouTube by Jamie Oliver and decided to give it try with some modifications.
This is a very easy recipe where you can basically use any type of stewing beef meat and any good quality fortified wine. The anchovies can be omitted, but it does provide that extra umami taste to the dish.
This dish almost seems Arabic instead of European with the use of sultanas and pine nuts. This is not surprising as Sicily was under Arab rule from 827 to 1061 and Sicilian cuisine was strongly influenced by the Arabs.