Marjorie's Muffins

These are basically a bran muffin that are great for breakfast.
The recipe comes from my mother and makes enough for around 24 muffins. We make a batch of the mixture and make 8 muffins at a time. The rest of the mixture keeps very well in a sealed plastic container in the fridge for a few weeks. just giving it a stir before you start to make the next batch.

Ingredients and Method.

Cream together.
2 eggs
3/8's cup oil,
1 and 1/2 cups brown sugar

Add.
2 cups bran
2 and 1/2 cups cake flour
2 cups milk
2 and 1/2 teaspoons bicarb
1 cup raisins
1 teasponn vanilla essence
1/2 teaspoon salt

Mix well.

Leave to stand overnight in the fridge.

Place in well oiled (Spray and Cook is fine) muffin tins and bake in a 180 degree oven for 25 minutes.

 

Garlic Crostini's

These are something I came up with. Very quick, cheap and easy to make. Really good with Trinchado, Periperi Chicken Livers, Soups or just own their own as snacks. 

I use a couple of Panini rolls that one commonly sees in Pick n Pay or Spar for around R2.80 each.

Ingredients.

2 Panini Rolls,
Olive Oil
Dried Thyme,
Dried crushed garlic (Robertsons)
Salt.

Method.


Preheat the oven to 180 degrees
 
Cut the Panini Rolls in slices about 1cm thick and arrange on a baking tray.

Sprinkle with a little salt, dried thyme, crushed garlic and quite a bit of olive oil.

Bake in the oven from 12 minutes for fairly soft chewable crostini's to 15 minutes for well toasted crunchy one's.
Here are some 12 minute ones.

Giaconda's Calamari Stew or Spanish Callos (Tripe).

Version made with Octopus 

I saw this one on a cooking T.V. show that used to be on a few years ago. The presenter was a lovely young lady called Giaconda Scott. She was of mixed Spanish and English parentage and ran a restaurant in Andalucia, Spain. I taped a repeat of the show and was therefore able to write the exact recipe down. It is yummy!

Calamari heads and tentacles used to be very easy to find, and very cheap but nowadays are a bit more difficult as they now export them overseas.

We went on holiday to the North West of Spain in 2006 and one of the delicacies of the area was tripe cooked in a very similar way. I tried the recipe with tripe and trotters recently and it came out really nicely.

Ingredients.
1 kg calamari heads/tentacles or 1 pack of very clean and cut up lamb's tripe and trotters for the tripe version. (Delico butchery from Riebeeck Kasteel sells very nice packs of these. They also have an outlet at Potbelly Pantry near Klapmuts. 

1 bunch of fresh sage leaves.
1 x 410gm tin of chopped tomato's
8 fat cloves of garlic (Yes 8! not a typing error)
1/2 cup of olive oil
1/2 cup of dry sherry (Spanish Manzanilla or Fino are the best).
1 teaspoon crushed chilli's (optional)
1 teaspoon crushed peppercorns
3/4 teaspoon salt.

Method 


Crush garlic cloves with the flat of a knife and add to heated olive oil in a heavy bottomed or cast iron pot and sauté for a few minutes. Add torn sage leaves and sauté a little further. Add calamari (Or tripe and trotters), chopped tomatoes, salt, pepper and chillies(if used). Pour in sherry and bring to the boil and reduce heat to a simmer and cover. Cook for + - 2 hours until calamari is tender (The tripe and trotters version will take around 5 to 6 hours), adding a bit of water if required. (I have never found this necessary and in fact have to cook it with the lid off for a while to reduce liquid for the calamari version). 

Serve with rice. 

Edit to remind me to try a new addition.

Add one Chourico sausage cut into small chunks after around three and a half hours cooking and a cup of cooked white beans or a tin of beans or chickpeas about half an hour later. I will try this next time and add to the recipe above if it's good.

Trinchado

Many years ago I was taken to lunch to the original Diaz Tavern in Harrington Street, around the corner from where it is now, I was fascinated by the many Portugese dishes on the menu and decided to try the Trinchado. I have been back many times and a while ago decided to try and re-create my own recipe.

Now, I like my steak medium rare at most, and I googled "Trinchado Recipes" and got lots of results. However, on going through the different pages, all of them were really only recipes for a beef stew, telling you to add the cubes of steak to the sauce and simmer for anything from 20 minutes to an hour. Now experience tells me that this will result in overcooked and very tough bits of meat, no matter how good the quality of the steak you use.

I decided to experiment and this is what I came up with.

Ingredients. (For 2 as a main course or for 4 as a starter)

450 grams of top quality, well hung sirloin or rump steak, cut into cubes.
2 onions coarsely chopped.
1 or 2 chilli's finely chopped (according to taste and heat of the chilli's)
1 red pepper seeded and coarsley chopped (Optional)
1 level Tablespoon flour.
1/2 bottle good red wine.
250ml beef stock
3 bay leaves. 
I small tin or 1 heaped Tablespoon or 1 x 50gm sachet tomato paste.
Olive oil.
Salt and pepper for seasoning.
2 or 3 large cloves of garlic crushed.
French bread or Ciabatta.

Method. 

I use a flat bottomed Potjie to cook this in on a gas cooker outdoors.

Heat the Olive oil in the pot until very hot and then sear the cubes of steak in batches so that they are browned on the outside and still very rare/raw on the inside. Do not overcook. Keep the browned steak cubes aside in a cool dish while you make the sauce. Do not try and keep them warm as this will cause them to overcook.


Cook the onions in the pot after adding a little more olive oil if necessary until browned/caramelized, stirring occasionally. Reduce heat and add the chopped chilli's and red pepper (If used) and cook for another minute or so. Add the Tablespoon of flour and cook for another minute or two, stirring often. Then add the red wine, stock, bay leaves and tomato paste and simmer for 1/2 an hour for the flavours to develop and the sauce to thicken up. (Add a bit of water if it gets too thick).

Season the sauce to taste with salt and freshly ground black pepper.

Add the seared steak cubes and the crushed garlic to the sauce in the pot and allow to cook for a minute or two for the steak to warm up and cook a bit more. This step is crucial as if you let it cook for too long, the steak cubes will be well done and tough and too little and they will still be cold and raw. I find around 2 minutes is fine.

Serve in bowls with french bread or ciabatta to mop up the sauce.

Mrs Lewis's Flapjacks

This is a really old one, going back to when I was around 6 years old. We had a neighbour called Mrs Lewis who to me at the time seemed about 100 years old. Every now and then she would cook up a batch of flapjacks, or crumpets as they were known then. They are also known as griddle cakes. She would then invite me over for a plateful of these.

Anyway, my mother wrote down the recipe and we still have them for breakfast every now and then. They are really easy.

Ingredients. 

1 and 1/2 cups of cake flour. 
pinch of salt. 
3/4 cup sugar. 
1 egg. 
1 cup milk. 
1 and 1/2 teaspoons of baking powder. 

Method. 

I add the egg and milk together in a blender and blend and then slowly, while the blender is running, add the dry ingredients. Let it rest for 10 minutes or more. You could also mix them together in a bowl, adding the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients until thoroughly combined.

Heat a large frying pan on the stove and add a small knob of butter and around a teaspoon of oil. The oil stops the butter from burning.

Spoon a Tablespoon of the mixture, one at a time into the hot pan until it is full of separate flapjacks. Similar to this image.

Cook until slightly puffed up and bubbles start appearing on top and then flip with an egg lifter or spatula and cook on the other side until done.

Keep warm on a hot tray or on a plate in the oven, slightly heated and cook the next batch, adding more butter and oil until all the mixture is used up.

Serve with lashings of butter and maple syrup or honey.

Alex's Recipes.

One of my joy's in life is creating (and eating) wonderful food.My mother was a cordon bleau cook and from an early age the love of great food was a huge part of my life.

The main reason for starting this blog is that over the years, I have found (and added my own touches) or developed a few recipes that have become firm favourites. Some are written down in a few notebooks and some are stored on various pc's or laptops and this is a way of getting them all in one place where I can find them and share them as well.