Easter lamb

My conventional religious feeling is limited to a genuine and fervid worship of stone churches, organ music and requiems. The rest of the time I'm more likely to deify food, drink and reasonably artistic representations on the female form. Oh, and flowers, especially flowers.

A trip to faraway grand stone churches being currently inconvenient, I present my Easter compromise: a lamb dish, which is apparently a great Easter tradition, to be served to Jeremy Summerly's truly moving rendition of the Fauré requiem.

Tradition however, should always bow to scientific advance, and to this end, I suggest a home version of the sous vide approach, to arrive at a wood-grilled lamb chop that is gently-pink-medium-rare and perfectly tender and moist, but grilled to brown perfection outside. I could list the many fire cooking sins, the infinite variations on raw-centre-but-burnt-outside through to dry-and-rubbery-grey-throughout, but suffice it to say that adding a sous vide stage allows independent and easy control of two critical meat cooking components - the inside, and the outside, while also providing a tenderising action that cannot be achieved any other way. By bringing meat to an exact temperature in the range of 49°C to 65°C, well below boiling, you can control precisely the level of doneness you prefer, from very rare to thoroughly well done. By adjusting the length of time at that low temperature, you can also arrange exactly the degree of tenderising action required through slow breakdown of collagen, without any drying or substantial shrinkage. I would not suggest emulating the current restaurant fad of cooking nearly all meat for 24 or even 48 hours sous vide, sometimes, god-forbid, without any post hoc grilling. Some bite is wanted, and a flabby, pinky grey steak is frankly off-putting no matter how wonderful the interior. But arguably, used with restraint, low temperature pre-cooking is the saviour of less than perfect cuts of meat, and can even improve the highest grade steak and roast, avoiding the usual muscle-fibre shrinkage, toughening and moisture loss caused by more aggressive conventional techniques³.

Although an all day affair for four lamb chops may seem obsessive, the actual work is a half hour or less:

Salt your lamb chops first thing in the morning, so the salt has time to re-absorb right into the meat after initially drawing some fluids out as salt will do.

At midday, pop the lamb chops into a zip-lock bag, with a little neutral oil and a tiny bit of fresh rosemary¹. Then squeeze as much air as possible out of the zip-lock bag, fill an insulated cooler box to half from the hot tap and add as much boiling water from the kettle as needed to get it to 60° C, and pop your lamb bag into the hot water. I use a meat thermometer to check the temperature.

Four to six hours later get started making your fire. You really only need kindling or twigs, since coals are not actually required.

When the fire reaches the small flames about to turn into embers stage you see in the pic above, retrieve your lamb from its bag, shake off any excess liquid, baste with a splash of good olive oil and a little freshly crushed garlic, and grill over the fire for just long enough to brown the outside. Yes, there will be flames dancing about your meat. Yes, I know that generations of braai/barbecue masters would consider this an offence punishable by a sword in the side. But trust me on this², the meat is already cooked to perfection on the inside by the water bath, and all you're doing is getting those happy browning Maillard reactions going on the outside. If your fire is not almost hot enough to melt the grill, you're going to overcook the lamb before you brown it. Two to three minutes later you're done.

Serve sizzling, with plain boiled potatoes, and a simple green salad. Ours wasn't harmed by the addition of leftover roast onion and white beans.

¹Elizabeth David found rosemary so overpowering that she swore it shouldn't be used at all, but in the matter of lamb I have to disagree with the Goddess, and suggest that in moderation it is truly wonderful, especially when wood-grilled.

²OK, if you don't trust me, trust Kenji of SeriousEats.com, who explains the beer cooler cooking technique in more detail here, and a similar approach describing the general principles here. He didn't invent the method, but does explore and explain it with a rare blend of scientific rigour and infectiously enthusiastic clarity.

³See here for a technical explanation of what happens when meat is heated at various temperatures, and references to other resources including the peerless Harold McGee's On Food and Cooking.

figs and prosciutto

For the last ten days, my most arduous choice was between surveying endless sea from a wooden deck suspended over lush vegetation, or rolling five minutes down the hill to wallow in perfect Southern Cape seawater. I actually read a couple of books for the first time in forever. Extended family gatherings are rarer than unicorns and as charming, and I count myself privileged to have been absorbed into Rosie's delightful and generous clan. But after nearly two weeks of shared spaces, other people's kitchens and communal holiday food liberally doused in braai sauce*, coming home felt like a rare treat indeed.

This morning we found cheap late summer figs and excellent prosciutto at Raith Gourmet in Constantia, and while tens of thousands chose to spend this perfect, still, hot summer day sweating their way toward the Argus Cycle Tour finish line, we sat down to feast.

Prosciutto, figs with blue cheese and a tiny bit of mint, perfectly soft goatsmilk camembert

Steenberg Sauvignon Blanc Reserve from the other side of that mountain inverted by the lens of the wine glass.

My burgundy dahlia with orange marigolds and basil flowers in a jam jar. Classy nê?

* For the non-South Africans, braai sauce is commercial steak restaurant chain barbecue marinade. It might be acceptable if cooked hot enough to caramelise. However, since the (utterly deluded) slow-and-long school generally holds sway, and interfering in another man's braaing is entirely out of the question, said sauce typically provides a sugary syrup coating on a tough grey lamb chop.

'Tis the season for butter

Food for the Rich (1) Labneh

It's hard to be witty about yoghurt cheese. Which is tragic since this is a momentous post - the very first of a series to be titled Food for the Rich. The title pleases me since it is 1) ironic and 2) stolen from an old book of the same name. But more about that in the next post. For now it is only important to know that this is actually food for the impecunious who have an appreciation for the finer things in life.

So without further ado, on to the labneh. It's nothing more than drained yoghurt, thickened to a cream cheese consistency or thicker, and with a bit more tang. There is a reason it's eaten throughout the Middle East, Greece and large swathes of the Med. It's cheap, easy, keeps really well for a fresh cheese, and of course, tastes fantastic. Labneh is mostly eaten drizzled with olive oil and piled onto whatever local bread is available, sprinkled with herbs or not, as you prefer.

the secret to perfect pastry

I am feeling magnanimous. Pie can do that to a person. So I will share with you you another of my closely guarded secrets. We all know that most pastry requires quick work and cool hands. Work it for more than a few moments, or too warm, and whether you're aiming for shortcrust or flaky, you will never achieve that melting tenderness that makes chubby angels sing. Marble work surfaces? Pish and nonsense! Unless actively chilled, they are the same temperature as any other material in the room. If anything they will conduct the ambient temperature into your chilled pastry faster than wood, or God forbid, melamine. So what's a pastry maker to do? Easy, just modify that one silly step that appears in every recipe but makes no sense at all. Do not cut your fat into small pieces and wait for it to soften before rubbing into the flour. Simply freeze the required quantity (I prefer butter even though lard is healthier - hard to believe I know - and lighter), then grate it straight into the flour, dusting regularly so that it doesn't stick together in a great clump. The finely shredded and still cold fat is then a complete doddle to quickly rub into the flour without warming or working it much at all. Voila! Pastry perfection.

Pork filling braised in gin and rosemary, with a stock reduced to sticky unctuousness doesn't hurt either.

In which we play with our food, or: eggy bread goes pretentious

I would love to open a restaurant or do a cookbook where every dish is an upmarket version of take-away food. Most of the joy would be in making sure the menu only used the original name, with not a mention of jus or fucking foam anywhere. Gatsby anyone?

Hollandaise, or: The Wages of Sin is Death

Today I went to give blood for my first ever cholesterol test.

pining for the tropics

If you know where to look in Cape Town, fine Indian dining and the ingredients required to replicate it are at hand. Fresh curry leaves? Easy, brought in from Durban several times a week. A vast and dazzling array of dried spices, secret and not-so-secret mixes, and sacks of rice in suitably picturesque printed cotton? No problem. Choose from dozens of shops, replete with ceiling high stacks of stainless steel tinware, and the heady scent of authenticity.

The rest of Asian cuisine is rather more of a challenge.

the secret gnocchi society

I'm not really sure where to start. I was going to compare the perfect gnocchi to pinot noir. In that it's really simple, you can hear church bells when it's just right, but it's also really easy to fuck up. And then, like most pinot, it's just dismal. But then a food-wine comparison seems trite and pretentious. Particularly since Jimi's live version of Little Wing is on in the background and there it is - distilled beauty, casual, seemingly effortless, just enough and no more.



And then I have to weave in the story of how I discovered Perfect Gnocchi. And many years later, learned to replicate the recipe. But I should probably start where I started with gnocchi - from cookbooks and in restaurants. They sounded so good in theory: tender morsels of tasty starchiness that could be adapted as the perfect foil for anything from light and classic pomodoro to creamy, blue vein cheesy goodness. But in multitudes of restaurants and from every cookbook I got variations on the same theme. It was as if a squad of riot police had just been through: "On the menu tonight sir, rubber bullets, but only the finest, fired from small calibre weapons". After many tries I finally decided that it was a hopeless quest. Then, fortunately while I was still young enough to have an ounce of hope left, I was taken to a little restaurant in the back streets.Well OK, it was main road Kenilworth - middle suburbia for those of you not from here -  but I don't know how to make that sound good. Anyway, this hole in the wall was run by a young Italian surfer who drifted away only a couple of years later. And there, I had my First Good Potato Gnocchi. Tender but with bite. The flavour of potato a gentle bedspread for some hot tomato oregano garlic loving. Sadly, my considerable charms could not part him from his grandmother's recipe. Begging did not work either, and I was about to try tears when I was dragged away protesting.

Some two or three years after this momentous event, I was undertaking my third favourite pastime, trawling a secondhand bookstore in an actual back street, when an only slightly overweight little paperback squealed loudly to let me know to heave off the pile of instant microwave and freezer books and rescue it. And a great light blazed down from above (Alright, alright, the cheap fluorescent strip flickered, but I'll take it) and The Book fell open to page 203. And there it was. The Secret of Perfect Potato Gnocchi. The Book of course is a begrimed 1978 Penguin paperback reprint of Simone Beck, Louisette Bertholle and Julia Child's Mastering The Art Of French Cooking Volume 1. Some other time I will tell the story of how I found the matching New Testament... I mean Volume 2, in an entirely different dingy secondhand bookstore in an entirely different area, and came to know that I was the Appointed One.

But back to Perfect Potato Gnocchi. Who would have thought that Italian happiness would be found in a book devoted to classic French food and techniques, but I just knew. And so it was. Just as I remembered. Tender but with bite, the flavour of potatoes  only just present, transformed into something delicate and light and wonderful. So what is the secret? Choux. Yes, the stuff of eclairs and profiteroles. The heart of quenelles.

Now most recipes for gnocchi are variations on this theme: Mix your  base ingredient (e.g. potato or ricotta) with flour in an approximate 3:1 or 4:1 ratio by volume, often with around 2 eggs per 2lb/1kg of dough. Some even go so far as to mention that you better take it easy with the mixing/kneading if you don't want them to be too tough. Giorgio Locatelli (in Made in Italy: Food and Stories) admittedly finesses this approach to the point where it just might yield something wonderful, and I will report back once I have tried his way. But most don't, and their pictures tell the rest of the story. Don't have the feather touch of Locatelli? Care for pomodoro on a bed of gristle? No? Then we will let Mastering the Art teach us to cheat a little, and achieve perfection every time. Like any good foodie, I have of course cut a couple of corners and made a few changes to make it my own.

Serves 4 as a main, 6 as a starter, or 2 gourmands with some left over for midnight snacking:
Start by boiling 4-5 medium sized floury potatoes - around 600g or 1-1.5lb.. I specify floury in case I develop a huge following in civilised countries where you can actually get waxy potatoes.
While the potatoes are cooking, get going with the choux. It sounds fancy, but really it's a complete doddle:

250ml (1 cup) water
90g (3 oz.) butter cut into pieces
1 tsp salt
110g (4oz.) sifted soft/cake flour
4 eggs

equipment: wooden spoon and a heavy bottomed saucepan, preferably with rounded bottom.

Put the water, butter and salt into the saucepan and bring to the boil. Once the butter has melted, turn down the heat. Shoot in all the flour and beat vigorously with the wooden spoon until it forms a smooth mass that pulls away from the sides of the saucepan.

Then, remove from the heat, and one by one, beat in the eggs until they are completely blended and the dough is smooth and glossy. Voila! You've just made choux.

Poke your potatoes to make sure they are done, then peel. I prefer to peel after boiling as this keeps them from getting mushy or absorbing extra moisture, but you could peel first if you haven't got asbestos fingers or the patience to let them cool. Now either sieve or just mash really thoroughly to get them light and fluffy with no lumps.

I specified a little less water in the choux than normal, to avoid the awful tedium of having to dry your sieved/mashed potato in a pot, and the worse tedium of having to then scrub the tenacious film of potato stuck to the bottom of the pot, but if you went the peel before boiling route, you might want to do this to avoid a soggy final product.

Choux rapidly loses much of it's ability to puff once it cools and stands around, so while everything is still hot, beat the now fluffy potato into the choux. You can also mix in a little grated cheese if you want as per the original recipe, but personally I think that messes with the angelic purity of the potato-only version. By now the timing is getting critical, so yell at your sous chef/partner to get a pot of water to simmering point while you work. If you're serving guests and need to cook the whole lot all at once, make sure it's nice wide pot with at least 3-5l of water. Sprinkle your work surface with a good dusting of flour, take a handful of dough and quickly roll into a sausage about as thick as a man's forefinger. Well my forefinger. Um.... that's about 1in./3cm diameter - remember they will swell when cooked so make them smaller rather than fatter if in doubt. Chop into little oblongs with a knife and press with the back of a fork if you want little corrugations to hold onto a little more sauce when served. It helps enormously to have a clean tea towel ready to hold the gnocchi in a single layer while you work, since they tend to stick together if piled, except where this is done quickly for photographs to simulate careless abandon.

Make sure your water is just simmering, and as gently as possible, drop in enough gnocchi for a serving. Rather cook two batches if you want to provide a second helping. Now remember, these are delicate animals - anything more than the gentlest shiver of movement in the water is courting disaster, and careless temperature control and boiling will result in rather bland potato soup. Don't ask how I know. At a gentle simmer, they will float at the surface within a minute or so. I once had a vicious argument with a lady of Italian descent, who claimed that gnocchi are ready as soon as they rise to the surface and must not be cooked even a moment longer. When she alluded to her heritage, I dared to point out that to the best of my knowledge, gnocchi technique is not genetically encoded, and discovered that shouting and waving arms however, apparently is. But, unless you relish the taste of raw flour, I would recommend that you leave them to poach for 10-15 minutes, by which time these choux-based versions will have swelled to nearly double their original size and be perfectly al dente. I do think that Ms. Beck et al's 20 minutes is too long however. They also neglect to mention a vital tool - if you are having seconds, and I assure you that you will, leave the water simmering, fish out the cooked gnocchi with a slotted spoon and gently shake off excess water.

I think they're best just like that - pop straight onto pre-warmed plates and serve with a simple sauce of very ripe tomato (you of course already know that canned is usually better than fresh, unless you grow your own), quickly stewed with a generous splash of olive oil, 2 or 3 cloves of crushed garlic and  a couple of tablespoons of chopped fresh oregano or a teaspoon of dried. But if it's winter or you're looking to experiment, the poached gnocchi can at this point also be brushed with a little butter or olive oil, and perhaps sprinkled with a cheese, then grilled under a moderately hot grill.

So what makes this potato gnocchi so special? Of course the choux gives a lightness and texture that is just glorious and can't be achieved with just flour and egg mixtures. But perhaps we should not ignore the butter in the choux - while it might not be completely authentic, it does add something without actually being detectable as butter. Vive la revolution!

You can apparently freeze the dough and gently reheat after defrosting, but then the final product loses much of it's lightness. Once you've prepared this a couple of times, the gnocchi can actually be made in less than 30 minutes, so I would rather halve the quantities if the portions given here are too large. And since the cooked gnocchi reheat very nicely the next day, I'd really recommend that you just make the full amount and get two days of happiness for the price of one.

and I made it all up myself he said modestly

Clearly 'boeuf bourguignon en croûte' is just a poncy way of saying steak pie.

what Sundays are supposed to be

On final deadline for huge project. But managed to do a real Sunday anyway. At least I did actually work all day yesterday...

Olympia Bakery pastries — not the best in the world, but the almond croissant and hazelnut danish with a not bad takeout coffee get an awful lot of mileage out of the setting.

(photos of me by Rosie):

Then  a brief foray into spring at Kirstenbosch - the glasshouse and gardens all bursting with flowers, but this Cyrtanthus only just about to open. Graham Duncan somehow manages to coax these shy princesses to show us their stuff.