My idea of a well balanced breakfast is to have a slice of lemon curd toast in one hand, and a spoon full of cremezola in the other. Granted, you will not find this as the de jour diet in any of the glossies, but if you landed here by searching for lemon curd, then you probably don’t follow those things anyway. I absolutely adore sweet, tangy & jubilantly yellow hued lemon curd. Not that luminous yellow stuff that could double as a traffic cone in a pinch that you buy ready-made off the shelf in the supermarket. Real, homemade, butter laden curd made with love by your mom and packaged in a great, big glass jar that you can scoop spoons full out of when you need a culinary cuddle. But if mom is far away, or you’ve actually learned how to be self-sufficient, it is fantastically simple to make your own sunshine in a jar.

A few years ago, I had a Blue Mountain lemon curd at our local cheese festival that I fell into instant besottedness with (only to hear that they were discontinuing the range!). The curd had a gorgeously nutty flavour. The type of gorgeously nutty flavour that can be achieved by doing one thing and one thing only: browning butter. You know what I’m talking about. And now you can’t imagine why anyone would ever make curd without browning the butter first, right? You can use your favourite lemon curd recipe and just brown the butter before using it as directed, or follow this easy one here. I used a recipe from that old standby that makes up a large portion of every warm blooded Afrikaner girl’s recipe repertoire, Kook & Geniet, and just tweaked it to reduce the risk of scrambling and make it a little more buttery. When in doubt, more buttery is always the way to go.

Browned butter lemon curd

Hands-on time

5 mins

Cook time

10 mins

Total time

15 mins

Author: www.twosuitcasesandatinpot.com

Recipe type: Condiment

Serves: Makes +/- 350ml

Ingredients

• 330g sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 egg yolk
• 110g salted butter
• Juice of two large lemons (roughly 400g in weight, whole)

Method

1. In a heavy based pot, melt butter over a medium low heat. It will spatter at first and then start foaming, and not long after will turn brown fairly rapidly. Don’t be scared to get a good amount of colour on it, but stop before the salt and milk solids (which will sink to the bottom) burns. Pour the butter – salt and all – into a bowl and set aside.
2. Add the sugar and lemon juice to the pot and bring to the boil. Once the sugar has dissolved, add the butter.
3. Meanwhile, whisk the eggs and egg yolk in the bowl that the butter was in. Slowly pour the sugar syrup into the egg mixture, whisking continuously.
4. Return the mixture to the pot and return to the heat, stirring until the mixture thickens. Do not let it boil or you will land up with sweet, lemony, scrambled eggs.
5. Serve smeared on warm toast, swirled over ice cream, spooned onto meringue nests or poured into sweet tart cases.

Blogging is not for sissies. It takes a massive amount of time and dedication, neither of which I have in excess right now. It also requires the ability to switch your creativity on at will when you do actually find yourself with thirty minutes to spare. I really suck at that too. One solution, they say, is to write drunk and edit sober, and frankly I can’t afford to be inebriated that often. This means that I have a draft folder positively brimming with unfinished posts. A little reminder, whenever I log into WordPress, of my ability to cling, hoard, procrastinate and just hope for the best when I know nothing will change. Every now and then I will go back to it, and listlessly page through the articles, knowing that I will never get round to sharing them with you because they either no longer seem relevant, or I’ve forgotten what I wanted to say in the first place, or in one sad case, the restaurant in question had inexplicably shut down before I could tell everyone why they absolutely had to go there. And yet, I hang on to them, even though I know that it is over and that they will never be written.

I know I will never get round to showing you the Qipu clothing market in Shanghai, with its mind-boggling selection of clothing stores, where the items get more expensive and the sales ladies get less pushy as the escalator goes up.

See? Start low, finish high.

Or the street-food-vendor-packed alley behind said clothing market, where I finally came across sanxian doupi with its delicate tofu skin encasing shrimp flavoured rice, and jiān bǐng with the fried pastry center that the my local Qingpu lady never added and I had been obsessing about since first hearing it was missing from mine.

No really. If you’re in Shanghai, and you love shopping and eating, then this is a must-add for your trip list!

In order to tell you about the massive Tianshan Tea City that we visited, I learnt more about tea than any sane person should be expected to.

But now you’ll never know the difference between the tea on the left and the tea on the right. (There, there now. You’ll get over the disappointment soon enough.)

I have a slew of posts on Shanghainese street food waiting to be written. For example, bet you didn’t know that Shanghai has more than 10,000 mobile food stalls? Or that in a government survey it was found that of 650 vendors surveyed, 609 had no business license? Or that sometimes your lamb skewer might be rat? Possibly poisoned rat. But that wasn’t going to stop me from encouraging you to try fire roasted sweet potatoes.

Or warm, cumin-y, delicious shao kao (street barbeque). “Lamb” and all.

Or sweet and fresh bingtanghulu (candied fruits).

Alas, I know I will never get round to them. So I’m letting go, moving on, out with the old etc., all in an attempt to feel less bogged down by what I have not accomplished, in the hopes that I can expend more energy on what I still hope to achieve. I’m hoping for catharsis, although the reality will probably only be a bit more free space on my server, and a once again full draft folder a few months from now, because some things never change.

But before I hit the delete button, I have one unwritten post that I felt have to share with you!

There are few things in life that give me as much pleasure as enjoying food with like-minded friends. Happily, I have been blessed with some very special foodies in my life! We don’t have it easy though. Living in a town where Wimpy is considered haute cuisine by many can be quite frustrating for fine dining lovers. I have raged about this before, and nothing much has changed since then. And so, my foodie friends and I decided to start our own Come Dine With Me competition. Four couples, four months, four extraordinary nights. A staggering amount of work went into preparing for each night, and afforded us all the opportunity of trying dishes that we would ordinarily consider too fancy for week night fare, or even your average dinner party. This beef fillet went a long way towards clinching the title for the winning couple, Niel and Pippa, who graciously shared the recipe with me. The recipe is from The Cliff, Barbados: Recipes by Paul Owens, a restaurant that was in the top 50 restaurants in the world when they visited there. I have paged through the book and can highly recommend it to anyone who would like to take their cooking up a notch! It has been a long time since I had this dish, but I can still remember the flavours as if they were melting in my mouth yesterday. Definitely one to add to your repertoire for when you’re having people around that you’d like to impress!

Fillet of beef on a potato rösti with Dijon mustard tarragon sauce & crispy leeks

Author: Paul Owens

Recipe type: Main

Serves: 4

Ingredients

• 4 x 80z tenderloins
• 3 cups chicken stock
• 2 cups dry sherry
• 1 ½ cups thick cream
• ⅓ cup Dijon mustard
• 2 tbsp fresh tarragon
• salt and pepper
• 2 leeks
• 4 potatoes (peeled)
• 4 tbsp of mixed chopped herbs i.e. marjoram, parsley thyme
• butter
• seasoning

Method

1. Season the tenderloins and sauté in a hot pan with a little clarified butter until medium rare (about 3 minutes per side). Divide the meat between four plates and allow to rest for 10 – 15 minutes.
2. For the sauce, bring the sherry to a boil and add the chicken stock. Reduce the liquid for about 10 minutes, then add the cream, Dijon mustard, tarragon and salt and pepper to taste. (Although the original recipe says to season here, I would leave that till the very end. You’re still going to reduce the sauce later, so it might become over salty.)
3. Cut the leeks into fine strips and deep fry in hot oil until golden. Place on a paper towel and season with salt and pepper.
4. Grate the potatoes and add the herbs and a little salt and pepper. Using your hands, squeeze out the moisture and form thin potato cakes. Sauté in hot butter until golden brown, drain on a paper towel. They can be made in advance and reheated.
5. To assemble the dish, place the steaks in a warm oven. Meanwhile reduce the sauce in a pan over a high heat until a syrupy consistency. Place steak on warm potato rosti and cover with the sauce. Top with crispy leeks.

Families are funny things, aren’t they? While scratch-your-eyes-out loyal if anyone dares speak an ill word about one of our own, we are the first to voice an opinion about cousin Betty’s latest binge drinking session as soon as we can grab a second alone with a familial accomplice. My family is no different. So it was that I discovered what my family had been whispering amongst themselves over wine glasses in kitchens and murmuring to one another on tee boxes while taking practice swings: I had somehow achieved the dubious honour of being branded the couscous pusher in our family. There I was, happily dishing up fall-off-the-bone lamb shanks over steaming piles of fluffy couscous, when I noticed a distinctly uncomfortable silence fall over the table. The same sort of silence you feel in that moment just after the drug addict has made himself comfortable in the cushy armchair, but before someone clears their throat to tell him that the tea party he’s been invited to is actually an intervention. Uncle T steepled his fingers together (as he always does when he has something uncomfortable to say) and with a sideways glance at my equally unimpressed looking brother said, “What is this shit now again?”. Around the table there was a lot of looking in laps, and readjusting of wine glasses, but when no one backed him up he continued: “Uncle G says you’re always trying to get us to eat couscous”. Now, please note that – whilst true – the last time I had attempted this feat was Christmas 2007, when I had tried to slip some of the little granules past everyone by disguising them amongst cubes of roasted butternut and crumbly feta while they read out loud to each other those terribly lame jokes that come in the crackers. But it mattered not. I had become the couscous pusher. And with good reason I suppose. See, I believe the much maligned couscous has had a bad rap. When it was first introduced to our shores, it was inevitably prepared by uninformed housewives who dumped too much cube derived chicken stock over it in sufficient quantities to turn it into a crumbly heap of mushy sludge more closely resembling wallpaper glue than a fluffy accompaniment to a lamb tagine. This really is a grossly unfair representation of what couscous could be. Really, if you think about it, when it is prepared correctly, what’s not to love? Tiny granules of al dente semolina that slurp up all the flavours you throw at them, couscous is the caviar of pasta. Add to that, it requires no more than a spoon to eat, so it is perfect comfort food. I have therefore made a mini mission out of turning couscous into a dish everyone could love, instead of just an ineffectual projectile weapon in a B-grade movie. This dish might not complete my life’s work, but it is one of my favourites.

Crispy chicken and chickpea couscous with feta & lemon zest

Comfort in a bowl.

Author: www.twosuitcasesandatinpot.com

Ingredients

• 4 chicken thighs, skin on
• 1 tablespoon flour
• 1 cup raw couscous
• good quality chicken stock
• 1 tablespoon oil
• 2 cloves garlic, crushed
• 1 tin chickpeas, drained
• 2 heaped tablespoons of basil pesto
• zest and juice of one lemon
• 1 or 2 rounds of plain Greek feta
• seasoning

Method

1. Season the chicken on both sides. Cook in a dry pan over medium heat, turning occasionally, until cooked through.
2. Remove the chicken from the pan and shred into bite sized pieces, discarding the bones.
3. Pour off all but 1 tablespoon of the fat in the pan and return the chicken to the pan. Sprinkle over one tablespoon of seasoned flour and stir through to incorporate all the fat and juices and yummy caramelised bits on the bottom. Fry until crisp.
4. In a separate bowl, combine 1 cup of raw couscous with chicken stock and prepare as per the instructions on the packet (different brands require different cooking methods and times.) Do not add more stock than the instructions say, or you’ll land up with the aforementioned wall paper paste.
5. Add the chicken to the couscous and stir through.
6. Heat the oil in the pan over medium heat and add the garlic, frying for a minute.
7. Add the chickpeas to the garlic and fry for two minutes. Turn the heat down to low.
8. Add the lemon zest, lemon juice and basil pesto to the chickpeas and warm through. Add to the couscous mixture and stir through.
9. Crumble the feta into the couscous and stir through. Adjust seasoning and serve.

Nutrition Information

Serving size: 2

Pierneef à la Motte in Franschhoek is one of my favourite restaurants. The menu is constantly changing to reflect the seasons, so you always get the freshest, seasonal ingredients packaged in beautifully plated, explosive flavour combinations. Unfortunately this also means that you best not get your heart set on any one dish, as it may not be there the next time you visit. There is an important life lesson in this. Never put off till tomorrow what you can eat today! The bittersweet Valrhona chocolate tart with peanut butter mousse that I wrote about when I reviewed them in September was one such dish. While the rich chocolate tart itself was obviously delicious, the highlight of the entire meal (okay, a joint tie with the quail and orecchiette pasta salad with smoked pork lardo and almond ginger sauce), was the peanut butter mousse that accompanied the tart. Piped onto the plate into little mounds of salty moreishness, they were the unintentional star of the dish. So I was very disappointed when, on a visit there last week, the chocolate tart was no longer on the menu. After a week of hoping for a miserable rainy day, so that I could stare sadly out the window while I longed for that mousse, I realised I was unsuccessfully dealing with this blow, and decided to try recreating the mousse myself. I added white chocolate, so it is not quite the same, but it makes a similarly rich, lovely, dense mousse. Serve in little shot glasses, as an accompaniment to a tart (I served mine with a salted caramel cheesecake, but chocolate and peanut butter are made for each other when the bread and jam aren’t looking) or as a filling between layers of biscuits.

Peanut butter and white chocolate mousse

Hands-on time

10 mins

Total time

10 mins

Author: www.twosuitcasesandatinpot.com

Recipe type: Dessert

Serves: 4 – 8

Ingredients

• 50g butter
• 150g white chocolate
• 2 eggs, separated
• 70g castor sugar
• 125ml cream
• 175g smooth peanut butter

Method

1. Melt the butter and chocolate together. Warm the peanut butter till it becomes a little more runny, and stir into the chocolate.
2. Add two egg yolks to the warm chocolate mixture and stir through.
3. Beat the egg whites till stiff peaks form. Slowly add the castor sugar to the egg whites while you continue whisking. Fold the mixture into the peanut butter mixture.
4. Beat the cream till stiff. Fold the cream into the peanut butter mixture and serve.

Jew’s ear is a species of Auriculariales fungus found growing mainly on dead wood worldwide. And really, on a dead stump, far from the dinner table, is where it should’ve been left. It is a popular ingredient in many Chinese dishes and can readily be found on most restaurant menus – usually in the form of a cold salad, dressed with soy and vinegar, or in chunky pieces in soups. The mushroom itself is quite astonishing. The size of a hand and beautifully aubergine hued, they really do resemble ears in an almost disturbing way. But that is where the astonishment ends. To describe this mushroom as gelatinous with a mild flavour is to be unjustifiably kind. You know that little piece of cartilage you find along the breast bone of a chicken? The one that is so soft and thin, you don’t even realise you’ve cut through it until you unpleasantly bite down on a mouthful? Jew’s ears taste like that. Squeaky, softly rubbery, and with no discernible flavour at all. I am yet to try a dish I like them in. But I am nothing if not an adventurous eater, so I tried to incorporate them into a creamy mushroom soup.

 To make the mushroom soup:

1) Prepare your favourite mushroom soup recipe.

2) DO NOT use any Jew’s ear mushrooms in your soup WHATSOEVER. They are vile. They will bring nothing to the table in terms of flavour and will merrily add a yucky, rubbery texture that will not zip up with a blender. Attempting to use them in a creamy soup will have disastrous consequences. If you absolutely have to try them, here is a recipe for soup that uses them whole.