Monday, January 31, 2011

Lazy Lucy to Martha Jewart

Tune of the Moment: "Sleep Away" performed by Maria Pia De Vito and David Linx (with Diederik Wissels on piano). Two seriously underrated and exceptional European singers and trend-breakers. Love, love, love them and urge you to listen to their album "One Heart, Three Voices" featuring David, Maria and another European inspiration, Fay Claassen.


Here's an audio clip (it's from YouTube but there' no visual, just a still picture) of Maria Pia De Vito singing "Sleep Away" with John Taylor on piano. You could use the song as a soundtrack for reading the rest of this blog....perhaps...






I always thought I was pretty lazy. This opinion was based on the following life choices I tend to make:
-I use canned chickpeas instead of soaking my own over night and boiling them up
-the trash can/dustbin is always on the brink of falling apart before I take it outside
-I bulk buy my favourite "When Pigs Fly" bread and freeze it so that a slice is always available to me-God forbid I should have to go out to buy fresh bread


So, I've become increasingly smug as my "happy homemaker" skills have flourished in abundance. I have recently purchased more bags of various ancient grains than is necessary (farro, spelt, kaniwa) and am no longer intimidated by the cooking instruction "soak over night and proceed to boil for 7 hours." I have organised my tea tins-a tin for non-caffeinated mint melange, lemon/ginger, fennel varieties, and a tin for the caffeinated green/mint, green/cherry blossom, green/jasmine selection.


I have also become an expert at roasting my own peppers. For those of you who know me, you're well aware that my vice is sugar. I can chase a slab of Cadbury's Top Deck Chocolate with a tub of Magnolia Bakery's Banana/Cream Pudding with ease and panache. I show disdain for those souls who can buy a chocolate bar, eat a couple pieces, and allow the rest of the treat to sit around, undiminished, for days or weeks even. Poor form. Epic fail.


However, I am attempting to nip my sugar addiction in the bud (well, I have been attempting this for years now...) and have recently stumbled upon some top notch strategies. The first step was to eliminate sugar from my breakfasts. I have always been a porridge-kinda-gal. During my year in the college dorms (hall of residence for the South Africans), my trusty microwave saved me from having to face strangers in the formica-clad cafeteria first thing in the morning. I would sit quietly in my room, with my MacBook Pro, eating microwaved oats and slowly easing into the day at my own pace. And I was a very good girl, opting for agave nectar instead of maple syrup or honey or, I blaspheme, granulated sugar. Eish. When I got tired of oats, my "rise and shine" alternative would be agave-adorned Fage yogurt littered with frozen blueberries and cherries (my aunt's genius concoction). 


Both these breakfast choices are pretty darn healthy. Don't get me wrong. But, after researching the methodology of other recovering sugar-fanatics, I decided to toy with avoiding processed sugar altogether. So, the new breakfast became centered around avocado, eggs, roast turkey breast, hummus and raw nut butters (cashew, almond, walnut). This long and winding history of my eating habits leads me back to the roasted peppers. I've found it useful to satisfy my sugar cravings with naturally sweet fruits and vegetables (luckily I'm not addicted to fructose, so I manage to eat fruit happily in moderation). Red Peppers are my new passion. Not only are they high in vitamin C (research says they have more vitamin C than oranges-although as I've grown older, it seems everything from kiwi's to strawberries has more vit C than the supposed Vit C King, the orange...) but they are the most fabulous shade of red (unless you're dealing with yellow or orange peppers-also good by the way).


I adore roasted peppers but find that the store-bought-bottled variety are less sweet and more oily than the homemade kind. So, thanks to an easy step-by-step guide from Smitten Kitchen (www.smittenkitchen.com), I've been roasting my own peppers every week for about a month now. It's so easy, leaves your tiny flat smelling like sugary, rosy-red heaven, and the peppers in question last about a week in a container in the fridge. My favourite use for them, which ties back into the breakfast thread, is to lay them lovingly upon a slice of warm toast and heap mashed avocado on top of them (see picture below).




So here it is-your way to filling life with sugar that counts.

Home-Roasted Peppers

A couple of red, yellow, or orange peppers
(I always put more than one pepper-sometimes 4 at a time-on the roasting tray)

Preheat oven to 375F/180C
Place whole peppers on a foiled baking tray
(keep the green stems ON)
Place in oven an use tongs to turn them every 20 minutes for even roasting
(This may seem like a lot of effort but it's worth it!)
After an hour (so 20 mins on each "side" of the pepper), remove.
Wait 20-30 minutes to peel and deseed.




Saturday, January 29, 2011

Saturday Soup & Lethargy

Tune of the Moment: Anita O'Day sings "Love Me Or Leave Me" from the album "Anita Sings the Most".


Which leads me to add this clip-it's Anita singing at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1958, taken from the documentary "Jazz on a Summer's Day". Bizarrely enough, I first saw this in Oslo, Norway when visiting a saxophone-playing friend of mine. I sat in on one of his classes at the conservatory and they played this documentary. It was love at first note and Anita has become a staple of my jazz vocal library. I should add the song she sings is the namesake of this blog.




It was just one of those days. I woke up, had two pieces of toast-one topped with mushed up avocado and home-roasted red peppers, and the other smothered in Holland & Barrett's all-natural apricot and apple spread and Brad's Organic's no-sugar peanut butter. I then proceeded to climb back into bed, cuddle with my Kindle, and fall asleep again.


I don't quite know why I'm so lethargic-too many blocks of Trader Joe's 70% dark chocolate, perhaps-but instead of identifying the cause and fighting my current state, I've decided to go with the flow and allow myself to waltz around, pyjama-clad and slightly dazed. 


However, this dilly-dallying cannot go on for the entire day because I have two girlfriends, A and N, coming over for dinner. Somehow I have managed to get a pot of Moroccan Chickpea Soup on the hob, and tidying up my abode will happen slowly but surely. A is a vegetarian, which is a common occurrence, especially in NYC. I dabbled in veganism for a week and still managed to consume butter (made from olive oil), ice cream (made from coconut milk) and milk (take your pick: soy, almond, hemp, oat, rice...). It's an easy existence when you're in a city/country that dabbles in substitutions (tofurkey, cashew cheese, etc).  So A's veg-state is easy to accommodate, especially since, per chance, I've been a vegetarian for the past week (it just happened, I promise!). My go-to dish for these wintery, relaxed suppers/dinners is my mother's Moroccan Chickpea Soup.



The recipe is easily tweaked to your liking. I add Trader Joe's already-cooked lentils (they're delicious and not at all like the unappetizing, brown mulchy lentils that come in tins/cans. These are al dente, and simply need to be rinsed and broken up in a sieve.) I also added the leftover lima beans in my fridge-any legumes work and this soup is loaded with protein, fiber and flavour so it ticks all the boxes. Mum is not mad about celery but I always seem to have some nestled deep in the fridge so I throw it in with the onions.



The great thing about soup in general is that while it's simmering and the flavours are intensifying, you can multitask and cook something else. In my case, it was lunch-penne pasta with browned, buttery mushrooms and melted cheddar. I'd actually just watched a bit of "Julie & Julia" (for the 12th time or so) and one of Julia Child's lessons is that one should never "crowd" mushrooms. The other wisdom credited to her is that a dish can never have too much butter. So, since I did "crowd" the mushrooms (I have terrible spatial awareness), I added an extra knob of butter to balance everything out-and it was delicious. I'll leave you with the soup recipe while I settle down to lunch and hulu.com.



Mum's Moroccan Chickpea Soup

1 tablesp olive oil
1 medium onion chopped
(2 sticks celery chopped, optional)
2 teasp ground cumin
1 teasp ground coriander
600ml hot vegetable or chicken stock (can make with cube)
400g can chopped plum tomatoes with garlic
400g can chickpeas, rinsed and drained
100g frozen broad beans/ or tinned lentils, drained, or I cook a cup of dried lentils ‘til al dente and drain – prefer the consistency to tinned lentils, much nuttier
Zest and juice of ½ lemon (optional)
Large handful fresh coriander or parsley and flatbread to serve
Soften the veg: Heat the oil in large saucepan, then fry onion and celery gently for 10 minutes until softened, stirring frequently. Tip in cumin and coriander and fry for another min.
Add the flavours: Turn up the heat, then add the stock, tomatoes chickpeas and lentils, plus a good grind of black pepper. Simmer for 8 minutes. If using throw in broad beans, and lemon juice and cook for a further 2 minutes. Season to taste and top with a sprinkling of lemon zest and chopped herbs. Serve with flatbread)
(Basically you can throw any tinned pulses and/or beans into this. The most important ingredient which makes the soup is the ground cumin! I often make this soup within 20 minutes – a meal in itself. I use tinned chickpeas, dried lentils, leave out the beans, and serve with grated gruyere cheese on top. Heat of soup melts the cheese.)

P.S. Sister K said my photograph of green tea (see previous post) looked like a mug of miso soup....she may have been right but what could be more delish than a hot mug of miso?! Crit taken. And I promise to aspire to bring you photographs that look like they came straight out of the pages of Donna Hay cooking magazines.

Friday, January 28, 2011

Soft Polenta Evenings

Tune of the Moment: Satie's "Gnossiennes No. 1 - Lent", which I came as part of the soundtrack for "The Painted Veil", even though Alexandre Desplat composed the rest of the film's score.

As it turns out, my mother is not completely supportive of my starting a blog. She said that blogging is narcissistic-and I agree, completely. However, narcissism hasn't stopped millions of other people from plying the internet with their thoughts, so I don't see why it should hinder my attempt to join the masses. So, with that sentiment established, I continue on blogging bliss...

My sister, K, was in the aisles of one of South Africa's finest supermarkets yesterday evening (this particular store, incidentally, allows you to load your basket with imported strawberries, rotisserie chicken portions and Franschhoek trout while listening to the sounds of Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra and Betty Cater through the speaker system-very classy). She was deliberating whether to purchase smoked trout fillets or hake fillets. Hake is a local fish-flaky without a very strong "fishy" scent. My mum thinks it's boring and never cooks it for us unless using it in a fish recipe-fish cakes, fish parcels, etc. I advised K to go with the hake because its more neutral flavour would allow her more freedom in cooking it. She decided I was right and proceeded to exclaim that she would put it on the braai (barbecue for the Americans).


This anecdote is not of particular importance, but our conversation ended with my declaring I would make polenta for dinner. And I did. Blogging and hake aside, another topic that my mum and I differ on, is the deliciousness of mushy food. Mum hates anything that resembles baby food. I, on the other hand, find overcooked rice, tapioca, "glue" potatoes (potatoes beyond-mashed in a food processor so that they are the consistency of pancake batter), and porridge to be the ultimate comfort foods. So it should come as no surprise that I adore soft polenta. The pictures were, again, not totally successful so I'll post the recipe with a picture of this morning's tea.

Because my eyes are always bigger than my stomach, I have a penchant for big mugs. It either comes from my father's big-mug obsession, or from the fact that it's just more satisfying to wrap one's hands around a large, smooth, warm mug. This mug is my favourite and comes from the awesome pottery/gallery shop in Kalkbay, above Olympia Deli.

Soft Polenta with Mushrooms, Spinach and Onion Marmalade

1/2 cup polenta
2 cups water
A handful of mushrooms (any variety-I used shiitake and button)
A handful of spinach (I used baby spinach)
Grated cheese (I used New Zealand cheddar but gruyere would work too)
Store-bought onion marmalade (I used the Woolworths brand-my fave)
Lots of salt (more than you suspect)
A glug of olive oil 
Butter (optional)

1. Bring the 2 cups of water to the boil on the stove.
2. While water is boiling, heat frying pan, add oil, add mushrooms on low heat.
3. Add 1/2 cup polenta to the boiling water and lower heat to simmer-level.
4. Stir polenta slowly, enjoying how it thickens just as the polenta-packet-cooking-instructions said it would! Miracle!
5. When polenta consistency is to your liking-add more water to thin it out-take it off the heat and mix in salt, grated cheese, and a nob of butter if you wish.
6. Add spinach to mushrooms and allow it to wilt.
7. Add mushrooms and spinach to the polenta, folding the mixture slowly and lovingly.
8. Add a dollop of onion marmalade and tweak the seasoning.
9. Eat slowly while watching trashy tv and simultaneously checking facebook.

*Footnote: I shall be using the South African spellings for "favourite", "colour", and a myriad of other words that I think look silly when missing the vowel "u" or using the letter "z" instead of "s." AnalySe that my lovely readers!


Thursday, January 27, 2011

Snowday in the Frosty Apple

Tune of the Moment: Barbra (it looks very odd without the extra "a") Streisand singing "Make Someone Happy" (by Jule Styne, Betty Comden, Adolph Green) from the album produced by Diana Krall ("Love is the Answer").

It's a(nother) snow day in New York. Apart from wearing four pairs of socks and a pashmina, this means no school, which is a fabulous reason to stay indoors, waste countless hours on the internet, and start this blog.

I know what many of you are thinking. Or I shall be so bold as to assume I know what you're thinking. "Another (add expletive) blog?!" "What makes her think anyone will be interested in her musings and drawn-out descriptions of food and music?"

Well, to be quite honest, I am writing this blog because I find writing (emails, facebook stati, hypothetical hate notes to the passport control officers at JFK) extremely cathartic. And it didn't cost me money to setup this blog. Also, several people (read: my doting father and two voice teachers) have told me I'm an okay writer so I thought I'd take that praise and go with it.

I had a discussion with my cousins in London about blogging and blogs in general. They are called MF and BF (for this blog, of course).  Anyone can blog, and everyone basically does (tweeting counts as a form of abbreviated blogging), so one really needs to weed out the bad from the good. My criteria for blogging is based upon one simple thing. Can the blogger in question use "to" and "too" correctly? I know several bloggers who are unable to get this right, and, in my opinion, they should hang up their blog-hats and stick to grammatically faulty oversharing on facebook.

Anyway, now that I've vented that gripe I feel better, lighter, and ready for lunch. On the menu is leftover mushroom barley. I'll make it more interesting by adding leftover lima beans, grated cheddar or gruyere cheese, and steamed tenderstem broccoli (broccolini for the Americans). Cousin BF says there must always be something green-and she's quite right! Life just doesn't feel balanced without that splash of grass-green, healthy-looking "something" on one's plate.

I posted a blurred picture of the barley on my facebook page and found several people asking for the recipe despite the hazy visual. So, here is the recipe sans the image. It comes from a website called Weelicious (www.weelicious.com) which is run by Catherine McCord. The site was initially a forum for baby food recipes, but as Catherine's children grew older, the recipes became adult-friendly too. However, with the popularity of the baby food diet (thank you celeb trainer Tracey Anderson), one could happily use this site for pureed, mashed up inspiration.

With that, I'm off to chew my lunch.


Mushroom Barley (Serves 4)


2 Tbsp Olive Oil


1 Small Onion, diced
1/4 Tsp Sugar
1 Cup Mushrooms, chopped
1 Garlic Clove, chopped
1 Tsp Salt, divided
1 Cup Pearl Barley, rinsed
3 Cups Low Sodium Chicken Stock


1. In a large pot, heat the olive oil over medium heat.


2. Add the onions and cook for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally.
3. Add the sugar and cook for another 5 minutes or until onions start to caramelize.
4. Remove the onions to a plate and add the mushrooms, garlic and 1/2 tsp salt to the pot. Cook for 3 minutes or until the water from the mushrooms start to evaporate, then remove to a plate and set aside.
5. Add the chicken stock into the same pot and bring to a boil, add the barley, 1/2 tsp salt, reduce to a simmer and cook for 45 minutes or until tender.*
6. Add the onions and mushrooms to the pot to combine and cook until heated through.
7. Serve.


*Cooking in the same pot allows all of the flavors to combine.