Moist Chocolate Cake Revamped

This very simple and super tasty moist chocolate cake is really one of my personal favorites. Its a great treat and always a winner among my mates and family. It probably isn't the most picture perfect cake that you will ever bake, but the taste and sugar rush totally makes up for it! WARNING! Do not feed to children under the age of 12. You will create hyper little demons! This cake is super addictive and it can be baked for all occasions like a birthday party, wedding, wake ceremony, days of compulsive overeating or even early parole.

So here’s my famous ‘Moist Chocolate Cake Revamped’ or how I like to call it ‘Nat Koek’. Try to avoid the sexual connotation as I know the name has a raging pun. The name really does imply rich moistness as you have never had it before. I am not talking: “Ohhh that’s nice and moist.” NO!! I am talking: “Oh my god I want to stuff my face with this cake, super moistness!”

Bake it, eat it, cry and eat some more! Most importantly enjoy it! Would love to hear your feedback!

Moist Chocolate Cake Revamped - 

Ingredients:

4 eggs separated - Make sure your eggs are fresh.

12.5ml baking powder

250ml cake flour

2.5ml salt

250ml castor sugar – “Very important you do not be a smartass and use regular sugar here!”

125ml sunflower oil

60ml cacao

125ml boiling water

Sauce:

410g Nestle Ideal evaporated milk

125ml Sugar

15ml Margarine

Topping:

200g Nestle Treat Caramel

200g Dark Chocolate
200ml Thin cream
3 tbs of strong freshly brewed espresso

1. Preheat the oven to 180°C/Gas 4

2. Whip the egg whites and 2.5ml of the baking powder together until stiff.

3. Sift the cake flour, salt, castor sugar and the rest of your baking powder together.

4. Beat the egg yolks and sunflower oil together and add to the sifted dry ingredients.

5. Add the boiling water to your cacao and whisk until nicely dissolved. Add to sifted dry ingredients.

6. Beat all of the dry and wet ingredients together until smooth or until the sugar has dissolved.

7. Carefully fold in your egg whites.

8. Pour the cake mixture into an oven proof dish, 35cm x 22cm

9. Bake for 40-45 minutes

Sauce: 

      10. Add the evaporated milk, sugar and margarine into a sauce pan and bring to a boil. 

            Be careful that it doesn’t burn. After it has boiled you can take it off the heat.

      11.  Let the cake slightly cool before you pour the sauce over.

         

       Topping:

      12. While you wait for your cake to completely cool down you can make the chocolate ganache. Add the cream to a saucepan and bring to a boil. Add the hot cream and espresso to the chocolate and stir until it melts and you have one consistency.

      

      13. After your cake has completely cooled spread the ganache all over and place in refrigerator to cool and set completely. After the ganache has set spread a generous amount of the caramel all over the set chocolate ganache. 

       You should have a very moist chocolate cake with a chocolate ganache and caramel topping. 

Serve eat and enjoy! 

10 Top Cooking Tips of the Week

1.

Microwave a lemon for 15 seconds and double the juice you get before squeezing. 

2.

It's important to let a roast beef, pork, lamb or poultry, sit a little while before carving. That allows the juices to retreat back into the meat. If you carve a roast too soon, much of its goodness will spill out onto the carving board. 

3.

When separating eggs, break them into a funnel. The whites will go through leaving the yolk intact in the funnel. 

4.

No "curly" bacon for breakfast when you dip it into cold water before frying. 

5.

Don't throw out all that leftover wine: Freeze into ice cubes for future use in casseroles and sauces. 

6.

Cheese won't harden if you butter the exposed edges before storing. 

7.

If you have a problem opening jars: Try using latex dishwashing gloves. They give a no-slip grip that makes opening jars easy. 

8.

When using rice, keep in mind that 1 cup of uncooked long-grain white rice makes 3 cups cooked. 

9.

You can keep pasta, custards, and milk from boiling over by coating the inside of the pot lid with vegetables oil. 

10.

Add a small amount of cooking oil to the water before adding pasta. It reduces the amount of pasta sticking together.

Healthy Eats Wednesday - Mediterranean Vegetables With Goat's Cheese & Penne with Carrot, Beetroot and Ginger Juice

I recently got satellite TV and I have to admit I am completely glued to the Cooking Channel. If my ass could shoot roots I would blossom and thrive in front of the tube. Saying that I am addicted is an understatement. There is not a show I don’t miss, maybe one, ‘Hungry Girl’. I think it’s the biggest load of bollocks on the network. Most of you have probably seen her show or heard of her. “Making every day meals healthy and delicious.” Bah! The bitch lies! Do NOT trust her overrated pallet!  It might be healthy but it isn’t tasty.

Hungry Girl's version of chicken nuggets is a piece of chicken rolled in crushed up All Bran Flakes and baked! NASTY! Even her famous ‘Hungry Girl’ traditional Italian pasta is something yet to be desired.
It’s basically a plate of cooked pasta sprayed with a bit of tomato juice… Sacrilege!!! I swear when she came up with that recipe age old Italian cooks just suddenly dropped dead or turned around in their graves!

Let’s be realistic for a second, it might be healthy to eat like that but no one can keep up or want to eat like that for the rest of their life. You will snap, develop murderous tendencies to kill your neighbour’s barking dog, divorce your husband or even worse speed to the shop and choke down a huge burger or chocolate. You know who you are!

I believe you don’t need to change your lifestyle and force yourself to eat crap in order to look good or lose weight. Let’s be honest eating healthy sucks! The trick is to explore different types of food and find a healthy dish that you love and are willing to make part of your daily meals.   

I am still on my own personal little quest to find healthy dishes that I love and are willing to replace with unhealthy ones. It’s a painstaking process but finding a dish that you love and happens to be healthy is a great triumph! 

Here is two personal favourites of mine. It took me a while to get it right but the end result was amazing and I have completely fallen in love with it. The best part of this dish and drink is that it is super tasty but also very HEALTHY. Have a look see and tell me what you think! 

MEDITERRANEAN VEGETABLES with Goat's Cheese & Penne

Ingredients: Serves 1

60g dried penne

1 red pepper, deseeded and cut into bite-sized chunks
1 small courgette, trimmed and cut into bite-sized slices
1 red onion, peeled and cut into wedges
1tsp olive oil
12 cherry tomatoes, halved
6 stoned black olives, halved
35g goat's cheese, crumbled
Freshly ground black pepper
Salt
few fresh basil leaves, to garnish

Dressing
2 tsp balsamic vinegar
1 tsp lemon juice
1 tsp torn fresh basil leaves


1. Bring a large saucepan of lightly salted water to the boil. Add the pasta, bring back to the boil and cook for 8-10 minutes, until the pasta is tender but still firm to the bite.

2. Arrange the pepper, courgette and onion on a non-stick baking tray, then brush with the oil and season to taste with freshly ground black pepper and salt. Grill for about 5 minutes. Turn the pieces and continue grilling for an additional 5 minutes, or until they are tender.

3. When pasta is cooked, drain well and transfer to a serving bowl. Stir in the cherry tomatoes, olives and chargrilled vegetables with their oil and juices.

4. Beat together the dressing ingredients and stir into the pasta. Crumble over the goat's cheese, then garnish with basil and serve. 

An early morning or late afternoon energy booster!  

CARROT, BEETROOT AND GINGER JUICE

Ingredients: Serves 2

5 large carrots, unpeeled, roughly chopped

160g beetroot,, trimmed, unpeeled, quartered

3cm piece fresh ginger

1. Pop all of the ingredients into a juicer and enjoy!

Eggy Manic Monday Madness! - How to Poach an Egg The Julia Child Way

For this next technique I have consulted my personal teacher’s cookbook, ‘Mastering The Art of French Cooking’ by Julia Child on how to perfectly poach an egg.

‘A poached egg is one that has been dropped without its shell into a pan of barely simmering liquid and cooked for about 4 minutes until the white is set but the yolk remains liquid. It should be oval in shape and the white completely masks the yolk.’ – Julia Child

I wouldn’t recommend attempting this free-floating traditional egg poaching method for the inexperienced and fragile of heart. It is rated as being the most difficult cooking technique. It takes allot of trial and error but the end result is nothing less than magical, in presentation and taste. If you think you got what it takes then try a poached egg next time instead of a fried greasy one.

It is very important that your eggs are fresh. Don’t try and cut corners and use your month old stale eggs. Trust me you will fail miserably and end up with mess.

How to Poach an Egg by Julia Child

To transfer the egg from the shell to the water you can either break it directly into the water or break it into a saucer, tilt the saucer directly over the water, and slip the egg in.

1. Pour 4-5 cm of water into a 20 to 25 cm skillet and add one tablespoon of vinegar per litre of water. Bring to a simmer. Vinegar will help the egg hold its shape.

2. Break the egg and holding it as closely over the water as possible, let it fall in. Immediately and gently push the white over the yolk with wooden spoon for 2 – 3 seconds. Maintain the water at the barest simmer and proceed with the other eggs in the same manner.  

After 4 minutes, remove the egg with a skimmer and test with your vinegar. The white should be set and the yolk soft to the touch.  Place the egg in cold water. This will wash off the vinegar and stop the cooking process.

3. To reheat place the cold poached eggs in salted hot water for about half a minute to heat them through.  Remove with a slotted spoon and serve.  

Eggy Manic Monday Madness! - How to Scramble an Egg

Scrambled eggs are often the very first dish we learn how to make, yet for many it’s one of the hardest dishes to master. Like a great piece of fillet everyone has a different ideal of how it should be like. I can’t help but smile when I’m served a plate of tender golden yellow curds that somehow manage to defy contradiction by being light and fluffy, yet rich and decadent.

Over the years I've seen all kinds of tricks and potions suggested to get those fluffy scrambled eggs. Some rely on additives like baking powder while others will tell you to whisk the eggs until they are foamy and full of air. These techniques do incorporate air into your eggs, it works a little too well and makes your scrambled eggs spongy rather than fluffy. I don’t know about you, but if I wanted to eat spongy eggs I’d rather go have a piece of cheap Pick `n Pay sponge cake. No more embarrassing, tasteless and failed medieval quests for the sacred scroll on how to prepare the perfect scrambled eggs. 

So here is my method for perfect scrambled eggs every time.

1. Lightly whisk your eggs, add a pinch of salt and whisk until all your ingredients are just combined and the mixture has one consistency.

2. Heat a non-stick skillet and add your olive oil, butter or spray with Spray `n Cook. Pour in the egg mixture and let it sit for approximately 20 second without stirring it. Stir with a wooden spoon, lifting and folding it over from the bottom of the skillet. Let it sit for another 10 seconds then stir and fold again.

Repeat this process until your eggs are softly set and slightly running in places, then remove from the heat and leave for a few seconds to finish cooking. Give a final stir and serve immediately or your eggs will go cold and rubbery. Season with salt and freshly ground black pepper! 

Eggy Manic Monday Madness! - How to Fry an Egg

There is literally nothing worse than an over-fried egg, with an egg white that is so burned you think it beat the tan that you got during summer.

A perfectly fried egg is an egg, of course sunny side up that is not chewy or have any burned edges.

Personally I think it’s essential to learn how to cook an egg. That is if you eat them. It’s so simple to prepare but you just have to keep your eye on them as they cook faster than you can fall asleep during a bad Adam Sandler movie.  Ok maybe not that fast.

This is my way of frying an egg and it has always resulted in the perfectly cooked egg with no burns or chewy bits. To properly fry an egg you need the freshest eggs. Not the eggs that has been hibernating in your refrigerator since last month. You know who you are!

Ingredients:

1 tsp butter or olive oil

1-2 large/ jumbo eggs

Salt and black pepper

1. To fry an egg, you’ll need a non-stick skillet or cast iron skillet over medium-low heat. A skillet as a frying pan btw. Once it’s hot add your butter or a dash of olive oil. If you are carb conscious you can spray your pan with low fat non-stick spray instead. Meanwhile, crack your eggs into a bowl. Try not to break the yolks and make sure you take out any shells.

2. Gently place your eggs in the skillet and then cover the pan until the egg white is solid.

3. Keep cooking until the egg is sunny side up. Don’t go sit in front of the tube as your egg will over cook!    

- For an egg that is over easy, flip the egg and cook it for an additional 35 seconds.

- For an egg that is over medium, an extra 45 seconds will do.

- For an egg that is over hard, just cook it for an extra minute or so.

Enjoy with a sprinkle of salt and freshly ground black pepper.

  

Eggy Manic Monday Madness! - Hard-Boiled Eggs

The rainy and cold weather is gone and it’s a bright sunny day in Cape Town! The only downside is its MONDAY! You probably burned the office down on Friday and jammed your hearts the rest of the weekend. If you still have a hangover you are probably not in the mood to read or see food. So I decided not to wreck your fragile heads with big recipes or reviews, but instead to focus on something rudimentary. I received a couple of emails this weekend and most of them asked that I should go back to the basics. What better way to start the week than a fun and wacky eggy madness. I am going to teach you the bare basics on how to properly cook an egg.

Believe it or not and laugh if you want to. There are honestly cooks out there that STILL don’t know how to properly prepare an egg. I will discuss and teach you how to boil, fry, poach and scramble an egg so that it’s yummy and perfect every time.   

Hard Boiled Eggs

By Carl van Niekerk

Some of you struggle with how to probably hard boil an egg. “How do I do it? How long is too long or too short?” These are just some of the questions I know people ask themselves.  Something as hard- boiling an egg seems simple but trust me if you don’t know what you are doing it can be quite daunting. Look no further!  With this artless technique, you’ll cook textbook hard boiled eggs every time!    

1. Place your eggs in a heavy-bottomed saucepan and cover them with cold water. You can have as many as one egg to several eggs in your saucepan. Just remember the more eggs you have the bigger the chance of cracking them. It is important that the tops of your eggs are covered by at least 1-2cm of water.  

2. Bring your water to a full bubbling boil. Turn off the stove or burner and let the pot stand on the heat for about 10-15 minutes.

3. If you wish to have more of a runny centre, bring water to a full boil, turn off the heat and cover for 3 minutes.

4. Remove the boiled eggs from the water and transfer them to a bowl of cold water until they are cool enough to peel and serve.  

Brigadeiro mania!

I saw this sweet on TV the other day and just thought I MUST share it with you guys! I haven’t made it myself but am very keen to give it a shot! A Brigadeiro is a simple but exquisite Brazilian chocolate bonbon. The sweet is almost like a very sticky version of a chocolate truffle. It’s traditionally served at parties. Knowing us South Africans we won’t think twice to ravage it in a second, so don’t try and wait for the right occasion to make it or eat it! Just do it! J

This treat is amazing and decedent and so simple and cheap to make!  

Ingredients:

1 can of sweetened condensed milk

1 tablespoon butter

3 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa

1.       In a medium saucepan over medium heat, combine cocoa, butter and condensed milk. Cook, stirring, until thickened, about 10 minutes. Remove from the heat and let rest until cool enough to handle. Form into small balls and eat at once or chill until serving. The little balls can be covered in granulated chocolate, sprinkles, lemon rind, cinnamon, finely chopped nuts and almost anything imaginable.  

      

BOBOTIE - A traditional South African savory mince dish of Cape Malay origin.

Lately I’ve been cooking up a storm out of my Italian and French cookbooks. After reading a distasteful article on how cheap and unimpressive South African cuisine is I decided to bring my cooking a bit back home. I was determined to see if traditional South African dishes have really been going backwards and if it is actually as bad as the article said it was. I personally think anyone who insults our local cuisine should be taken to kwaMatiwane Hill and clubbed over the head with stale roti.

After looking long and hard I found a very old South African original, Bobotie. Bobotie is very similar to meatloaf except that it consists of ground beef flavoured with curry powders, ginger, marjoram, and dried fruit like raisin or apricots. The dish is then finished with a milk and egg custard on top and then baked. Traditionally it is served with yellow rice and chutney. Except for eating braaivleis, drinking beer and watching rugby what is more local than bobotie?  

I grew up with bobotie so I was familiar with the dish, but the bobotie that was served at my home was nothing like the bobotie I made last night or bobotie in general. I always thought bobotie should be pale, anaemic and 1 cm thick. Imagine my shock when I realised that it should be spicy, flavourful, hearty and definitely bigger than 1 cm. Folks from the old world seemed to have suffered from acid winds, hence the blandness of their food and recipes. Today the most flavourless food you find in Cape Town is probably at Mcdonalds.

Tested and tried! This bobotie recipe will definitely knock your socks off! It’s easy, fast and awesome! Cheap and unimpressive my ass! A fast food joint in South Africa like Mcdonalds doesn’t count as serving ‘local’ cuisine! 

BOBOTIE

Cooks: 4-6 Servings

Ingredients:

500g mutton or steak mince

1 thick slice of bread

1 ½ cup milk

1 large onion chopped

1 tsp crushed garlic

½ tsp grated ginger root

Butter or oil for frying

2 eggs

Juice of ½ lemon

½ tsp salt

1/3 cup sultanas or raisins

1/3 cup slivered almonds (optional)

1/3 cup chutney

3 tsp crushed coriander seeds

5 small Bay leaves

½ tsp nutmeg

2 tsp yellow curry powder 

1. Soak bread in half the milk. Squeeze out and retain excess milk. Crumble bread and mix with mince together with the yellow curry powder.

2. Saute onion, garlic and ginger in butter with crushed coriander seeds. Set aside when golden. 

3. Braise mean until color changes. Remove from heat then add fried onion, 1 egg, lemon juice, salt, half the remaining milk, sultanas and chutney. Mix well.

4. Pour mixture into greased oven dish. Beat together 1 egg and remaining milk and pour over meat mixture.

5. Press the bay leaves or fresh lemon leaves into bobotie then sprinkle the nutmeg over the meat mixture. 

6. Bake at 180°C until golden brown (30min).

Serve with yellow rice, fruit chutney and cooked vegetables. 

Cooking tip Wednesday! Stop sucking and start cooking!

Improve your cooking and impress your friends with these 5 helpful hints! 

1. To keep a pot from boiling over, put a toothpick or chopstick between the pot and the lid. This nifty trick also works with covered casserole dishes in the oven.

2. When frying bacon, sprinkling a pinch of salt in the frying pan will help to keep the grease from splattering.

3. To keep a mixing bowl from sliding around and crashing to the floor when you’re whisking something in it, set it on a damp kitchen towel.

4. Nonstick cooking spray will keep foods from staining plastic utensils or storage containers. Just give them a quick spray before using. It will also help honey, peanut butter or yummy Nutella slide out of measuring cups.

5. When using a double boiler or bamboo steamer, put a few marbles or a jar lid in the bottom of the pan – they’ll warn you by rattling when the water gets too low and save the pan from scorching.    

And there you have it! 

X-rated PENIS cake makes history!

Buy a well-thought-of birthday gift, dress up, nibble on snacks, sip on drinks and pretend to enjoy the night.

“The party ends with domestic abuse...”

Buy a last minute chocolate, dress up, drink more, forget to eat and crawl home.

“At least one person is drunk, overemotional and suicidal…”

Buy a bottle of Southern Comfort and conveniently forget to wrap it. Screw the dress up, raid the buffet, and steel the bottle of alcohol back. Trash the party and pass out in the bathroom while clinging onto the toilet like it’s a deck chair on the sinking Titanic.

“Hate yourself the next morning and swear to never dink again…”

Bake a humongous X-rated PENIS cake! Go over the top with the dress up, raid the bar, ravage the buffet, play drinking games, get violated and conveniently claim to suffer from memory loss.

“Sit and cry in the shower the next morning while committing carbicide with a box of chocolate chip cookies…”

Photo by Francois Swanepoel

Wow well that escalated quickly! This boys and girls is a breakdown of the yearly birthday parties in and around Cape Town. Sound familiar? And no it’s not a typing error I did say penis cake. For my best friend’s birthday I decided to bake a massive X-rated pecker cake as her birthday present! It took me ages but the end result was priceless. The only regrets I have was making a huge mess and having to clean it up the next day with a banging hangover!

The cake itself was an orange infused chocolate sponge cake with a Nutella filling. The frosting was a vodka and orange flavoured icing with a twist of vanilla.    

Check it out!

Photo by Carl van Niekerk

Photo by Carl van Niekerk

Photo by Carl van Niekerk

Photo by Carl van Niekerk

Catch of the day! Pesce Intero al Forno

I want to thank each and every one of my readers for your amazing support! I know my little blog has only been up for a week but I’ve gotten so many hits it’s unbelievable! The ‘Pesce al sale’ recipe I posted was a great hit and so I decided to share another one of my personal favourite Italian fish dish recipes. This recipe is once again by my two favorite ladies, Rose Gray & Ruth Rogers. Today I will be sharing ‘Pesce Intero al Forno’ or 'whole roasted fish with potatoes' straight out of The River Classic Italian Cookbook! 

 Cook, eat and enjoy!

Photo by Carl van Niekerk

Photo by Carl van Niekerk

For 4

8 large yellow waxy potatoes, peeled and quartered

2 garlic cloves, peeled

2 lemons: 1cut into 1cm pieces with the skin left on, 1 finely sliced

3-4 sprigs of fresh oregano, leaves picked from half

Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

Extra virgin olive oil

1 x 2kg sea bass, John Dory or sea bream. I used Yellow tail for this dish!

150ml white wine, such as Pinot Bianco, Verdicchio or Vermentina

Preheat the oven to 250 °C or high as it will go

Bring a pan of salted water to the boil. Put in the potatoes and the garlic and cook for 5 minutes, then drain and put into a bowl. Add the lemon pieces and most of the oregano leaves, and season with salt and black pepper. Pour over 3 tablespoons of olive oil and mix well.

Put the potatoes into a large oval ovenproof dish big enough to hold the fish. Stuff the fish with the remaining whole oregano sprigs and the slices of lemon. Season inside and out. Place the fish on top of the potatoes, drizzle with a little olive oil and roast in the oven for 20 minutes. Add the wine and stir the potatoes around in the juices. Continue to roast for a further 5-10 minutes, or until the fish and potatoes are cooked. Test whether the fish is cooked by inserting a fork into the thickest part, near the head. When it’s ready, sprinkle over the rest of the oregano leaves. 

Photo by Carl van Niekerk

Photo by Carl van Niekerk

It's hip it's happening it's Beleza Restaurant - Review

Whenever I find myself in Cape Town the Beleza Restaurant is without doubt always my first stop! I’ve been going there since the beginning of 2009. I always have breakfast sometimes even lunch. 

Since 2009 the restaurant has seen some décor changes but their menu, the quality of their food and service stays untouched and absolutely legendary!  The Portuguese and Italian inspired cuisines especially Beleza’s famous breakfasts are very tasty and decently priced. I’ve never had a breakfast that I sent back! 

Photo by Eat Out

The staff and service are the least to say outstanding. The waitresses are friendly, efficient and above all they remember their customers. Walking into Beleza and having your waitress know you by the name really support the warm and hospitable atmosphere that the restaurant is known for!

Photo by Francois Swanepoel

Beleza has a pleasant undercover outside deck area where you can enjoy your meals and watch the world rush by! The inside is always warm and welcoming with trendy and vintage décor designs adding to a hip and happening relaxed but far from ordinary or boring dining experience.

I will certainly be going back hungry for more!    

Overall Rating: 15/15      Food: 5                 Service: 5             Ambiance: 5         Yes, I would return! 

Photo by pasajebarato.com

Photo by Carl van Niekerk

Photo by TripAdvisor

Engen 1 Plus Shop & Corner Bakery - Review

Although it would be nice to write great reviews on every restaurant or deli out there, it is simply just not possible. We do encounter the worst of the worst sometimes. I regrettably had an unforgettable encounter last night with what I can only describe is “bloody horrific”. I’ve always like pies and yes I know its junk food and bad for me, but who can resist those beauties after a good night of drinking?  Not even 500meters from my apartment in Durbanville there is an ‘Engen 1 Plus Shop’ with a ‘Corner Bakery’ and ‘Steers’ on Willie Van Schoor Ave. I’ve overlooked the fact in the past that, that specific branch isn’t very good. After last night I just thought enough is enough! Why do I have to pay through my ass for something as simple as a bloody pie that I can’t and won’t even feed to my dog, let alone my goldfish? 

The service was a joke! I got the impression that the staff was doing me a favour by getting up and actually helping me. I waited nearly 15 minutes before I received any service. There was no one else in the shop! The ladies at the counter saw me standing and waiting, but none of them would get up to help me. It was probably rude of me to walk into a Corner Bakery at an Engen 1 Plus Shop and expect to be helped by the staff while they are sleeping or having fat conversations with each other. Next time I will bring them some tea and a blanket!

After being rudely spoken to for DARING to ask what pies are available and god forbid if they were fresh I was able to go home after 25 minutes with my frozen goods. I asked for a pepper steak and Cornish pie. I received a steak & kidney pie and something that resembled spinach and what looked like feta pie. The pies were dry, NOT fresh and just horrible. Not even a generous amount of tomato sauce could save those puppies.

Shitty service and horrible pies! I will NOT be going back for any food from the Corner Bakery. I will be going back to bring those blankets, tea and to sing them lullabies!

WHAT A JOKE! 

Voila! Klaus’s Tomato Stew!

It’s the weekend! Stop your work and start with eating and drinking! What better way to relax after a crazy week than a good glass of wine and some good food! It’s still a bit chilly here in Cape Town so I decided to share one of my own personal recipes with you guys. I love cooking and enjoying good food but sometimes a dash of creativity plus extreme hunger sparks crazy recipe ideas. Some of which even work! So here is my famous ‘Klaus’s Tomato Stew’. You’re probably wondering why my stew is called ‘Klaus’s Tomato Stew’ and not just plain tomato stew. Firstly, this is not just your average tomato stew and secondly, the day I wrote this recipe happens to be the same day I got my first goldfish. Yes, yes I named my tomato stew after my pet goldfish…

Tomato stew is served with a glass or two of Alvi's Drift 2011 Chardonnay - Viognier

This recipe is really tasty and very simple to make and its heartiness will melt any mother-in-law’s fidget disposition any day. Give it a try and tell me what you think!

Ingredients:

1 tin plain chopped tomatoes

115g tomato paste

400ml chicken stock   (1 cube)

1 big onion

3 garlic cloves

1 ½ cup water

Lambs neck (About 6 pieces)

Freshly ground black pepper

Salt

3-4 tbs sugar

½ tsp chilli flakes

1 tsp Parsley

1 tsp Thyme

1 tsp sweet basil

1 tsp rosemary

2 tsp garlic flakes

3 large waxy potatoes peeled and cubed

½ cup milk

1. Fry the meat until sealed and take out of pot.

2. Sauté the chopped garlic and onions until brown.

3. Add the meat and stir together.

4. Add the chicken stock, tomato paste and chopped tomatoes.

5. Add water and the rest of your ingredients. Let it simmer for 40 minutes on medium to low heat until sauce is nice and thick or meat and potatoes are soft and tender.

If you are in a rush you can flash boil your potatoes in boiling water for 5 minutes.

Instead of letting the stew simmer for 40 minutes you can throw it in a pressure cooker and let it cook for 20min on high. After 20min add your potatoes and let it gently simmer until they are nicely cooked.  

Cook eat and enjoy and remember stay classy South Africa! 

Restaurant review - Ritchies

What’s a Wednesday without a coffee date and some filthy gossip? The best gossip always unfolds over a cigarette and a cup of coffee. Well in our case several cigarettes, mofo big breakfast and a Savanna. I feel bad for the restaurant that has to endure our little coffee dates. My friend and I can be at times a bit of a mini social tornado destroying the tranquillity of any restaurant, pub, bar or church. It usually depends on how much we had to drink or how many cigarettes we have.

Today was no exception and the victim was Ritchies restaurant in Panorama, Cape Town. Surprisingly they were quite laid back so no daggers from the owner or the waitress this time. I have to admit that I was quite surprised by the size of their menu, quality of food and most of all their prices. C’mon who doesn’t find an R58.00 breakfast attractive? I stingy gypsy perhaps... R58.00 for a breakfast is one hell of a bargain if it consists of 2 eggs, 3 rashers of bacon, a heap of mushrooms, two bangers, a salad, a fair amount of fries, a tomato topped with cheese and two slices of toast.  Boom!* Calorie train straight the thighs! *Whooop *Whooop…

The food and coffee was lovely and definitely filling. Perfect for that hangover or just a normal pig out session! Crispy fries, fresh salad, tasty grilled mushrooms you name it! Nothing fancy but also nothing mediocre about it, just your average homey restaurant that delivers good quality food.

Service was good even though the waitress seemed like she was going to have an asthmatic fit from all of our smoking and her never ending marathon to clean our ashtray like every five minutes. Service started with a smile and ended with a smile. I can’t be sure if that fabulous Colgate smile of hers was genuine or if it was from a ‘high’ brought on by all of our secondhand smoke or just her body’s constant release of Endorphins from all the running around.  

All and all, great place, great food and most importantly its still standing! I will definitely be going back hungry for more!