Christmas fever: Quince, red onion, rosemary and rosé wine stuffing

You know it’s Christmas when the queue in the Hermanus Woolworths winds up and down three aisles at 7 30 am. It’s a killer hot day, and everyone’s dashing around trying to keep the festive spirit together.

I’m also getting in on the fever. I’ve baked like a banshee today, a second batch of mince pies, a lemon and vanilla biscuit wreath, a batch of puff pastry and a few other things are ticking over. The other day I attempted to bake some Lebkuchen but they turned out rock hard. So I whipped out the gold and silver dust, and a dash of yellow raffia, and did some cookie pimpin' for the tree.

My fave thing from today is the quince stuffing I dreamed up for the half- smoked turkey tomorrow:

Quince, red onion, rosemary and rosé wine stuffing

Decemberitis: The fear of cooking failure

Mageirocophobia: The fear of cooking. I am not a sufferer. But every year I fret from a dose of what I call Decemberitis: the fear of flops.  It creeps up on me towards the start of the festive season. After six months of my academic, student lifestyle (where I eat communally on a low budget, only cook once or twice a week, and leave my favourite kitchen equipment to gather dust in the cupboards) I start to prepare for my private cheffing stint in Hermanus.

The annoying worrying starts. What if I’ve lost my touch? What if I can’t chop fast enough? What if… what if…. They don’t like the food? I try to resist it, going through old blog posts, proof that I can. Paging through my favourite recipe books, hoping inspiration will strike. Googling away at food blogs while I should be studying for exams.

On my first day of work I get a caught by a speed trap en route to Hermanus. Then, the guests arrive late. The butcher order isn’t in yet and I go shopping elsewhere. The meat is not top notch. (I don’t recommend Woolworth’s sirloin, mine was super- stringy) A first lunch flop. This is exactly what happened last year and the year before. A tradition perhaps?

Road tripping: Eastern Cape

I'm writing now from Bantry Bay; the doors are open to let the sea air through and there is still sand between my toes from Glen Beach.

The sea was as cold as slush puppy but we stayed in, soldiers.

Beach bats.

Good friends.

Ice cold coke.

Paragliders suspended in the blue sky; Table Mountain grand behind us.

I feel rested and smug. My skin is browner.  My hair curlier from the sea. My brain has rebooted.  December has been a most beautiful month. 

It started in the Eastern Cape, with a Nanaga Pie that was confirmed to be the best pie ever (By a man who doesn't normally like pies) .Then Grahamstown: The rain had finally cleared, it smelled of dust and the stench of exams had finally been erased. We celebrated the holidays with wine at the Monument, and pizza at the Rat and Parrot, which is just as it should be. 

Bathurst toposcope.

The End of the Year

I love the end of the year, I really do.

It’s bursting with promises.

It unties the twisty knots that built up through the year.

It’s beach time. Families hanging out. Talking about 2011. And 2012. Stories and pipedreams.

It’s being silly with brothers and sisters.

Ching chong cha.

Road trippin’.

It’s ice cream and presents and listening to all the music on your iPod you’ve been neglecting. It’s finding new favourites.

It’s many cappuccinos and remembering how to be a tourist in your own country.

It’s moaning about the weather that’s never compatible with your plans.

Sunblock. 

It’s saying goodbye to sweet Grahamstown and its criss-cross networks of friends and people buzzing in and out from my home to the peripheries of this bubble.

It’s me getting the chance to go to Hermanus and private chef and play, play, play

Love: Chocolate mud Cake with Raspberry Meringues

I attended a very beautiful 21^st party recently. The kind with warm friends, great outfits and songs written especially for the birthday girl. Someone shouted “cake is love” before Candace cut the cake, and screamed; with a room full of people who adore her joining in.

Cake contains the kind of love that cut be portioned and shared, from plate to mouth to mouth. With receptive grins and crumb- cornered mouths and licking of icing off fingers.

I had a cake- making project coming up and I was feeling inspired. Efe is a cake- lover, a dark- chocolate lover; and the kind of person who generously shares her passions. She commissioned me to make the party centrepiece and I agreed, despite 7 looming academic pieces of work and all sorts of other little stresses hanging about my mind. I agreed because there is nothing as satisfying as

Googling chocolate cakes when you should be studying (thank you Sweetapolita, you are great.)

Going shopping and putting 2 kilograms of chocolate and 1kg of butter in your trolley. 

Discussing cake making with Chef Jenny, and Thandi from next door.

Making a cake of three tiers that you know will be dismantled in minutes

The reward that comes with a chocolate- smattered/ pink/ silver dusted dirty apron 

Watching the birthday girl’s face when she sees the sparkles and the pink fairy dust and the crowds of friends singing, and bursts into tears.

Before you start worrying that this is going to be a deeply emotional and teary post let me tell you that making this kind of cake requires brute physical strength. Well, ok, if you don’t have a whisk attachment for your mixer, that is. The rest is all quite sentimental and airy and fun.

Three tier Chocolate mud Cake with Raspberry Meringues

Rocking the daisies 2011

 (Because every now and then you experience a weekend that sits like a burnished blimp on the surface of your year. You feel compelled to write about it quickly, before it seeps away into your wash bucket of tousled memories. )

It started with a frantic phone call on Wednesday. A friend’s lift had bailed out and a free ticket was on offer in exchange for a driver. Keen, I said. It has dawned on me lately that life is too short to let the good things go.

Then in an eye- blink I was standing in throbbing crowd, surrounded by shrieking girls and the tang of sweaty bodies. Jack Parow was waving his armpits in my face, which is what you do when you’re cooler than everyone else.

There were squeezy bottles being filled with gin dry lemon, beer, vodka coke, redbull, and lots and lots of water in between. Hot air wrapped like a blanket around us. A sweaty, close blanket that could only be temporarily escaped by a plunge into the dam; in bikinis, onezies or your summer dress. Or starkers.  There was dancing waist- deep, toes squishing in the mud and wondering what the poor ducks must think of these crazed beings.  

 There were porter loos: Solidarity in lack-of-toilet- paper, and long queues. Volumes could be written on the twisted expressions

Drakensberg Adventures

(also, How to warm up dinner and make breakfast on a fire without the use of pots)

Bear Grylls would be proud of this one. My friend T and I arrived in the most majestic Monk’s Cowl in the Drakensberg after a long academic term and a 12 hour drive. We were met by a beautiful campsite, all set up. We went for a walk, we had potjiekos, and drank wine and spoke rubbish with my parents. Then we slept all morning, ate some glorious lunch, and helped my parents pack up, leaving us behind with a tent and all the basics we would need.

Except pots.

So, what do you do if you find yourself in this situation? (All reality show participants can take note here; this is a typical African mountainous scenario.) Like a reality TV game, you have certain tools but not others. The mission: to eat. Points given for resourcefulness. Points given for laughs.

This is what you do:

You make it feel like a game because you’re on holiday and its much more fun that way.

Then, you scout the premises for any useful tools. Girls get resourceful.

Don’t get overly enthusiastic now. It seems a good idea to uproot the fence to get at that piece of wire; but they do have security guards. Look elsewhere.  

A flat rock- great. A piece of thick wire. Kindling. Check.

You figure out that you have got tinfoil and you feel grateful.

You pour yourselves a drink (you can make this step 1 depending on how perplexed you are).

Then, you make a serious fire. You disinfect that piece of wire that you found behind the scullery block by burning it and wrap up your mother’s camping plates in tinfoil.

Pop the potjie kos on there and stir a bit. It can get messy if you can’t see what's going on but no matter. It takes a while to heat up, you have put that foil plate right into the ash. Cover it up. Yes, potjie does taste better the next day.

(We just laughed while we waited because the moon was so bright it was bursting. We could see up to the cliff faces, we could see a controlled veld fire with its orange streaks ripping through the landscape. We couldn’t see anyone else, and sometimes its so damn nice to know its just you and the mountains and your dinner.)

Day 2.

The breakfast was our greatest feat. Pure ingenuity, Grylls would certainly agree.