In which we have dinner but not a dinner party

And then, we had friends over for hot dogs. I am too embarrassed to call it a dinner party, and I don’t even know why we had hot dogs other than that Andrew said we should. In my defence: I bought sausages from the German deli, and bread from a nice bakery, and then made a potato salad with lots of colour so we didn’t just have plain hot dogs. I liked the potato salad; it’s not the mayonnaise-y, eggy one I grew up with, which I also like but which leaves me wracked with guilt in the middle of the night. This one has green bits and no mayonnaise, so it feels like it’s a bit French and much better for you.

This looks like mostly green beans, but there were
actually quite a few potatoes underneath

Potato salad

I haven’t included any amounts, because I just add as much as I have or feel like; this one turned out with a lot of greens in comparison to potatoes, for example, because I had a lot of lovely fresh baby green beans I wanted to use.

Baby potatoes, halved and roasted with a little oil, thyme, salt and pepper; roast a couple gloves of garlic, skin on, along with the potatoes

Fine green beans, topped and tailed and lightly steamed (they should still be crunchy)

red onion, very thinly sliced

wild rocket

olive oil

lemon juice

salt

pepper

Dijon mustard

flat leaf parsley, roughly chopped

Place the potatoes and red onion in a bowl. In a smaller bowl, combine the peeled roasted garlic and mash it up with a fork. Add the olive oil, lemon juice, mustard, salt and pepper and whisk to combine. Taste and adjust seasoning, adding a pinch of sugar if you like. Add to the potato bowl and toss well, set aside and leave to soak up flavours until you’re ready to eat. At this point, add the green beans, parsley and rocket, toss again, and serve.

The fourth dinner party

The menu

The fourth dinner party was not at our house. When you tell people you're leaving the country indefinitely, they become very nice to you and do things like take you to the Mount Nelson's garagiste wine pairing evening. Below are some photos of the food. Inexplicably, the photos become more and more blurry as the evening progresses. Strange.

The first course: beetroot, raw and marinated, with
mozzarella, fennel and orange

The second course: pepper cured duck with pickled persimmon

The third course: mushroom crusted hake in crayfish bisque

The fourth course: quail, confit and crown roasted, with
barley and Jerusalem artichoke puree

Talking! In the very pretty dining room

The fifth, very blurry, course: cheese mille-feuille 

The sixth, final course: a chocolate and banana dessert
with brown butter ice cream. Also very blurry

Thank you to our friends for the lovely dinner!

Summer salads

Cape weather is notoriously fickle, so I'm hesitant to say this, but it does seem like summer is arriving - for now, at least. When it's hot, I really don't want to keep the oven and stove on any longer than absolutely necessary, which means Andrew and I tend to eat salads for the duration of summer. Here is last night's inaugural summer salad:

It might look all innocent (and very green) in that picture, but there is a lot going on in that salad. If I'm going to eat salad for dinner, it has to be both interesting and substantial. Luckily, as I've mentioned before in this post, I tend to have lots of bits and pieces of already cooked leftover components in my fridge most of the time, so often I cobble hearty salads together using those bits and pieces.

Even if you don't have that advantage, though, it's easy enough to cook a big batch of one or more grains, chop and saute or roast a few vegetables, maybe cook some bacon or chicken over the weekend, and keep all of this in the fridge to use for salads during the week. Then it's just a matter of throwing these cooked ingredients together with fresh, raw ones in different combinations, and with different dressings.

Of course, this sometimes works out better than other times. Luckily last night's salad was a winner.

Inaugural simmer salad

about 1 cup cooked bulgur wheat
half a small head of broccoli, chopped and sauteed
5 small courgettes, sliced and sauteed
about 1 cup peas, sauteed
1/4 cup roasted cashews
3 rashers streaky bacon, cooked and crumbled
1/2 log garlic and herb chevin
juice of half a lemon
2 tablespoons olive oil
squirt of honey
salt and pepper

Everything tossed together, except the chevin, which I crumbled on top. Dinner in less than five minutes.

An evening at the Foodbarn

When I was a student at chef school for a year, we had two big practical exams, one halfway through the year and the other at the end of the year. For these exams, we had to cook a three course meal including specific elements that showed off the techniques we’d learnt. And we had to cook it all perfectly and present the food beautifully while sticking to a time limit. I can’t remember what the time limit was – three hours, maybe? It was nerve-wracking. They were the two scariest exams of my life, apart from, possibly, my driver’s licence test.

   

To make myself feel a little more confident going into these exams, I cheated. Sort of. We were meant to design entirely original menus and accompanying recipes, and our overall exam mark included a mark for the menu design. The problem was that, surrounded by some brilliant fellow students, I didn’t trust myself to come up with a decent menu. So I decided to "get inspiration" for recipes and dishes from cookbooks.

As a poor student, though, I couldn’t afford cookbooks, so I’d gather up a pile of the latest and most inspiring ones at my local book store, hide behind a bookshelf with my stash, and go through them slowly and carefully. Hidden under the cookbooks on my lap would be a small notebook and pen, where I would surreptitiously jot down ideas, names of dishes, and even entire recipes. This was of course all very much against the rules, since I was using the books but not buying them. Luckily I only got caught and kicked out once.

Despite all the many cookbooks I copied from, there was only one whose ideas and recipes I eventually used for my exams: Feast, by Franck Dangereux. Back then he was the head chef at La Colombe, making what I thought looked and sounded like some of the most beautiful, yet simple food imaginable. So that’s what I attempted for my exams.

Nowadays, Franck Dangereux owns the Foodbarn in Noordhoek, a much more relaxed space than La Colombe, but still with his signature beautiful, simple food. On Wednesday evening, I was lucky enough to be taken by Andrew (so thoughtful!) to finally see him in action, doing a cooking demonstration of three different dishes before we were served a three course dinner with wine pairings. He was just as lovely and entertaining as I’d hoped, and I came away from the demonstration having learnt lots.

Franck Dangereux putting the finishing touches
on the dishes he demonstrated

Cooking, talking, and generally being charming

And then, dinner. All I can say is that I managed with some effort not to lick my plate after every course. 

We both ordered this starter: cauliflower and basil mousseline ,
yellow fin tuna sashimi, aioli, soy sauce, and pickled ginger.
I couldn't wait for the camera before digging in.

Andrew's main course: candied pipperade galette, grilled kingklip,
and thyme butter

My main course: slow roasted pork belly, almond mash, wilted spinach,
balsamic jus, and marjoram swirl

My dessert: banana crepe with rum, treacle ice cream,
and coconut sauce

Andrew's dessert: trio of homemade ice creams - hazelnut, horlicks,
and white chocolate