Sensual Salad

Do yourself a favour and experience this salad:

• Squash cherry tomatoes into a beautiful bowl until they pop
• Tear a mozzarella ball into shreds
• Bruise basil leaves to release the taste and smell
• Season with a couple of twists of coarse salt and pepper
• Drizzle with olive oil and balsamic vinegar (I used mango and green chili balsamic vinegar)

Chill in the fridge for at least 20 minutes (or preferably leave overnight)
Serve with ciabatta to mop up  the sauce or toast bread and top with salad
Enjoy! (you are allowed to lick your fingers)

Variations - add chopped garlic clove, or chili or use red wine vinegar instead of balsamic.

Lavender, Travel Stamps and a Potjie: Part 3

Potjies on a fire in a village in the Eastern Cape 

Potjies are traditional cast-iron 3-legged pots which have been used to cook over a fire for centuries in South Africa. Usually a stew is made with whatever meat is available and vegetables and spices are added. Of attraction to me, is the fact that after initial preparation, it requires little looking after and you can socialize while it cooks for hours, stewing and blending all the different tastes. I like that you can throw a little bit of everything in and out comes something wonderfully harmonious. 

When I was deciding on the blog-header, the idea of a cultural melting pot to represent South Africa, came up. I thought it was quite appropriate to represent what I wanted to blog about and could also be a metaphor for my views on spirituality and religion, and indeed on life. 

When my son completed junior school at the end of last year, one of the traditions that he was involved in, was a Potjiekos Competition. There was great excitement as they were placed into groups and discussed recipes. He is a meat-and-potatoes man in the great South African tradition, of course, and we adapted his favourite meal - the Cape Malay tomato bredie. He was delighted that his team came in at third place. Here's the recipe that my mother used when we were growing up:

Tomato Bredie
Ingredients:
1 kg Mutton pieces (knuckles are great)
2 large onions
1 kg ripe red tomatoes (use canned if you have to)
1 tin of tomato paste
4-6 medium potatoes
2 cloves of garlic, crushed
2 teaspoons of sugar
salt to taste

Braise the onions until golden brown.
Add the meat and braise until soft.
Add tomatoes, tomato paste, garlic and cook for 15 minutes.
Add the potatoes and cook until soft.
Add the sugar to balance the tartness of the tomatoes.
Season to taste.

Best served with white rice.

(A vegetarian potjie is of course perfectly possible, too.)

For more on Potjiekos click here

So, these three blogs on potjiekos, lavender and travel, more or less explain the design of my blog-header, and a little about me. Hope you stick around for more.

For the two previous blogs, see here:
Lavender, Travel Stamps and a Potjie: Part 2
Lavender, Travel Stamps and a Potjie: Part 1

Lavender, Travel Stamps and a Potjie: Part 1

Lavender Biscuits

The smell of biscuits and freshly-cut lavender is floating all around. These are smells I associate with holidays. I have just been baking batches of lavender biscuits and have also preparing little bags of lavender to give to friends as "happy holiday" presents.  It's a little tradition I started the first year we moved into our house.

Lavender bushes have always lined the pathway leading up to our front door. They have survived drought and at one time were almost the only plants left in our garden because of water restrictions. I love that it looks so delicate and pretty yet can be so hardy and withstand such adverse conditions. I love how the scent fills the air when we trim the bushes or after the rains. I love walking in through the gate with my arms outstretched so that I brush up against it and release the aroma as I walk in. Ever since I did the aromatherapy course it has become my signature - the colour, the oil and the smell. You'll usually find bunches of it in jugs and vases all over the house.

Lavender is pretty much the aspirin of aromatherapy - used for pain and comfort. It is calming, soothing and balancing.  It has been used for thousands of years for healing and cleaning (in fact, "lavare" means to wash in Latin). Charles VI of France apparently used to sit on pillows stuffed with lavender, bunches of lavender were used to scrub floors and the oil was used to clean furniture (remember lavender floor polish?).

St Hildegarde of Bingen recommended lavender for "maintaining a pure character" and in North Africa, women planted lavender to guard against ill-treatment by their husbands. My favourite anecdote, though is about Rene Gattefosse, a famous French scholar and pharmacist. After a suffering a burn in his lab, he plunged his hand into a bottle of neat lavender, the nearest liquid he could find. He was amazed at how quickly his hand healed and this led him to greater research about essential oils  and their properties. He experimented with different oils on soldiers during WWI and became known as the father of modern aromatherapy.

On my bucket list is a visit to the lavender fields of Provence in late summer - I have a mental image of row upon row of lavender and can imagine the scent that must fill the air on  a hot summer's day! See here for more pics. So now you have some idea of what the lavender on my blog-header is all about. I'll explain the potjiekos and travel in subsequent blogs. 

Here is the recipe for my lavender biscuits:

100g castor sugar
200g butter
300g flour
a pinch of salt
1 teaspoon of lavender flowers

Cream the butter and sugar. Add the flowers. Sift the flour and salt and mix to make a dough.
Refrigerate the dough for one and a half hours then roll out and cut with cookie cutters.
Place on a baking sheet and sprinkle with castor sugar.
Bake at 150-160 deg C for 15-20 minutes.

Happy Holidays!