Fusion
This instant bread is seriously quick to whip up, requires no kneading or rising and will clinch any mezze-type dinner party with no extra effort.
We used teff flour here that we ground ourselves, but feel free to substitute for other grains or flours as you have available.
African
Gorgeous bright green fritters, the spinach really shines here. We have a sweet old lady who sells fresh spinach in the main road of grahamstown, so we often find ourselves with lots of Swiss chard and no idea what to do with it 🙂
You can totally leave out the fish if you want a vegetarian option, or just feel like something cleaner 🙂
European
Let me start out by saying that this recipe contains pretty much all of my favourite ingredients, and is stunning.
It is also very adaptable, so feel free to chop and change according to what you have in your cupboards.
Fusion
This takes a classic french sauce and turns it on its head with bold Japanese flavours – Unusual, delicious, and doable on the stovetop in a fraction of the time needed for a traditional espagnole sauce.
Fusion
Chicken cooked sous vide in ponzu with our spicy asian tomato relish – Delicious fusion asian cooking that works as well for weeknight eating as for entertaining guests.
We recently completed our low-tech sous vide setup, and it is by far the best way of doing meat and poultry. You need a heating element, a thermostat with a switch, and a fish tank submergible water pump, and some MacGyver skills.
If you are new to the world of Sous Vide – Don’t run away! You can do it in your own kitchen (albeit with slightly more effort), all you need are ziplock bags and an accurate thermometer.
A sous vide setup is a water bath that you keep at a constant temprature, and you use this to cook food slowly and precisely.
You can do this yourself without a professional setup. Use the heaviest cast iron pot you can find, fill it with water, and, using your thermometer, bring it up on your stovetop to the desired temperature (between 60-62C in this case).
You will notice that this is considerably more difficult on an electric stovetop, as the heating element takes long to heat up, and continues to produce heat after being turned off. Removing the pot from the element reduces this problem slightly.
You will also notice that the heated metal of your pot continues to heat the water after you switch off the gas/remove from the plate, so you need to plan for the overshoot. I would recommend doing a test run to get the feel of things before starting on a meal for loads of guests that you want to impress.
Stir regularly (every 2-3 minutes at least), and when you turn on the heat, keep it on for very short intervals – you can always switch it on again and cook for longer, but once you overshoot properly the meat dries out and you can’t recover from that.
If you do overshoot, remove the meat from the sous vide immediately and wait for the water to come back down to the correct temperature before re-adding it.
Fusion
This is our take on chicken, veg and gravy – taken to the next level of course.
You need a sous vide cooker for this, but you can do it manually if you have an accurate thermometer.
The espagnole sauce here is an absolute winner – easy, cheap, healthy and exploding with umami flavour; it goes perfectly with any meat or vegetable dish.
European
This is my go-to chunky tomato sauce whenever I need something delicious in a hurry – This recipe is infinitely adaptable, and variations on the theme end up in a lot of our dishes.
Use fresh tomatoes if you can – preferably super red ripe ones that are on the verge of going off – but if your tomatoes aren’t as ripe as you had hoped, you can help them along with a splash of balsamic vinegar and an extra teaspoon of sugar.
Fusion
We made this mussel ragout in the eastern cape coast of South Africa. The old idiom “Necessity is the mother of invention” is certainly true here – We pulled the mussels off the rocks, and the watercress was growing wild at a spring near the house. The japanese flavours work perfectly with tomato and seafood, and really lift a simple dish to amazing heights.
I wouldn’t recommend doing this with shop bought frozen mussels – if you can’t get this absolutely fresh, then rather do something else with your mussels – white wine and cream can cover up the unhappiness of frozen mussels quite nicely.
Fusion
