In search of better Biltong

Fu says:

If you don't get excited at the mention of the word Biltong, then you're missing a vital food experience. Granted, the idea of salted, dried meat as a delicacy probably doesn't turn many heads - but it's an institution in South Africa.

Biltong, for those unfamiliar with the subject, has its origins from the days when my great, great grandmother and her parents trekked across SA in the 1820s (No, I'm not kidding - my family really did come here with the '1820 settlers'). Many pioneers around the world at the time were using various pickling, salting and drying techniques to preserve meat.

Somewhere along the line, somebody obviously got tired of rehydrating and cooking the preserved meat and just decided to eat the bloody stuff as it was. As proof of how stubborn my ancestors were, the salty, tough plank-o-cow did not dampen their spirits or cause them to surrender and go back to rehydrating it. No, they just decided there had to be a way to make it more palatable. Thus biltong was born.

Now some people may tell you that it is just dried meat, others will say it is like American jerky, but they are oh so wrong. Well-made biltong is as delicious and delectable as parma ham or smoked salmon.

The problem is that with the rising price of meat - and the growing greed of some producers - this staple of the SA weekend braai (barbeque) is now incredibly pricy. Average prices are now sitting at anywhere between R150 to R250 per kilogram (15.25 - 25 British pounds per kilogram, $11 - $18 per pound).

For me, that's now way out of my price league and for years I've been grumbling about how easy it would be to make my own biltong. Being deprived of this treat for a few months was enough to spur me on to do something about it.

After reading an article in Popular Mechanics describing how to make a simple biltong drying cabinet, I scrounged around the house and discovered I had the hardware to make a tiny drying box. I figured that starting small would be good, so I could learn as I went along and apply that at a later stage to a much bigger project.

I used a sealable plastic bin (roughly 20 litres capacity), window frame cornice, a 12v PC cooling fan and a transformer that converts 250 volts AC to 9 Volts DC.

The assembly is relatively simple: Cut a hole for the fan in the lid of the bin and afix the fan with self-tapping screws. Cut lengths of the window frame wood (dowels can also be used, but then holes must be drilled in the container sides) and fix in place with self-tapping screws. Drill some holes in the side of the bin for ventilation and wire the PC fan to the transformer. Voila!

It took me all of thirty minutes to make and is robust enough to withstand repeated use, but simple enough so that I didn't excessive waste time or money on it. I couldn't tell you what it cost, because the materials were all either bought months ago, or scrounged for free from friends.

Nonetheless, I was really chuffed with the results and was now more determined than ever to make my own biltong.

In the next installment ... Making the good stuff.

Ice Cream dreams

You might think the main ingredient in an ice cream cake would be ice cream, but actually what you need, what your REALLY need is patience, lots and lots of patience.

Last week I took up the challenge to make a cricket-themed ice cream cake for a very sweet client. I turned to my old friend google for a few tips and ideas but for once was left feeling rather let down by the lack of information. This time I was on my own.

After some brainstorming with my client we settled on a 23cm square cake with an oreo cookie base, a vanilla, caramel and peanut brittle swirl ice cream filling, all finished off in green ice cream.

For the Oreo base I used two boxes of oreos, crushed and mixed with a small amount of melted butter to help it stick together. This was pressed into the base of the cake tin and left in the freezer to set.

For the main cake I used 5 litres of good quality vanilla ice cream, left out just long enough so I could whip it up with a hand blender. To this I added the caramel and crushed peanut brittle.

The ice cream mix went on top of the oreo base and then it was back in the freezer for at least 8 hours to make sure it was frozen solid.

Once it was set I carefully removed the ice cream cake from the cake tin and covered it in vanilla icing mixed with some green food coloring. I must say this had to be done in stages as the temperature outside was around 38C (100F) so I could only work on the cake for about 5 minutes at a time before the ice cream started to melt and I had to rush it back to the freezer.

The main challenge was finding a way to make the edible decorations to go on top of the cake. I experimented with royal icing, butter icing and marshmallow icing. I found the royal icing looked great when it was frozen but once out of the freezer turned almost to water in no time at all. The butter icing kept its shape once out of the freezer but did not taste that great frozen. The marshmallow icing seemed to be the best bet. I made all the decorations from this and then let it harden in a sealed container on the counter before adding it to the cake the morning of the party.

My biggest concern was getting the cake from my house to the party venue without it turning into a big puddle. This time luck was really on my side, as my client was able to come early in the morning before the sun realised what was going on. Since she stays in the same area she managed to get it home and straight into her freezer before any disasters could strike.

The feedback I got from her was enough to put a huge grin on my face for days. Her hubby loved his suprise ice-cream cake and the party was a great success. I was very stunned when she dropped in a few days later to give me a thank you pressie for the cake - I am just so spoiled and very happy that this worked out.

I will definitely be open to more ice cream cake orders in the future - I just hope the weather cools down first.

Tea Time Treat

Everyone needs a quick and easy backup biscuit recipe for when unexpected visitors drop in for tea or when the family just feels like something sweet and you really don't want to go all the way to the shop.

So the next time the munchies grab hold of you just whip up a batch of these yummy little treats.

Vanilla Biscuits

125g margarine or butter
125g castor sugar
1 egg (lightly beaten)
250g cake flour
5ml Vanilla essence (1tsp)

- Cream margarine and sugar
- Stir in the egg and vanilla essence
- Add the flour and mix lightly till it forms a soft dough
- Roll the dough into little balls and flatten slightly with a fork
- Bake in a pre-heated oven at 180C for about 10-12 minutes (depending on your stove)

This is so easy and delicious you might want to make a double batch.

Restaurant Review - Nobu

Strawbz’s hubby says:

I’m hijacking this blog temporarily (upon Strawbz’ request) to tell you about a food experience I had a few weeks ago.

As a motoring journalist I end up at a lot of formal dinners, some for vehicle launches and some to meet industry people and fellow journalists. I have been to more four- and five-star hotels than I can count, and sadly many of them are found wanting when it comes to their menus.

Fancy bedrooms, helpful staff and beautiful surroundings – all of these are relatively easy to pull off when compared to creating really good food. After all my years in the motoring industry I would without hesitation opt for a home-cooked meal over one with claims of Michelin or five-star status.

So when General Motors invited me to a dinner with GM International Operations Communications vice president Johan Willems, I was both eager and wary. With GM, the company is always good – I was just hoping the food would match.

We headed for Nobu at the One & Only Hotel in Cape Town’s V&A Waterfront. The hotel and its surroundings are truly exquisite. The reception area is a vast, open room with a ceiling that hangs a good 30 metres or more above the main lounge,

There I waited at the central bar, sipping one of the best Mojitos I have had anywhere.



Soon the gang of local journos, along with GM communications manager for South Africa and sub-Saharan Africa, Denise van Huyssteen, were gathered and ready to go.

The Nobu restaurant branches off from the main reception area of the hotel and is relatively compact (about 100 seats) but stunningly decorated.





Our waitress quickly solved the dilemma of myriad menu choices and offered to bring us group platters until we said: “No more”. I lost out on tempura and Kobe (or Wagyu, as Nobu calls it) beef because of this – but the trade-off was worth it.

The food (finally)

We began the evening with a marinated salmon sashimi – soft, fresh and full of flavour. So far, so good – quality and presentation got really good points but originality scored low.

Along with this we had endamame salad. This is green soya-bean pods, picked before they get hard and then boiled and marinated. They have a hard, inedible outer skin and so you have to squeeze the bean out of the pod to eat it. I’ve had this before and this second tasting confirmed what I thought then – finicky to eat and tastes bloody awful!

This was followed by beef carpaccio and the most extraordinary salmon. The fish tasted as if it had been heavily barbequed in a sticky marinade, but the meat was visibly raw and fresh. The beef scored high – this is only the second time I have had buttery-soft meat in a restaurant (and it wasn’t even Wagyu).

Platters of beef kushisashi and chicken yakitori followed. In their very basic essence, these are simply beef and chicken kebabs. However, these were tender, flavourful little packages of meat. Wow!

Also worth mentioning was a dish of grilled (or was that fried?) Salmon in a decadent, sticky soya and sherry sauce.

A few dishes later we were presented with one of the biggest bowls of sushi I have seen so far. Each piece was delicate and had a very unique flavour. Even the basics – like prawns over sushi rice – were scrumptious. The freshest sushi I have had to date.



Each course was washed down with some rather delicious wine – a Shiraz in my case (I really wish I had noted the label, because now I feel like a fool for not writing it down.)

Then it was on to desert – individual spoons of sorbet made from fresh fruits. Delicious, but not enough for my sweet tooth.

I could go on about the food in detail for pages and pages. What it boils down to is this: Nobu is truly an astounding restaurant and the menu, food, wine and service were spectacular.

Just note that you have to have very deep pockets to eat here. Very, very, very deep pockets.


(Review by Fu)

Pancake Day

Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday which, for us Catholics and many other Christian denominations, mark the start of Lent. This is a sacred time of fasting, sacrifice, prayer and penance which helps to prepare us for the celebration of Easter.

It is traditional during this time to forego all rich and fatty foods, especially on Wednesdays and Fridays when we are not allowed to eat meat. As I'm not a big fish fan this usually means that by the end of Lent my family is pretty sick of tuna pasta bake as that is one of the few fish meals I really enjoy. So this year I have decided it’s time to find a few alternatives. For the duration of Lent I will be trying out new fishy recipes on my family and sharing the results and their reactions to them.

Before we start on this special journey of Lent we have one last day to indulge. Shrove Tuesday also known as Pancake Day, is when we enjoy special treats many will forgo during Lent. We make huge stacks of pancakes that can be eaten with either savory or sweet fillings - some countries hold special pancake races where contestants have to flip pancakes in a pan while running.

In Iceland, Shrove Tuesday is known as Sprengidagur, which means Bursting Day. In France and French speaking regions in the USA it is called Mardi Gras, meaning Fat Tuesday. In Sweden it is Fettisdagen, which also translates as Fat Tuesday. To find out more about how this day is celebrated in different countries visit the British Life & Culture website by Mandy Barrow.

If you are looking for a easy and delicious pancake recipe to make for tonight try this one. It has never let me down and my family love it.

Pancake Batter

500ml cake flour (2 cups)
2 ml salt
2 eggs
500ml water (2 cups)
5ml lemon juice (1 teaspoon)

(This recipe can easily be doubled or even trippled depending on how many pancakes you need)

- Sift the flour and salt together.
- Mix the water, eggs and lemon juice.
- Pour the egg mixture into the flour and whisk till it forms a smooth batter.

Cover the batter and let it rest for an hour.

- Lightly oil a frying pan and heat to medium-high temperature.
- Add a ladle of batter to the pan and swirl it around till it covers the base of the pan.
- When the one side of the pancake is cooked flip it over to cook the other side.
- Keep the pancakes warm by gently simmering water in a big pot with a dinner plate on top, then simply place the cooked pancakes on top and close with a dome lid.
- When they are all finished serve hot with either a savoury or sweet filling.


Happy Shrove Tuesday everyone!! enjoy your pancakes.

Square one

It all started with a square. Actually it started with me deciding about a year ago that I wanted to learn a new craft. On an impulse I thought, what about knitting? I never like doing anything without purpose so I had to have a goal to work towards. Since I was looking for a new TV blanky it seemed only logical that this would be my first ever knitting project.

My darling hubby took me to the local wool shop where I bought a pair of knitting needles and some lovely balls of red and orange wool. I went home with a big smile, confident that I was going to somehow turn these balls into a fluffy blanky that will keep my family warm for generations to come.

The only little hiccough in my master plan was that I had not held a pair of knitting needles since I was a little girl and even then my granny used to put the stitches on, pick them up again when I dropped them and cast off the rows when I was done. Not that I was going to let this little detail get in my way.

I turned once again to my trusty friend Google and went searching for a 'how to start knitting' tutorial. It's amazing what you can find on the web when you know where to look. I was surprised to find how many different ways there are to just get the stitches onto the needles in the first place. After trying a few, I started to remember the way my granny did it; she used to twist the wool around her thumb and then hook it over the needle. I was amazed at how the memories started flooding back. It was like my hands remembered what to do and soon I was busy knitting away with a huge grin on my face.

The first little square took me about four days to complete but after a few weeks I was getting much better and although I would never win any speed-knitting competitions I was eventually able to do about one and a half squares per day.



I loved working on my blanky and was looking forward to the day I could cubble up under it to watch my favorite movie. Unfortunately after a few months I got side tracked and slowly but surely started to fall behind on my knitting. Eventually it got packed away along with my scrapbooking stuff, half-completed cross stitch projects and other bits and pieces I always tell myself I still want to make time for.

Currently we are slap dash in the middle of another blistering hot summer with temperatures reaching up to 39 degrees celsius and the heat making even breathing feel like a chore. Well what better time could there possible be to get back to my knitting? I know it seems insane, I mean who wants to sit with a bundle of wool on their lap while the sun is trying its best to boil your insides; but the thing is, the summer is not going to last forever and if I get going now I might just be able to finish my TV blanky before the winter has time to unpack its bags.



I calculated that my blanky will need ninety squares, nine squares wide and ten squares long, to be the perfect size to cuddle under, at the moment it has twenty seven squares, and since autumn is only a few weeks away I'd better get knitting.

A new year, a new outlook

Although we are already well into this (not so) new year this is my first blog post for 2011 and quite a lot has happened in the past few weeks and months.

I ended 2010 by living out one of my biggest dreams as our family got to spend about three weeks touring the UK with my mom. We left Cape Town on my son's 13th birthday and after a brief stop over in Johannesburg and a loooooooong flight right through the night, we finally made it to Heathrow early the next morning.

The UK is everything we hoped for and more; there was history and wonder waiting for us around every corner. I felt like a weary wanderer coming out of the desert and stumbling into a pool of clear, sparkling water - I can not get enough of this country or its people and I wanted to drink it all in and store it away safely so I would never forget a single moment.

In London we spend two days on the Big Red Bus having all the best-known sights pointed out to us by our friendly, helpful tour guides and then ended our second day with a Thames River cruise. The great thing about the Big Red Bus is that you can get on or off as many times as you want while your ticket is still valid, so when you see a place you want to investigate, you just jump off and then catch the next Big Red Bus that comes along.



Before going to the UK, London was the place I was least excited to visit. I thought it would be just another big city and they are all pretty much the same. I was so wrong, I don't think I could ever get tired of London; whether it's walking in St James' Park and feeding the cheeky squirrels, enjoying the festive atmosphere at the annual Hyde Park Christmas Market (where we had roasted chestnuts), standing next to the 900-year-old Tower of London or finding a favorite pub where you can warm up over a bowl of hot soup and a generous glass of mulled wine. As Samuel Johnson once said; "When a man is tired of London he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford."



From London we traveled north to the breathtaking town of York, with its rich Roman and Viking history. We walked along its ancient wall, sipped mulled cider, climbed up to Clifford's Tower and learned more about the Vikings at the Norvic Museum. In the evening we were privileged to celebrate mass at St Wilfrid's, which dates back to 1864 and stands not far from the York Minster cathedral.





My daughter and I could have spent an entire day at the Beatrix Potter gift shop with trinkets and collectables to suit anyone’s budget. However, a visit to York would not be complete without lunch at the famous Golden Fleece, the most haunted pub in York; but we were not there for the ghosts, we wanted to try their legendary Yorkshire Puddings. I have never seen a Yorkie that size before, it was as big as a dinner plate yet as light as a feather. We decided we had to go try these out at home.



Saying goodbye to the magical town of York, we continued North to Edinburgh in Scotland where we finally caught up with the snow. The kids (and us) loved the fluffy, freshly fallen snow and they played outside till we finally lured them in with a cup of hot chocolate.



We stayed in a lovely holiday apartment on the Royal Mile half way between Hollyrood Palace and Edinburgh Castle in a street called Old Tollbooth Wynd. The first night we got there we had supper at the Old Tolbooth Tavern just a few slippery steps away from our front door. This was where we had our first taste of the famous Scottich Haggis, and to our surprise we found that we all loved it. We spent the rest of the week eating Haggis at some of the pubs up and down the Royal Mile but in the end we all decided that our favorite was still that served at the Old Tolbooth Tavern.





We shopped along Princess Street, spend a morning exploring the majestic Edinburgh Castle, admired the dark stone buildings and looked for treasures in the interesting little gift shops.





The only thing we did not like was the place where we had planned to have our Christmas lunch. The pub was called The Bank Hotel, they were completely disorganised, rude and unfriendly, however we were not going to let them upset our Christmas so we ended up going to the Bay of Bengal where we had a fantastic lunch and the staff were eager to please. The atmosphere was warm and friendly and we enjoyed the most delicious curries and biryani, a great alternative to our usual traditional Christmas lunch.

After Christmas we were back on the road, this time to explore Shakespeare’s place of birth, Stratford-upon-Avon. We stayed at the New Inn Hotel in a little village just outside of Stratford called Clifford Chambers.



We met some of the villagers one morning as we were heading into Stratford. We were amazed to be told by one very elderly lady with a twinkle in her eye that she only went home after midnight on Christmas eve as she was playing cards with her friends and lost track of time. This pretty much sums up most of the local people we met in Clifford Chambers, friendly, fun and with a mischievous sparkle. We went on long walks around the Village and took some photos of the local Manor House that dates back to the 15th or 16th century and was redesigned by Edwin Lutyens after it was badly damaged in a fire in 1918.



In Stratford we got to see The Holy Trinity Church where William Shakespeare was baptised and later buried. After exploring the church we went for a walk in a beautiful park, it was covered in a light layer of snow and ice and there was a soft mist in the air that added a real storybook feel to it. Walking in that park was one of those moments in life that you want to bottle and keep forever; it was the place of dreams.





We loved our time in Stratford and Cliffords Chamber but all too soon it was time to pack our bags and head back to Heathrow for our flight home.

When we booked in for our flight the friendly ground hostess offered to change our tickets as there were a few open seats available on a direct flight from London to Cape Town, which would cut five hours out of our traveling time.

By the time we landed in Cape Town we were all ready to turn around and go back, the only thing we knew for sure was that we had all left our hearts in England and we can't wait to go back.

England is a magical country and it is clear where authors like Terry Pratchett and J.K. Rowling get their inspiration. Surrounded by all that history, architecture, parks, museums and cathedrals it was like stepping right into one of their books. Walking around the outer wall of Buckingham Palace, all I could think of was the wall around the Unseen University and I wanted to look for the 'secret' back entrance used by the students who return after curfew.

We have now been back for almost eight weeks but it feels like it's been a life time, as Tiffany says in A Hat Full of Sky; "Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving." (Terry Pratchett) This trip has changed us all and forced us to take a long hard look at our life and where it is going; we know now where we want to be.