Smoked Snoek Risotto

I use to hate snoek. Only because of the amount of bones it had and the effort it took to eat it. I was converted when I tried the typical South African snoek braai that was prepared by some locals in Gaansbaai the night before going shark cage diving. I never actually made it into the harbour the next day, let alone a cage in freezing cold water to be drooled over by some of the oceans biggest serial killers, because as with most South African braai’s, I got a little too drunk the night before and couldn’t stomach the thought of coming face to face with a Great White. Anyway, the snoek braai, that was prepared with butter, apricot jam, parsley and garlic, and then deboned for me in order to get me to eat it, was UNBELIEVABLE! I was reborn and willing to accept snoek into my life as my new favourite fish!

I still do it on the braai with the butter apricot garlic concoction, and have always loved snoek pate (no bones you see!), so I started experimenting a bit more with smoked snoek. I have made a few dishes, some not so remarkable, but this one is my all time favourite - Smoked Snoek Risotto, finished off with some sour cream and served with a butternut, feta and orange salad.

INGREDIENTS

1 tbsp butter

60ml peanut oil (or vegetable oil, but not olive oil)

300g smoked snoek (deboned obviously)

3 or 4 shallots, or one brown onion, diced

3 garlic cloves

1 thumb size piece of fresh ginger, peeled and grated

1 red chilli, sliced

2 tsp turmeric

1 tsp paprika

1 tsp coriander powder

1tsp smoked Maldon salt

1/2 tsp white pepper

250g risotto / arborio rice

100ml chardonnay (pref wooded)

750ml chicken stock (I added 2 tbsp of shitake mushroom stock powder to the chicken stock, but this isn’t essential)

Handful cherry tomatoes

2 tbsp freshly chopped parsley

1/2 cup of cream (more if you like it creamier)

3 tbsp parmesan cheese

Saute the shallots / onion in the butter and oil, followed by the garlic, ginger and chilli. You want the onions to be slightly browned, but not burnt, before you add your spices and seasoning. Fry for another minute or two and then add half (250g) of the snoek, reserving the rest for later. Immediately add the risotto, and stir to get it nicely coated with buttery spices until you hear it starting to ‘sizzle’ slightly before you add the chardonnay - keep stirring until the wine is absorbed by the rice.

In a separate pot, keep the chicken stock on a low heat, and ladle about a cup at a time into the risotto, stirring constantly while the rice absorbs the liquid before adding another cup. Once you have added the last cup, turn off the heat and cover the pot, which will allow the rice to absorb the rest of the liquid while you start the salad.

Once your salad is ready, about 10 minutes, remove the lid from the pot and add the cherry tomatoes, parsley and the remainder of the snoek. Put the heat back on low, and then add the cream and parmesan and stir constantly. To make it really rich, add a knob of butter at this stage too.

Serve with a table spoon of sour cream, grated parmesan and extra parsley.

Brandy & Food Pairing insert for All Access

When I was asked by Homebrew Films to do an insert on All Access for the Brandy Festival (www.brandyfestival.co.za) alongside Jenny Morris, I almost s#@t myself in excitement. Not just because I love All Access, but mainly because I LOVE Jenny Morris. Her approach to food and her witty personality are so encouraging... just makes me want to cook in the nude! Now I know that sounds weird, and probably illegal if your serving paying guests, but Jenny just has that effect on you (I hope her husband doesn’t read this).

At one stage during the shoot, while she was preparing her delicious pork fillet on pears with a brandy infused sauce, she stirred the sauce with her finger and proceeded to stick it in Mark Bayly’s mouth for a taste. Mark didn’t really have a choice in the matter and was a bit taken back, but he got over it pretty quickly and sucked every last drop of that gorgeous sauce off of Jenny’s finger. Everyone on set had a good chuckle!

Jenny was given the Joseph Barry 10 Year Pot Still Brandy to play with, which won best brandy in the world, which is quite a feather in South Africa’s cap!

I was given the new trendy Collison’s White Gold Brandy, which after quite a bit of sampling, I decided to rather enhance the underlying characteristics of fig, hazelnut and vanilla than to pair it with food - a dessert was the obvious choice. I made a very simple but incredibly delicious fig tart made with fresh Mediterranean figs, hazelnut pastry and a vanilla pod and white brandy custard.

To find out how to make either one of these recipes, you will have to either watch All Access or email me and I’ll gladly send them to you!

BORSCHT! - say what?

The origin of Borscht (including its spelling) is debatable, some saying it is of Russian origin, some saying Polish, and others the Ukraine.

I had it for the first time when working in London where my larger than life bar lady from Poland insisted that I try it. It did not go down too well then, but since I have an abundance of beetroot growing in my garden, I thought I would give it a go (with my own twist) considering its enormous health benefits.

INGREDIENTS

1 tbsp butter

30ml oil (I used peanut, but veg oil will do)

10 organic beetroots, peeled and quartered

2 peeled potatoes, quartered

1 onion chopped

4 cloves of garlic, crushed

2 carrots, sliced

2 tbsp fresh thyme

150ml chardonnay (or any other white wine)

500ml light beef stock (2tsp in 500ml boiling water)

Fry the onions, garlic and carrots in the butter and oil until the onions are nice and soft, but not browned. Careful not to burn the garlic as this will cause the soup to taste bitter.

Add the fresh thyme, beetroot and potatoes and saute for a few minutes, followed by the wine. Reduce slightly, then add the beef stock. Season with black pepper and a little salt - the stock will add quite a bit of saltyness already, you can always add more once the soup is cooked.

Cover and cook for between 30 and 40 minutes, until the vegetables are cooked through. Taste it and test for seasoning. I added some raw honey, white pepper and a dash more salt to balance it all out nicely. Once cooled slightly, carefully ladle into a blender and blend in batches. Be careful - beetroot stains!!

To finish the dish off, I made Chilli Bites* with tamarind and honey, added a bit of self raising flour to fluff them up a bit, and fried them in peanut oil until crispy and cooked through - about 3 minutes on each side.

Carefully ladle some soup into a bowel, place a chilli bite in the middle and top with some sour cream. Pretty dam good if I may say so myself!

*You can buy a Chilli Bite mixture from most Pick n Pays, which is produced by Spice Mecca, and then follow the instructions on the box, and add any extra flavourings that you want. They are really easy to make from scratch if you not feeling as lazy as I am - let me know and I’ll send it to you - free, gratis, vir niks!

A Raw Foods (only) Lifestyle

For a very refreshing change, I spent this past weekend on a course that promotes a lifestyle of eating only raw foods.

Peter and Beryn Daniel, the couple who run a company called Soaring Free Superfoods, hosted the course at Rustenburg Girls High School. They are trained Raw Food Chefs and authors of South Africa's first gourmet raw food recipe book, RAWlicious (comically referred to by the press as "the uncook book").

To be completely honest, had my mother not paid for the course, this is not something I would ordinarily decide to spend my weekend on. I am a chef after all, and the thought of doing a course on how not to cook, over a weekend, didn’t really grab me. Knowledge is power they say, so off I went to learn how not to cook…

I took away a lot more than I thought I would, including a raging cold brought on by my poor body obviously going into major shock from the lack of any saturated fats, diary, meat, and of course alcohol. I learnt how to make diary free cream cheese (made from macadamia nuts, water and probiotics), which was surprisingly delicious.

Another recipe that really stood out was the Gourmet Raw Pizza. Now if you had have told me that you can make a pizza without any flour, cheese or an oven, I would have sent you on your bicycle back to the funny farm. But as this course was about “eating as close to nature as possible”, without cooking anything and thereby loosing all (or most) of the nutrients in your ingredients, I was proven wrong. Beryn made a pizza using hulled buckwheat, flaxseeds, courgettes, tomatoes and cold pressed organic extra virgin olive oil, all combined in a food processor (an essential tool in a rawfoodists kitchen) to form a paste. This paste is then smeared onto a dehydrator sheet and left to dehydrate overnight, in a…. dehydrator, another essential piece of equipment for a rawfoodist. The tomato sauce and toppings are pretty much self-explanatory and can be changed according to your vegan preferences. The “cheese” topping was made with cashew nuts, water and nutri yeast! Once the “cheese” is added, the pizza is then put back in the dehydrator to “melt” the cheese. Just when I thought I had heard it all!

Although I can’t promise (in fact I wont promise), that I could live this sort of lifestyle forever, purely because I cook for a living, I highly recommend this course. It really shines some light onto how some foods are produced (such as margarine actually being plastic – true story) and what the body ACTUALLY needs to sustain itself as apposed to what we are lead to believe that it needs.

For more info, go have a squiz at their website: www.superfoods.co.za

Private Cheffing

Being a private chef, as with most jobs, has its pro’s and con’s. Most of my clients insist that a confidentiality agreement is signed, which prevents me from being able to divulge any information about them, which is fair enough I suppose. This just means that I can’t gloat about who I’ve worked for, where I worked for them and how demanding they were....

Saying this, I LOVE PRIVATE CHEFFING! It gives me the opportunity to seriously play in the kitchen and create dishes that I would not necessarily make for myself. A good veal stock takes forever to make, and to be honest, I couldn’t be assed to spend the entire day making a stock to go with my scrambled egg on toast. With my high caliber clients how ever, I seriously make an effort. Most of them are extremely well travelled and dine at restaurants that I can only visit via my computer, so their educated palates need to be challenged. This is when Im in my element - spending the whole day in a fully equipped kitchen creating dishes that will hopefully blow my clients away (not literally of course).

Another pro to private cheffing is getting to see some of Cape Town’s most prestiges and expensive properties. I have cooked in South Africa’s most expensive private real estate (no, I can’t tell you where), mansions in Constantia and Bishops Court, hotels and guest houses across the peninsula, bungalow's worth millions right on Clifton beach and quaint little farms in the Karoo.