Its tuna mayonnaise may look a little yucky on the first sight but once you eat it, as well as the thinly sliced veal beneath it, it’s whoa!-amazing. Then something with even more tuna:
And, on a whim, some doubly deep fried plantains for dessert:
File as: food porn.
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It’s even delicious before baking. I may have coined the Term ‘Scarlett Johansson der Backvorstufe’ when trying to describe the whipped egg-whites with sugar and almonds. Yummy! And after baking the meringue on top is fantastic as are the berries inside. Can’t wait for tomorrow when I’ll eat it.
And just for the sake of the argument. Would LOLCATS use umlauts (I CAN HAS FUNNY DOTS) or would they refuse (MEOW - LETTRZ LOOK WRONG)? Discuss.
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This one came out extremely crisp which I enjoyed. And the next day I learned that a fully home-made chicken mayonnaise sandwich can be quite a joy as well.
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Afterwards – while burger induced overeating inertia still ruled – we made our way down the road to a gig where first S.O.L., three girls from Bremen, played or rather rocked the stage and then Bernadette La Hengst, a queen of the Hamburger Schule, played an extensive set. She has pretty much everything in her songs, a solid performance, a message to communicate, witty lyrics. It’s a good thing altogether. While I appreciate that I’m strangely not a huge fan of her music anyway and find it a bit boring at times.
Freiheit ohne Sicherheit
Friggin’ liars!
The main problem when making pesto is that you need pine seeds to do so. In most supermarkets pine seeds are hideously expensive. Only after a lot of looking around I could find vaguely affordable ones. So our ingredients are:
- around 100g of pine seeds
- a large basil plant
- parmesan
- salt, pepper, nutmeg
- a clove of garlic or two
- olive oil
Making the pesto is rather straightforward. First you roast the pine seeds in a pan (easily burnt once things get going!) and let them get reasonably cool again afterwards.
Then you need a blender. One that’s suitable for chopping stuff. Luckily my Pürierstab
has an addition that’s just right for the job. Chop half of the pineseeds finely in there, add half of the basil leaves, finely grated parmesan and garlic, add a good dash of olive oil as well as pepper, salt, and a bit of grated nutmeg to taste, rhetorically ask Will it blend?
and blend away until the result looks fine enough for your taste. Then repeat all those steps with the other half of the ingredients.
After all those steps you’ll have about a glass full of pesto. And after setting the value of your labour to zero, it’ll only be slightly more expensive than a reasonably tasting supermarket pesto. It’ll just taste very different. Mine was very rich and nutty in taste. Which would be brilliant on a cold winter day. Unfortunately I was looking more for a ‘refreshing’ pesto on that warm day. I guess I’ll try with less pine seeds and some new ideas the next time.
Looks good, doesn’t it?
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Plus a bit of salad even because – despite my otherwise Fleisch ist mein Gemüse
attitude, I like that as well.
And as an ‘exotic’ dessert there were even marshmallows.
Sickeningly good, I say. Apparently the pack we had was made in Belgium and they had serious problems spelling short and long German words correctly. Uh, and they considered § an appropriate replacement for ß. I think, for a change, we can file that as human rather than technological failure.
And at the end of the day, the bits with sesame oil and Japanese soy sauce remained the ones I liked best. So I could have just stuck to those. The only interesting addition was that I put a bit of hoisin sauce at the very end. Will have to indulge that a bit more.
]]>Use mildly flavoured rice (I currently prefer the Thai scented kind), cook it to be ‘just right’, then use a lengthy bit of it and flavour it in a way that gives an increasing gradient of taste. Something like rice only → rice vinegar → mirin → sesame oil → mild soy sauce (eg Japanese) → dark soy sauce. That should also give an interesting colour gradient. If colour is not an issue one could move on chili-based condiments after this…
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sweet: Little bistro in Stellenbosch with proper breads run by Swedes. Nice if you want a solid bread but I found the ‘fillings’ a bit uninspired. And the traffic on the road next to it a bit too heavy when sitting outside.
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Eikendal wine farm: Their restaurant is situated quite close to a road but by the magic of elevation and a lake just in front of it, you won’t notice. The springbok carpaccio was probably a bit thick for carpaccio but still nice. And hooray for daytime drinking.
We were also highly amused by finding
Thüringer Bratwürste
among their daily specials. Correctly spelled. Those Germans are everywhere.
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Mama Africa is a widely recommended restaurant in downtown Cape Town. With my parents being reluctant to travel there and back at night it took a bit of nagging to go there. The place was packed and the food was neither particularly exciting nor particularly good. I tried the crocodile sosati which tasted like chicken (with my memory of crocodile being more like fish but that may be because of different preparation) and had a Kudu steak which was rather dry.
The place isn’t just a restaurant but also doubles as a bar. Many people came and went and there was live music playing which made things a bit too busy and loud for having dinner. The band was playing what I’d consider ‘Caribbean’ version of pop songs. I actually thought they were quite good but it’s a shame they didn’t do anything original.
While it may just be a tourist trap after all, I’d say that just coming to Mama Africa for a drink and some music rather than a meal should be much more fun
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La Petite Ferme: Situated on the hills behind Franschhoek (the demise of whose great pancake restaurant keeps making me sad), doing only lunches and being fully booked doesn’t make this restaurant the most convenient one. But it was the best one during my whole holiday. We had to wait a bit for the table to be cleared and sat down in the sunshine of their garden with a view on the valley for the time being, ordering some wine.
I had the rice paper with greens and pine nuts as a starter which was nice. The mussels with creamy white wine sauce were rather good as well.
As a main dish I had the idea of staying lean by having the
open ravioli
which essentially meant sheets of noodle with plenty of tomato, feta, herbs and walnuts among them. Doesn’t sound too exciting but tasted good. The trout was very good as well and the seared tuna on green asparagus was such a generous portion and so well done that I may have regretted my choice after all.
After that I had to have a dessert as well and went for a tarte, fruit, ice thingy. Quite nice particularly the fresh berries in it.
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The Guinea Fowl: The restaurant on the Saxenburg wine farm is quite good as well although many of their dishes suffer from being overly sauced and decorated as well as being fancy for the sake of being fancy rather than being downright good. Sitting on the stoep may give you a view all the way to Table Mountain.
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96 Winery Road: This one has been a favourite with the family for a while. Not just for the meat platter they carry around to show off the different cuts and pieces but also for the rest of the menu. I had some oysters as a starter and, while OK, I keep wondering what the fuss is about. I also remembered them to be less fleshy from when I had some as a kid (imagine the suffering of holidays at a place where oysters are cheaper than ice cream…), continental differences, perhaps?
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Dros: Another franchise where you can eat a steak with onion rings. We went there because the place had a great entertainment area for my friends’ kids. With games and the facilities for them to roll out, top and bake their own pizzas. I would have loved that as a kid…