Koeksisters en Koffie

Koeksisters is so tradisioneel aan Suid-Afrika en ek sal my verstout om te se dat jy 50 meter in enige rigting in Suid-Afrikaanse dorpe kan stap en jy sal in een vasloop.  Soos met enige dis of gebak in Suid-Afrika sal daar maar altyd debat oor die oorsprong daarvan wees.

Ek het groot geraak met ons gevlegde gebak as koeksisters. Die Maleise oliebol wat in stroop en soms klapper gedoop word is ‘n ‘koesister’ in die volksmond.

Al wat ek weet is dat ‘n koeksister se bak ‘n kuns is. Die gevlegte deeg word in warm olie gebak en my ma het geglo hulle bak die beste op ‘n gas stoof. Waneer die hele pot vol koeksister dryf wat uitgepof en sissend goudbruin raak, het my ma hulle uitgeskep in ‘n bak vol stroop wat oornag in die yskas gestaan het. Die beste is om twee bakke stroop byderhand te hou. Een in die yskas en een vir die vars koeksisters. Ruil die bakke gereeld om om te verhoed dat die stroop warm raak.

Die stroop moes koud wees sodat die warm opgepofde koeksister die stroop onmiddelik opsuig en ‘n krakerige dop vorm wat die stroop binne hou.

Die stroop het kaneel, gemmer en suurlemoen skil in wat hierdie lekkerny onweerstaanbaar maak.

Vroëer is gedroogde nartjieskil in die stroop gesit, iets wat ek ‘n hele jaar voor sal moet wag om te probeer. Rumina by Ondersteun Handelaars by die Soutriviermark gebruik nog steeds gedroogde nartjieskil in haar stroop en sy glo die smaak is onoortrefbaar.

Eendag as ek groot is sal ek ook probeer koeksisters maak met gedroogde nartjieskil wat ek self gedroog het.  Tot dan geniet ek die gebak van die plaaslike tuisnywerheid met ‘n pot koffie gemaak met Deluxe Coffee Works se heerlike koffie.

Waneer ek in die krakerige koeksister byt en die stroop loop soet in my keel af, dan kom lê die geluk warm in my binneste. Die reuk van die vars swart koffie  wasem in my neus voor ek die heerlike bitter drink sodat dit die soet van die koeksister in my mond ontmoet en hulle saam ‘n riel in my keel af dans.

Koeksuster, koeksister of koesister wat maak dit saak, al wat ek weet dit val soos heuning op die tong.

Lament for a Lost Season

I arrived home with the imminent prospect of load shedding on a rainy Friday. With no warm glow and a welcoming drink to greet me, I unpacked the bakkie and considered going out for supper. I do not enjoy eating out on my own. There is no fun in being surprised or disappointed by a meal if it cannot be shared and a second opinion obtained.  I decided on the next best thing and went to Karin’s on Main, the local restaurant, to order two thin-crust wood oven baked pizzas.

Long shadows of a sunny Sunday

While my pizzas were being prepared I went to the local supermarket to buy some milk and bread for breakfast. I arrived home with my pizzas, lit the candles and selected a good bottle of red wine. I was ready to settle in for a romantic evening of load shedding for one.

Without the heaters to take the edge of the rainy evening I opted for an early triple duvet covered bed. Feeling rather squashed but warm I fell asleep with the sound of rain in the orchard.

The sun breaking through on a rainy day

On Saturday I woke up to more wet, cold and rainy weather. I put all my plans for gardening on the back burner and had a warm comforting breakfast. The inspection of the garden broke my heart. The complete crop of what was to be the first harvest of the Cape naartjies, were gone. The young tree survived the encounter with the uninvited harvesters but the orange trees were not so lucky.

The kumquats were safe from the onslaught

Broken branches that were ripped off when the fruit was picked were lying everywhere. I cleaned up as best I could in the rain and went back to the house with a heavy heart. A whole season was taken by the unwelcome visitors. The organic naartjies that I was nursing for their peels that I wanted to dry for a surprise menu of culinary delights was lying somewhere discarded next to the road.

After lunch, during a break in the weather, I harvested some peas and carrots. The peas were a delight of green and white. They looked like a flower bed with their profusion of sweet white flowers. I made a mental note to explore the possibility of making pea flower soup or quiche.

Peas and carrots harvest

Lunch

With an enamel bowl filled with carrots and peas, I headed to the kitchen crunching away at the delicious snap peas. I made a Thai beef curry with fresh peas, carrots and ginger and contentment soon edged away the negative feelings of the morning.

Blue Sky on Sunday

Sunday brought the brightest blue day and chilled sunshine which meant that I could spend time in the garden. The newly made gate to one of the entrances was freshly painted by Shawn. I marvelled at Keith’s carpentry skills with the gate hanging proud and strong.

The new gate

I halted other painting on the property because of the rain and cold and will focus on the new roses and fruit trees. Having decided on the replacement roses I am confident that I will be able to get them. The fruit trees seem to be a challenge with Ashton nursery sold out of three cultivars of the four trees that I wanted. A week of searching lies ahead for me because I want to plant in the first week of August.

How can one not believe in tomorrow

I have decided not to mourn my lost season of naartjies because as Audrey Hepburn said, “To plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow.” 

Friends and Flowers

The past weekend was a rare weekend that I got to spend in Cape Town by the instigation of our friend Susan. She wanted to explore what the city had to offer in terms of culinary fare. It was an easy decision to stay, entertain and to explore and discover with her.

I enjoy the house in Cape Town but as it has a small garden, I always need to ensure that there are fresh flowers in the house.  If I had more space, my flower budget would exceed my book budget.

Flower Sellers circa 1920

The fresh flowers I always buy from the flower market at Trafalgar Place in Adderley Street, Cape Town’s main street. Apart from the sheer abundance of the beauty of all the colours and the variety of the flowers at the market, there are the owners of the stalls who for me exude the essence of Cape Town.

Flower Sellers July 2015

I have been buying my flowers there for the last twenty six years and know most of them and they all know me. They know my preference in flowers and allow me just to choose what I want. Sometimes one of them will try and convince me to buy something different for a change.

Winter Roses

When one closes one’s eyes and listens to the spirited conversation of the market you experience the most charming and sometimes shocking expressions but it is always true to the Cape.

Mixed Bunches for R30 a bunch

Chrysanthemums

The flower sellers have been trading in Adderley Street for more than 150 years and some of the current sellers are the fourth generation having inherited the stall from her mother who inherited it from her mother and so forth. Most of the flower sellers are women who can talk fast and convince you to buy flowers from them even if you had no intention.

Proteas

I have supported them all these years because for me they are a very important part of Cape Town, like Table Mountain, and it would be a sad day if they disappeared from the city. They are struggling to earn a living and I do not understand why the whole of Cape Town does not support them instead of the big commercial enterprises. They are the fabric of the city and that makes it a unique Cape Town experience to buy flowers from them. You can be assured of a good price for the flowers you want.

The White and Green Bouquet 

I surprised Ielhaam by buying a bunch of stocks, kale, proteas and other white flowers that I just loved and true to custom I also had to buy my regular bunch of King Proteas.

King Proteas

Susan arrived on Friday afternoon in the midst of a Cape storm and I dreaded the prospect of showing her around in the unpleasant weather. But typical of Cape Town in the morning we awoke to the most glorious day and I could take Susan into the City centre and share with her some of my favourite places, like the flower market.

Tea with George Orwell

We are tea lovers and enjoy loose leaf tea, something that is becoming more and more difficult to find. Online you will find places with names that conjure up exotic tea shops with wooden crates filled with aromatic black teas. When one finds the establishments going by these charming and evocative names to be a glass cubicle in the middle of a mall selling a few miniature tins of tea, or somebody selling the tea online from an office in the middle of the city, one tends to feel a bit cheated.

I will always look for a good source of loose leaf tea. Preferably a black tea with its flowery, malty aroma, but I will not close my palate to a white or green tea.

In my search for tea I came across an essay about tea drinking written by George Orwell in 1946, written between the publication of Animal Farm (1945) and Nineteen Eighty Four (1949). The essay was probably written at Barnhill on the Isle of Jura off the west coast of Scotland.

A Nice Cup of Tea

By George Orwell

If you look up 'tea' in the first cookery book that comes to hand you will probably find that it is unmentioned; or at most you will find a few lines of sketchy instructions which give no ruling on several of the most important points.

This is curious, not only because tea is one of the main stays of civilization in this country, as well as in Eire, Australia and New Zealand, but because the best manner of making it is the subject of violent disputes.

When I look through my own recipe for the perfect cup of tea, I find no fewer than eleven outstanding points. On perhaps two of them there would be pretty general agreement, but at least four others are acutely controversial. Here are my own eleven rules, every one of which I regard as golden:

•              First of all, one should use Indian or Ceylonese tea. China tea has virtues which are not to be despised nowadays — it is economical, and one can drink it without milk — but there is not much stimulation in it. One does not feel wiser, braver or more optimistic after drinking it. Anyone who has used that comforting phrase 'a nice cup of tea' invariably means Indian tea.

•              Secondly, tea should be made in small quantities — that is, in a teapot. Tea out of an urn is always tasteless, while army tea, made in a cauldron, tastes of grease and whitewash. The teapot should be made of china or earthenware. Silver or Britanniaware teapots produce inferior tea and enamel pots are worse; though curiously enough a pewter teapot (a rarity nowadays) is not so bad.

•              Thirdly, the pot should be warmed beforehand. This is better done by placing it on the hob than by the usual method of swilling it out with hot water.

•              Fourthly, the tea should be strong. For a pot holding a quart, if you are going to fill it nearly to the brim, six heaped teaspoons would be about right. In a time of rationing, this is not an idea that can be realized on every day of the week, but I maintain that one strong cup of tea is better than twenty weak ones. All true tea lovers not only like their tea strong, but like it a little stronger with each year that passes — a fact which is recognized in the extra ration issued to old-age pensioners.

•              Fifthly, the tea should be put straight into the pot. No strainers, muslin bags or other devices to imprison the tea. In some countries teapots are fitted with little dangling baskets under the spout to catch the stray leaves, which are supposed to be harmful. Actually one can swallow tea-leaves in considerable quantities without ill effect, and if the tea is not loose in the pot it never infuses properly.

•              Sixthly, one should take the teapot to the kettle and not the other way about. The water should be actually boiling at the moment of impact, which means that one should keep it on the flame while one pours. Some people add that one should only use water that has been freshly brought to the boil, but I have never noticed that it makes any difference.

•              Seventhly, after making the tea, one should stir it, or better, give the pot a good shake, afterwards allowing the leaves to settle.

•              Eighthly, one should drink out of a good breakfast cup — that is, the cylindrical type of cup, not the flat, shallow type. The breakfast cup holds more, and with the other kind one's tea is always half cold before one has well started on it.

•              Ninthly, one should pour the cream off the milk before using it for tea. Milk that is too creamy always gives tea a sickly taste.

•              Tenthly, one should pour tea into the cup first. This is one of the most controversial points of all; indeed in every family in Britain there are probably two schools of thought on the subject. The milk-first school can bring forward some fairly strong arguments, but I maintain that my own argument is unanswerable. This is that, by putting the tea in first and stirring as one pours, one can exactly regulate the amount of milk whereas one is liable to put in too much milk if one does it the other way round.

•              Lastly, tea — unless one is drinking it in the Russian style — should be drunk without sugar. I know very well that I am in a minority here. But still, how can you call yourself a true tealover if you destroy the flavour of your tea by putting sugar in it? It would be equally reasonable to put in pepper or salt. Tea is meant to be bitter, just as beer is meant to be bitter. If you sweeten it, you are no longer tasting the tea, you are merely tasting the sugar; you could make a very similar drink by dissolving sugar in plain hot water.

Some people would answer that they don't like tea in itself, that they only drink it in order to be warmed and stimulated, and they need sugar to take the taste away. To those misguided people I would say: Try drinking tea without sugar for, say, a fortnight and it is very unlikely that you will ever want to ruin your tea by sweetening it again.

These are not the only controversial points to arise in connexion with tea drinking, but they are sufficient to show how subtilized the whole business has become. There is also the mysterious social etiquette surrounding the teapot (why is it considered vulgar to drink out of your saucer, for instance?) and much might be written about the subsidiary uses of tealeaves, such as telling fortunes, predicting the arrival of visitors, feeding rabbits, healing burns and sweeping the carpet. It is worth paying attention to such details as warming the pot and using water that is really boiling, so as to make quite sure of wringing out of one's ration the twenty good, strong cups of that two ounces, properly handled, ought to represent.

(Taken from The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell, Volume 3, 1943-45, Penguin ISBN, 0-14-00-3153-7)

Brown Betty with Drip-less Spout

A Winter Conversation

When I arrived home on Friday I was greeted by the fragrance of narcissus as I got out of the car. With the narcissus in full bloom in the bed under the oak, the parking terrace has officially adopted its winter look.

The Narcissus under the oaks

The kumquats are ridiculously heavy with fruit but beautiful with the bright orange citrus fruit resembling tiny oranges. Keith and Shawn have pruned all the roses and made holes for the six replacements required in the rosarium. Some of the original roses planted 23 years ago needed to make way for new ones. The rose nurseries are always introducing new varieties and part of the weekend was spent deciding which ones we will introduce into the garden.

Kumquats adding colour to the Winter Garden

The pruned and prepared Rosarium

The orchard resembled the rosarium with big holes where I want to plant the new fruit trees. When I planted the orchard, I dreamt of a mature orchard with ancient trees in them but the reality is that as trees get older than 20 years they tend to bear less and for a small orchard you need the trees to perform well, bearing ample crops.

The Orchard awaiting the new trees

The pruned row of quince trees

The quince row looks neat and naked and ready for a good rest. With night temperatures now reaching an average of -5° C, most of the pests and diseases will not survive. The cold weather will force the trees and roses to go into a deep rest which will allow them to be stronger and healthier in the spring.

Flambéed 'Kaapse jongens' crepes

The cold weather called for ‘slaphakskeentjies’ and lamb shanks, stews, soups, flambés and kudu burgers.  It was good just to sit at the kitchen table, eating, drinking, dreaming and planning with Keith who was soon to be heading back to Pretoria.

Giving the wine cooler legs to stand on

With the size and weight of the new wine cooler, we had decided to get it its own legs in the form of an antique riempie stool. The wine cooler can easily hold 12 bottles of wine with the required ice and will be very handy over the summer holidays.

A generous wine cooler

Keith has replaced a weathered and fragile pedestrian gate and the new gate is hanging well with the locking mechanisms working smoothly and easily.

The last bouquet of the season

Packing up on Sunday to head home it was with a heavy heart that I threw out the last bouquet of roses for the season, a luxury that the pruning had provided. We said goodbye to the old but wait with anticipation for the new.

The garden looking more and more like winter

For the Love of a Stone Stoep

Every weekend brings new surprises with Keith chipping away at long overdue maintenance issues. With the garden embracing winter, everything has stopped growing but the oaks are hanging onto their brown leaves as usual. With the leaves being brown some people tend to ask why the trees died. I always find it strange that many people are not in tune with the seasons and the changes it brings to a garden. The roses are preparing themselves for pruning this week and in celebration of winter they donated a colourful and fragrant bouquet of blooms to the house.

Before the pruning

Keith finished grouting the stone stoep in front of the kitchen door, a difficult task that takes planning and measuring because one is working with uneven stones. The stone surface needs to slope away from the house and that takes skill but then Keith has got the skill and determination to make sure that it happens that way. I just love the completed stone stoep and I catch the house proudly pushing out its chest. I feel like getting a chair and a bottle of wine and sitting under the bare oak just watching the stoep until I get used to how amazing it looks.

The completed stoep

One gets used to incomplete projects on the property because there is always something else that is more urgent. But when it gets completed it is the most amazing feeling and one just wants to look at it until it just becomes part of the familiar visual landscape. 

Another view of the Stoep

All the doors have got their weatherboards fitted and painted with a pink wood primer. It looks like the green doors are standing there with pink feet. It is perfect for winter as it will keep the rain away from the thresholds.

Keith has replaced all the broken pickets and the vegetable garden is guarded by rows and rows of pink pickets waiting for their green layer of paint. The pickets were damaged by people unable to resist temptation and reaching over the fence for the citrus fruit. We still have to find a solution to protect the fence from such behaviour. 

Pink Pickets

The property is becoming more monochromatic as more and more plants lose their leaves. The seasons in the valley contrast sharply in their look and character so that one can never doubt which season the property is in at any given time.

A Winter Garden

The winter garden at Towerwater is very much dominated by citrus in the orchard and garlic, peas, brassicas, carrots, beetroot and young onion plants in the vegetable garden. The herb garden needs a good clean up with the refreshing of culinary herbs and the pruning of the perennials.

Kumquats

The citrus trees are a feast with kumquats, Seville and Valencia Oranges, smooth and rough skin lemons, limes and  Cape ‘naartjies’ (tangerines) all in fruit.

They introduce a freshness into winter dishes that reminds one of summer.  Citrus time is also marmalade time and with the making of the marmalade the cycle of production for me and the garden starts.

Citrus and Vegetable Garden

Lemons

Limes

On Saturday we had supper with Susan and Michael.  Susan made a themed supper in memory of a Clementine orchard that was removed on a neighbouring farm during the week. 

Starting with a Clemintine Negroni as a pre-dinner drink and ending with a Mille-feuille decorated with fresh clementines dipped in dark chocolate. Mille-feuille (‘a thousand leaves’) is a desert made with layers and layers of pancakes with a crème filling in between the leaves. 

Mille-Feuille with Clementines dipped in dark Chocolate

The rich and decadent desert punctuated with the burst of clementines seduced with a dipping of dark chocolate, made me want to run out and remove another clementine orchard just to inspire Susan to make it again. 

Sugar Snaps enjoying their Trellis

Baby Peas

The peas seem to enjoy their trellis and are flowering with promises of lots of sugar snap and green peas for the winter table. Food possibilities include a fresh pea and mozzarella pasta with lime and olive oil or a fresh pea and ham soup with rocket and homemade bread. I had better stop before I drool all over the keyboard at the thought!

Furry Fennel

Fennel and geranium abound in the herb garden adding to the fragrant wetness of the winter garden.

The Garden from the Cellar