Impala-Liver paté

We spent the Easter weekend in a place called Biki Bini Bos near Rustenburg. It is a lovely place, very quiet and the owners Martie and Pieter and their family are the nicest hosts you will ever meet. On the day we left they even offered the liver of an Impala to me that they shot in the morning ...

So here is my recipe for liver paté - it works with any kind of liver of course but Impala liver has a very nice taste indeed.

Ingredients
400 gr. Liver
110 gr. Butter (warm)
1 small onion
50 gr. fresh cream
a shot of Brandy
1 bay leaf
2-3 juniper berries
fresh thyme




Cut the liver into 2-3 cm thick slices. Roughly chop the onion. Crush the juniper berries in a mortar.

Take some of the butter and put it a frying pan together with the bay leaf, the juniper berries, the onion and the thyme. 


When the butter is really put some slices of the liver in the pan. Not all at once or else the temperature of the pan will drop to much to sear the liver properly.



The liver will take about 3-5 minutes to cook properly. Do not leave it in the pan too long or else the liver and the paté will be grey which you do not want. You can feel if the liver is just about right by how firm it is. It should be firm and very elastic. But this takes a bit of practice.


Take out the liver, deglaze the pan with a shot of Brandy. Take out the bay leaf and the thyme and throw away. But everything into a blender and add the cream and the rest of the butter. Blend the mixture until smooth.

Next put the mixture through a very fine sieve. Do not be lazy and miss this step. It will make the paté very smooth and will take out all the little grainy stuff.

Now you can pour the still liquid paté into whatever kind of container you have available. Put it immediately into the fridge for about 20-30 min. - just long enough for the surface to solidify a bit. If you keep it in the fridge for too long the surface will turn brown.


Now take some extra butter and clarify it i.e. heat it until it dissolves and take of the white froth from the top. Now carefully spoon the clear butter over the paté and put it in the fridge again. It should be ready to eat after about 3-4 hours in the fridge and it will keep for a couple of days. Try the Italian Bread recipe below for a perfect combination.

The Thermals - Born to kill

Neues Video von den Thermals zur neuen Platte 'Desperate Ground':

Roberto's Italian Bread Recipe

A while ago we bought some stunning photographs of Joburg CBD from Kutlwano Moagi which we will finally be able to put on the wall when we move to our new house. Have a look:

These photographs are actually quite large (1.1m x 1.1.m) and we wanted to get them framed. We randomly picked a gallery close to where we live and there we met Roberto who runs a gallery on Jan Smuts.

He is an Italian gentiluomo and while we were chatting we he mentioned that he likes to cook and to bake bread. He gave us a sample of his bread and next time we met to pick up the pictures he gave me the recipe. Both the recipe and the framing is excellent and I am sure you get both if you visit him.

I am still trying to figure out how to execute his recipe properly but I wanted to share it and show my first results.

The ingredients could not be more simple:
1.7 kg of flour (any kind)
1 Paket of dry yeast
2 Tbl Sp Salt
some sugar
Water
some additional Flour for the baking tray

Actually I added the sugar to this list. It was not in Roberto's original recipe.

Ok, now here is what you do:
Take some warm water and dissolve the yeast with some sugar and a couple of spoons of flour. Wait until you get some bubbles on the water. In the meantime get a large bowl and put the flour in it.


Pour the water with the yeast into the bowl. Knead the dough a bit. Dissolve the salt in another big cup of water and add it to the dough.

Now you have to knead the dough for a couple of minutes. Probably not more than 5. Add more water or flour as required. You will feel that the dough will come off the bowl and it will not be sticky anymore. It should be elastic and firm.

Next cover the bowl with a plastic bag and let the dough rest somewhere warm for about 2-3 hours. After that the dough should look like 'cow shit' - at least that is how Roberto described it. The dough should actually have more bubbles than shown on the picture below so I must be doing something wrong but I am not sure what it is.


Next you pre-heat the oven to 240°C or as hot as you can. Cover the baking tray with some flour and carefully take the dough out of the bowl. I use my fingers to scrape the dough from the sides of the bowl to get it out. Cover the baking tray with a clean cloth and let it rest again for 30 min. When the oven is at 240°C put the tray into the oven and close the door quickly again to not lose the heat. Wait for 20-30 min until the crust of the bread is a dark brown colour and than reduce the heat to 140°C for another 90 minutes.

Here is what the result looks like:
Compared to Roberto's bread my version is too dense and has not risen enough. But it is still delicious! If you want to you can add other ingredients to the dough. Today I made a bread with black olives and ricotta which works quite well.

Ever thought of beekeeping?

Recently my love and I were strolling through a book store and I don’t know why, but a book from Luke Dixon “Keeping bees in towns and cities” caught my attention. Bought it, read it and then thought, well, let’s start a new career!

Unfortunately it is not that easy-peasy. Beekeepers deal with wild(!) animals and they have to have some knowledge about bees in order to keep the bees successfully. And of course, not every person living in the city is super-fond of having one or more swarms of bees close to their homes. Besides that, we simply do not have the space in the garden for a bee hive and I am also not so sure about what our two dogs would think.

Nevertheless, I am still interested in the whole subject and do also have every support from my personal chef as the whole subject is about food and potentially having our own honey supply at some time in future is worth something. To improve my knowledge and get some “hands-on” information I visited a monthly beekeeping meeting of the Southerns Beekeeping Association (www.beekeepers.co.za) in Johannesburg. At that meeting, a professional beekeeper mentioned honey badgers and the problems he is having with them. I never heard this English word before, so did some research later at home and here are some amazing facts about the “Honig Dachs” (extract from Wikipedia):

• Honey badgers are intelligent animals and are one of a few species known to be capable of using tools
• Honey badgers favour bee honey
• They also eat insects, frogs, tortoises, rodents, turtles, lizards, eggs, and birds
• Honey badgers have even been known to chase away young lions and take their kills!
• Honey badgers have very powerful jaws
• They kill and eat snakes, even highly venomous or large ones such as cobras
• Their skin is hard to penetrate, and its looseness allows them to twist and turn on their attackers when held. The skin is also tough enough to resist several machete blows

Wohooooo! Seems like having problems with honey badgers basically means you do have really serious problems!

And last thing to think about: Please support your local bee keepers and don’t buy imported honey. Potential diseases for the local bees can be imported with honey!!!

New house owners in Melville

Naa… let’s say, we are this close of buying a house. Nothing is written in stone yet, but we do have the verbal confirmation. Huhuuuuu!

I must admit, these are very exiting times. First time house ownership feels like first job, first degree, first time driving a car… You know what I mean. We knew that this is our home when we first stepped over the door sill… Booom! Hopefully we can take and post some photos soon. However, the next six months are very likely to turn our lives upside down as this house is old and a lot of things need to be fixed and renovated and we are lacking exactly these skills. So good times to improve them soon...

The property is located in Melville. To be honest, I did not really know a lot about this old urban area besides the fact, that I simply liked its look and atmosphere. But “no knowledge” is nothing that cannot be changed into something like “having some basic knowledge” with doing a bit of research. So, here we go:

Melville is over 100 years old and almost as old as Johannesburg. The area was established on the 5th October 1896 and named after the land surveyor Edward Harker Vincent Melville. Melville was constituted as a working-class area. The class origins of the suburb are clearly discernible today: houses are close to the road and facing the street with minimal parking. This was not a suburb of grand driveways and stables. From its very first days, Melville as always been recognized for its picturesque village feel and its magnificent views.

The Melville Koppies Nature Reserve or just “Melville Koppies” is a pretty green space close to Melville. It is also a World Heritage Site and of major historical significance, given that people have lived here since the Stone Age(!), and the ridges are estimated to be 2.9 billion years old.

Map: http://www.mk.org.za