Christmas truly makes December a coveted month because it brings food, family and friends together and closer to our hearts than any other time of the year. Cooking by recipes endemic to the season is a perfect example of how we celebrate the spirit of togetherness, for we bring down the once-a-year cookbooks from hibernation, oil the baking tins and ready pouches of flour, punnets of strawberries, ladels of sugar and bundles of eggs for the sweets our guests will enjoy. As a child, the first day of December traditionally meant I could put the hedonism switch on for all the hard work was done already, the presents and food were on their way and the laughter came easier than any other time of the year. I distinctly remember the simple joys of decorating and celebrating, in hanging candy canes from the highest reaches of our synthetic tree, storing bonbons from the ends of branches, draping tinsel and hooking nativity scenes and the golden star upon the top point of the tree. It was a tree we loved, even for its fatal flaws; it was awfully unstable and unpleasant tree, supported on the base by a cast-iron clamp and a few dirty bricks concealed with a tablecloth, with unsightly power-coated bristles and branches that would cut, scratch and itch the skin. But it was well worth the effort since it involved plucking carefully hidden chocolates from inside the tree.
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This post contains a cheeky surprise – something overwhelmingly vivacious, perhaps something slightly audacious and saucy, conjuring dazzling images of succulent culinary delights — lasagne is, undoubtedly, my personal favourite dish, a meal that I am most confident in preparing. And yet it a dish I learned to make and perfect by observational learning in the kitchen of my mother and grandmother. No amount of recipe books purchased, however detailed and exquisite, were able to impart their wisdom to me. So if you have been too shy to build a pasta masterpiece in the past, take note of the fact that lasagne is fiendishly difficult at first, but like moulding clay, becomes easier and more malleable with time has the potential to become a creative medium to accommodate your imaginative whims. Thai chicken lasagne? I’ve heard of it before!
In the writing and the preparation and photography of the dish, I had placed upon the table many awful, soggy excuses that were barely passable as a final product. With a grimace, my housemates would assure me it was edible and praised the effort. But not meeting one’s personal potential in culinary adventures is I decided to get right into the nitty-gritty, rolling up my sleeves and rolling out the sheets and spreading over the sauce. I spent hours on quiet contemplation with a mental scouring brush, seeking recollections of family moments crowded around the gas stove, as the dented steel deep-dish overflowing with lasagne bubbled under the gas flame and oozed a crimson river of mozzarella and tomato.
Forget your preconceptions of lasagne as difficult, time-consuming and hardly filling: as I don’t believe in the widely propagated image of ‘the perfect lasagne’, I set out a mission in this post to present a time-and-trial tested recipe and tout it as the best and easiest home-made version, that is certain to keep you coming back for more.
Although you may not agree with me, I feel that August is a great month for the Southern Hemisphere. Frankly, what’s not to enjoy? It is in August that the best seasonal fruits and vegetables drop in price, culminate, force you to salivate over their colours, their variety. Some articles of wonderful produce greet the shelves like cherries, oranges and pineapple, that for months before, have known only pickles, preserves and candied forms. Most importantly, August means a time for embracing the limbo of seasons, desiring the incredible and exciting experimentation with recipes given to you; embrace the variety of life. After all, Mother Nature didn’t invest in four seasons in a single year for nothing!
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Heart stuck on your sleeve? Can’t let go of the tricycle in the backyard? If only we could be forever young; everything to do with being a grown-up seems to involve complexity, uncertainty, periods of trial and error. Sure, we’d probably never know what it feels like to have perfectly and fully realised love, never have any lasting friends nor the chance to take our first rust-bucket sedan for a trip down memory lane. Still, it sure sounds swell being a knee-high cherub.
But that’s because being a kid meant not worrying about the grown-up stuff. It was, for many of us, a time to form memories of the food we enjoyed, of the kitchen with its myriad of silverware, cast iron cookware and fine bone china. But most importantly, the aromas and laughter that filled the house at the dawn of every season. Food brings families together and it is through the ritualistic passing of recipes from generation to generation that the spell-making method is preserved. And so I present to you a winter warmer dessert that’s low on complexity and full of nostalgic yielding.
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It would be great if only we had such a creation as a split identity – a new dimension to ourselves that interacts with the world and which does the chores you’d rather maintain a distance of a 50-metre pole. But the reality is that you’re strapped for time, strapped for money, stressed out and pulling your hair out. It’s cold outside and your toes are poking through your last pair of socks – yes, those socks; the ones which came wrapped up nicely with a ribbon for your seventeenth birthday. Your stomach grows. Your fridge door is hanging off its hinges full of jars and bottles; mucky milk, mouldy mustard, rancid relish, putrid pesto. Perhaps the only “gourmet” ingredient you’ve seen in weeks is a tin of eerie brown coloured caviar. Perhaps, by the time you reached the end of this list of disgusting fridge contaminants, you’re on the floor laughing, rolling around in stitches.
But I can assure you that being in dire straits has happened to you more times than you’re comfortable to admit. The true art in cooking, in my opinion, is inventiveness with the ingredients on hand – the ability to create an indispensable number of dishes from similar bases. Thankfully, there’s a solution to your winter woes that doesn’t involve taking out a second mortgage on the house or selling that briefcase full of unused Dinky Toy cars. Read on to hear more about one of the best kept secrets of the Mediterranean coast.
The Wild Thyme and Sweet Pea project found its roots when it was plucked excitedly from the garden, washed briskly in a basin of water and lovingly left out to dry in a soothing marinade of vision and ambition ... More »
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