Sticky Balsamic Reduction Tomato Relish

The first time I heard of Verlaque was at the South African Food Bloggers Conference earlier this year where I received one of their products in my goody bag. I've posted about using Verlaque products on my blog before(Rasberry Balsamic Roasted Butternut) and I will probably post again, but today is a special post. Verlaque is having a competition to see who can come up with the tastiest original recipe using one of the products from the "Balsamic Reduction" range.


I came up with this tomato relish just a few days before the challenge was posted (just in time). I was having dinner at my mother's house, we planned on making salad but when we got home from the shop the baby tomatoes we bought were so bland and flavourless that they just wouldn't cut it in a salad. And so my recipe was born...

My mother was very sceptical when she saw how much balsamic vinegar I added to the tomatoes but after she tasted it she was an instant fan! She even got all enthusiastic about buying salad stuff for when I made the relish again with the Verlaque Balsamic Reduction!


Enough about my family, by now you must be wondering what flavour I used? Originally I wanted to use the Fynbos/Wild Flower Honey Balsamic Reduction but unfortunately I couldn't find any in the Woolworths stores near my home. Second choice was the Sundried Turkish Figs Balsamic Reduction which I luckily did find in store (but in all honesty, I think you can use any flavour that tickles your fancy). The fig flavour turned out pretty tasty, especially when I served it with blue cheese and glazed figs on some rocket leaves. The tomato relish would also work nicely on some bread, perhaps with some cheese and...let me rather stop there and let your imagination dream up the ideal accompaniment to this tomato concoction!


Sticky Balsamic Reduction Tomato Relish
Serves 2 as a salad topping

• 17 Baby Tomatoes (more or less)
  
• 50ml Balsamic Vinegar
  
• 25ml Verlaque Sundried Turkish Figs Balsamic Reduction
  
• 25ml Chutney
  
• Salt and Pepper to taste
  

1. Cut the tomatoes in half, place cut side down in a pan.
   
2. Mix the rest of the ingredients together and pour over the tomatoes.
   
3. Simmer on a medium heat. Don't stir the tomatoes while cooking, just move them around from time to time so that they don't stick to your pan and that they stay intact. Your relish is done when the tomatoes are cooked through and the sauce had become nice and sticky.
   

Meaty Slow Cooker Bean Soup

I made this bean soup for a challenge at the Kleine Zalze For The Love Of Wine website. The soup is very economical, the beans and the eisbein cost me about R40 and the soup was enough for 8 hungry students!

Meaty Bean Slow cooker Soup
Serves 8 hungry male students

• 2 Packets Red Speckled Sugar Beans
  
• 1 Smoked Eisbein
  
• 2 Mutton Stock Cubes
  

1. Put the beans in a pot. Add water to the pot until the beans are covered with at least 5cm of water. Soak overnight.
   
2. Drain the beans and put them in a slow cooker with the eisbein.
   
3. Add enough water to cover the beans and the eisbein.
   
4. Put the slow cooker on auto and let it cook for at least 8 hours.
   
5. When the beans are soft add the stock cubes and salt to taste. At this stage I like to mash some beans so that the soup becomes a bit thicker.
   
6. Remove the eisbein bone from the soup and serve.
   

Homemade Chive and Peppadew Cheese: JessiKaas!

Homemade cheese! And it tastes good! I feel so chuffed with myself! Okay, enough exclamation marks already. Making cheese sounds hard, people look at you in awe upon hearing that the tasty cheese is your own creation but really the process is quite simple; all that you need is a little bit of patience and something heavy. (The patience is for waiting while the milk boils and the curds drain and the heavy object is to compress the curds to get all the whey out.) The cheese has the texture of cream cheese, it is tasty spread on bread and a great conversation topic in a crowd!

For the non-Afrikaans readers, "kaas" is Afrikaans for "cheese", and my name is Jessica so I cleverly combined the two to create JessiKaas! (Creative genius am I right? Right? Yes I'm here all week folks. *ba da dum*)


Homemade Chive and Peppadew Cheese aka JessiKaas
Makes about 1 cup of cheese

• 1 litre Full Cream Milk
  
• 250ml Buttermilk
  
• Chopped Chives to taste
  
• Chopped Peppadews to taste
  
• Salt (plain or flavoured) to taste
  
• Cheesecloth
  

1. Heat the milk in a saucepan until it just starts boiling.
   
2. Remove from the heat and stir in the buttermilk. White clumps should start forming, this is the curds. The liquid is the whey, it should become clearer as more curds form.
   
3. Leave for about 10 minutes for the curds and whey to fully separate.
   
4. Line a colander with cheesecloth and pour in the curds and whey. Rinse the curds with water for a few minutes to remove all of the whey.
   
5. Knot the cheesecloth with the curds and place under a heavy object for an hour. I placed the cheesecloth under a cutting board and weighed it down with a box containing six full wine bottles for this step.
   
6. Remove the curds and place in a mixing bowl. Work the curds (knead) with your hands until the texture changes from rubbery to creamy and smooth. This takes about 5 minutes.
   
7. Add flavoring to taste, place the cheese in an airtight container and refrigerate.
   

Sticky Condensed Milk and Vanilla Seed Icing

In my opinion condensed milk is just about the best thing that comes out of a can. If you need some to disappear I'm the person you should go to... So when Marisa from The Creative Pot tweeted about condensed milk cupcakes the cogs started rolling and I came up with this icing. Let me tell you, if you don't like sweet things you should stay away from this icing, it's sticky and sweet with the creamy taste of condensed milk and the light taste of vanilla to break the hold that the sugar has on you. The icing sets to a beautiful silky matt covering with the vanilla seeds dotted throughout the surface.


I built my own light box last night so that I could take proper photos. It was actually quite easy to make, I found the instructions here, I used tissue paper for the diffusing material instead of fabric. Just need to get myself a stronger light than my bedlamp!


Condensed Milk and Vanilla Seed Icing
Enough for approximately 10 cupcakes

• 250g Icing Sugar
  
• 70g Butter
  
• 100ml Condensed Milk
  
• Seeds of one Vanilla Pod
  

1. Mix together the butter and condensed milk.
   
2. Beat in the icing sugar.
   
3. Add the seeds and mix well.
   

I heated the icing a little bit before piping it on the cupcakes. It spreads quite a bit so there is no making impressive icing towers with this one.

Wedding Cake Decorating Trials

My friend and I have a thing, a cake baking and decorating thing. We studied engineering together and we both love baking. Every once in a while (usually around birthdays) we give in to our urges and bake themed cakes. We started with decorating cakes with buttercream icing with props and sweets and things on top then moved on to experimenting with fondant cake covering and fondant decorations.


Recently one of our friends that got engaged asked us to make their wedding cake! First thoughts were "Yay, they asked us, wow!", second thoughts were "Oh crap, can we realy make a cake worthy of being called a wedding cake?". A trail run for wedding cake designs was in order. The color scheme for the wedding is white, blue and silver, we tried out a few things but the cake and cupcakes pictured won in the end. We also tried our hand at wrapping a cake with chocolate. The cake came out pretty well, just have to spread the chocolate a bit thinner next time! (the canned fruit was a last minute substitute as we realized we didn't have any fresh fruits...)

So without further ado, gaze upon the cake decorating efforts of Grethe and Jessica!











The photos were taken while everyone was standing around looking at me and waiting for the cakes to be cut, not ideal conditions but oh well!

Home-made Hummus

At the South African Food Blogging Conference in March Jeanne Horak-Druiff from Cooksister spoke about finding your blogging voice. The point that really stood out for me was that there are two types of food bloggers; a writer that likes to cook or a cook that likes to write. The more I blog the more apparent it is that I am definitely the latter (pfft, not like I didn't know that already..!).

I started blogging in the first place because I wanted all my recipes in one place, blogging made more sense in terms of data security (my laptop can fail or get stolen; blogger.com has backup servers to prevent content loss). Also, if the recipes are on the internet they are easily accessible from almost anywhere.

The second reason why I started blogging is completely unrelated to food or cooking; I am currently busy with a Masters degree which means that thesis writing looms on the immediate horizon. The main focus of Engineering really isn't on stimulating creative writing skills; I've found that a 4 year degree is really effective in undoing a lot of writing experience gained at school. In writing just like any other skill, practice makes perfect. Writing does not come easy to me so the blog is my way of practicing making the words flow easier.

Phew, enough of super long personal exposé! This is what happens when I wake up inexplicably at 1am...


My inspiration for making hummus came from the Beetroot Hummus post by Nina from My-Easy-Cooking. I never realised that it is so easy to make this super tasty spread/dip! Luckily my mom had a pot of tahini paste lying around (that stuff is expensive!); the tahini really plays a large role in the taste of your final product. For those who have never heard of tahini paste (I only found out about it recently), a quick Google search defines it as "a paste of ground sesame seeds and a flavour similar to peanut butter.".

Cooking to me is a very 'free-range' compared to baking; baking requires precision but with cooking I usually stick my fingers in stuff and taste and adjust the food until I am happy with the taste! For the hummus I suggest using my recipe as a guideline, at the end of the day you have to eat it so modify it until you like it.

In the photos I served the hummus on some fresh ciabata with roasted tomatoes marinated in oil that I bought at the Cheese Festival. Very tasty!

Hummus
Makes about 500ml of hummus

• 1 can of chickpeas, washed and drained
  
• 2 tablespoons Tahini paste
  
• Juice of 1 lemon
  
• 1 clove of garlic
  
• Plain yoghurt
  
• Salt and pepper to taste
  
• Optional: Cumin seeds
  

1. Put the chickpeas, tahini, garlic and half of the lemon juice in a blender and blend until smooth.
   
2. Add yoghurt to thin out the mixture (other recipes call for oil here).
   
3. Add spices and lemon juice to taste.
   
4. No more, it's that easy!
   

Easy Broccoli Soup

Winter has arrived in Stellenbosch! The cold weather made me long for soup the whole day, the only question was whether I would make broccoli or butternut soup. Clearly broccoli won, but butternut soup can be made exactly the same way by just substituting the butternut for the broccoli.


Easy Broccoli Soup
Serves a lot, at least 4 ravenous people

• 2 Broccoli heads, broken into small florets
  
• 1 large Onion, chopped
  
• 2 Chicken Stock cubes
  
• Milk for thinning
  

1. In a large pot fry the onions until soft.
   
2. Put the broccoli and stock cubes in the pot, add enough water to cover about half of the broccoli and bring to a simmer.
   
3. When the broccoli is soft, put everything in a blender until the mixture is smooth.
   
4. Return the mixture to the pot, add milk until the desired consistency is reached.
   
5. Cook for a few minutes, add salt and pepper to taste and enjoy!