I love smoked food. I love it all, and I love it beyond the point that most people would consider healthy. I also think most smoked food is extremely wine-friendly (my favourite pairing for smoked salmon is a rich, stinky champagne or MCC¹). As such, I take every opportunity I get to indulge in it and every now and again I try and smoke something in my kettle barbeque. Recently, I made in it what I consider to be the best smoked dish I’ve ever made – hot smoked salmon.
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There are few things I like eating as much as steak. There are many good cuts, of which rump, rib-eye, fillet, sirloin and t-bone are probably the most well known and I love them all. Personally I usually go for sirloin or t-bone, char grilled over a charcoal fire and sometimes basted with a sticky basting. If the weather’s too crap to fire up the braai, then I’ll pan fry it in butter and serve with black pepper and fresh parsley but to me this is definitely second best to the flame-grilled method. Continue reading
Well, it’s been stinking hot here for the last couple of days. Believe it or not, but England can actually get stinking hot, just not that often. The thing about a hot day here is that it is usually accompanied by a large dose of steamy humidity and that tends to make a 30°C day feel more like a 40°C day. Yesterday was 31°C and my office is without air conditioning, so it was with great pleasure that I exercised my contractors’ right to leg it early, leaving all the other suckers to duke it out in the sauna that is the development department. Continue reading
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Every so often I have visitors from South Africa come to stay with me – usually family or close friends. One of the benefits of having said visitors is that sometimes they can be persuaded to mule some South African produce over the Atlantic for me. Any ex-pat saffa will tell you how awesome it is to be presented with treats such as biltong, Nik naks, Snacker bars, Strawberry Whirls, Klipdrift brandy and the like from our homeland and while I love all of these, my personal preference is for a bottle or two of fine South African wine. Continue reading
Directly translated, ‘bitterballen’ means ‘bitter balls’. There are so many jokes I could make here, but I’ll refrain as it’s not in my nature to take the low-hanging fruit (oh dear, and I tried so hard). Does this description sound appetising? Well, I’ll let you decide. Continue reading
The clocks went back (forward) last weekend, so I can finally come home in the evening and still have enough daylight to braai (barbecue) on a work night if the urge takes me. I knew the weather would be half-decent today, so I prepared some chicken kebabs, or as they’re called in Saffa Land, “sosaties”. Continue reading
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fat gary 