Succulent Ostrich Neck with mash, sautéed vegetables and bordelaise sauce

My little sister has been an adventurous eater since day one. I like to take quite a bit of credit for that, but in reality, our entire family likes to eat interesting foods.

So after collecting little Nelia at school on Friday, we popped into my local greengrocer (Lynnpark Food Hall on Lynnwood Rd, all the staff know us!) for some fruits for the weekend. She pointed out strange looking meat in the freezer – very fresh – it hadn’t yet had the chance to freeze. To my surprise they were soft, purple hued ostrich necks! The only time I had heard about eating ostrich neck was in Sepupa, Botswana from missionaries I lived with for a month. With some encouragement from Nelia, I reached my hand in and took a packet, and upon turning around saw lovely bone marrow in the fridge and the word ‘bordelaise’ sang out in my mind.

Perfecto! Bordelaise is a classic sauce made from stock, cooking juices, red wine which is finished off with rich bone marrow. We enjoyed the sauce with the necks and some sautéed vegetables on a chilly winters night in our slippers and PJs and thereafter settled down to watch Stepmom – a favourite film of ours.

x

Lea

Ingredients:

The starting point

Meat:  

500 g fresh ostrich necks

2 stalks celery

1 red onion, roughly chopped

1 tsp crushed garlic

500 mL beef/vegetable stock

5 mL ground cumin

5 mL black pepper

120 mL red wine

1 pomegranate, cut into quarters

5 thyme sprigs

2 fresh curry leaves

Raw ostrich neck

Sauce:            1 small brown onion

1 tsp crushed garlic

200 mL beef stock

Cooking juices from the meat

Dash of red wine

2 pieces of bone marrow

Vegetables:     Go with what’s in season (we had carrots and baby marrows)

Pinch of salt and pepper

2 mL crushed garlic

Fresh thyme, chopped finely

Mash:            Potatoes

1 knob of butter

60 mL milk

2 Tbsp sour cream

salt and pepper

Instructions:

1. For the ostrich:

Brown the necks in some oil in a saucepan. Fry onions, garlic and fresh herbs in a pressure cooker pot until soft. Add the celery, cumin and pomegranate and sauté for 2 minutes. Add the ostrich necks, wine, stock and season. Place the lid of the pressure cooker on and cook at medium heat for 1 hour until the meat falls of the bone.

Cooking in progress

2. For the sauce:

Fry the onions and garlic, add the stock, wine and the juices from the pressure cooker and reduce down until almost at the consistency desired. Reduce the heat, add the bone marrow and stir until the marrow has cooked away into the sauce. Season to taste.

Leandri cleaning the marrow bones

3. For the mash:

Peel potatoes, and boil in salted water until soft. Drain off the water and add butter, seasoning and milk to the potatoes. Mash until smooth and then stir in the sour cream.

4. For the vegetables:

Steam the vegetables until tender and then finish off in the pan with some butter, garlic, thyme and season to taste.

The complete dish – the meat falls apart when you touch it and it melts in your mouth

Nelia taking the perfect bite…

Easy-peasy Pear Tarts

Simple and quick food appeals to me lately; I’m way too lazy at the end of a day at varsity. I bought some beautiful pears at the Boeremark two weeks ago and have been dying to make a pear tarte tatin. But I am too lazy.

So, instead I prepared two pears tarts: one savoury, one sweet. This just goes to show that you can take a very basic idea and adapt it to suit any occasion. I must add here that I love chai, and Seline has had an issue with it since the early days when I would buy it and put the box of tea leaves in the cupboard (I had to put them inside a ziplock bag!). She also doesn’t like cooked fruit. This dish incorporated both, and yet, she loved it… Chai tea has a new convert.

It only goes to show: You can make any one like something if you prepare it in a way that appeals to them.

Easy-peasy, 5 ingredient pear tarts

Basic for 2 little tarts:

2 squares of 10cm ready to roll puff pastry

1 pear, peeled

Milk for brushing

The sweet tart:

The basic tart ingredients

5g chai tea leaves (or a bag)

2 crushed cardamom pods

250mL water

5 T sugar

Cream, to serve

The savoury tart:

The basic tart ingredients

4 rashers streaky bacon

4 thyme sprigs

Soft cheese of choice: I used a WhiteRock Semi-soft Cheese with dried cranberries

Salt and pepper

Serve the sweet tart warm with some cream and left over tea syrup

To make the sweet tart:

Place the whole pear in a pot with the tea leaves, sugar and cardamom.

Poach the pear for a few minutes, depending on the ripeness.

Remove the pear from the tea and reduce the tea until syrupy.

Slice the pear in half. Place it flat-side down on the pastry square.

Drizzle over the syrup and glaze with the milk.

Bake at 200 for 10 minutes until golden.

Whip the cream and fold in some of the tea syrup to taste.

To make the savoury tart:

Savory pear tart with bacon and cranberry cheese

Slice the pear thinly and arrange on the pastry square.

Fry bacon until cooked, but not crispy (it will crisp in the oven).

Arrange the thyme on the pastry, then the pears and bacon.

Season the pastry and brush the exposed pastry with milk.

Bake at 200 until golden brown, and then crumble some soft cheese over the pastry.

Easy-peasy tarts in no time.

Lots of peace and grace,

Leandri

Mafikeng Mud Cookies

Reminiscing about our childhood made these come to mind…

Mafikeng was a wonderful place to grow up. Not because we had everything there. Quite the opposite actually. It was wonderful because we had nothing…

Nothing forces you to create, imagine and pretend like, well, nothing. And that’s how I remember being as a little girl. I grew up building houses in the garden with fallen branches, collecting snails at night after it rained so that we could feed our Aunt Lynette’s ducks, playing chef-chef or hospital-hospital for days on end with my sisters. It was a good time; magical even.

I was reminded of these stories this week by a lovely lady named Gloria and as a result, I decided to make mud cookies, just like I would have done when I was 4, sitting on the grass in my Mad Dogs matching outfit, waiting for my cookies to dry in the blazing sun. Luckily for you, I have swapped the mud for dark chocolate, the pebbles for nuts and the ants for black pepper… So, here goes…

Dark Chocolate Mud cookies with black pepper roasted macadamia nuts and salted caramel

Ingredients:

120ml regular sugar (or castor sugar)

120ml cream

60ml Milk

1ml salt

180ml macadamia nuts

Pepper

Small drizzle Olive oil

100g butter

60g brown sugar

140 castor sugar

200g self-raising flour

50g cacao

90g dark chocolate (chopped)

90g white chocolate (chopped)

1 vanilla pod (seeded)

1 egg

3ml instant coffee powder

Method:

1. Coat the nuts in the olive oil and black pepper and roast in the oven at 200 degrees Celsius for 5 minutes
2. Make the caramel by melting 120ml of the regular sugar in a small saucepan until golden brown. Add the cream and salt and set aside to cool
3. Cream the butter, vanilla seeds and the brown and castor sugars
4. Beat the egg with the instant coffee and add to the butter mixture
5. Add half the sifted cacao and flour and combine.
6. Add the milk, mix and then add the remaining cocoa and flour. The mixture is meant to be stiff, don’t worry
7. Mix the chocolate chunks and roasted nuts into the mixture
8. Spoon onto a prepared baking sheet and inject blobs of caramel into each cookie. Crack a bit of black pepper on top of each cookie
9. Bake at 200 degrees for 8 minutes
10. When you remove the cookies from the oven they will still feel soft. Let them cool for 5 minutes before removing them from the baking sheet – they harden over time
11. Spoon some more caramel onto each cookie once cooled

My goal with these cookies was to make them rich, but not sweet; thick, moist and gooey. They are best served fresh and warm out of the oven with a cup of really good coffee (preferably made by Leandri). You can store these in an airtight container, but I cannot imagine that they won’t be eaten within a day

Childhood Mafikeng Mud Cookies

May you all be reminded of little childhood gems this week…

x Seline

Quick and Easy Peanut Sauce

I must admit that I am slightly obsessed with peanuts and peanut butter… If given half a shot I would add it to most of my recipes, whether in raw, praline or butter form!

Eating some stir fry for lunch today, I was struck with how much this dish needed a peanut taste and texture. So I quickly whipped up this sauce and thought that I’d share it with you. Serve it with stir fry, satays, platters or crudités

Ingredients:

45 ml milk

45 ml peanut butter

±1 ml cayenne pepper (to taste)

pinch of salt and pepper

20 ml natural yogurt (or sour cream)

The easiest peanut-butter sauce in the world

Mix all ingredients together and viola! See, just like I said; easy-peasy!

x Seline

PS: I’d like to just say thank to Leandri for my special birthday post! Those cheesecakes were to die for 😉 Love you x

Seline’s Birthday Pretzel and Salted Caramel Cheesecake

Hooray!

The beauty element of Beauty and the Feast turns 26 today. Since Seline and I live together, it makes it rather difficult to sneak a birthday blog post up on her. Also, her boyfriend has a sweet camera that we like to use to photograph our work …

So please forgive me, readers (and Seline!) for the rather ‘rustic’ photography in the post today. Us cooks like to use the word ‘rustic‘ as a euphemism for messy and clumsy. I trust Seline will forgive me when she tastes the yummy creaminess of these babies.

Adding salt to sweet dishes is a hit in our house; it just brings out something different in the dish.

Seline you’re lovely and oh-so-special to me,

xx Your Kiki

You’ll need:

For the base:

150g pretzels

100g Tennis biscuits (coconut cookies)

200g softened butter

For the filling:

250g plain cream cheese

100mL sour cream

1 T plain flour

150 g caster sugar

1 egg

2 T lemon juice

1 vanilla pod

For the caramel:

60 g caster sugar

2 T water from the tap

1 knob of butter (about a teaspoon or two)

2 T single cream

It is rumoured you hear angels sing ‘Happy Birthday’ as you bite into this cake

 

And so it starts:

1 – Blitz the pretzels and biscuits in a blender or mortar and pestle until fine. Add the butter and mix. Press into cupcake cups and set aside

2 – Cream the cream cheese, sour cream, flour and sugar together.

3 – Add the egg and beat (I used an electric beater for all of this).

4 – Add the vanilla and the lemon juice, and beat until incorporated.

5 – Spoon into cupcake cups and bake at 180 degrees Celsius for 15 minutes. Remove and cool.

6 – Heat the sugar and water until bubbling. Stir to ensure all the sugar has dissolved.

7 – Add a knob of butter and stir. The sugar will start to go really funny and crystallise out – relax! Just keep stirring. Once the ‘mess’ starts to melt again, it will go brown. Add in the cream and mix until well combined.

8 – Spoon the caramel over the cheesecakes and sprinkle with some sea salt flakes

9 – Light the candles, make a wish and tuck in 🙂

Grace and Peace,

Leandri