Lemon

The rush of the unexpected taste fills my mouth and makes me salivate involuntarily. For a moment it is all that I can taste before it mingles with the saltiness and sweetness, becoming a good halfway between the two, muting them and bringing them together at the same time.

I love lemon. I am not one of those people who can eat it straight, biting into it. My taste buds are far too sensitive for that. But I certainly love cooking with it, and find it to be a good ingredient to cook with. I tend to use it often, probably too often for the liking of my housemates who have to endure my cooking!

One of my favourite things to do is to replace oil with lemon when I am cooking chicken. It works just as well, but gives the chicken a lemon flavour and is far healthier. What I tend to do is squeeze some lemon juice into a pan, sprinkle in a fair amount of Italian herbs and then fry the chicken up with the herbs and lemon, leaving out the oil bit. Forget Nando's chicken and herb. I far prefer my own :) Once the chicken is "fried" I either roll it up in a tortilla with lettuce and tomato, or I add some veggies into the pan and make a quick stir fry. Each way provides healthy alternatives to the regular chicken dishes that I used to cook. Plus it is far tastier.

There is also another recipe that I have not tried since my uni days, but used to work well enough then. I would place some lemon juice into a bowl and marinade the chicken in the juice before placing it in the oven on grill for 10-15 minutes, turning every 5 minutes ago. What I ended up with was lovely juicy chicken breasts, bursting with flavour and perfectly tender. I usually served that with either baked potatoes or mash.

You can expect to see quite a few of these kinds of food tips over the next few weeks, since I am now participating in a challenge issued by one of my "Korean" friends (aka. friend who I met in Korea who is not actually Korean) involving a healthier lifestyle in terms of both cooking and exercise. I am not convinced about the exercise, since I can hardly get myself to cook when I come home from work being utterly exhausted and all, but I can certainly try to cook as often and possible, and when I am not the one cooking, I can get Grant to do the cooking for me, and get him to cook as healthily as possible.

Unfortunately, I already see a problem day in the horizon, since the girls are coming over on Saturday night for home made cocktails, and you know that is going to involve more than a few calories. I only found out about the challenge after I had arranged the cocktail evening though, and it is something that I have been trying to arrange for at least a month and a half, so there can be no backing out now! Oh well, cest la vie!!

French Dreaming

I really don't think that I appreciated France enough when I went there in 2004. I was 16 years old, and it was not where I wanted to be. I wanted to be back in South Africa, at a camp with my friends, lying on the beach during the day and sleeping in tents at night. Instead, I was forced into coming to France, travelling through the countryside, sleeping in four star hotels (that's just how my family rolls, y'all) and eating decadent French cuisine.

Now, I can see what you are thinking (yes, I can read minds). Why on earth am I complaining?? Dirty, uncomfortable camp compared to France in luxury - not too difficult of a choice, right? Well, I wasn't all too happy to be going along. As much as I wanted to visit a foreign country, I also knew by this point what travelling with my family was like, and it wasn't something that I particularly looked forward to. And I was right. As beautiful as the French countryside was, it was a trip filled with fighting. I was fighting with my sister, which led to my father fighting with me, which led to my parents fighting with each other, which led to my sister fighting with my mother for defending me. There was a lot of fighting. In between, we visited Paris, Ceret and other areas whose names lost in the whirlwind trip, but whose images are ingrained in my mind, and overall the trip wasn't quite as bad as I had imagined that it would be, but it was certainly not the way that I would have liked to experience France.

Now that I am older and wiser and far more appreciative of different cultures, different cuisine and different people, I want to travel there again. Unfortunately, this is not particularly likely. Instead I have to console myself by reading books that are based in France - books like Five Quarters of the Orange by Joanne Harris.

For those of you who do not know who Joanne Harris is, she is the woman behind Chocolat, the sensational book (also based in France) and the award winning movie that followed starring Juliette Binoche and (swoon) Johnny Depp. I loved Chocolat, almost as much as I love the subject of the novel, and somehow knew that I would love Five Quarters of the Orange as well. Harris has this wonderful way of writing that just draws you into the novels that she writes and keeps you there through a mixture of suspense, longing and nostalgia (for lack of a better word).

Five Quarters of the Orange, like Chocolat, has a theme of cooking running through it, and she uses this theme to reminisce about the main character's secret past. Framboise, the main character, inherits a cookbook and a single truffle preserved in oil when her mother passes away. Her brother inherits the farm that the family grew up in, and as he has no use for it, Framboise buys it from him and returns to the town where she grew up under the pseudonym of Madame Simon. There, she builds up a restaurant and a life for herself, all the while delving into the mystery of her mother through her cookbook, filled with recipes and diary-like notes, and trying to avoid the past that threatens to catch up with her.

I adored Five Quarters of the Orange, and it is a book that I intend to read over and over again. The scenery described is beautiful, the recipes mouthwatering and the story intriguing. If you have read Chocolat and loved it, I would highly recommend this book. It has some of the best parts of the novel, and even though I still think that Chocolat is slightly better, I wouldn't pass this one over. For those that have yet to read Chocolat, I would recommend reading it first.

Apples for Jam

A few weeks ago I wrote a blog post about how I had started getting into cooking and all the things that I wanted to try. Well, today I thought that I would write a post about a cookbook that I recently acquired.

I remember it well, the first time that I picked up Apples for Jam. It was the first time that my mother and I were eating out at Cafe Delicieux - a cafe that had opened up the road from our house. I sat down on a grey pouffe in amongst the delicate paper pattern decorations (depicting gardens filled with fauna and flora) and chandeliers. This was not somewhere to come for your everyday cuppa Joe. This was a treat in itself. We opened the menus and scanned the delicious sounding options before setting on some drinks and a sandwich to share. While we waited for our meal, Mom picked up a magazine and I, not really in the mood for a magazine, picked up the first book that appealed to me. I think it was the cover that perked my interest, the bright red shoes on little feet, the delicately detailed embossment on the cover that could only be seen when you looked at it out of the corner of your eye. I picked it up and opened to the introduction:

This is food for families, for young people, for old people, for children, for the child in all... for life.

The line captured me. From that moment I was hooked. I wanted to page through the recipes and memories at a frantic pace, try to take it all in and remember everything word for word, but before I knew it, our food had arrived and I was not even halfway into the Red section. I reluctantly put the book down, but remembered the name so that I could look it up the next time I was in Exclusive Books. Apples for Jam became my personal motto. Apples for Jam, I repeated to myself over and over again. It became my aim, my philosophy, my ideal. If there was one cookbook that I was going to buy, I said to myself, Apples for Jam would be it. And then I entered Exclusive Books and, amazingly, came across the book almost immediately. It stood out from the rest. It called to me. I gingerly stroked the spine and carefully removed it from it's shelf. And then put it straight back after a momentary glance at the price. There was no way that I could afford to pay R500 for a cookbook, especially since I didn't do all that much cooking.

Over the next few years, I searched for Apples for Jam in every book shop I went into. I found sales on other Tessa Kiros books (Tessa Kiros, of course, being the woman responsible for my addiction), but never Apples for Jam. Years passed and I could never justify buying the book for myself. And then, before I left Cape Town to come to Grahamstown (after my year in Korea), I got given a gift voucher for Exclusive Books. It was a particularly generous voucher, a birthday present from my grandparents, and within moments I had decided what I would spend it on. It wouldn't cover the whole book, no. But I was prepared to put in the difference and made my way to Exclusive, straight to the cooking aisle, and there it was, where it had always been, still calling me and drawing me towards it. I took it to the counter and, after a bit of rude service from the sales assistant that fortunately didn't manage to deter me from my purchase, I left with the book in hand.

It was still a good few hours of shopping, window shopping and driving before I could finally be alone with the book. I gingerly opened the cover once more and, skipping the introduction this time, wanting to jump straight in, started devouring the pages that the book had to offer. The book itself is divided into colours rather than food types - Red, Orange, Yellow, Pink, Green, Gold, White, Brown, Monochrome, Stripes and Multicolour - to symbolise the colour that the food will turn out to be. In Red, for example, you will find a number of recipes that use a large amount of tomato or berries; in Orange you will find foods that use pumpkins, butternuts, oranges, apricots and numerous other orange ingredients; while in brown you will find a number of baking bits and pieces - cakes, breads, etc. Though it does make it a little difficult to find specific recipes if you know what it is that you are looking for, I thought that it added a childlike, sweet quality to the book. At the start of each chapter you will find a memory attached to that colour, and Kiros weaves stories at the start of each individual recipe, turning it into more than just a cookbook, but a small window into her own world.

I have not yet endeavoured to cook any of the recipes that are hidden in the book. I am saving that for a special occasion or for a very specific craving. But I completely intend to indulge in almost every recipe in the book, as I haven't found a single one that doesn't make my mouth start to water - from Chocolate and Cranberry Biscuits, to Wholemeal Apricot and Apple Pie, to Angel Hair Pasta with Zucchini, Mint and Feta and beyond. I can hardly hold myself back!

My question for you today is this: What one book have you been eyeing for ages?

Cooking

Anyone who has come into contact with me over the last year or so would be shocked to hear me say this, but I love cooking. That is not to say that I am very good at it, nor is it to say that I do it often. But on the occasion that I do, I absolutely love it!

One of the things that I missed over my year in Korea was being able to cook. Sure, I had a mini-kitchen decked out with pots, pans and a hub of two stove tops; sure, there was a grocery store or three up the road from my house; but cooking for one just isn't the same as cooking for others. When it came down to it, ordering in or eating out was just so much easier and, in the end, so much cheaper as I never ended up eating the leftovers that I ended up with after cooking for myself.

One of the first things I requested for when I came home was a home-cooked meal. Of course, I never got it, but that doesn't take anything away from the point that I am trying to make – a hard-earned meal that has been cooked through blood, sweat and tears just tastes so much better than something that requires as little effort as phoning the pizza-place and reciting your address and phone number.

Now that I am home with a world of cooking-equipment and groceries at my fingers, I am already contemplating all the meals that I am looking forward to cooking. In fact, I have put together a list made from my recently acquired cookbooks (click here to see it). I highly doubt that I will cook all of these dishes over the next year, as I only intend to do the cooking about twice a week and will not always want something so rich or so expensive, but I do intend to get through the list over the next few years. So check it out and if you see something that you would like to try, let me know – maybe I will make it the next time you visit!

So my question for you today is twofold: which of those recipes do you most want to try and what is your favourite recipe?