Africa Dreams

Well it’s been a busy couple of weeks
One thing that took a great deal of time was the addition of about 60 Chocolate Recipes on the website if you’re at all interested in CHOCOLATE a visit to this section of the website will prove fruitful.

I have included recipes across the range from Chocolate cakes and Fudge to Chocolate covered strawberries to find the recipes click on Chocolate I’m sure you’ll find something to tickle your taste buds

Michael

Amongst other things I publish a recipe newsletter. I haven’t sent it out on a regular basis but now I will send it out on a monthly basis.

A number of people asked for a recipe on flaky pastry
so I publish a recipe for a quick and easy pastry of the type used
in South African Chicken Pies and Cornish Pasties amongst other things

So I decided to include the entire newsletter on this blog as an exception

QUICK FLAKY PASTRY

INGREDIENTS:

500 g / 1lb 1oz cake flour
2 ml salt/ 1/2 tsp
7 ml/ 1 1/2 tsp cream of tartar
500g/1lb 1oz butter, chilled and then grated
150 ml/1/2 cup iced water

METHOD:

Sift the flour, salt, and cream of tartar together into a bowl.
Gently rub in the butter with your fingertips so that the mixture resembles small crumbs.
Using a knife, cut in the iced water.

Place the pastry into the refrigerator for at least one hour.

Lightly sprinkle a board with some flour and then roll the dough out onto the board.
Fold each corner of the dough inwards so that it resembles an envelope.
Roll out dough again and fold into envelope shape twice more before rolling out a final time.

Use the pastry immediately.

If baking the flaky pastry blind, place in a 240 C oven for 10 to 15 minutes.

If baking with a filling, place in a 240 C oven for 10 minutes before reducing the temperature to 190 C

Makes 1 kg.

TRADITIONAL CHICKEN PIES

INGREDIENTS:

250 g/ 9oz Quick Flaky Pastry
2 hard boiled eggs, shelled and sliced
1 egg yolk
a little milk to mix with egg yolk

Filling:

2 kg /4/lb 4oz chicken, cut into portions
6 allspice berries
6 peppercorns
3 whole cloves
6 blades mace
2 medium onions, sliced
10 ml/ 2 tsp salt
200 ml/ 1 cup chicken stock
30 ml/1 oz sago
150/ 1/2 cup ml dry white wine
1 egg yolk
10 ml/ 2 tsp lemon juice

METHOD:

Begin by making the filling.
Stew the chicken pieces with the allspice berries, peppercorns, cloves, mace, onions, salt, and stock until chicken is tender.
Remove the bones and the spices, taking care not to scald yourself.
Cut the chicken meat into smaller pieces.
Soak the sago in water until it is soft, and then add to the chicken.
Add the wine and simmer until the sago is transparent.
Stir in the egg yolk and the lemon juice and then remove from the stove.
Cool slightly.

While the fillin gis cooling, roll out the pastry and use it to line six small pie dishes.
Spoon the chicken filling into the prepared dishes and place a few slices of the hard boiled egg on top of the filling.

Cover with the remaining flaky pastry, crimping the edges together to prevent leaking.
Make slits in the top of the pastry.

Mix a small amount of milk with the egg yolk and brush onto pies.

Bake the pies in a 200 C overn for 15 to 20 minutes, or until golden.

.

PUMPKIN SOUP

INGREDIENTS:

1 kg/ 2lb 2oz pumpkin, peeled and seeded
2 onions
2 cloves garlic
30 ml/1 oz butter
1 litre/4 cups chicken stock
375/ ml / 1 1/2 cups milk
salt, milled black pepper to taste
1 ml/ 1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
grilled bacon bits to garnish (optional)

METHOD:

Cut the pumpkin into even-sized pieces of approximately 4cm in size.
Peel and roughly chop the onions.
Peel and chop the garlic into fine pieces.

Melt the butter in a large saucepan and then saute the onions and garlic until translucent.
Add the pumpkin pieces and the chicken stock
Cover the pan and bring to the boil, thereafter reducing to a simmer.

Simmer for approximately 20 minutes until the pumpkin is soft.
Place the soup in a food processor or blender. Alternatively push the soup through a sieve, or use a potato masher.

Return the mixture to the saucepan and add the milk.
Bring to the boil, and season with the salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

Place grilled bacon bits in on top of the soup in bowls and serve.

Serves six.
If after reading these recipes you decide to join the 6,800 readers of the FREE newsletter you can click here to sign up.
After all 6,800 readers can’t be wrong

OK seems the docs have got things right at last
I haven’t been in hospital since January & I’m now well enough to get my internet ventures up to date

This is a great recipe for a sweet Moroccan dessert in the form of fried honey cakes.

Normally you’d use a yeast dough for these desserts but the recipe has been changed somewhat using eggs and baking powder to achieve the desired lightness without the need for lengthy kneading (oops)

Cake Ingredients:
3 Eggs
1/4cup (60ml) orange juice
1/4cup (60ml) oil
1 Tblsp grated orange zest
1/4 cup (60g) castor (superfine) sugar
21/3cups (300g) All purpose flour + an extra 1/3 cup (40g) used for
rolling the dough
1 tsp baking powder
oil for deep frying

Syrup Ingredients
2tblsp lemon juice
11/4 cups (275g) sugar
1/3 cup (120g) honey
1tblsp grated orange zest.

For the cake mixture
Place the eggs, orange juice and oil in a large bowl and whisk until frothy. Sift in the flour and baking powder and mix with a wooden spoon until smooth. At this stage the mixture should still be a bit sticky Cover the bowl and set the mixture aside for from 1 to 2 hours.

Then sprinkle a little of the extra flour on the cake mixture and transfer it to a lightly floured smooth surface. Again using the extra flour work in just sufficient to ensure that the dough doesn’t stick to your hands

Using a rolling pin (or wine bottle..hic) roll the cake dough out until it’s approximately 1/4in (5mm) thick. The dough will be extremely elastic so you will need to keep rolling it out and resting it until it stops shrinking.

Using a round biscuit cutter (2in (5cm) would be an ideal size) preferably with a smooth and not serrated edge cut out round shapes.

For the syrup
add 11 fl oz (300 ml) to the lemon juice and sugar in a large saucepan. Heat this mixture stirring constantly until the sugar dissolves.Then bring the mixture to the boil as soon as it starts
to boil reduce the heat and simmer for 6 minutes. Add the orange zest and honey simmering for a further 6 minutes. Keep this mixture hot.

Frying the cakes
Using a deep frying pan heat the oil until a cube of bread dropped into it browns in 18-22 seconds. Fry the cakes four to five at a time turning once so each side is puffed and golden.. Using a slotted spoon, or tongs, remove the cakes and drain on paper towels.

Again using the slotted spoon or tongs, transfer the drained cakes to the hot syrup leaving them for long enough for the syrup to soak into the cakes. Remove from the syrup and serve hot or cold…

I bet these won’t last long in your house

Yep Ladies and gentlemen things are looking up

I’ve only been hospitalized 3 times since the last post
and the last one was only for one day.

They did some work on my heart the time before last and with the new retread I should, accorfing to the doctors, be good for another 100,000 miles.

So hopefully, gentle reader, we’ll be adding new posts/recipes on a regular basis from now on.

When I started this blog I debated choosing either Africa Dreams or Africa Dreaming as a name for it. I didn’t want to restrict it to cooking and recipes so Afri Chef wasn’t suitable. Anyway I chose Africa Dreams. Looking at the paucity of posts and reviewing my family’s recent history the better name would have been AFRICAN NIGHTMARE

This year alone I’ve managed to get myself hospitalized 4 times as an emergency case, and more often than not admission to the ICU ward.

Towards the end of last year my daughter slipped and fell at university fracturing one of her vertebra. This meant a week in hospital and thereafter 6 weeks in a full body brace, not being allowed to sit for the entire period… She could stand or lie down so couldn’t work at her computer…This didn’t help her progress for her Master of Music degree.

A couple of weeks ago, while I was in hospital, 4 armed men broke through our back security gate, tied up my daughter and our domestic help and then proceeded to ransack the house… This was an unmitigated disaster. However, when I consider what could have happened to my daughter and/or the domestic I have reason to be extremely thankful that only replaceable (in the main) goods were taken.

All the above, together with the fact that I enjoyed (major sarcasm) 5 hospital stays during the latter half of last year, conspired to prevent me publishing anything to this blog, sending out my free newsletter or adding anything new to my various websites. I have however recently added a section on pasta to the Afri Chef side of this website. The section comprises some interesting facts about pasta and some easy but delicious pasta recipes.
I’ve also started putting the long overdue newsletter together.

If there’s any truth in the postulation that the universe strives to achieve balance I should be on the brink of a pretty wonderful period… Let’s wait and see.

Well in spite of my optimism in my first post this year things haven’t turned out as I had hoped.

In fact I’ve succeeded in being admitted to hospital on three separate occasions this year.
The first time for a stroke, the second for pneumonia and the third for a major asthma attack.
The good news is that the strike was a minor one and I have basically recovered from it. Probably the worst experience was the asthma attack which resulted in me spending some time in ICU before being transferred to high care and after that for full recovery to the ward.

However, all the above including the necessary recovery time after leaving hospital has resulted in me not posting to this blog as I had initially anticipated and the work I had almost completed in so far as the diabetic section of the website is concerned has been left in abeyance.

Hopefully, in the spirit of optimism that I stated at the beginning of this year, as I have now recovered sufficiently to recommence my Internet endeavors, the rest of the year will prove to be extremely fruitful. In fact it has to be to make up for the last 18 or so months given that according to Universal principles there has to be some kind of balance. This being the case expect to see some major improvements/additions to this website and to the others that I have.

To plagarise a comment used by Queen Elizabeth II some time ago…2006 was an incredibly disasterous year as far as I was concerned.

In February my wife and daughter and daughter’s boyfriend where hijacked by armed gunmen in the driveway of our house. The *&(%$#@** got away with 2 cars, a 4 month old Kia Cerato and a BMW… However that wasn’t the major concern the worst was the trauma suffered by my wife & daughter and the boyfriend, all of whom had to undergo lengthy psychological counselling.

This was followed by my being diagnosed with cancer on my birthday (of all days) The initial biopsy revealed I had lymphoma. The subsequent Cat Scan and bone marrow biopsy showed that the lymphoma had spread to all my lymph glands and that I had mantle cells… This was pretty traumatic as the prognosis for mantle cell lymphoma is pretty grim. Average life expectancy being 1 year with only 5% responding to Chemotherapy, giving an average of another 18 months.

They retested to establish which of the 4 types of mantle cells I had… I waited 7 (working) days for the results, under sentence of death… The results showed that the first test had been an anomaly and no mantle cells were present…Talk about reprieve.

So…although I still have lymphoma it’s one of the very slow ones. As the oncologist said, “If I had to pick a cancer I should pick the one I’ve got, because average life expectancy is 28 years” At my age 28 years is somewhat irrelevant as I’ll die from something else before then.

However the cancer scare, coming on top of the hijacking, meant more trauma and counselling for my wife & daughter…

There were a couple of other unpleasant occurances, not for publication but altogether they resulted in some very trying months…As a result this blog and website, together with a couple of others were left very much alone throughout most of the year.

Offsetting the unpleasantness was the fact that, as a family we have drawn closer together in adversity and my daughter obtained her B.Mus degree cum laude.

Hopefully 2007 will be a totally different and happier year. In fact having a positive outlook I am very sure it will be…I’ll be putting up more than a few new pages on this site which I have almost ready…This will include a very much expanded diabetic section. together with some other interesting pages including an enlarged piece on South African Rooibos tea and South African Hoodia (bet most of you didn’t know the San knew about Hoodia centuries ago)

Michael

I’ve added a new section to my AFRICHEF website.
Yes, you’ve guessed! It’s general information about DIABETES and PRE_DIABETES together with a selection of DIABETIC RECIPES from the DELICIOUS DIABETIC RECIPES COOKBOOK which is for sale at US$14.95. Since the book contains over 500 specially selected diabetic recipes it’s a steal at this price.

Why should a website devoted to African recipes contain a section about diabetes and diabetic recipes, you might well ask? It’s rather simple actually! My wife Carol, a registered nurse and the Regional LIfe Underwriting Manager of a large multi-national Life Assurance Company, was diagnosed with Late Onset Diabetes 3 years ago.

In spite of her being a nurse the news that she was diabetic was rather traumatic. We thought that we’d have to change our lifestyle completely and that our previous enjoyment of food was something of the past. We believed that we faced a life of bland, boring and tasteless cuisine in order to comply with the restrictions of a DIABETIC DIET Nothing could have been further from the truth, we just had to learn to cook a little differently…

I set up the DIABETIC RECIPE section of the AFRICHEF website to show people that they could eat cookies, cakes and desserts that were equally as good and tasty as non-diabetic foods…

In fact not only are they far healthier for diabetics and non diabetics alike, they are often tastier…

Have a look at some of the sample diabetic recipes from the DIABETES and DIABETIC RECIPES section of my website, you’ll be glad you did.

BTW:- Carol has a Masters Degree in Business Administration.

Today I finalised, as much as a website is ever final, my new website.

Cooking is one of my passions, but if I had only one then life would be pretty boring and a single passion often turns to boring drudgery if not interspersts with something else.

If you have read “Meet the Chef” on main site, of which this blog is a part, you will have noted that I spent my early years in the veldt accompanied by my Rhodesian Ridgeback. Since then dogs have formed an integral part of my life. My family currently has 3 Yorkshire Terriers. I would love a big dog but since I feel that our garden is too small I share, somewhat reluctantly, the Yorkies with my wife and daughter.

My new site All the dog information you need makes for pretty good reading and will certainly help you understand your dog.

Michael