When you need to cook to impress.

Sometimes you need to impress, usually with very little effort, or skill. You know, like a date scenario where you’ve just bragged about what a great cook you are (and earned yourself some major brownie points), and now you actually have to prove it. Eek!

I don’t know about you, but I am terrible under pressure. If I think someone in the car is judging my driving, I’ll do all the mistakes they’re looking out for. Fail. If I know I’m cooking for someone and they’re judging my skills in the kitchen, I’ll probably mess it up a little. Double fail. So, my mother always used to infuriatingly tell me again and again when I was still a fledgling cook in my teens, but with much wisdom, that i should stick to something simple and tested when catering. It takes the pressure off you, and you should know it like the back of your hand. And if you REALLY want to impress with something a little more exotic, test it out before. Preferably a few times. Until it doesn’t flop.

So here is an incredibly simple recipe, that is always a winner with the guests. The squid-ink pasta, although not crucial, just makes it a little bit dramatic. So they’ll think you’ve been slaving over the stove for ages (our little secret). Just make sure you get the pasta/sauce ratio right!

Squid-ink Spaghetti with a Creamy Porcini Sauce

Ingredients:

• 125g porcini mushrooms
• ½ cup chicken stock
• 2 cloves of garlic, crushed
• ½ tsp dried chilli flakes
• 6 sprigs of thyme, leaves removed
• 3 Tbsp mascarpone
• 2 egg yolks
• Zest of 1 lemon
• Handful flat-leafed parsley, roughly chopped
• 250g Spaghetti al Nero di Seppia (I.e. squid-ink pasta)
• Shavings of parmesan, to serve

Method

– Put a pot of water to the boil, then add pasta and cook until al dente.
– Meanwhile, heat some olive oil in a pan over medium heat, and fry the garlic, chilli and thyme until garlic has turned golden.
– Add the porcini mushrooms and fry for a few minutes, until the mushrooms have browned and softened. Add the stock and continue cooking until the liquid has reduced somewhat.
– Add the mascarpone and stir until melted through. Drain the pasta, leaving a few tablespoons of the cooking water, then add to the sauce with the cooking water (as much is needed to make sauce silky) and toss over the heat until well coated.
– Take off the heat, add the egg yolks and stir through. Add the lemon zest and parsley and serve with the parmesan on top.

Chickpea, orzo and feta Salad

One of the articles I wrote for the Varsity Newspaper was aimed at establishing the basics that could get them by. Student pantries (or, rather, solitary food cupboards) are notoriously under-stocked. Which makes deciding what to make for dinner quite a mission. I suggested a few basic ingredients all students should always have on hand that make the base for so many simple, delicious and healthy meals, and a few recipes that use them. Student or not, most people’s lives are somewhat chaotic, and useful ingredients to have on hand to make delicious, quick and healthy meals will make life a whole lot simpler. Here’s what I always have stocked in my kitchen:

Avocado: While this ingredient is a little on the expensive side, a little goes a long way. Other than dressing up almost any salad, it’s amazing mashed on toast, in wraps, or as a dip for nachos.

Pasta: This is an obvious one, as pasta dishes can be made as simply as just adding fresh chopped tomato, pesto and feta. Pasta is the kind of ingredient that can be used with anything left over in your fridge.

Lemons: Lemon juice makes simple and healthy dressings for salads, gives extra flavour to chicken and fish, and is used in almost all Asian cooking.

Feta: Not many salads taste as good without this yummy ingredient! It also works well in pastas, on pizzas and crumbled over avo on toast.

Spring onion: a little fresher than onion, spring onions add that little bit of zing to any dish, and is good both cooked and fresh.

Chilli, garlic and ginger: This should always be in the fridge! Woolworths sell a great little four-pack for R17.99 that has all three of these ready and mashed, so you don’t have to do any of the prep, and it lasts the week.

This recipe uses many of the above ingredients, and is ridiculously quick to make!

Chickpea, orzo and feta salad

Serves 2-3 people

Ingredients:

½ cup orzo pasta rice
500ml chicken stock
1 can chickpeas, drained and rinsed
1 spring onion, chopped
1 round feta, crumbled
Any salad vegetable, chopped (e.g. tomatoes, peppers, cucumber)
Handful fresh mint, chopped
Handful fresh basil, chopped
1 tsp chopped green chilli
Juice of half a lemon

Method:

Bring the chicken stock to the boil, then add the orzo and boil until al dente (around 10 minutes). Once the orzo is cooked, add all the remaining ingredients and dress with the lemon juice, salt and pepper.

Tip: Orzo rice is delicious in salads and pasta bakes, but can also be substituted with couscous or another type of grain.

A week’s worth of healthy meals: Courgette and Creme Fraiche Pasta

I know it’s a cliche to start off the the new year on a healthy note. It’s the reason Virgin Active gives away hundreds of red adidas backpacks if you join  at the beginning of the year (do they still do that?), and also the reason you see these backpacks on nearly everyone’s backs around Cape Town. Students, I observed, seemed to be particularly vulnerable, maybe because at that young age we believe a new year will cause us to become entirely new people. Like the type of people that actually go to gym regularly and eat healthily 90% of the time. And I, also being a student, am entirely guilty of this mind set, believing I might have a life-altering revelation that will cause me to be become like those few higher mortals. But, alas, like all normal and less-than-perfect people, I’m still stumbling after the first month. How could I make this year be different?

So I figured if I made it a type of project, to discover, try out and blog as many healthy meals as I could, it will appeal to the dominant foodie side of me. Now don’t get me wrong, I will still be making and enjoying home-baked cakes and forbidden foods like risotto and pasta and pizza. I mean, I tried out a new cake recipe just the other day. But I’m going to try and include as much fruit and as many vegetables as I possibly can into a meal, and do the whole yadda-yadda-moderation thing. And I share more of my cake, so my friends and family are happier too. It’s a win-win situation.

Monday starts with a healthy twist on my absolute starchy favourite: pasta. This recipe was actually thought up by my friend Daniela, who passed it on to my roommate, who kindly shared a bite and got me hooked. It fulfils all the requirements for a delicious meal, being starchy and cheesy and gooey, but also packs the wholegrain and vegetable dose in. It’s also incredibly quick to make, so it’s perfect for a weekday meal, and there’s very little cooking involved, i.e. less dishes to wash ! You see, a student at heart.

Courgette and Creme Fraiche Pasta

Ingredients:

250g Wholewheat Pasta

2 cloves garlic, peeled and crushed

300g courgettes, grated

125g creme fraiche

1/2 chopped up green chilli (optional, and to taste)

Handful parmesan, to serve (optional)

Method:

Bring a pot of water with 1 Tbsp salt to the boil, then add the wholewheat pasta and garlic cloves and continue boiling until al dente (about 15 minutes).

Drain the pasta, leaving 2Tbsp of the cooking water over, and remove the garlic cloves. Add the grated courgette, creme fraiche and chilli, and continue cooking, continually tossing, until glossy and thick.

Season with salt and pepper to taste, then divide into bowls and sprinkle grated parmesan over.

Serves 3-4 people.

A little tip: As you might have noticed, when I write out a pasta recipe, I also include saving a little of the pasta cooking water, adding the sauce, and tossing over heat until glossy and thick. I’ve read over and over again that this is the secret to perfectly coated pasta like the restaurants make it.

A note on courgettes:

Courgettes are one of my favourite vegetables, and not only because I have more than one name to to call it (zucchini and baby marrow can be substituted). It can be used in salads, stews, traditionally in ratatouille, but is often best sliced thinly, grilled, and served among braai meat or in salads (I have an amazing courgette, mint, pea and quinoa salad I’m intending on sharing sometime soon). A more exotic use of courgette involves the flowers, which can be stuffed, dipped in a batter, and deep fried, which is traditionally Italian. I’m on the lookout for them, as they’re usually only sold at fresh farmer’s markets, and not often in supermarkets, so I can try it out! Courgettes are well paired with chilli, garlic, mint and strong cheeses.

Springtime Linguine

Don’t you ever find that you end up collecting so many recipes that you feel like you’ll never get to cook/bake all of them? No. Oh well, I get that feeling all the time. I’m a budding collector of cookbooks (sometimes I just like the look of them!) and I rip recipes out of magazines left, right and centre. My cooking board on pinterest (‘Culinary Delights’) happens to have the most pins out of all the other boards. Sigh. How is a girl supposed to cook all of it? So while trying to cook a multitude of new recipes, there is one springtime recipe that shows its face every season, pushing the new recipes aside. This recipe is adapted from Jamie Oliver’s ‘Summertime Linguine’- seeing as I’m having it in the springtime, I thought I’d give the name a twist. The linguine is tossed with the simplest of ingredients: pine nuts, flat-leaf parsley, olive oil, parmesan cheese and lemon, chopped up into a paste and beautifully fragrant. This dish is eaten with the nose before the tongue even tastes it! I happen to have a fellow lover of the recipe, my friend Jenna, who makes sure she’s always there when it is cooked (or maybe it’s just always cooked when she’s there!). This is best made to share on a balmy day after a day on the beach, it’s just that kind of simple recipe.

(Serves 2-3)

Ingredients:

100g pine nuts, semi-crushed

Juice and zest of 1 lemon

Handful flat-leaf parsley, roughly chopped

50g parmesan cheese

3 Tbsp Olive oil

125g linguine (I used wholewheat, it has a wonderful nutty flavour)

Salt and pepper, for seasoning

Bring a big pot of water to the boil with a teaspoon or two of salt.

Meanwhile, combine the pine nuts, lemon juice and zest, parsley, parmesan and olive oil.

Cook the linguine until al dente, about 6 minutes, then drain, but keep at least 1/4 cup of the cooking water.

Put the linguine back in the pot over the heat, add the pine nut mixture and continue tossing until the mixture and the cooking water have created a thick sauce that coats all the strands of pasta. Season with salt and pepper to taste.