Classy comfort food.

The week before last was a bad week.  Last week was worse.  My kids and dog were threatened with a firearm, then I discovered my daughter was the victim of some hate email, my dad had a bad round of chemo, but hey, we all laagered-up (that’s gathered around in a protective circle for you non-South Africans, and not lagered-up as in Castle Lager) and we dealt with it.  Or so I thought.  Obviously some of us are better at dealing than others and the residual fallout inevitably splashed over into the rest of my week.

In my heart of hearts I’ve always had this vision of myself as an elegantly clad Greta Garbo type.  Bizarrely, my husband has this same image.  And I say bizarrely because this elegant, organised alter-ego is diametrically opposed to the reality of my life.  I’m actually more Goldie Hawn than Greta Garbo, more Commedia del’arte than Film Noir.

I won’t go into all the sordid details, I’ll just hit you with the highlights.  Sunday afternoon, packed Deli, one of our regular customers happens to be sitting in the window overlooking the busy road.  He quietly informs me that there’s a bit of an odd situation going on with the parked cars.  A car alarm is going off and they have just seen someone disappearing into the car.  They think he could be hotwiring it.  Okay, I say, and I step outside to take a look.  So far this is all in the realms of possibility.  This is South Africa we are talking about.  I’m just going to check it out so I can ask around the deli if it is anyone’s car.  ‘Oh fudge!’  I murmer very quietly (not) ‘That’s my dad’s car!’  and I promptly abandon the shop and take off running up the road.  Now I’m not really very fond of running, and halfway there common sense starts to rear its unwelcome head.  What am I going to do if someone is trying to steal my dad’s car? 

I arrive on the scene and slightly apprehensively, peer into the car only to find one of our kp’s on his knees with a dustpan and broom in his hands, cleaning out the car for my dad.  ‘Oh, it’s you Alex’  I say, to which inane comment I get a perfectly reasonable blank look.  I turn around to go back to work, only to find the entire human contents of the deli on the pavement, with one socially minded gent running up the road behind me, ready to back me up.  Needless to say, his coffee went on my tab, and yes, I’m still blushing.

Monday was no less harrowing as we had to put our 15 year old siamese cat to sleep.  We were all still reeling, and after such a long week at the deli no-one had had time to go shopping for home.  The kids got home from school, we dug a grave next to our other cat in the garden and interred him with due ceremony and one of his favourite shortbread biscuits for the journey.  Then I got busy scrounging through a very bare larder in the effort to cobble together some sort of supper.  1 cup of jasmine rice, a few bits of salad, a small box of frozen shrimp and a package of frozen marinara mix.  Unusual finds really as we generally don’t eat frozen shrimp and/or marinara mix.  Still, neccessity is the mother of invention.  I picked some lemon thyme from my mom’s pot at the front door, heated some butter, put the rice on to cook and flung the contents of the freezer into the buttery pan. 

‘Oh fudge!’ I murmered genteely (again not!) ‘Look at this!  This is shocking!  There’s a massive rusty fishhoek in this marinara mix!  I can’t believe this!’  All wrapped up with a tracer (I think that’s what it’s called, I’m a cook, not a fisherman) and loads of fishing line.  My genteel murmer must have been reaching concert level decibals because my mom heard me from upstairs. 

‘What are you cooking?’  she called down to me.  ‘Don’t use the stuff in the freezer, that’s Tud’s bait!’

You can always rely on your family to back you up in a crisis.  But clearly mine didn’t fully appreciate how close to the edge I was.  Amidst their gales of laughter I flung ’supper’ in the bin, stuck a few stale slices of sourdough in the toaster, and opened an emergency tin of pilchards in tomato sauce, before stomping downstairs to sulk. 

My sister has been dining out on this story all week, but I have only just managed to bring myself to repeat it, perhaps so you will understand why I completely and utterly failed to send in my entry for Johanna’s round of WTSIM… Bistro Food event.  She mentioned the dearth of desserts in the event, but the roundup was full of fabulous dishes so pop on over and check it out.  And anyway, although this is a French apple flan recipe, I’m not entirely sure it is Bistro Food.  It’s certainly the comfortingly country French version of a great British pub Apple Pie, and served while still warm with lashings of whipped cream, made me feel better, even after the fortnight from hell!

The recipe is posted to the sidebar (as usual), so enjoy.

a lone dawn kayaker in our gorgeous bay

I know that I normally just write about food and family, but there is so much of my last six months in Africa that has touched me deeply that I want to share it.  These sights, smells, frozen moments that I’ve captured on camera have infused my senses and recalibrated my soul.  Like looking in a mirror, these African reflections remind me who I am.

This is one of a series of photographs I took one dawn in January.  It was very early and the sun was just rising over False Bay.  My heart swelled in instant empathy with the lone kayaker, surrounded by the rarely pond-calm sea.  He must have felt both huge, and mightily insignificant.  He raced across the bay from Fish Hoek to Muizenberg so fast, as if knowing that the sea might wake before he made it.  I scrambled to get my camera adjusted in time to snap him as he passed through the beam of sunrise, to no avail.  It was difficult to be disappointed though.  I still carry the vision in my mind’s eye, and at least I can share this pic, snapped a few seconds later with you.  Double click on it to bring it up full size, take a deep breath, and imagine for a moment that it is you who balances so precariously atop all the vast ocean….

A fabulous five page feature in May's Garden & Home

A little while ago a multi-talented and extremely stylish friend who happens to love food, steered a journalist friend of hers my way.  And so, via Morne (many thanks Morne) I met Gill Cullinan.  She arranged to come and meet me and my family for a laid back brunch, bringing along a very talented photographer, Henrique Wilding.  Turns out, we’d met Henrique years before when we helped her out with another shoot she was doing when we were still at Groot Constantia.  Also turns out, they are two extremely nice ladies.

Cheese and pesto muffins, and artichoke flan

Actually, nice is such a tepid word.  They were fantastic.  They may have got more than they bargained for with my noisy (and as Gill puts it: ‘boisterous’ family ), but they showed no fear , and so, like most of our family gatherings we all wound up in the kitchen, all talking at once, screeching with laughter, tripping over dogs, salivating over fresh cheese muffins and artichoke flan,  and generally getting on like a house on fire.

gravadlax on molasses seed loaf, and honeybaked granola

I don’t know how Gill did it, but she managed to get almost everything we said in passing, down verbatim, and weave it into a beautiful story that really shows the importance of family to me and my food style.  And as for Henrique, I will be forever grateful to her for making my food look so scrumptiously good and also for making me look much better than I did in real life that morning.  (I have decided I’m all for airbrushing, because let’s face it, if you’re going to get snapped for posterity, you may as well look good).

Thanks ladies, it was great fun, and thanks to my mom, my sister Kalli, who helped with the styling, and my daughter Dakota & puppy, Jedi, who helped with the eating.

The five page feature is out now, in May’s South African Garden & Home magazine, so pick one up if you are in SA or check out their website. 

Oh, and the cherry on the top:  Yesterday morning I had a call from a Mr Taylor, owner of a guest house on the Garden Route.  Mr Taylor was making the cheese muffins from our recipe in the magazine and just wanted to double check that the amounts printed were correct.  They are, and I hope your muffins came out beautifully Mr Taylor.  Mine came out of the oven about 15 minutes after your call, and were delicious.  It really is one of my favourite recipes.

my gorgeous Tud at Greyton river in November 08

It’s difficult to tell exactly how you will react in a crisis unless you’ve been through one or a hundred.  As a family we’ve been through our share and it’s becoming fairly easy to predict that my sister will be transformed into someone emminently sensible, my mother will cope with her usual equanimity, quiet strength and grace, I will shout at anyone I love who I feel is in danger, and my dad will take instant and calm control, drawing on a lifetime of experience, common sense, intuition and humour, to bring us all safely through.

That was before my dad, my Tud, was diagnosed 10 days ago with advanced leukaemia, and the bottom fell out of my world.

I have written often in this blog about my mother, Kassie, and how her gentle love permeates everything I do, spicing my kitchen and my home wherever I am in the world.  I have written only once about my Tud, but don’t mistake that for a lesser love. 

Like Africa, my love for my dad seeps deep into the bedrock of my soul.  It is the dark, rich soil beneath my feet and the salt scented oxygen I breath.  It is the passionate European blood pumping through my veins and the dusty African tears tracking down my cheeks.  It is the childish laughter bubbling out of me and the solid comfort of his all forgiving hug.  It is a constant, living, thrumming, immutable truth that will not waiver or fade, whatever the time or distance that separates us.

It is the poet in me that comes direct from him, which sees the beauty in a war torn world, or the quiet dignity of a decent man, regardless of circumstance.   It is the warrior in me that also comes direct from him, that understands the  unshakeable loyalty to family and the sacred bond of friendship as he taught me.  And it is the child in me who all my life has had the utmost certainty of my place in his heart and the immensityof his love who cannot conceive of a life lived without him.  And I am not the only one.

The day after he discovered what he was up against, he received 89 messages on his phone, and that was after he stopped answering his calls because he couldn’t keep up.  Bush telegraph is an amazing thing once it gets going, transcending longitude, latitude and time zones, and it seems my dad has made an indelible impression on more than a few people around the globe.

His boys, Rory and Eduardo, who are his sons in all but blood, are travelling from Russia and England to see him. Distance never being a bar to their closeness.  By a strange confluence of serendipity, lifelong childhood friends like Bing and Dereck will also see him shortly, from as far away as Aus and the UK. 

He has been overwhelmed by the out pouring of love, cameraderie and friendship that has come his way, and the unswerving belief that he can fight this, that he will fight this. 

Last Sunday he was the honoured guest at the most incredible lunch.  Surrounded by kids and special friends, he was feted and fed, he had a sonnet written for him by the amazing Bar, and he reclined like caesar on a chaise lounge whilst Beezey read to him from the acid but oh-so-funny pen of AA Gill.  He was presented with a beautiful painting with a message that touched him to the core.  And Beezey, he wants you to know he’s certain he’s seen trout in the river…

His life is full of those he loves and those who love him, and whilst he is as unafraid of death as he has always been of life, we are not yet ready to say goodbye.  Thankfully, he is not yet ready for farewells either.  When his doctor informed him he could have ten years with chemo, or ten weeks without it, he said: ‘I’ll take the ten years thanks, I’m a bit busy right now!’

So on Tuesday, when he faces the biggest battle of his life, we will all be holding our breaths in collective hope and anticipation, that just this one more time, our hero, our mentor, our poet warrior, will refuse to accept what fate has dealt him, and will instead throw down the gauntlet, laugh in the face of the enemy, and ultimately, be carried victorious from the battlefield, back to the life, love and laughter which has always overflowed from him, and to his family, who will otherwise be lost without him.

Tuddy our Bud, we love you.  You, who taught us that bravery is our birthright, are the bravest of us all.  I believe that if anyone can win this one, you can.  You are a most uncommon man.