He Cooks?

My culinary skills are limited… but, since I seem to have impressed some folks lately, here’s some dead easy recipes I’ve got tagged.

 

Fruit crumble

Dry Ingredients

• 1 cup self-raising flour
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 1 cup butter
• half cup ground almonds
• pinch salt

Spices

Half teaspoon each of ground ginger; allspice; cinnamon and nutmeg.

Fruit

Whatever you like really. Try apples, pears, nectarines, cherries, rhubarb etc. I like adding granadilla (passion fruit) for extra tartness.

All together now

Mix the dry ingredients in a mixer, keep in fridge till required. Half an hour before cooking place crumble in freezer. Butter up a cooking dish, slice the un-peeled fruit roughly into the dish — sprinkle with spices. Grate the frozen crumble over the fruit. Bake at 200 degrees celcius for 35 minutes.

 

Mielie Pap

Polenta — sort of. Essentially ground corn meal. A staple food of Africa done in the microwave with extra corniness.

Ingredients

• 2 cups Braai Pap
• Tin Sweetcorn
• Butter
• Pinch Salt

Process

• Place braai pap in a liddable dish, add salt. Add boiling water slowly to mix while stirring with a fork. You just want to coat all the meal with water.
• Cook in microwave for 5 minutes on High.
• Remove, stir vigorously with fork, add tad more water — if required.
• Cook in microwave for 3 minutes on Medium.
• Remove, add sweetcorn and lotsa butter.
• Cook for 4 minutes on Medium.

That’s it. The trick is not to add too much moisture — otherwise you end up with porridge. Using a fork gives a crumbly consistency which I like.

 

Pizza Dough

Ingredients

• 1 cup warm water
• 1 envelope active dry yeast
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 3 cups white bread flour, divided
• 1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
• 1 teaspoon salt

Process

• In the bowl of your heavy-duty mixer (like a Kenwood or KitchenAid), stir together the water, yeast and sugar; let sit until the mixture is foamy, which takes about 5 minutes.
• Add 1  1/2 cups of the flour, the oil and salt into the yeast mixture and, using the knead attachment combine until mixture is smooth.
• Add remaining flour, turn up the speed and let the machine knead the dough for about 3 minutes; it should be very smooth and perhaps a bit tacky.
• Feel free to add an extra minute or two of kneading if you wish; it won't hurt the dough at all. Add small quantities of water if the dough seems too dry.
• Rub the insides of a large mixing bowl with a little olive oil; remove dough from machine, form into a ball, and place into oiled bowl, turning dough over to make sure all sides are coated.
• Cover bowl with dish cloth and place in a warm, draft-free area to rise; the dough should nearly double in size, which will take about 60 to 90 minutes.
• When dough is ready, lightly punch it down and knead it a bit, leave in bowl until ready to start making pizzas. Divide into five equal balls, sprinkle a dusting of flour onto work surface and roll out the pizza base with a rolling pin.