This is my last post of South African meals, because I’ve run out of photos…. If this subject thread hasn’t made you want to climb on a plane and head to restaurants in South Africa, you either eat at McDonald’s on a regular basis or had your taste buds excised.
carpaccio 3 ways: kudu, crocodile and beefeven the bread is freshly made and lovingly presentedmaster architects put these meals togetherIt was a wonder we didn’t lick our plates after every mealI remember the speckled item as an indescribably delicious puree of vegetable infused with seeds
For everyone else, the cooking in South Africa is beyond delicious! Uwe and I are still raving about the meals we ate every single night we were there!
My books are Broken In: A Novel in Stories, Tsunami Cowboys, Grounded, and The Trail Back Out.
Tsunami Cowboys was longlisted for the 2019 ScreenCraft Cinematic Book Award. Broken In: A Novel in Stories was semifinalist for the international 2020 Hawk Mountain Short Story Collection Award from Hidden River Arts and Finalist for Greece’s 2021 Eyelands Book of the Year Award (Short Stories). The Trail Back Out was the 2023 San Francisco Book Festival Winner for General Fiction, American Book Fest 2020 Best Book Award Finalist: Fiction Anthologies, Runner-Up for the 2021 Top Shelf Award, 2021 IAN Book of the Year Award Short Story Collection Finalist, and awarded a 2021 Wishing Shelf Red Ribbon. The title story The Trail Back Out was longlisted for the 2021 ScreenCraft Cinematic Short Story Award.
Click here for my author page to learn more about me and purchase my books.
Ah yes, more photos of our meals in South Africa last November.
all details edible and perfectly alignedeven the tiniest feathery bits are precisely placedanother dish almost too pretty to eat….if only these chefs made house callscould these BE any prettier??
“I intend that my last work shall be a cookbook composed of memories and desires.” ~ Alexander Dumas *
My books are Broken In: A Novel in Stories, Tsunami Cowboys, Grounded, and The Trail Back Out.
Tsunami Cowboys was longlisted for the 2019 ScreenCraft Cinematic Book Award. Broken In: A Novel in Stories was semifinalist for the international 2020 Hawk Mountain Short Story Collection Award from Hidden River Arts and Finalist for Greece’s 2021 Eyelands Book of the Year Award (Short Stories). The Trail Back Out was the 2023 San Francisco Book Festival Winner for General Fiction, American Book Fest 2020 Best Book Award Finalist: Fiction Anthologies, Runner-Up for the 2021 Top Shelf Award, 2021 IAN Book of the Year Award Short Story Collection Finalist, and awarded a 2021 Wishing Shelf Red Ribbon. The title story The Trail Back Out was longlisted for the 2021 ScreenCraft Cinematic Short Story Award.
Click here for my author page to learn more about me and purchase my books.
I use my mom’s copy of the first edition, clearly a much used and battered cookbook (there are even pages in it that are singed from when Mom placed them too close to the burners)
Julia Child was born on August 15, 1912 in Pasadena, California. She was an American cooking teacher, author, and television personality. She stood 6’2″ (1.88 m) tall and is famous for the ground-breaking cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Childs hosted cooking shows I remember my mom avidly following. The National Museum of Natural History has a room dedicated to her original kitchen. When I visited, I joined a group of other people: all of us watched videos of her cooking show. In her honor I am reprinting a post I wrote after visiting the restaurants of Estonia and Latvia. – Jadi
Uwe and I made our first trip to two of the Baltic states. We spent a couple days each exploring Riga, Latvia and Tallinn, Estonia. Along with sparking a brand-new curiosity in the Hanseatic League [1], these cities introduced me to the northern European food scene.
Oh. My. God. We ate incredible meals every night. What made those meals so special is an insistence on local products and a reverence for tradition, but with a modern spin. The chefs did delicious things with grains like kasha, and groats and millet, and barley. For years I have firmly insisted that German bread is the best on the planet, closely followed by breads baked fresh in India [2]. Now there’s a new guy on the (bread) block: the pumpernickel and dark breads of the Baltics.
A starter with local smoked salmon
We ordered dishes with elk, deer, fresh and smoked fish.
A different restaurant’s smoked salmon with trout cavier, accompanied by rolled slices of cucumber… and a third restaurant’s smoked salmon appetizer. Art on a plateTraditional beet borscht soup, updated with yellow lentils and pieces of elk meat that melted in my mouth
We enjoyed the local cheeses and beers. For the first time in my life I ate (and loved!) kippered herrings. Everything was decorated with edible flowers and herbs, and served up with intense purees of once-uninteresting and now fascinating root vegetables. Everything was presented as a work of art. This is food to die for….
First course of wild mushrooms sauteéd and served in spinach blini purses
Without further ado, here are some of the plates from our feasts. Every night we forgot to photograph at least one course. We were too busy enjoying our food!
Lamb marinated in juniper berries served with yellow beetroot cream, cranberries and barleyFresh fish with beet root puree and kale (out of all the meals we ate, the kale was the one item that was not perfect)Venison stew with roasted onion halvesBeef with sweet pepper-eggplant-onion millet squares, oyster mushrooms, water cress and johnny-jump-ups
A shout out to the amazing restaurants Von Krahi Aed and Rataskaevu 16 in Tallinn, as well as Peter Gailis and Melna Bite in Riga. Labu apetīti and jätku leiba! [3]
Hibiscus poached pear, pumpkin seeds in apple syrup, and raspberry sorbet
In memory of Julia Child, August 15, 1912 – August 13, 2004
My books are Broken In: A Novel in Stories, Tsunami Cowboys, Grounded, and The Trail Back Out.
Tsunami Cowboys was longlisted for the 2019 ScreenCraft Cinematic Book Award. The Trail Back Out was American Book Fest 2020 Best Book Award Finalist: Fiction Anthologies, Runner-Up for the 2021 Top Shelf Award, 2021 IAN Book of the Year Award Short Story Collection Finalist for the Independent Author Network, and awarded a 2021 Wishing Shelf Red Ribbon. The title story The Trail Back Out was longlisted for the 2021 ScreenCraft Cinematic Short Story Award. Broken In: A Novel in Stories was semifinalist for the international 2020 Hawk Mountain Short Story Collection Award from Hidden River Arts and Finalist for Greece’s international 2021 Eyelands Book of the Year Award (Short Stories).
Click here for my author page to learn more about me and purchase my books.
Two weeks ago, I posted about crispy fried big black hairy spiders. I admit it…. I had fun thinking about grossing you out.
Believe me, when I saw the size of those buggers that day at the rest stop, I wasn’t just grossed out. I was really, really happy that they were behind glass.
I felt bad (okay, only slightly) for scaring the small children and grown men in my reading audience. So this week, I’m bringing you another food post, but in the opposite direction: Food as Art.
Uwe and I just made our first trip to two of the Baltic states. We spent a couple days each exploring Riga, Latvia and Tallinn, Estonia. Along with sparking a brand-new curiosity in the Hanseatic League [1], these cities introduced me to the northern European food scene.
Oh. My. God. We ate incredible meals every night. What made those meals so special is an insistence on local products and a reverence for tradition, but with a modern spin. The chefs did delicious things with grains like kasha, and groats and millet, and barley. For years I have firmly insisted that German bread is the best on the planet, closely followed by breads baked fresh in India [2]. Now there’s a new guy on the (bread) block: the pumpernickel and dark breads of the Baltics.
A starter with local smoked salmon
We ordered dishes with elk, deer, fresh and smoked fish,
A different restaurant’s smoked salmon with trout cavier, accompanied by rolled slices of cucumber… and a third restaurant’s smoked salmon appetizer. Art on a plateTraditional beet borscht soup, updated with yellow lentils and pieces of elk meat that melted in my mouth
local cheeses and beers. For the first time in my life I ate (and loved!) kippered herrings. Everything was decorated with edible flowers and herbs, and served up with intense purees of once uninteresting and now fascinating root vegetables. Everything was presented as a work of art. This is food to die for….
First course of wild mushrooms sauteéd and served in spinach blini purses
Without further ado, here are some of the plates from our feasts. Every night we forgot to photograph at least one course. We were too busy enjoying our food!
Lamb marinated in juniper berries served with yellow beetroot cream, cranberries and barleyFresh fish with beet root puree and kale (out of all the meals we ate, the kale was the one item that was not perfect)Venison stew with roasted onion halvesBeef with sweet pepper-eggplant-onion millet squares, oyster mushrooms, water cress and johnny-jump-ups
A shout out to the amazing restaurants Von Krahi Aed and Rataskaevu 16 in Tallinn, as well as Peter Gailis and Melna Bite in Riga. Labu apetīti and jätku leiba! [3]
Hibiscus poached pear, pumpkin seeds in apple syrup, and raspberry sorbet
For everyone else, the cooking in South Africa is beyond delicious! Uwe and I are still raving about the meals we ate every single night we were there!
