Lekker: Tomato Bacon Summer Sandwich

This isn't a real post. It's just a sandwich. But the Roma tomatoes in my garden are going nuts and I'm putting them on EVERYTHING. This is my very favourite summer sandwich, so chock full of bursting freshness I could eat it every day.

Tomato Bacon Summer Sandwich
makes 2 sammies

What You Need
4 pieces of your sandwich bread of choice; I love the fresh Tuscan something-or-other from Trader Joe's but you can use any fresh bread with a nice crust and soft insides
1 avocado, mashed and seasoned with S&P to your liking
a few Roma or heirloom tomatoes, sliced into thin lengths
6-8 slices of bacon, cooked to desired crispness
handful of pea shoots (I suppose you could use any sort of sprout here, but the pea shoots have this delicious, sweet-pea taste to them with the most amazing deep green color and fresh crunch; I can only find them at Trader Joe's)
South African Smoke seasoning from TJ's (I swear they should be paying me for how often I cite them; if you can't find this or don't have a Trader Joes near you, you can try experimenting with other smoke seasonings but to me this is the key ingredient--I've made it without, and it's just not the same)

What You Do
Toast the bread slightly, just to give it a bit of crunch. Smear the avocado on each slice; please do not insult this sandwich by putting mayonnaise or butter on it. Avocado is nature's butter, bitches! Use it. It's full of healthy fats and antioxidants, and it's in season. No excuses. Next, layer the tomatoes on top of the avo and add the smoke seasoning and more S&P if you want it. On the other slice, pile on the bacon and the pea shoots on top of it. Snap a photo and Instagram it like a true food hipster and make everyone around you roll their eyes (I don't care; tag me @southafricanbokkie in it) and then dig in.

WOMAN, MAKE ME A SANDWICH!

 Because really, I want one too.

Lekker: Momma's Roasted Butternut Squash Soup

Hello all, and TGIF! I suppose since it's a Friday I should have a fancy featured cocktail recipe of some sort but I've been sitting on this one for a few days and wanted to share it. I have ALSO been challenged to dream up a Mac-and-Cheese Martini, so that's bouncing around in my head for the future. If YOU have something you want me to attempt, e-mail me at SouthAfricanBokkie@gmail.com--I do love a challenge!

So, let me preface this recipe by saying that it is just slightly more complex than some of my other recipes. It doesn't require any special skills, but it'll take just over an hour to complete and requires two "specialized" tools (if you want to call them that) that aren't reeeeeeally that specialized: a citrus zester (though you might be able to get away with the really really fine holes on a cheese grater) and an immersion blender or a regular blender. If you don't have an immersion blender and you're a regular cook, I highly suggest you get one. KitchenAid I think makes one for like $30 and I've found it to be immensely useful over the years for all sorts of soups, sauces, pestos, etc. But, you can of course use a regular blender for this as well.

This particular recipe is very near and dear to my heart because it is the creation of my dear sweet Mamon. I suppose most memories take on a bit of a rose-hued patina after someone you love dies, but beyond my personal connection with this recipe it's just really GOOD and unique. Many people don't realize what a beautiful soup butternut can make, and most recipes call for a curry taste while this one is so bright and fresh it's almost like springtime. That's why I serve it year-round, really. Wanna give it a shot? Course you do, it's damn delicious.

Roasted Butternut Squash Soup
makes enough for 2 people, IMO
total time: this took me exactly 1 hour and 10 minutes to do, so basically one episode of Orange Is The New Black

What You Need
1 butternut squash, about 2 pounds (or 2 pounds' worth of pre-cut butternut if you can find it...but it's not as good as fresh!)
1 medium onion
Dash or two of white wine
~2 cups of chicken broth or stock
1 orange (normally I give options for lazy people substitutions but not here! This is a must!)
3 T sour cream
vegetable or canola oil
salt & pepper
fresh or dried parsley, to taste

Optional Garnishes: I like a little bit of textural contrast in my soups so I typically top it with a handful of croutons. If you want more creaminess or tang, use a dollop more of sour cream or try crème fraîche. Want a kick? Add a drizzle of sriracha, which looks pretty against the bright yellow too. Or if you really want to be utterly decadent (who doesn't?) you can fry up some bacon or panchetta and top it with THAT. Now that is delicious.

Anyway, 'nough of that. We have to actually MAKE it first before we go garnishing away.

What You Do
1. Preheat your oven to 400 degrees. First thing you have to do is process your butternut into manageable 1-inch chunks and this is the most time consuming part. BE CAREFUL. Use a sharp chef's knife and go slow, cutting it into circles first and then slicing off the skin. (You may want to use a smaller paring knife for that part.) Scoop out the seeds and discard. Chop up into 1-inch pieces and toss with the oil and salt and pepper to get it nicely seasoned. Spread them out evenly on a baking sheet lined with foil and place in the oven for about 10 minutes.

 Look how pretty!

Something like this. My hand slipped on the oil decanter so this is a bit over-oiled; don't do that because I had to use tongs to put the pieces in the pot to avoid everything becoming an oily mess. Pain in the ass.

2. While that's going, heat a tablespoon of oil (or butter if you want for this stage) in a large pot over medium heat. Dice up the onion and fry it up until it gets all...golden and nice smelling. You can add the wine at this stage; any kind will do but I'm usually drinking Sauvignon Blanc and no, I don't measure, I just tip my wineglass over until I think it's enough. If I was pinned against the wall to give a measurement, I guess I'd say 1/4 of a cup? Little more? What do I know, I'm pinned up against a wall and thinking about other things.

Ahem. Moving on.

3. OK so your onion is sizzling nicely on the stove with the wine and if the buzzer has gone off for your butternut it's time to take it out, give it a quick toss and put it back in for another 10 minutes. You want them to roast up nicely without drying out, so just use your judgement. I'll admit that the original recipe called for simply boiling the butternut, but I find that roasting it gives it such a fantastic depth of flavour that I don't think I'll ever boil it again. At this point you can add the chicken stock to the pot and bring it up to a slow boil. Get to work zesting the entire orange (putting the zest aside to add in a second) and juicing it; you'll want to strain it to get rid of the pulp.

 Since you're zesting, find an orange with a really nice, bright orange healthy skin color. Bonus points if you use a South African navel orange!

4. BZZZT. Squash is done, right? Good. Add it to the pot along with the fresh orange juice and orange zest and go to town with that immersion blender. You want it to be really nicely blended with no chunks. If you're opting to use a blender here, you may have to work in smaller batches and just please for the love of God BE CAREFUL, it is a hot mixture and it will go into a glass container that will also immediately become hot. Now that it's all blended it's time to taste. Adjust salt and pepper to your liking and add parsley for color at this stage, too. Feel free to tweak the amount of chicken stock depending on how thick or thin you like your soups. Let it all simmer together for another 5-10 minutes while you toast up some French bread to serve alongside it, or make a salad or drink another glass of wine. If it's all yummy and bright and spring-y, you can take it off the heat now and stir in the sour cream. Serve right away. Bathe in praise and adoration from your dinner guests.

That's it! In my opinion it's totally worth the work and I always get rave reviews when I make this. Hope you do too.

Kisses,
G

Liquor: Gin Rickey

This isn't a real recipe. I'm only posting it because it was so beautiful outside yesterday that I decided to take my book ("Z": A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald by Therese Anne Fowler) outside to the patio to read, and because it was a day ending in "y" I had plans to have a drink. In keeping with the theme of the Roaring 20's of the novel, it didn't take me long to decide on an absolute classic: a Gin Rickey.

Gin Rickey

What You Need
1.5 ounces gin (or 2 ounces if you're feeling wild; I like Bombay Sapphire)
juice of 1 freshly squeezed lime
club soda

What You Do
The proper way to serve this drink is in a tall Collins glass, which is a clear glass with tall straight sides and a thick bottom, but this is also supposed to be an easy, relaxed drink so you can make it in a Pyrex cup for all I care. Put in some ice, squeeze the lime really well over it and add the gin. Top off with fresh club soda and stir gently. I like to throw in a quarter of the squeezed lime because I like a little bit of the bitterness from the oils of the lime skin in the drink, but it's not necessary. You can garnish with a regular lime wedge or a couple of pretty lime slices if you're feelin' fancy. Go outside, sip, and enjoy.

Lekker: Crispity Crunchity Cuke Salad

This isn't a "real" recipe. This is just one of my favourite salads of all time, one I grew up with and learned at my Mom's elbow and was inspired to eat for dinner last night as a way to get more of my delicious homemade feta cheese into my mouth (recipe coming soon).

I was looking forward to this salad all day; it's so crunchy and refreshing and light and just what I wanted after a cathartic run. Also I'm single and busy, so make no mistake I'm not making full fancy meals for myself every night. I grabbed an English cucumber from Trader's Joes and my currently-preferred olive oil (100% cold pressed, 100% organic from Spain and only $5.99 at TJ's) on my way home from work, thinking I'd use the gorgeous vine-ripened tomatoes I'd pick up from the store only a couple of days ago. WRONG! They were, already, a rotten soggy mouldy mess. I don't deal with disappointment well, so I had a beer. Then, PING! I thought to check out in the garden. My housemate TB had told me that our current tomato cycle was over, but I wandered out there anyway and I found more than enough gorgeous, bright red, PERFECT Roma tomatoes waiting to go into my salad.

I know I'm lucky. Not everyone has these luxuries and I'm well aware of my fortune in TB.

Crispity Crunchity Cuke Salad

makes 1 large salad for a really hungry chick

What You Need

1 English cucumber, peeled (it's the long slim one in the plastic wrap in the grocery store; I like it because I think it's crunchier than the traditional cucumbers, but obviously use whatever you like, this is not Nazi Cucumber)

a handful of Roma tomatoes or any other kind you like, in proportion to the amount of cucumber

feta cheese, same in proportion

olive oil

lemon juice (fresh squeezed or bottled, whatever you have)

S&P

What You Do

It's a salad with like 3 ingredients, how complicated do you think this is? Dice up the cucumber and tomatoes into cute little bite sized pieces. Toss it with enough crumbled feta cheese until you're satisfied. Dress it lightly with equal parts olive oil and lemon juice, salt and pepper to taste and stick it in the fridge to marinate for 15 minutes while you drink another beer and pat yourself on the back for making a salad. Nom.

Sometimes, GOOD doesn't have to mean complicated.

You can see I added some diced kalamata olives here because I wanted more salinity since my cheese was much milder than I'm used to. If you're using store-bought feta cheese I would leave the olives out, because that's a LOT of salt, and bloat works for no one.

Lekker: Clean Eating Egg Muffins

Mornings suck. Well, most mornings. Weekend mornings are the best because they usually involve sleeping in late, cuddling up next to someone special, mimosas, and of course, bacon. However, something went wrong with the universe and time and space and we only have two weekend mornings and five weekday mornings per week, which is some crazy bullsh*t if you ask me, but there you have it. Weekday mornings are their own special kind of hell if you're not a peppy morning person and, like me, have the bar set so low that if you can make it out the door to work with coffee in hand and your dress on the right way out you're already impressed with yourself.

So, breakfast. Ain't nobody got time for that during the week.

But we know it's important! While coffee *is* an appetite suppressant, it's not enough to keep me from turning into a real Moody Judy until I can finally eat lunch at noon. And THEN, that's usually not enough to hold me over until 6:00 PM when I get home and can ravenously destroy something before I go to the gym. It's a terrible system and I would be grouchy in the mornings when my blood sugar bottomed out, and then feel guilty and stupid later on in the afternoon because I couldn't stop myself from snacking around 3:00 PM. These are all poor decisions when you're trying to eat right and make intelligent choices so you can binge guilt-free on the weekends.

I was looking for a reasonable solution that would not require any effort on my part in the morning and stumbled across this recipe on Pinterest. I gave it a whirl several weeks ago and have been hooked since. You can go to the original source recipe, of course, but here is my version that's pretty short, sweet & simple. I whip these up on a Sunday evening and it takes me about 15 minutes of prep plus the baking and cooling time. Even you can do this. One episode of New Girl and they're basically done.

Clean Eating Egg Muffins
makes 12 muffins, a dozen eggs = a dozen muffins so scale up or down however you want

What You Need
1 dozen eggs (I like organic eggs because I think regular eggs taste like weak nothing and will probably kill you, but you do you)
Veggies of your choice, finely diced (see list of suggestions below)
Salt/seasoning of your choice & pepper (I like Lawry's seasoning salt)

Optional: shredded cheese and/or diced meat. Obviously this adds more calories to it. I've never added meat because I try to eat a more vegetable heavy diet when possible, and if I'm going to eat meat it's going to be a delicious grilled steak or perfect French cut pork chops, not some sad soggy breakfast sausage. I used cheddar cheese the first time I made these, omitted it the second time and didn't miss it. Up to you, homie.

What You Do
1. Heat your oven to 375. Grease a muffin tin REALLY WELL with whatever spray you have around. You've already finely diced up your vegetables into little pieces, so throw those into the muffin tin all evenly.

2. Crack a dozen eggs into a bowl, add salt and pepper and whatever seasonings you like and beat it with a wire whisk like it stole from you.There should be all sorts of little frothy air bubbles in it. Gently pour that on top of your veggies; it'll soak in around all the spaces between the veggies nicely.

3. Bake at 375 for 15-20 minutes--for me, it's 16 minutes on the dot every time. They will be huge and probably will have run over the muffin pan a bit; chill out, it's not the end of the world. They're going to collapse as soon as you take them out of the oven. Let them cool for 5 minutes, then run a knife around the edges and pop them out onto a baking rack until they've cooled completely. Pack them up into a giant Ziloc bag and toss in your fridge. Grab two each morning, heat in the microwave for 1 minute and voila, low-cal, protein-packed breakfast goodness is served. I nosh on mine around 10 AM with a small glass of Naked's "Green Machine" juice smoothie and it keeps me full and focused until 2 PM.

Veggie Suggestions: My go-to is baby spinach, tomato, red bell pepper and scallions. Once I made a "Sante Fe" type version with red bell pepper, green bell pepper, lots of onion, cilantro and sriracha beaten into the eggs. That was the bomb dot com. Next week I plan to do a mushroom and broccoli run. Zucchini and cucumber have a lot of water in them so don't use those because it'll make the muffins all mushy. Just use your judgement; whatever you'd throw into an omelette you can throw in here.

I'm not a genius, I don't know what the nutritional content of these actually are but a whole organic egg has about 70-80 calories each, and if you keep out the cheese and meat this is ONLY GOOD THINGS that you can stuff your face with and feel awesome about doing it.

UPDATE 09.03.13: I just did a batch with diced baby bella mushrooms, kale and turkey pepperoni since that's what I had in the fridge for this week, and they are AWESOME! The turkey pepperoni only has 70 calories per 15 slices so I used 10 and diced it up finely. It adds a nice kick and richness and some salt too. I'm going to investigate using cupcake liners next time, though, because cleaning the pan every week is a real bitch of a task.

UPDATE 09.16.13: I did a broccoli, mushroom and pepperoni mix this weekend and tried to use cupcake liners. DO NOT DO THIS. The cupcake liners did jack nothing and got all soggy in the fridge and the egg muffin still stuck to that, so...that was a completely pointless endeavor. I'm going to try swinging by Target next pay day for a silicone muffin tin to see if that might be the final solution. (I can't say I cared for the broccoli in the muffins, either, and won't be doing that again.)

UPDATE 10.09.13: My dear friend Momma Bird told me that I should use the foil cupcake liners and remove the waxpaper liner that usually comes on the inside of those. GENIUS! Use the foil liners and spray those with Pam, and the muffins pop out of those much easier and cook more evenly too. 

I probably over-filled them a bit here, but to me it's NBD. You can fill them up to only 3/4 of the way if you want more "pristine" muffins. 

Eat with a glass of this for maximum superhero capabilities. Until lunch, anyway. (DON'T EVEN TELL ME YOU DON'T LIKE IT BECAUSE IT'S GREEN. Stop it with that nonsense, you haven't even tried it yet. It's delicious.)

Liquor: Grapefruit Crush

I really don't know WTF is going on right now, it's 90 degrees outside and football is on. Something is not right. I'm gonna go ahead and assume that it's still summer though because I'm not ready to pack away my wedges and white denim shorts yet, and THIS was the drink of my summer: a Grapefruit Crush. I discovered it on a girl's trip with my chickadees Tiny Bird and Lilypad to Annapolis, Maryland at O'Brien's Steakhouse. The bartender there was a barred lawyer, mixing drinks because it paid better than being an attorney, which caused no small amount of anxiety about my budding legal career...but the vodka fixed that.

O'Brien's original recipe calls for Finlandia grapefruit vodka shaken with fresh-squeezed grapefruit juice and topped off with Sprite. *I* could never find Finlandia and I forgot about the Sprite until just now, so this is my drink:

Grapefruit Crush
makes 1 refreshing drink

What You Need
Absolute Ruby Red Vodka (I keep mine in the freezer so it's always nice and cold)
1 fresh squeezed pink or red grapefruit, whatever you can find
Ice

What You Do
Throw some ice into a glass (crushed is cool if you've got it). Pour in some vodka, how much you want is probably in direct relation to how your day was. I usually use two shots' worth because I like my drinks strong. Squeeze the hell out of a grapefruit into the glass. Scrape the fruit against the side of the glass and get all that pulpy goodness in there. Don't worry about the seeds, they're just little baby thin white seeds and they won't bother you. You can fish them out I guess but don't make this weird, if you're so tightly wound that you have to do that then you DEFINITELY need this drink. Mix it all up with a long spoon and drink up, preferably giggling with girlfriends or at a pool somewhere. I like this drink because it's so simple you can still make more even if you're kinda drunk already. If you wanna get crazy you can add that Sprite for sweetness or fizz or whatever. I'm sure I'll try it that way next time if I can remember.

Cheers!

Stuff Yo Face

My name is G and I'm a Foodstagram wench. I admit it! 80% of my Instagram feed is the food that I grow, buy, prepare, plate and ultimately stuff my face with. That's why this blog is here, because the shit I make is simple and delicious but not so simple that the instructions for replicating it can fit in an Instagram comment. That's the point of making good food, to share it.

So!

I called this blog "Lekker & Liquor" because I was born and (mostly) raised in South Africa, and "lekker" is a slang word for awesome, cool, righteous and epicly chill, and that's the kind of food I aim to make. And "liquor" because, well, didn't you hear me? I'm from South Africa (and a bit from Germany and a bit from Latin America) and we only drink on days that end in "y". Good booze goes with good food like white on rice and some days there is no sweeter sound than that of ice being shaken up inside stainless steel.

About my kitchen: I lucked out with finding a bomb-ass housemate on Craigslist, TB, who happens to be a kitchen and bath contractor--so our kitchen is AWESOME. This is not normal for a 22-year-old, trust me, I know I'm lucky. Due to my general passion for food and cooking, I also have a few more specific tools and skill sets than the average person my age but whatever, I promise the stuff I make is easily replicable by anyone.

What you won't find here is fancy food photography (come on, please, this is the iPhone generation and Instagram and Picstitch are my friends) or pretentious hipster cocktails with 13 different ingredients, one of which is the tears of the parents who put those kiddies through interpretive dance school or whatever. I am inherently lazy and I like to get the vodka inside me sooner rather than later.

That's about it for now. Bottoms up, amigos!