Vote for food!

After yesterday’s admittedly very blue post today something more fun. Let’s talk about food. Yes, you read correctly not pasta, but food. In general. All sorts of food. Food and the fact that I think it may have just been me who nominated my wonderful cousin Thekla for the Eat In Best Food Blogger Award. Because she just is!

A little over a year ago she started in this venture called blogging and though it was after Julie & Julia and Jamie Who not a new thing by far, there was something that she was just doing right… and different…and lovingly.
In a world of 50 course menus, blobs of food served in test tubes, and portions that make French cuisine look like a Mount Everest on your plate, there has been a new trend in food lately. Call it back to the roots. Old school is nouveau. Not little is more, but simple is. With her blog and service Domestic Goddesses I think Thekla has hit the mark of this new appreciation for honesty on a plate and simplicity in the kitchen.

For me personally...well, she was the one who inspired this little blog here. She also inspires me in the kitchen. I still mainly cook pasta, but I try and play with new things thanks to her. If I find a recipe I don’t quite dare to attempt myself I will take it to her. Most of the time she ends up cooking it while I keep company with a glass of bubbly or two. I just pretend I learn all there is while watching and do my share by chopping the occasional onion.

Out of an impulse when putting things in my kitchen after moving in, I put this picture of her and me up next to the stove. A picture taken when I had just moved here and had enough time to acquire a proper tan. Though it might be an odd place for a photo, I just like it there, cooking, looking at my inspiration – we look happy, it makes me smile.

When I was back home in August I went through old boxes of photos and I came across the one on the left. It was taken when I first came to South Africa 16 years ago. It shows Thekla's Mum Colleen and myself at some farm stall and though photographically it seems a silly picture (no faces, no scenery, no nothing) to me it sums up everything that drew me here in the first place: light, warmth, and extraordinary people.

I took it back to Cape Town with me and for some reason it found a fitting place in my kitchen as well. Considering that Thekla draws her cooking inspiration from her mother, I think it closes the circle nicely.

Now we get to the deal: Thekla is nominated and needs votes. Either you liked this post or you liked my cooking and since now know where it comes from – vote for Thekla!*

*Or I shall never cook for you again. Obviously.

What's cookin', Pastaholic?

After lots of Pastaholic stories and how I came to be one, I’ve decided that it is time to actually show what kind of pasta I usually eat. The ritual that happens in my house about every other night finally documented. If you are hoping for a recipe, don’t. I don’t do recipes, a fact that almost caused my last boyfriend and I to break up. Which we did eventually, but not due to recipes or lack thereof. I also don’t do complicated so if you really wanted to re-cook what I made last night, you could just take the ingredients and put them all together. It’s quite simple really.
I had a somewhat serious hangover yesterday. I came to realize that may have been because after bubbly and red wine I decided to almost single handily finish a beautiful bottle of desert wine as everybody else was going for the grappa. No headache though, which speaks for the quality of the wine. Regardless, I wasn’t a happy girl and whenever I get niggly due to too much alcohol, I start day dreaming about pasta. Obviously that is not the only occasion when I think of pasta, but this situation is a sure, reoccurring thing. Through the grapevine, I found two new food blogs and got very inspired by Chris’ Vongole. I got intrigued by the pictures, yes, but even more so by the suggested combination of drinking rose champagne with pasta. Where have I been all my life?? I mean I love pasta, I love rose champagne. I sounds like a match made in heaven.

Pasta + rose champagne or pink bubbly as we would call it here = Perfection

I’m not sure why I have been sticking to stupid old red wine with pasta when it clearly calls for a nice cold bottle of Old Man’s Sparkles. Though to be honest here, that wasn’t the plan for last night. Because I’m a) scared to make vongole by myself and b) I had a date. So if there was to be any drinking done, it would have to be in company. Not ideal for the way I felt.
Then I stars magically realigned. First I found this recipe from Sweet Paul, which was so profound and so beautiful and did not require any vongole and then my date cancelled.
You know you have become too good of a single if you are happy when a date cancels just so you can stay at home and eat pasta. But the feeling was good and I’m sticking to it. Here is what I did last night:

I love trying new pasta shapes and though this one wasn’t quite as exciting as I wish it would have been, it worked perfectly for what I had in mind.

Fresh prawns from Woolies – I totally lucked out as my store usually doesn’t carry them and I seemed to have found the last packet. They were delicious.

I’m not sure of their proper names, but these are blackish/green/red tomatoes from PnP. I am totally obsessed with them as they are full of flavour and the colouring is just freakishly cool.

Garlic, of course.

Parmesan grated two ways.

I forgot the lemon zest, but it actually turned out – it did not matter. And with or without the rose champagne (I was being good yesterday, so I can go to &Union tonight) it was so good, I could not not finish the entire pan.