Affogato and other cool things

 "Doodskoot" at Mariana's.

One of my favourite New York desserts, eaten at Al di La and 'inoteca, appeared on two Cape menus recently: at Uitsig in Constantia, and at Mariana's in Stanford.

I remembered Mariana's version - named Doodskoot (lit. "death shot", as from a gun) because of its accompanying shot of Grappa or Amaretto (I chose the former) - from about six years ago, when I ate there with my mother. I was able to replicate that meal to the letter last weekend: ajo blanco, jambon persillade (quivery morsels of ham in aspic, with parsley), and the affogato, above. Not sure if that menu ever changes, but it was nice.

 Vince's dive watch being cooled off so that it could measure ambient temperature. We thought it was lying when it said 37'C.

A farmer was selling his first-of-the-season hanepoot grapes about 50 seconds away, and I was sorry not to have found those highly perfumed grapes hiding beneath the the cool white soup in my bowl, below, but Mariana's version, with lemon oil dribbled over and ice cubes that melted in front of our eyes on a 37'C/98'F day, was good, if very light on the garlic.

I was so hot that another gasket threatened to blow and I prevented an explosion by rubbing ice cubes up and down my arms. They melted fast. Inbetween top ups of wine we rinsed our glasses with ice and water to cool them again. Within ten minutes the wine in the glasses would be lukewarm again.

Uitsig's Affogato, above. Espresso in this country seems uniformly good. Ice cream seems uniformly too sweet.

And soon it will be time for Re-entry.

Insalata Caprese with nasturtiums?

 I've been thinking...

Would nasturtium leaves, cut into thin ribbons (chiffonaded, if I must be proper), and added to tomatoes, buffalo mozzarella and purple basil be...wrong?

I had forgotten about the simple nasturtium until I saw their butter yellow flowers trailing up and down a picket fence in my mom's herb garden. Their leaves are delicious, peppery and apparently antimicrobial. As a child I was instructed to go into the garden and wrap one leaf around a small piece of cheese, to chew for sore throat relief. The cheese was my reward for taking the medicine.

I have not eaten them for a long time, but while thinking of ideas for AOL's Shelterpop I got the bright one of "Grow your own Lunch." Well, my lunches turned out rather green, and why not? Growwe bruin brood, as we say (rough brown bread), nasturtium leaves, and grated sharp cheddar. Lekker. And mighty good for you.

Still tinkering with that favourite salad.

And tinkering with the blog: to constantly post mega, screen-eating pictures does not seem justified unless they are very good, and obviously not all of them are. These two pictures, for instance - they're nice, the first one is better, but they're not spectacular. Does one want an entire screenful of OK nasturtium leaves?

Does one want nasturtium leaves in one's Insalata Caprese?

We shall see. A last lunch on Sunday, hopefully under the tree. Friends and Interesting People to feed.

Picnic with benefits

We are back in Cape Town after a long weekend staying at the house of friends, on a beautiful vlei in Stanford. A few days and a few nights took us much farther than we could have imagined. Quiet water, flocks of flamingos, croaking blue cranes, high white dunes, a seal surfing in the turquoise sea.

In a week we will be leaving for New York. There is a lump in the throat. I miss home. And I will miss home.

Back in Cape Town we went to Kirstenbosch for a picnic. I had not packed a cork screw. Don't ever not pack a cork screw. Even if it is prosecco. All the usual tricks did not work with the bottle of bubbly whose flush-with-the neck cork refused to leave the bottle. We now know that the gift shop does not sell cork screws. Poor Vince went down the hill then up the hill to no avail. The bubbles in the glasses belong to Appletizer.

Above, Protea repens. Not many proteas in bloom right now (their season is winter and spring), but this is a beauty. Below, silver tree, Leucadendron argentea.

Gardenia lutea in bloom with fruit at the same time. If you live locally, hurry and get there while they last. A flower a day.  These small trees are planted in a large clump at the top of the Cycad Amphitheatre and smell delicious.

The ericas were inundated with orange breasted sunbirds. They are remarkably unafraid and watching them was wonderful.

 

Guinea fowl and Cape francolin visited our picnic and begged.

The figs were firmly plump and sweet-tart, the melon cold and sweet, the quiches flaky-fresh and their filling barely set. The wine stayed firmly in its sleeve, waiting for another day.

The noon day gun

Last week we walked up the slopes of Signal Hill above the Bo Kaap, through a dusty garden belonging to the Noon Day Gun Tea Room and through an open but warning gate in a no-nonsense razor wired fence, to see where the noon day gun is fired every day.

It was long past noon, but I had never seen the gun and imagined a solitary affair and someone in uniform standing to attention, through all weathers.

It was a very odd place, with a funny feeling. Dry, dry, dry, dust-packed, with many hacked and blue-painted agave stumps, bar the two survivors framing the stadium, many covered guns pointing at the harbour below, and the two in-use guns, dating back to the eighteenth century, surrounded by deserted colonial-era buildings and bunkers, a flock of creaking guinea fowl and a wonderful view.

I got very hot. The sun struck my head like a gong (who wrote that?). Later I blew a gasket round the corner from the Atlas Trading Company - I could actually feel it happening. I sent heat-resistent Vince to take pictures of the Bo Kaap and sat in the car with the air the conditioning blowing full blast and the reflective silver screen on the dashboard, gonging the sun back at itself. Then my gasket felt better. I went into the spice shop, browsed, allowed my hair to become perfumed with cloves and cardamom and left again.

There is something about the noon day gun enclave.

Below it is the tea room, through whose dust bowl garden (it has been hot, water is expensive) we climbed. That part was quite human, and I would like to eat at the tea room where one can apparently find a good biryani. On our way down we met a Muslim man walking down, too, cradling a wilted orchid in a plastic pot. I think it is his garden. The lemon tree in it had been watered.

But I digress.

And must end there, since I cannot put my finger on it.

Kirstenbosch in Garden Design

The fruits of Gardenia lutea.

My piece about Kirstenbosch for Garden Design went live recently. Fresh pictures, new stories. More reasons to visit Cape Town!

2/7/11 -Disclaimer: there are no skunks in the Conservatory at Kirstenbosch! I read the piece hurriedly before our trip and discovered several typos, especially the one about skunks, which ought to have been skinks. While I am perfectly capable, ahem, of manufacturing my own typos in blog posts,  I tend to go over copy for paying concerns with a fine tooth comb. So until these glitches are corrected, and they have not been, yet, please take my word for it: Skunks are NOT performing natural pest control in the glass house. That role falls to the far less furry, and far better scented, skink.

Windowboxes

 

In downtown Cape Town someone with a sense of humanity built a block of flats.

And someone grew something...

Logging

After an aborted climb up the mountain (thick mist, wind, cold, turn back) above Constantia Neck, we walked down the jeep track through the recently felled plantations.

Initially I had been sad to think of the big trees being chopped down, but after thinking about it for two minutes I realized that the fynbos returning is a far better thing. It cannot grow under the pines and eucalyptus that were planted here, and the water the exotic trees sucked up belongs better to the plants that make this part of the country, and world, unique. Already on the felled slopes lobelia, pelargoniums, gnidia and struthiola were growing and blooming...

2/12/11 - for an educated view of the complication of felled forest + fynbos, read Marijke's post at her Biodiversity Blog and more specifically her comment to my question, there.