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Baked Apple Salad with Pecans and Feta
Serves 4-5This delicious salad compliments the pork main course to perfection. It is also quite filling, so you can get away with smaller main course servings. If you prefer to serve the salad with the main course use our Butternut Soup as a starter.
4 red skinned apples, unpeeled but cored
¼ cup (60 ml) sugar
¼ cup (60 ml) water
1 T (15 ml) fresh lemon juice
1 punnet of rocket or herb salad
½ cup (125 ml) pecan nut halves
2 wheels feta, crumbled
Ina Paarman's Honey Mustard Dressing
Preheat the oven to 180°C.
Adjust the oven shelf to middle position. Line a baking tray with baking paper.
Core the apples and cut each one into 8-12 wedges.
In a medium/large mixing bowl dissolve the sugar in the water by microwaving for 2 minutes on high, stirring now and again. Add the lemon juice. Toss the apples in the sugar syrup and spread them out in a single layer on the prepared baking sheet. Pour over the remaining syrup. Bake for 20-25 minutes until softened and beginning to brown. Leave to cool.
TO SERVE
Heap the rocket onto 4-5 serving plates. Top with apples, nuts and feta. Drizzle with a generous amount of Honey Mustard Dressing.
CHEF'S TIP:
Toast the nuts briefly in a non-stick frying pan to crisp.
Replace apples with pears and use Blue Cheese Dressing and crumbled blue cheese in place of feta.
Apples can be roasted the day before and refrigerated in an airtight container, but bring to room temperature before serving.
Slow Cooked Belly of Pork
Serves 4-5Pork belly is wonderfully tasty but it is a tough cut. Therefore pre-cooking it slowly either in a slow cooker or in the oven in a covered casserole at 100°C is the best way to tenderise it. Finally we baste it and crisp the fat in a very hot oven.
1-1½ kg lean belly of pork, skin removed - ask the butcher to cut the surface fat into a diamond pattern
Ina Paarman's Meat Spice
1½ cups (375 ml) boiling water
Ina Paarman's Sticky Marinade
1 T (15 ml) Ina Paarman's Brown Gravy Powder
SLOW COOKER METHOD
Preheat the slow cooker on high. Season the pork lightly on all sides with Meat Spice. Place the meat in the slow cooker with the fat side down. Carefully pour in the boiling water on the side so as not to disturb the seasoning. Cover with a tight fitting lid.
Cook for 1 hour on high. Turn down to low and cook for a further 3 hours. Ideally done the day before so you can easily skim the fat off the gravy.
Preheat the oven to 250°C.
Remove the meat from the cooker and baste it all round with a generous amount of Sticky Marinade. Place it, fat side up in an ovenproof casserole and bake for ± 15-20 minutes. Baste every now and again so that you build up layers of stickiness and flavour. Leave to rest, covered with foil, for 5-10 minutes while making the gravy. Slice thinly. An electric knife does the job really well, otherwise use a very sharp carving knife.
TO MAKE THE GRAVY
Skim or pour off as much of the fat as you can. Mix 1T of our Brown Gravy Powder with 2T of water and stir it into the remaining sauce in the pot. Stir until thickened. This will give a thin gravy. If you want it thicker add a little cornflour or potato flour thinned out with water.
OVEN COOKING
Preheat the oven to 100°C.
Place the seasoned meat in an ovenproof pot or casserole, add the water, and cover with a lid. Bake for 4 hours. Pour the sauce off and put it into the deepfreeze to 'set' the fat, so you can easily skim it off. Proceed with browning, basting and making gravy as above.
Stuffed Courgette Flowers
Serves 4-5I can kick myself that only now, towards the end of the season, I have come across this fantastic easy way to do stuffed baby marrow flowers. Most other recipes suggest dipping them in batter and deep-frying. Here they are simply oven baked, far less fattening and a real 'wow' vegetable dish prepared in no time at all.
12-14 courgette flowers
1 x 100 g goats cheese rolled in black pepper (Fairview makes one for Woolworths)
½ cup (125 ml) ricotta or chunky cottage cheese
1 egg
2 T (30 l) finely snipped chives
1 t (5 ml) Ina Paarman's Green Onion Seasoning
olive oil
Preheat the oven to 180°C. Position oven shelf in middle position. Brush a medium, ovenproof dish with olive oil. 
Rinse the flowers very carefully in a bowl of water (a running tap will damage them).
Mash the cheeses, egg, chives and Green Onion Seasoning together. Stuff the flowers (no need to take out the stamens) with a heaped teaspoon of cheese mixture. Fold over the petals and lay them in the prepared dish. Drizzle with olive oil and bake for 20 minutes.
Buttered Noodles with Chives
Serves 4-5
250 g tagliatelli
2 t (10 ml) Ina Paarman's Green Onion Seasoning
1 T (15 ml) olive oil
1 T (15 ml) butter
3 T (45 ml) snipped chives
Boil the noodles in unsalted water according to pack instructions. Drain and toss with Green Onion Seasoning, olive oil, butter and chives.
CHEF'S TIP:
Put a cork in the pasta water, while boiling, it prevents foaming and the water from boiling over.
Leeks with Parsley Sauce
Serves 4-5Leeks are such an underrated vegetable and yet, if correctly prepared they are absolutely delicious. We are dressing them with a delicate parsley sauce flavoured with Stock.
6-8 smallish leeks
1 cup (250 ml) boiling water
1 T (15 ml) Ina Paarman's Chicken or Vegetable Stock Powder
½ cup (125 ml) cream or full cream milk
2 T (30 ml) Ina Paarman's White Sauce Powder
1 T (15 ml) butter
½ t (2½ ml) Ina Paarman's Garlic & Herb Seasoning
½ t (2½ ml) Ina Paarman's Green Onion Seasoning
¼ cup (60 ml) finely chopped parsley
Slice off the root ends of the leeks and trim the green part to about 4cm above the white. Start about 2cm from the root end and slice up and through the centre. Turn the leek 90 degrees and slice again, now separate the fronds with your fingers and rinse them well in a bowl with deep cold water to wash away any sand trapped between the leaves. Cut the leeks in thirds across the length.
Measure the boiling water into a medium sized saucepan. Add the Chicken or Vegetable Stock Powder and the prepared leeks. Cover with a lid and cook over medium heat until tender ± 10-15 minutes. Spoon the leeks out with a slotted spoon into a serving dish. Cover to keep warm. Add ½ cup of cream or full cream milk to the remaining leek stock in the saucepan. Mix the White Sauce Powder with 2T of cold water and use it to thicken the sauce. Stir in the butter and seasonings.
Add the parsley and pour over the leeks.
Ice-Cream in Goblets Served
with Stewed Gooseberries and Apple
Serves 8A real dinner party treat. We all agreed that this is one of the most delicious desserts we have developed to date.
ICE-CREAM
1 x 250 g Ina Paarman's Lemon Cheesecake
1 cup (250 ml) water
2 cups (500 ml) fresh cream
Mix as per pack instructions. Leave to stand for 10 minutes. Line muffin pans with paper cups. Heap them with the mixture and freeze.
STEWED GOOSEBERRIES WITH APPLE
Enough for 8 servings
400 g gooseberries (1 heaped cupful)
1 cup (250 ml) water
*½ cup (125 ml) vanilla sugar
2 T (30 ml) lemon juice
2 cored, peeled Granny Smith apples, coarsely grated
Simmer together, without a lid for 20-25 minutes. The fruit mixture will taste quite sour, but don't add more sugar. When served with the ice-cream it is perfect. Chill in the fridge.
* If vanilla sugar is not available. Add ¼ teaspoon vanilla essence or better still, ¼ of a vanilla bean split in half lengthways.
CARAMEL
Caramel goes sticky quite soon when exposed to the atmosphere. Store it flat and open in the deep freeze if preparing in advance.
½ cup (125 ml) white sugar
3 T (45 ml) water
Line a tray with non-stick baking paper.
Use a smallish saucepan with a long handle. Put the sugar and water in the saucepan and shake regularly over high heat until the sugar starts to melt. Keep shaking and tilting the pot until the caramel is a dark golden colour. Pour it out onto the baking paper and tilt the tray to spread it as wide as you can. Leave to cool. When rock hard shatter with a knife to get shards of caramel (it will look like broken glass).
TO ASSEMBLE
Edible flowers to garnish e.g. tiny violets.
Take the ice-cream out of the freezer at least an hour before to soften a little. The dessert can be assembled an hour before serving time and left in the fridge. Add the caramel at the last minute.Spoon the Gooseberry and Apple Sauce into balloon shaped brandy glasses. Remove the ice-cream from the paper cups and carefully lower into the glasses with two forks or pierce with a kebab stick and lift. Scatter flowers around the ice cream and spear each one with an upstanding shard of caramel.
Wine suggestion:
This month's wine suggestion is courtesy of Le Bonheur. Le Bonheur (happiness in French) is situated in the Stellenbosch Wine of Origin District and draws wine lovers who are content to sip fine quality wines and enjoy the seemingly timeless atmosphere of the estate.
LE BONHEUR SAUVIGNON BLANC 2009 is a perfect accompaniment to the Baked Apple Salad - great fruit and perfect balance of acidity will compliment the apple and be fresh with the nuts and cheese:
| Colour: | Brilliant with a greenish tint. |
| Bouquet: | A powerful nose of green figs, asparagus and tropical fruit. |
| Taste: | Crisp and fresh with the bouquet carrying through to the palate, particularly the green figs and tropical fruit, creating a lively melange of flavours. |
| Ageing process and potential: | The wine was left on the lees for three months to concentrate the flavours. |
For main course, the oaked LE BONHEUR CHARDONNAY 2009 with its buttery nuttiness will be perfect with the pork belly and the buttered noodles will just LOVE a splurge of Chardonnay:
| Colour: | Straw yellow with green tints. |
| Bouquet: | Fruity with dried peaches and apricots with vanilla in the background. |
| Taste: | Fresh and crisp with a creamy entrance and subtle citrus and apricot. |
| Ageing process and potential: | This Chardonnay will develop well with another three years of ageing. |