Polpette – that’s what the Italians call small meatballs. Now you could say ‘small meatballs’ when you serve this up, but it’s a lot more fun to give it your best Italian inflection and shout ‘polpette’! Recipes for polpette are legion, with each Italian nonna or mamma giving it her own special twist. Some add herbs, some garlic, some chilli, [...]
Frikkadels or frikadelle – my dictionary offers meatballs or rissoles as an alternative. Now I don’t readily disagree with lofty tomes but, well, balderdash. Because for me a meatball can be any size, made of any meat, and contain pretty much anything in addition to the meat. And that folks, is not a frikkadel. Nope, to be a true frikkadel, [...]
Burgers, done properly, are a thing of beauty. They’re super easy and cheap to make. Best of all? They’re actually quite healthy. Now before the fast food insults start flying, let me qualify. A burger is healthy IF you make it yourself, because you’re in control of what goes in. Use good beef mince, and not much more than a [...]
‘Gatvol’. Most of my compatriots would need no explanation. But to my readers in other countries, it’s kinda like fed up – times a thousand. And that’s exactly what I was last week. Because why? Because load shedding. (For my foreign readers ‘load shedding’ is our quaint, euphemistic term for electricity blackouts.) Now normally this would not make much of [...]
In my experience, bobotie is a little bit like opera. Few folks seem to be neutral about it. They either love it or loathe it. I happen to be rather partial to both. Growing up, bobotie was very much a ‘special occasion’ dish – for high days, holidays and, rather bizarrely, funerals. And that’s just silly because few things could [...]