I am not sure where they are originally from, but you find chimney cakes for sale all over central Europe. They are light and fluffy, and drizzled with sugar and cinnamon. Best eaten hot, you’ll never forget the amazing taste. And the secret ingredience, as clearly stated, is love butter.
One of the many coffee bars in Italy; you find them all over the county. Many are just a bar counter where you order a quick yet most excellent expresso on your commute. This particular coffee bar was at the Napoli railway station.
There is a new distillery in Town. Deep South Distillery opened its doors to the public mid-December, so of course we had to pop over for a visit. They have a small but well-equipped operation, you can have a short tour of the production area where you can see the pot and column stills, and then a generous gin-tasting in the bar area (if you ask nicely you might even be able to taste some rum).
We sampled both their clear and pink gin; both are very different and both are very well made. You get both the tour and tasting for R60. Don’t go when you’re in a rush, because it is a leisurely tasting which includes experimenting with different additions to the gin’s to see how the flavour is affected (eg lemon peal, orange, thyme etc).
Of course we came home with a bottle of both the pink and clear gin, and have been enjoying some wonderful experimentation with some fantastic gin’s in the evenings. Make some time and pop down to the Deep South in Kommetjie. You can find them here on Facebook, and their phone number is 021 783 0129.
Zakopane there are small cheese market stalls, selling an amazing smoked cheese from the region. The salty cheese is called Oscypek, and it is mostly made from sheep milk, but also from cow and sometimes goat.
On every street corner in
It is great on its own, but even better when they heat it on the coals and serve it with a little cranberry sauce. You can buy just one or two pieces of the cheeses, or buy a big block to take home. We did both, but when we arrived back in Cape Town all our clothes smelled of smoked cheese…
Warning: it is very addictive.
When we arrived in our apartment in Athens, we found that a section of one of the walls had been turned into a chalk board shopping list. Except that instead of a shopping list, we saw the recipe for a Greek Salad. We had eaten plenty of them by the time we arrived, but now we had a real recipe from a real Greek host in Athens.
How to make a Greek salad
Here’s how it looks!
Here’s one of my favourite recipes – a hearty sour soup from Poland. No it does not have a sour taste, but it contains fermented rye flour which gives it a unique taste.
There are two parts to the recipe – making the zakwas – the base, and then the actual zurek.
The base for zurek
Mix the flour with the boiling water until there are no lumps. Then set it aside to cool. Add bread crust (it should sink completely), garlic, and remaining water. Put the mixture in a jar or clay pot covered with gauze or a delicate piece of cloth. Let the mixture sit for 3-5 days at room temperature (each day mix the ingredients a little). As the flour ferments, there will be some lactic acid bacteria and wild yeast, and you will smell the sour rye-bread smell. You can use it immediately or put it in the fridge (it can be stored for about 2 weeks).
Zurek
Directions
Original source: http://blog.polishorigins.com/2013/06/26/zurek-traditional-polish-sour-soup/
This is about as traditional as Viennese street food goes, the humble Vienna sausage. The Vienna sausages from Vienna are nothing like we get at home. They are not the mass-produced slightly suspect sausages we think of. Rather they are top-quality.
You can find them on almost any street corner, usually served sliced with (not on) a roll, with a little mustard or tomato sauce on the side. They are great value and perfect for filling the lunch-time gap.
Lunch time
A selection to choose from
If you weren’t at the burger festival this weekend you lost out. They should have more correctly called it the burger and beer festival, because there was plenty of amazing craft beer.
It’s great to see how many small scale breweries there are now in Cape Town, and tasting how good some of the beers are! There was plenty to taste, and the beer community has such amazing people in it – so passionate about their beer, and so willing to share.
Of course beer goes hand in hand with burgers, and it was difficult to choose which stand to buy a burger from. I eventually settled on a 3-cheese burger – mozzarella and cheddar mixed into the patty, topped with blue cheese from Fat Harry’s. I don’t normally eat chips, but after a 30k run this morning I was hungry, and I am glad I ate the chips. Without a doubt they are the best chips I have ever eaten.
It turns out that Fat Harry’s is a restaurant in Harfield Village; I will be taking a turn there to try their other burgers. Here is their website. http://www.fatharrys.co.za
Here’s a pic of my burger; you can decide for yourself how good it looks.
Vienna is known for its coffee shops, and with good reason! The coffee and cakes are wonderful, enjoyed in the splendour of comfortable leather armchairs. I could get quite comfortable with Viennese life.
I had coffee with whipped cream, enjoyed with a Mozart cake, which is layers of light and dark chocolate.
A friend of mine sent me an amazing recipe for low-carb chocolates – basically made from coconut oil and butter.
The original recipe is from Primal Perks, and here is my version. The main differences is that I dropped the sweetener, used peanut butter (yes I know peanuts contain carbs but given the amount used it will add very little to the total) and I made 1/2 the quantity for my first attempt.
By the way it only takes about 10 min to make.
Ingredients
Method
They are excellent and very filling. They naturally separated a little as they froze, giving that nice three-layer effect. I think they may make a great pre-race snack which I will try on my next race.
Thanks to my friend Trevor for sending the original recipe to me.
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