Endless Simmer - A Food Blog

I first discovered halloumi cheese in South Africa last year. A trendy SA chain called News Cafe serves an avocado salad with fried halloumi, grilled brinjal and peppadews. Since I didn’t know what any of those things were, I had to try it. I ended up making several return trips for this amazing fried cheese.

For the record, brinjal is just eggplant, and peppadew is a spicy red pepper native to South Africa. But that’s beside the point, because halloumi was the real discovery. This super-salty, extra-firm-but-slimy goat/sheep’s milk cheese is actually from Cyprus, and if you try to say otherwise, the Halloumi Police will get you.

I’m not sure why it’s so prevalent in South Africa, but I have never noticed it stateside before, so when I spied it at the co-op last week, I jumped for it.

In taste, it’s probably most similar to a queso blanco, and like that Mexican cheese, it’s most exciting because it can be fried or grilled. A few recipes around the web recommend dipping it in flour, but I just tried it straight up and got this nice golden brown after frying thin slices for about a minute each side in extra virgin. The outside is a crisp golden brown and the inside is just a tad melty.

Since I didn’t have any peppadews lying around, I made my own version of the salad, with roasted red peppers, cucumbers, and of course, pine nuts.

*This post is tagged both Greek and Middle Eastern for redundancy’s sake, not as an attempt to fuel any cheese-related territorial conflicts.

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Holy crap.

So my older brother completely slacked on getting me a Christmas present this year. I mean, it’s almost Easter for Christ’s sake. It’s OK, I forgave him since he has one of those miniature people things to take care of. Anyways, he kept saying he was just about to send my present in the mail. Expecting a CD or book or something, I had pretty much forgotten about it.

Needless to say I was surprised when the UPS guy rang the doorbell this morning, carrying a three foot long, oddly-shaped box postmarked Louisiana and leaving a significant trail of soil behind it.

It’s a Miracle Fruit plant! Wow, I had no idea you could even purchase an entire plant - no way am I ponying up $15 a berry to those shady fruit party people - I’m growing my own, suckas!

So here’s the thing…I have no freaking idea how to make a plant survive, much less convince it to grow berries. I’ve never been responsible for one before.

I am so excited to make this thing flower, and you all are officially invited to the ES miracle party, but, I am equally nervous that I am going to make it die. I know I’m supposed to put water in the soil or something like that, but I’m in serious need of some advice.

Here’s what the seller, Stokes Tropical, has to say:

Prefers 30-50% shade. Blooms from May-November and has fruit form June-December in Zone 9. In Zone 10 and higher plant is ever bearing. Slow growing (5-year old plant, only 3’ tall), make it ideal for container culture; a 10 year old plant is only 4’-5’. Very heavy fruit producer; 6’ plant produces as many as 300 berries at one time.

Aaaaaaaah! What the hell does any of that mean? How do I give something 30 to 50% shade? Where in the world is Zone 9? Where are my 300 delicious berries? HELP!

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I’m gonna go ahead and say I’m getting a little old for the party circuit. (One sign is when you find the latest club opening far less exciting than the news that Food Network is now available in HD.)

But I do still keep my in-box full of all those email updates about what the crazy kids are into this week, just to pretend like I can still hang.

Thrillist is one daily email that lets you know where the hard-partying set is pouring, pill-popping and passing out on a daily basis.

Last week, I was shocked to receive an email from Thillist proclaiming that the latest party prop of choice isn’t Adderall, cystal meth, or a kumquatini, but merely a pint-sized African fruit that sounds more Everyday with Rachel Ray than partying with Paris.

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Now that Halloween National Slut Day is over, we can start officially planning for the biggest foodie celebration of the year: National Gluttony Day, a.k.a. Thanksgiving. Some news and views to get the ball rolling:

- The hard-hitting investigators over at Cook’s Illustrated have announced that the best-tasting turkey on the market is (gasp!) frozen. [Epi Log]

- Red Alert! Our global gluttony dominance may be under threat from the rising power of South Africa. A group of Pretoria bakers recently smashed the world record for largest pumpkin pie ever, creating a 1.5-ton monstrosity that bested the record set by Ohioan farmers two years ago. [Slashfood]

- Personally, I’ve always been a believer in the “it doesn’t get any better than stovetop” school of stuffing thought. But if you’re more inclined to drop some fancy, BA has some recipes for prosciuttoing, shrooming, and sageing up your stuffing. [Bon Appetite]

Cartoon: Humor Matters

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Not to call myself a trendsetter or anything, but South Africa is so the next culinary fixation. Joining Madiba in Clinton Hill and Shebeen on Mott Street, NYC’s first South African wine bar, Xai Xai, opened in Hell’s Kitchen earlier this month. So I stopped in this week with endless simmer’s erstwhile mac-n-cheese expert, el, who was in town for some sort of conference, about mac-n-cheese I presume.

Despite the confusing name (Xai Xai, pronounced shy-shy, is a beach town in neighboring Mozambique), this laid-back spot is genuinely South African, complete with a chilled-out endless summer vibe, a lekker, straight-from-SA staff, and of course, a lengthy list of wines from Stellenbosch, (SA’s Napa). There are about a dozen different varieties of pinotage (a red wine made from a South African grape), and we had an especially tasty Anvil Road merlot-pinotage blend. Each glass of wine is served in a mini-decanter, a healthy portion for seven to twelve bucks.

Xai Xai also has a small plate menu, and while there is sadly no bunny chow, there’s plenty of biltong, South Africa’s famed cured meat snack. The biltong I encountered in South Africa was usually an incredibly dry, unappealing beef-jerky variation, but Xai Xai’s version is a thinly-sliced, salty product that goes nicely with their sample platter, which is really just an antipasti plate loaded with tasty meats and cheeses alongside some British-style meatpies, another South African staple.

Xai Xai
365 W. 51st Street
212.541.9241
www.xaixaiwinebar.com

More in Hell’s Kitchen: Leon Bakery, Tulcingo Del Valle

Photo: Cape of Good Hope, by me…why am I not there right now?

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Many of you may have already read today’s breaking Mauritius news (it’s about a dodo bird  named Flightless Fred). You may also be aware that I recently escaped the confines of working America for an extended vacation to Mauritius, a one-of-a-kind paradise island.  See above pic.

I will certainly be adding additional culinary details from my travels to make you all (and my present self) jealous. But for now, good ol’ Flightless Fred made me remember a basic food question I had after much dining out in Mauritius, where they happen to speak French.

In the U.S., any restaurant fancier than Applebees refers to main courses as entrees. I always assumed ”entree” was a fancy French word for main course. BUT NO! In French, as I learned from Mauritian menus, entree actually means appetizer! So what gives?

Webster says that entree is either French for “entering” or American for “main course,” but offers no reason for the blatant contradiction. Are we doing this just to piss off the French? Was entree the original Freedom Fries? Can anyone offer any insight?

Discuss. 

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This week Top Chef went all apple pie ’n’ mom on us and made the theme of the show “American classics.” The chefs had to work with classic American comfort foods like sloppy joes, fried chicken and tacos (I imagine Tom Tancredo will be staging a protest against TC, insisting that tacos are not all-american). The chefs had to update these classic dishes to make them both upscale and healthy. The result was a smorgasbord of disaster, with many tasteless, disappointed glares from Padma. CJ took the healthy idea way too far and made some sort of flaxseed-wheat grass-hemp oil-left coast abomination. But the challenge proved most difficult for our foreign friends, who seemed both disgusted and confused by our greasy, lard-soaked traditions. Jamaican chef Sara M. just said screw it and instead of updating Chicken a la King, she  made Chicken kebabs over couscous. But it was snobby South African chef Micah who was left in tears when the judges did everything but spit her meatloaf and mashed potatoes back in her face. Maybe she should have just made bunny chow.

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In my recent trek through South Africa, I was in general not too wowed by the food scene. Every meal from breakfast to dinner is served with french fries (def not complaining, but not exactly exotic) and many meals are anchored by a dry, mealy porridge-like substance called pap (I tried to provide you with a pic of this, but learned that google image searching for the word ‘pap’ is not a good idea.)

There is however, one original South African dish that is a must-eat:  bunny chow. A specialty of street vendors in Durban, a port city with a huge Indian population, bunny chow is a straight-forward but utterly genuis creation. The insides of a loaf of bread are removed and replaced with spicy veggie curries, and less frequently, lamb or chicken curry. When I first heard about this dish I thought they meant something like a bread roll, but no, they are not kidding around; it’s an entire loaf of sandwich bread filled to the brim.  The pic above (not mine) is a half order. The best part is once the curry is gone, the remaining bread crust is soaked full of tasty curry spices.

Bunny chow is so popular in SA that it is even the title of an upcoming movie from the country’s MTV division, which looks pretty amazing so here’s hoping it will be released in the states.

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