Fresh and simple life

As much as I enjoy going on an amble, one of the most pleasant things about it is coming home. So we’ve had a lovely week of overdosing on all kinds of art in Grahamstown, but that also meant overdosing on wine and eating out.

An earlier version of the salad, including avocado wedges

It means, too, that I deeply appreciate being able to stroll into the vegetable garden and pick a fresh and simple supper: fat cherry tomatoes, a handful of spinach, and a couple of small heads of broccoli. I note that the sweet peppers are starting to form healthy little fruits.

I like to make a warm salad with these ingredients, based roughly on a recipe from Kathy, so roughly that I can’t clearly remember the original.

My lemon pickle is a success!

Anyway, I wilt the spinach in olive oil in a frying pan, grind in a bit of salt and black pepper, and then lay the leaves onto a platter as a bed for the salad. I’ve also used a mix of rocket and fresh lettuce leaves in the past. No result is ever the same; see the pic I’ve given you on this page for an example.

I steam the broccoli florets, not for long because I want them to keep that beautiful green colour, and toss that onto the spinach. Then I add the cherry tomatoes – I fry them lightly in olive oil this time because it seems to enhance the taste – some feta cheese, raisins that have swelled in orange juice (I've used cranberries before), and a bit of dry roasted seeds (pumpkin, sesame and sunflower). I sprinkle balsamic vinegar over the lot.

It’s delicious. We eat it with V’s leftover ciabatta, which tastes good toasted the next day.

Sweet taste of tartness

And we get to open the lemon pickle I attempted to make towards the end of May. It’s perfect! And this is a surprise, I admit, because I was a bit doubtful. 

The texture of the peel and flesh is soft, yet far from mushy; the lemon juice itself has turned into a kind of syrup; and the taste has just the right amount of salty tartness.

Our friend, Prof, can’t seem to get enough of the pickle, and goes home with a little bakkie (plastic container) crammed full of it. That is just the kind of encouragement I need to experiment some more.