Living the dream: Sail a tall ship

We all have dreams. So do I. Mine is about freedom.

This freedom comes in many guises, perhaps not always fully understood when the opportunity to break free knocks. My dream is about freedom and it is vested in sailing. Specifically longer voyages. On day sails you get this freedom in very small doses. I have a healthy dislike of bureaucracy, of which I get an overdose every day. This adds to my stress levels no end. So, dear reader, you will understand my addiction to sailing, where I have the freedom of choice and the time to enjoy it.

And I am an addict, so longer voyages are quite in order.

I have written before about the silence and the quietness surrounding one on a voyage. The lack of noise and air pollution that you find at sea. And the peace.

Yesterday I had the opportunity to talk to people who do exactly this for a living. Long voyages. See the world. And to top it all, these people do it aboard classic tall ships. Ships built before the first World War, which make them around a hundred years old.

Three of the Dutch Tall Ships visited Cape Town on a circumnavigation.

All of them have satellite communications equipment on board. But no 24/7 internet connection. The communications run via the HF radio or satellite telephone, so email once a day is what you get. The communications are mainly used for weather updates and communications back to the office.


The Tecla, the smallest of the three, is a lugger-rigged ketch of 197 gross tonnes. Their facebook page quotes as follows:

“The Tecla was build as a fishing vessel in the Netherlands back in 1915. in 1935 she retired and got her first engine, she was then christened Tecla and sold to Denmark. In 2006 the family Bouwman & Sluik bought the Tecla, a ship that makes dreams come true.”

I had a long conversation with Jet, the first mate and cook on board. They sailed from Brazil across the Atlantic to Cape Town with only four people on 

board. On a ship like this, four people means long working hours. For this voyage the crew was divided into two watches and worked shifts of six hours on, six hours off.

There is no auto-helm and the crew on watch has to steer the ship manually. There is also no deck house, so you are standing there on the aft deck exposed to the wind and weather, steering the ship. And Jet, as the cook on board, has to double up on feeding the hungry sailors.

We discussed the vagaries of cooking on board the vessel. This ship is quite small as a ship, but very big in normal yachting terms. This means they have a decent size freezer and other refrigeration to allow for catering on a long voyage for up to twelve people. They have three meals a day, which means that the cook is quite busy. The small size of the vessel means also that the cook is exposed to pots flying off the hob in bad weather. Quite similar to a small yacht, in fact.


We discussed the diet on such long passages. Here is where local knowledge of your destination comes in handy.

Dry food is ordered via the ships agents, so not a big problem there. The fresh stuff is bought at local markets, where Jet specifically looks for food that has not been in cold storage. Food that had been in cold storage goes off faster than fresh food.

Chalk up some points for being a yachtie or sea salt: You are automatically forced to eat decent, unprocessed food!

The galley on board is perhaps, in terms of scale, smaller that the galley on a 12m size yacht. Yes it is bigger, but the galley on a small yacht proportionally takes up more space than on a larger vessel.

Oosterschelde galley. A very busy place.

We looked at the galley on the Oosterschelde, which needs to cater for up to 120 people on day sails. The galley on the Ooterschelde has the size of your average suburban house kitchen, measuring perhaps two and a half by four meters or thereabouts. Not big. The hob has six burners/plates, that's it. Industrial size, yes. But not overly so. There is an oven, of course. A small work area and a sink completes the layout.

And the space is cramped.

There is standing headroom in the galley, but I shall have to bend almost double getting provisions from the storage in the bilges below. There is always a compromise on board. Win some, lose some.



The cook told us that she operates mostly alone in the galley, sometimes with an assistant cook, depending on the number of people on board. When there is a lot of people aboard, she will arrange help from the deck side to add hands to the two people in the galley.

Peeling potatoes? Yes, that is where the passengers get to help a little. It helps with the boredom of being idle.

Of course, the Oosterschelde is quite big, 42m long (50m including the bowsprit) and 7.5m wide. So there is a little space.

And the saloon has an old world charm second to none. My friend Tasso and I sat in a little poop deck like a mezzanine deck aft of the saloon. Green carpets, dark brown solid wood, varnished. Green leather upholstery. An upright piano bolted down in one corner of the saloon. The sun shining mildly through the windows.

As we sat down, our immediate thoughts were of coffee and a cigar. You sit there and begin to get an idea of the peace to be had on a voyage, sitting there, reading a book. I could live like that. Quite easily, in fact.

The wheelhouse on the Oosterschelde.
Navigation only, the wheel is outside.

Oosterschelde wheel. Outside.

The Bark Europa is more or less the same size as the Oosterschelde, 50 m overall length, including the bowsprit. This ship has a bigger galley yet, as the full crew complement for a long voyage numbers 25. But the galley is still quite small, as can be seen from the photo on their web site. Here one has three meals a day prepared in the galley, baking bread and biscuits at night. Very busy indeed.



Freshly baked bread. Fresh, unprocessed vegetables, fruit and eggs. Fresh fish from the ocean. Frozen meat, no cattle or chicken farm on board.

And hard work. Hard work for all. Somebody has to make the experience happen. It may just as well be everyone on board.

This is the dream, then.

Freedom. Freedom, especially from bureaucracy.

Experience the taste of fresh food, prepared properly.

Running repairs.

And the reward: no telephone calls, no internet. No Facebook, Twitter or other social media. Yes they have some entertainment in the form of DVD players and so on. For the die-hards.

Read a classic book. Or even two. Write your memoirs. Write a blog with sensible and proper content, you have lots of time.

Chill out, you are going to the ends of the earth slowly.
And feel what freedom is all about.



I'd sacrifice a lot to skipper a ship like one of these...

Somebody has to make it happen.

Authored by Johan Zietsman

Last updated on 2013-05-14

The bar in the saloon, schooner Oosterschelde.

Saloon, schooner Oosterschelde

Flavours of South Africa: Bobotie

Being part of a large blogging community has some interesting side effects. One of them being the greater awareness of what goes on around the world in terms of culinary arts, if you will.

You also get ideas about the mood of the month and what is fashionable or not. I am also a member of the Flavors of the World community on Google+. This is quite interesting from a historical perspective, as South African cuisine is a fusion of flavors from the Far East, East Africa and Europe.

This is a result of the closure of the overland silk and spice route through the Middle East and Constantinople (now Istanbul) around the early 1400's. This led to the opening of the spice and tea route around the southern tip of Africa and the eventual establishment of the victualing station at Cape Town. Which led to my being a white African, so to speak. But that is another story.

The resulting food is quite delicious and flavourful, known as the Cape Malay style of cooking. This style of cooking is kept alive by the very colourful Cape Malay people in and around Cape Town. And the rest of South Africa as well, especially for a dish like bobotie.

Pronounced boh-boo-ti. “Boh” as in “bottom,” “boo” as in “booty.” “ti” as in a short cuppa. Close enough phonetics, I think.

The dish originally was made using minced lamb, which is relatively scarce or unobtainable. Unless you mince your own leg of lamb, of course. Lean ground beef works as well. Bobotie is a baked dish, consisting of spiced minced meat, covered in an egg custard. The flavour is on the sweet side and may be made mild to quite spicy. It is usually served with yellow rice with raisins as a very traditional South African dish. It is quite easy to prepare and well worth the little effort for the exquisite result. It took me longer to do this write-up than to prepare the dish, bar the baking.

The dish will go well with a fruity dry white wine, perhaps even slightly off-dry, depending on the spiciness of your specific version of bobotie. I normally have a light red wine with meals like this, where the South African Pinotage variety is the wine of choice.

I used fresh masala paste instead of the garlic and chilli. There is also some chopped up dried apricots to add to the sweet and tangy taste. Don't fret if you don't have chutney, just use a little more apricot jam and chilli. Or just a little more chopped up dried fruit. The vinegar and other spices will do the trick just fine. Or add some raisins.

I only used the freshly toasted almonds and chopped dried apricots. The result was outstanding. Toasting the dry almonds strengthens their flavour by a large margin, so you can use less, lest the nutty flavour dominates the rest of the spices. The bay/ lemon leaves I substituted with dried curry leaves.

This recipe will be enough for about four to six servings, depending on who dishes up!

Ingredients

500 g lean ground beef

1 thick slice bread/ 2 normal slices

2 large eggs

1 cup milk

1 onion, chopped

1-2 cloves fresh garlic, chopped and minced

15 ml curry powder of choice

15 ml turmeric

15 ml apricot jam

15 ml chutney

5 ml of brown vinegar or lemon juice

5 ml Worcestershire sauce if you feel like more flavour.

50 ml almonds, preferably freshly roasted, then chopped/mashed finely.

50 ml seedless raisins. I substituted 50 ml dried apricots, chopped finely.

some salt to taste.

8-10 lemon leaves or bay leaves.

  

 Process

Chop the bread into small cubes/large crumbs and soak it in the milk. Toast the almonds whole in a dry pan. When they are brown, mash them into coarse crumbs. Squeeze the milk from the bread and keep the milk, add the soaked bread to the meat. Add the chopped apricots, the almond crumbs and all the wet ingredients, except the milk and eggs. Mix this thoroughly.

Rather use less of the vinegar, chutney and apricot jam, these may also dominate the other flavours.

Fry the chopped onions until they start to caramelise. Add the garlic and fry until the garlic is also done. Add the dry powder curry and the turmeric and fry for 10 seconds, then add the meat mix to the pan and fry until the meat is done. The meat will turn a nice brown if you used duck fat instead of cooking oil to fry the onions.

Whisk the two eggs into the milk. Add a little more milk if required. You need about 1 to 1½ cups of the egg mix. Spread the meat in a shallow oven proof dish and arrange the bay leaves/ curry leaves/ lemon leaves in the meat. Pour over the egg mix, then bake this at 180ºC / 350ºF for twenty minutes or until the egg custard has turned a nice light brown in spots.

Remove the dish from the oven and let it rest for another twenty minutes to develop flavour. Or switch off the oven and leave the dish inside for another fifteen minutes.

You can remove the leaves before serving, but it is rather nice to lick them off during the course of your meal...

Serve with yellow turmeric rice.

Bon appetit!

Authored by Johan Zietsman

Adapted from this recipe.

Last updated on 2013-04-29

The Obiquitous Hot Dog

Not inimitable. Omnipresent, yes. Big words. Especially for an Afrikaans-speaking person. The glut of reading during this convalescence is beginning to show, I think.

I am still on convalescence after my operation, hobbling about and dragging my sore leg after me up the stairs. The knee complains by getting back at me for a whole day after one hour of standing in the kitchen, so cooking is out.

But I have friends. In the immortal words of one Joe Cocker, I can get by with a little help from my friends.

My sailor friends at the Gordon's Bay Yacht Club asked me to focus more on hand-held food, as most of their sailing is of relatively short duration and one does not want to waste time standing at a bouncing galley when there is much exciting sailing outside to be enjoyed. The sailing is typically overnight trips to Cape Town or Dassen Island, where food will stay fresh in a cooler box. So fast food is in order.

Now, fast food is one of my pet hates. But food prepared properly, even though it may be fast food, is OK. Especially on board small sailing yachts. Just don't rush it and neglect the attention it deserves.

I was casting around for ideas, when a dear food blogger friend posted an article on hot dogs. I contacted her and after a brief discussion, I was in business, feeling like Joe Cocker; getting by with a little help from my friends.

Zirkie Schroeder is another well-known name in the food blogging world in South Africa. She publishes a blog under the nom de guerre of Pink Polkadot Food.

Being a wife and a mother of children, albeit now somewhat grown-up, she understands the vagaries of feeding hungry mouths. She was also a finalist in the recent Dinner Diva cooking competition for food bloggers on South Africa's SABC2 TV channel. The contestants were required to post their recipes on their blogs too.

So here we have a wonderful recipe from a real pro when it comes to fast food made with love and passion.

This one is for hot dogs, which can be very bland. However, the Pink Polka Dot version is sure to tickle your taste buds!

Read all about it here

I shall be back soon with more culinary adventures for your next sailing trip.

In the meantime, Bon appetit!

Authored by Johan Zietsman

Last updated on 2013-04-18

This blog post compiled for the GBYC newsletter.

Forget your low GI diet: Sourdough Babka alla Ziets

I recently had another chance at pondering life and my experiences in general, having had a knee replaced. The time in hospital, drifting in and out of a pain killer induced daze, is quite useful for this sort of pondering. I pondered about my cooking and my lifestyle. And then some more. I thought that it was time for some baking again.

The operation went super well, everything just fine. The problem is now that I need to take things slowly, lest I damage the new joint in its settling period. So I have to slow down, take it easy. Lots of rest.

This had me reminisce about my hunting and fly-fishing days. I realised, after a number of unsuccessful outings, that you don't see anything until you slow down to the rhythm of the veld. Then suddenly, life explodes before you and you are swamped with images of movement and happenings. Like seeing a fish jump out the water and take an insect from the air. Or, once on a memorable occasion, a bass taking a malachite kingfisher in flight. But that is a different story.

Getting back to cooking and baking, I thought that there must be a similar golden rule in preparing food. And then it jumped at me:

SLOW DOWN

I realised that fast food is just what the name says, not really prepared with love and care. Quite noticeable in the food served to you in some restaurants. Or cooking things fast instead of simmering. Or using a pressure cooker. I may be on thin ice here. Another argument discussion for tomorrow.

So this is exactly what I did in my next affray into the wonderful artful world of baking with sourdough. I slowed things down.

I wanted to bake something different for a change. And I had the notion of having a celebration. Seeing that it was close to Easter, I thought babka may be in order. Something people make after a time of fasting. Something to eat in celebration.

So babka it was. Slowed down. I used a cheesy babka recipe from Comfy Cuisine.  I imagined the cheese part would blend in extremely well with the sourness of the yeast. And then there is the vanilla, of course. I tried to stick slavishly to the recipe, but had to compromise on the yeast, of course, as well as the vanilla.

I used the real thing, scraping the seeds from a pod and using those neat in the cheese filling. We don't get farmer's cheese here, so I substituted cottage cheese. And I used brown sugar, because that is what I have.

In addition, I made a mix of one cup of cake flour to three cups of white bread flour. Partly because I had run out of white bread flour and partly because I reasoned that babka should be rather more like a cake than a bread. Therefore I would need some refined flour in there to make the whole thing a bit smoother. And lighter, but that is where the slowing down bit comes to bear.

I made up a starter using a cup of white bread flour in my sourdough. This I let ferment at room temperature for 12 hours. Then I made the main dough mix, leaving out the raisins. Having had my doubts on the vitality of my home-captured yeast, I let this lot rise for a full 20 hours.

Wonderful idea. The dough almost tripled in volume. The raisins were added and the dough kneaded back to the original volume. I kept the dough on the soft side, in accordance with the recipe. I also reasoned that a softer dough will give a lighter crumb in the end.

The dough was rested only for the time it took to make the cheese filling. I rolled out the dough as per the instructions on the recipe and added the cheese filling as per instruction.

The cheese filling came out a bit too runny for my taste, so I added some cake flour to get it to the required consistency.

The loaves were prepared as per the recipe, then I left this lot to rise (second rise) for two and a half hours. The yeast performed like a champion and the loaves almost doubled in volume, looking for all the world like crocodile torsos.

The oven was heated up and the loaves popped in for the requisite period of 35 minutes. I went overboard with the egg-white wash, so the loaves came out quite brown. A very nice thin crust and a beautiful airy crumb.

Chalk one up for slowing down!

Voila! Your very high GI babka alla Ziets. To be consumed in small quantities, this one is very rich. And the sourness of the various components blended very well too. I shall keep this one for special occasions. It is very much worth the effort.

This blog post also linked to Yeastspotting!

Authored by Johan Zietsman

Last updated on 2013-04-06

Very Fast Pizza? Try the Zoobiscuit Version

Anél's picture of what this looks like. Yummy!

This week's recipe is not from me, I am going in for a knee replacement. Fair wear and tear, says the doctor. Which leaves me unserviceable for any cooking, baking or other activities in the kitchen.

Well, all is not lost. A fellow food blogger has a brilliant idea which works for one or many mouths to feed. Anél Potgieter does not need an introduction in South African cooking circles, having won the Dinner Diva cooking competition recently. This competition was to find the best food blogger-cook in the country.

Which Anél won with aplomb. As well as the 2013 Eat Out DSTV Food Network Best Local Food Blog Award.

So we are especially honoured to have her recipe for a fast pizza as the boat food recipe for this week. This one is quite delicious. And also a no brainer. Well, almost. You do need to think up your own variations. But the recipe is quite simple.

You do need a rolling pin. Else use a bottle. I am sure you will find one somewhere on the boat. Other than that just the normal kitchen tools that you will find in the boat's galley.

Read all about the recipe here.

And thanks for stopping by, I shall be back...

Authored by Johan Zietsman, with gratitude to my fellow food blogger Anél Potgieter.

Last updated on 2013-03-26

Compiled for the GBYC newsletter

Eat a Piece of History: Jaffles

History for me and my age group in South Africa at any rate.

Jaffles.

A very South African variation of a sealed toasted sandwich from the days before snackwich toasters. These are made using a jaffle iron over a camp fire, over the coals or over a gas hob. Take your pick. They used to be very popular at church and school fund raising events. Then fashion changed, the snackwich toaster came to be and that was the end of the jaffle.

 Well, that is until recently, when I found a jaffle iron at my local sports equipment chain in the camping goods department. I believe our local builder's supplies chain also keep them in stock. There is a round one and a square one available. Buy the round one, it always seals the sandwich all around the edges.

The jaffle, like the snackwich toast, has one up over a normal toasted sandwich.

It is sealed. No mess. You can use a saucy ground beef filling and it still doesn't spill when you eat it. And the jaffle has more capacity than a snackwich toast. Which means more meat, almost like your standard meat pie.

Or other filling.

We all tend to forget that there is no law that requires a meat filling only. This is the beauty of the jaffle. Standard shape, standard capacity and sealed all around the edge. And fillings to you heart's content.

Which translates to interesting fillings, like tuna or chicken mayonnaise. Or cheese and mushroom. Or combinations of cheese, tomato, onion, jalapeno, gherkins, mixed diced veggies and what not.

Meaty fillings include ham, salami, ground beef, biltong, sliced leg of lamb or pastrami, bacon, chourizo, smoked salmon.

For a sweet one, use banana and golden syrup or honey. Or try sliced apples, cinnamon, nutmeg and honey or golden syrup. I have made these and they are all wonderful fast desserts in the camp. Or when you have lots of children around wanting to keep busy.

I still have to try one adding nuts of some sort. Could be decadent. I have had sweet pizzas of this nature at a gourmet pizza parlour in Pretoria by the name of Toni's Fully Furnished Pizza. Exquisite!

The filling list is endless. Use a filling or combination that is not too dry, else you may have to take water to swallow the jaffle.

Another useful aspect of the jaffle is that you can eat it cold. It is good picnic food that can be prepared the previous day. Quite useful for a day sail or an overnight trip where you may feel like focusing on the sailing experience rather than spend time cooking.

Boat food par excellence.

I decided to test my new jaffle iron by following the recipe on the label. Biltong, cheese and tomato. I used brown bread and butter as per normal sandwich. Extremely simple. It took me longer to take the pix than to prepare the food!

Close the jaffle iron around the sandwich, cut off the excess, it will burn. Then heat over a small flame on the small burner. My jaffle iron is made of cast iron, so it takes a while to heat. Once hot, it toasts the bread very nice and evenly. And I get the heat back at the end, when I can turn off the hob and leave the last jaffle to “bake” to perfection.

How cool is that!

And then there is the ultimate dessert, courtesy of one of the participating teams in the Ultimate Braai Master competition: Bread and butter pudding jaffles.

Start with the standard two slices of bread. I used brown bread. Spread some butter. And some apricot jam. Actually a lot. As in copious amounts. Soak some warmed raisins in brandy. Make a runny batter with an egg and some milk. Add a dollop of ground cinnamon. Soak each slice of bread briefly in this, then stack in the jaffle iron. Soak briefly, else you will have a runny mess. Remember to add the boozy raisins in between the slices.


You will be surprised at just how much brandy it takes to make these!

The batter will boil out if you have too much. Don't fret, the stove is easily cleaned afterwards. Fry until the bread is nice and crispy outside. Mix a little icing or castor sugar in fresh cream, beat until stiff and mixed properly, then add a dollop  of this with each serving.

You may have to make two per person...

Authored by Johan Zietsman

Last updated on 2013-04-03

Compiled for the GBYC newsletter

Cricket Bats, Skillets and Other Weapons of Anger

After the whole Oscar Pistorius scandal and the ongoing saga surrounding the happenings, I thought at length about the weaponry available in the kitchen. That is, apart from the obvious supposedly sharp knives that are quite blunt in fact. Well, in my experience, mostly anyway. And apart from the other obvious weapons in the hose, like cricket bats and baseball bats and the more innocuous looking rolled up women's magazines.

And I wondered about the vagaries of using kitchen equipment as weapons. A cricket bat featured in the statements made and the evidence gathered in the Oscar Pistorius case. I wondered how many skillets have been used in anger as a weapon.

Perhaps the kitchen equipment have been used for millennia in anger to prepare angry food! I know of at least one case where policemen in barracks have been fed angry food with overdoses of various spices after they mistreated their hired cook. In such cases the skillet is most definitely a weapon, but used in a more subtle way, perhaps.

Blunt knives and useless kitchen equipment have become such an epidemic that I now take my personal chef's kit along whenever I travel. This kit includes three properly sharpened knives, including a large chef's knife, a solid bird knife and a small paring knife. Include a proper peeler that can also peel squash pumpkins, a small sharpening device, a GI can opener and a small cutting board.  The small cutting board is replaced by a big end grain cutting board when I am not flying or sailing. Add to this a proper silicone spatula from le Creuset and you are almost there.

And not to forget my spice box. It is horrendous how many people have no idea of using spices and just mix ready-made sauces, or even worse, ready mix dry powder sauces (read chemical concoction) in various brews and call it food.

But today I wish to discuss the various uses of a skillet. We have touched briefly on its use as a weapon, in direct and other subtle ways.

A skillet is heavy. With good heat retention characteristics and really useful to cook on. Or is it 'in'? Make no mistake, I regularly use my heavy cast iron utensils.  However, for my travel requirements I need something lighter. Something that I can use on the gas hob over the coals or over dancing flames. For use in grilling meat, making stir fries, pancakes, flapjacks and, last but not least, paella. My favourite Spanish food.

Kitchen weapon of choice for the moment

So I shopped around and found a real Spanish paella pan at Perfect Paella. At a really decent price, with sizes and finishes to satisfy even the most eclectic fashion tastes. And they are quite light. I purchased one in polished steel. These pans are nicely finished with no surface treatment other than a layer of oil. You clean them by boiling some water in it, drying, then oiling lightly with olive oil. The pan will get a layer of olive oil baked into the surface with use. Complete with the flavours that you use in the pan, rather like a wok. I like it this way. Over time the pan seals completely and nothing ever again sticks to it. You clean it by wiping with a wet cloth.

I went the whole hog and cleaned the pan as per instructions, not wanting to take chances. I bought some real Spanish paella rice along with the pan and used the recipe on the back of the pack as a broad guide to what I was about to make.

The pan performed way beyond what I expected from the first use. No burning, no heat spots, no discolouring of the steel. I used a stainless steel egg lifter to stir the food. One of the plus points of using a plain polished steel pan. No problem there. I  made a medium sized fire in the Weber kettle and plonked the paella pan on top of the grill. Be careful when handling the paella pan, the steel handles get hot. The pan needs a medium to hot fire. I think one will need to experiment a little with the size of the fire.

The beauty of using the kettle braai is that one can put the lid on the kettle and let the dish simmer. The fluid in the pan steams and it controls the fire a bit. The steam also heats up way past  the boiling point of water, adding to the heat distribution inside this makeshift oven. All of this work towards very good cooking.

This pan is getting an honourable place in my kitchen. It is a very good tool. In the house, on camping trips and on travelling holidays where you have your own travel medium. Like a car. This won't work when flying.

Al fresco cooking

The recipe for the paella is quite simple: Two diced tomatoes, a clove of garlic, two diced onions, two cups of rice, some sea food, some chicken, salt to taste, seafood stock, paprika or Spanish saffron. Some olive oil. Add water as necessary. Fry the chicken pieces until brown, remove from the pan then fry the sea food, using a dollop of olive oil to lubricate the pan as required.

Remove the sea food when almost done.

Then add the onions, fry until translucent, add the garlic and fry for ten seconds, then add the dry, uncooked rice. Fry this until the pan goes almost dry, then add some of the stock. Keep on stirring and frying, adding first the stock, then water as required until the rice is almost done. Add the paprika or saffron while the mix is still quite wet and runny.

Add back all the meat and fish, garnish with chopped parsley and a cupful of fresh garden peas and simmer until everything has cooked through.

Make sure that most of the water has boiled away or has been absorbed; this is paella, not risotto.

The result: perfect paella

I added a chopped Thai chilli, pips removed. The paella must not be too spicy. I also added some fresh coriander leaves chopped, along with the parsley. A sprig of chopped spring onion was added along with the peas. And I added some fresh turmeric in lieu of saffron.

Smoked paprika apparently works wonders too. I shall purloin some somewhere in the near future. It adds a very special character to the dish.

Allow the dish to rest for fifteen minutes before dishing up, as always. It allows the flavours to develop. Have a glass of red wine while you wait, it is good for you.

Buen apetito!

Leftovers

Authored by Johan Zietsman

Last updated on 2013-03-12