My recipe for Melktert comes from the South African chapter of Good Housekeeping’s World Cookery and it is a baked custard tart. It is called Melktert because the day before the recipe for the OG Milk Tart went to print, someone broke into the printing press and stole all bar one of the vowels.
Some people would tell you that it is a dish that originated in Holland and it kept the Dutch spelling when it came to South Africa. However, we at RFFMT prefer not to allow truth to get in the way of a good story. Besides the visual image of a never say die printer triumphantly adding e’s to where the i and a had been, humming a prototypical version of The Shamen’s 1992 hit Ebeneezer Goode as he did so was too good not to share.
I pondered whether in homage to the melktert, I should also write this post using the letter e as my only vowel.
That idea lasted all of about 5 seconds – I got as far as “Here. Melktert. Sweet” and gave up.
The Melktert was delicious! Just the right amount of sweetness and the almonds on top gave a nice crunch. There was a lot of the filling mix leftover so I think next time I make it I will try a deeper dish which would also mean there would be more of the slightly cinnamon-y custard which could only be s a good thing! The recipe does state a deep pie dish!
Melktert :The Recipe
That’s all folks, nothing much else to say except:
Happy Easter to those who celebrate it! At Maison de la retro foods, we are supplementing our chocolate eggs with some North African Hamine Eggs. These came to us via Good Housekeeping’s World Cookery. The book offers two versions of this recipe. There is the traditional way:
In Egypt there are special shops selling them; there, after the eggs have been cooked for 3 or 4 hours, they are put under the ashes of a fire and left for as long as 8 hours – this makes them as creamy as butter”
– Good Housekeeping World Cookery
Never mind the pyramids and the Sphinx. Get me over to Egypt pronto for some of those buttery eggs!!!
Eggs Hamine – The Recipe
The non-traditional version of these eggs is so easy!
Put the brown outside skins of some onions into a saucepan of ocld water with the eggs and boil for 2 hours or as long as possible. The onion skins turn the shells of the eggs and the whites brown. Shell and halve the eggs and serve hot or cold with lemon wedges, salt, pepper and mixed spices”
I cooked my eggs in the slow cooker for a full 8 hours.
Pre – Water
4 hours – One of the eggs cracked during the cooking but did not ooze out like they do when they crack during normal boiling.
Eight hours!
Note, if you decide to make these in your slow cooker, the onion skins will stain your slow cooker brown along with the eggs. Get ready to soak and scrub to remove it!
Eight hours and fifteen minutes!
I sprinkled my egg with some salt and some dukkah and dug in! It was delicious. There was a faint taste of something – not exactly onion but slightly savoury to the egg which was different to a normal boiled egg. I would not say that it was buttery but the white seemed more delicate than a normal boiled egg.
I was also very surprised to see that the onion skin dye had penetrated not only into the white which became a gorgeous soft caramel colour but also the yolk! This was startling because it is so strange to have a monochrome egg!
These were nice and an interesting experiment but for me, it was a long time to wait for a fancy boiled egg so I will probably not make them again. If I ever do get to Egypt though, I will be making a breakfast beeline for the Hamine Eggs shops!
Making these eggs might be a fun thing to do with kids for Easter or for a science project on osmosis.
Hello Globetrotters and food lovers! Given we can no longer travel in actuality I guess the next best is to travel virtually via our tastebuds. And today, we are turning the page in Good Housekeeping’s World Cookery to a whole new continent! And what better way to celebrate anything but with some cheesy pastries otherwise known as Raiff of Cheese!
So, where are we off to? Here’s a clue:
I hear the drums echoing tonight
But she hears only whispers of some quiet conversation
She’s coming in, 12:30 flight
The moonlit wings reflect the stars that guide me towards salvation
Yes, my friends, we are going to be blessing the rains down in Africa for the next little while. And I, for one, am here for it! Africa is a real knowledge gap for me in terms of food. I have cooked tagines and couscous, I have eaten Doro Wat and Injera in an Ethiopian restaurant and I have read about Bunny Chow and Sosaties. But that’s pretty much it for what is a massive continent! So, this will be a journey of exploration for me. Not that I am expecting Good Housekeeping from 1972 to provide any 100% authentic recipes but I”m hoping it will be enough to give me a taste of African food!
These cheese pastries or Raiff of Cheese come from the North African section of World Cookery. I chose to cook these because they reminded me very much of the Cheese Pastries we love at our local Syrian restaurant. Believe me, I could sit and eat plate after plate of their Bourak B’jebneh! I was also inspired by the menu at Shaam to use haloumi as the cheese in my pastries.
Raiff of Cheese – Recipe and My Variations
I used bought filo pastry because life’s too short to make homemade filo. If you do want to do that, here’s a recipe and good luck to you! I do want to try to make my own haloumi one day though. I think it would have been nice (but maybe not very North African) to sub in some mozzarella for the haloumi to give the pastries some lovely melty cheesy stretchiness. Next time maybe!
Another little change I made to the recipe as given in GHWC was to add in a little sauteed leek and the very last of the chervil from my garden. This combination features in many of the other North African recipes and it just so happened that I had half a leek in the fridge. I had no idea that either of these were used so extensively in North African cooking. Like I said, journey of exploration!
Finally, to serve my cheese pastries, I added a little drizzle of pomegranate molasses – the sweet-sour of this being a perfect counterpoint to the salty haloumi and some toasted sesame seeds to add some nutty crunchiness. Any chutney or relish would be good with these.
I’m not sure how authentically North African these cheese pastries are but they were really tasty. And as sure as Kilimanjaro rises like Olympus above the Serengeti I’ll be making these again!
If there’s one food Australians love, it is pumpkin.
Ethiopian Pumpkin Soup
But unlike our American pals who like to eat their pumpkins for dessert, for us it is sadly almost always served savoury as a vegetable. Just incidentally though, Australia, why don’t we have pumpkin pie? We get all the trashy American stuff – the Kardashians and ice bucket challenges to name but a few. Why can’t we get some of the yummy delicious pumpkin pie action too?
According to this, you don;t even have to cook it. It’s MAGIC…
Pumpkin Dream Pie
Sadly for us, Pumpkin Dream Pie remains just that…
We eat pumpkin as a side for a roast, in lasagné’s risottos, salads and scones. But more than eating pumpkin, we love to drink it.
How much do we love to drink it? Pumpkin soup is a, no probably the Australian ubiquitous menu item – just about every cafe, restaurant, pub bistro and hole in the wall has their own version prominently displayed on the menu – I go to a cafe where it has been the soup du jour for at least five years.
Out of curiosity I had a little look on taste.com.au for pumpkin soup recipes. There are 79 of them. Ok, so it’s not the 765 recipes they have for chocolate cake but 79 variations on a theme of pumpkin is still quite a number. There are recipes for Classic Pumpkin Soup, Creamy Pumpkin Soup, Perfect Pumpkin Soup and Smashing Pumpkin Soup (I guess that’s the soup that despite all it’s rage is still just a rat in a cage).
I did start to notice a trend though -not only do we love our pumpkin soup but we like it to be a bit of a international bright young thing. There are recipes for:
Thai, Moroccan, non – specific Asian, Tortellini (Italian), Japanese, Thai again, Thai again again, Curry x 3, South Indian, Australian (whatever that maybe…I didn’t look, possibly flavoured with beer and vegemite), two more Thai’s. The Americas are represented by one paltry entry for Maine Pumpkin soup.
Africa too is sadly missing from that list. Ok, yes, Morocco is there but…jeez…(eyeroll), if you must be pedantic, sub-Saharan Africa is completely missing. Hopefully not for much longer…because it’s time this delicious Ethiopian Pumpkin Soup adapted from Diana Henry’s Plenty took the stage!
This is gorgeous to look at, the inclusion of tomato paste and the Berbere spices gives it a real 1970’s burnt orange colour. It’s really tasty too – slightly sweet from the pumpkin, slightly smoky from the spices, slightly spicy from the chilli and cinnamon and ginger. If you leave out the yoghurt garnish it is also vegan.
Ethiopian Pumpkin Soup 2
And, whilst I don’t want to blow my own trump….actually, no, wait, it’s my blog, I can blow whatever I damn well want! The Berbere pepitas and pinenuts which were my own invention were amazing! They add some additional spice and salt and crunch. The only problem with these is that they are so good you will be hard pressed to save any for the soup. I had to make about three or four batches of them because we kept eating them before they could be used as the soup garnish. They are seriously good!
Berbere Roasted Pepitas and Pinenuts
The key to this soup is the Berbere spice mix. I bought mine but you can make your own. There are about a thousand of these on the interwebs, each of which is slightly different. I have included a recipe for Berbere here
Berbere Spice Mix
Either way you’re going to end up with a lot more Berbere than you need to make this one recipe. Of course you could make the soup more than once and you will surely make the Berbere Pepitas and Pinenuts more than once but if you want to experiment a bit more with this spice blend you can also try these:
