African AbFab

photo by Marguerite Slavik

Where were you a couple of weeks ago when I was looking for an expert to tie my Easter headscarf? I had to improvise myself.

Although I have to admit, no matter how much I practiced on my own, I never in a million years could have fabricated this incredible confection.

photo by Marguerite Slavik

The artist who created our headscarf wraps was Olga Mtshweni of Wrapsody.

Olga brought a bag full of her headscarves to the party, many of which are available for sale on her online shop. I chose a waxed hollandais fabric called "Nubia."

"Mama Africa and the Nubian Queen"

Each and every headwrap design Olga created for our little group was a unique work of art!

photo by Marguerite Slavik

Here is the best part about using the stiff waxed fabrics for your headwrap. I could literally take it off my head completely intact to wear at a future date!

sitting atop a gooseneck table lamp in the study until I get a proper hatstand!

Delights

I have protected the innocent wearing these attractive hairnets!

As if I needed any more Easter candy, I went on a tour of the Sally Williams Nougat Factory, and bought some more.

There really is a Sally Williams and her business is a South African success story. After tasting nougat in the souks of Morocco, the real Sally Williams began perfecting her own nougat recipe in her kitchen in Johannesburg before moving production to her garage before opening her first factory in Kramerville at age 55!

Her company became so successful that her son-in-law bought her out, she retired comfortably and he opened a state of the art candy making factory in Linbro Business Park. We removed all our jewelry and watches, donned our hairnets and white lab coats, washed and sanitized our hands once again and visited the factory for a behind the scenes tour to see how it's made.

product pictures from the Sally Williams website

When they can, they source from South Africa. Sugar, egg whites, macadamia nuts, and glucose syrup. Honey from South Africa too. And not just any honey. Honey made specifically for Sally Williams using bees who pollinate only citrus trees in Limpopo.

But they also use the most decadent milk and dark chocolate imported from Belgium. They source their almonds from California - mostly because the quantity and quality is guaranteed. And their cranberries come from the United States too. 'Cause that's where cranberries come from. (FYI: FDA approved, Sally Williams is also sold in the USA.)

Along with nougat in various configurations studded with cranberries, almonds and / or macadamia nuts, they also make the best Turkish delight in the world - even better than Turkey. Perfectly sweet, they use rosewater imported from Switzerland. Plain, enrobed (that's the word they use!) in chocolate, or layered with a non-dairy "cream."

And they make mint dark and milk chocolate slabs with crispy nougat using crushed up nougat and delightful bite-sized madeleine-shaped milk chocolates with crispy nougat too.

popping the chocolate bubbles

Much of the production is done by hand like popping the tiny chocolate bubbles on the enrobed  nougat and Turkish delight. But the industrial equipment the hands use to make the confections is state of the art precision custom calibrated machinery from Germany.

The quality control is unbelievable! Nothing enters the production area until it is tested and documented and guaranteed 100% free of bacteria or infestation. Their egg products especially are run through a battery of tests and temperature controls to make sure there is no bacterial contamination. Nuts and the candies produced with nuts are strictly quarantined. Sally Williams guarantees that when they say their candies are made without nuts, buyers with nut allergies can trust that the candy is safe to eat.

more Easter loot from the factory store

I love these behind the scenes factory tours - all except the hairnet part of course!

Easter Sunday worship in South Africa

If you are out and about driving on Sundays - including Easter Sunday - it is not unusual to come across a group of white-robed worshipers in open fields, by a river or under a tree on the side of the road. In fact, it is quite common.

I think they are members of African Independent Churches (AICs). By far the vast majority of South Africans belong to AICs, which combine traditional ancestor belief with Christianity. The Zion Christian Church is the largest of them. The AICs reflect a combination of traditional Christian one-God worship together with traditional African ancestral spirit worship

We passed these white-robed worshipers on Easter Sunday morning as we were driving from Johannesburg to Pretoria for lunch. That's Easter Sunday in South Africa!

Easter game drive

It is not that far-fetched for my Easter treats to consist of chocolate, marshmallow and candy safari animals. We had our Easter Sunday lunch at the Orient Boutique Hotel on 280 hectares of Conservation Area within the Francolin Conservancy. And we passed many zebras, nyalas, impalas and giraffes out and about eating their Easter lunch as we drove from the entry gate to the hotel parking lot.

Easter lunch in Shangri-La

entering the dream

We ate Easter lunch at Mosaic, the restaurant at the Orient Boutique Hotel outside Pretoria.

No, that statement does not quite do it justice. We had one of the best dining experiences of our lives over five hours in one of the most beautiful dining rooms inside one of the most gorgeous hotels we have ever seen. On Easter Sunday in South Africa.

art nouveau detail

The design of the Orient Boutique Hotel itself and Mosaic's dining room is other-worldly. Being there is like floating through an Art Nouveau dream in a Henry James novel set in Shangri-La or Xanadu. Many people opt to dine at Mosaic as part of a whole weekend at the hotel. And it would be wise after an evening spent indulging the Grande Degustation menu accompanied by the perfectly selected South African Enthusiast or International Connoisseur wine-pairings. The hotel is 45 minutes from Joburg and it would not be a good idea to drive home at night in the dark after an evening enthusing or connoisseuring.

But our reservation was at 1:00 on a Sunday afternoon. When we left to drive home, at least it was still light out. But that still didn't make me ready to leave the dream and return to reality. But unfortunately Vince had to hop on a plane later that evening for a trip to Dubai and Cairo. Dinner over. Dream over. Poof. Wake up! But first ...

Like Scheherazade, I was conjuring up the culinary genie in a bottle ...

Poof! me and Chantel

Once you get past the opulent setting, it is time to concentrate on the raison d'être. The food. The genie in the Mosaic lamp responsible for the fine dining is Chantel Dartnall. Chantel is the Eat Out Chef of the Year. Everything I have read about Chantel and her accomplishments is true. Everything. And everything about the menu was perfection. From the ingredients to the combinations to the preparation to the presentation. I couldn't take pictures of all the plates - we were there for five hours and they served plate after plate after plate! Vince has lost all patience with me on that score. But some of them were just too pretty to believe.

Like this sunflower made of carrot jelly and orange blossom cream. A thing of beauty for all the senses! 1000 words are just not enough.

Or this amazing construction.The Millionaire's Nest Egg. Inspired by weaver bird's nests,the nest was created with delicate courgette tagliatelle, upon which three miniature quail eggs, each with a different flavored liquid center, are placed. How did she do that? And sliced truffles on top!

Or the Mousse de Mer. The plate looked like a piece of art nouveau majolica! Hard to believe it was edible. Langoustines and risotto on a beach of ground dehydrated tomato skins! With a shot of rooibos tea and tomato on the side. Crazy delish!

Vince and I parted ways on the main course. I had the Bouillabaisse. Kakavia soup, fruits de mer and rouille. Vince had the Birds of a Feather. Quail, guinea fowl, capon and wholegrain mustard. (We could have used a third person with us to order the other main choice. Agneau aux Herbes de Provence. Free Range Lamb, Black Olive, Herbes de Provence.)






As expected, our wine pairings parted ways as well on the main course. We did take a copy of all the wine selections to bring with us on our next wine purchasing foray.

Mosaic even bottles its own vintage semillon / sauvignon blanc blend called First Kiss which they serve with the Rainbow Trout, Lime and Vanilla Velouté. Sommelier Germaine Lahodey gave us the secret phone number for the winemaker!

The cheese course came with a cheese plate already loaded up with some selections accompanied by a groaning side cart. This Karoo Crumble was especially noteworthy!

I had to drag the camera out for two more dessert dishes. I just had to! Have you ever seen anything as beautiful as the presentation for this Dark Valrhona Chocolate composition with house-made cherries? Well we hadn't either! Food calligraphy.

'Cept maybe this chocolate package of strawberries, rhubarb and yoghurt sorbet. There's my Easter orchid.












We will be back to dream the dream again someday. And we will stay over next time.

Holiday food is life!

One way that people like to celebrate their holidays is with food.

Easter 2012 menu from NY's Osteria del Circo

Back in the USA, the Christmas holiday meals we prepared over the course of the season were strongly influenced by our families' heritage. Seven fishes for an Italian Christmas Eve (me and Vince). German crown roast of pork on Christmas Day (Vince) and borscht and chicken Kiev for a Russian Epiphany (me again.)

Easter cuisine was kind of up for grabs. We would typically go out for brunch in NYC as our main meal of the day followed by a light supper later that night at home in NJ. Could be to a French restaurant, Italian, Greek or our old standby, the Russian Tea Room - any cuisine that includes a strong Easter menu. Thanksgiving was without fail an all-American turkey. And Independence Day? That would be a barbeque at the shore on the Fourth of July.

If we were traveling during the Christmas or Easter holidays, we would naturally check out the local customs and fare. Like oysters for a French réveillon on New Year's Eve. Last year we were in Mozambique for Easter so Easter lunch consisted of king prawns straight off the fishing boats!

An Easter supper in our NJ dining room

... and another Easter supper in our NJ kitchen

This year for Easter we stayed put in Joburg. We had Easter Sunday lunch at Mosaic with Eat Out Chef of the Year Chantel Dartnall at the Orient Boutique Hotel in Pretoria. But before that, we indulged in some traditional South African Easter dishes which we made at home.

First on Good Friday, our one meal of the day was poached kingklip. Along with Ash Wednesday, Good Friday for Catholics is a day of abstinence which means in addition to being meatless, it is also limited to only one full meal for the whole day.

After our Good Friday dinner, we prepared pickled fish from the leftovers for Holy Saturday's dinner. The suggestion and recipe for this Cape Malay Easter classic came from a blog called Scrumptious South Africa.  Award-winning social media strategist, cook, food writer, recipe developer, professional freelance journalist, editor and blogger Jane-Anne Hobbs Rayner (that's alot of hats!) also included a bonus fish paté recipe for the leftovers from the pickled fish dish. This recipe keeps on giving!

Eating pickled fish is a South African Easter tradition. Celebrated Cape Malay cookbook author and chef Cass Abrahams, of German and Xhosa extraction, was raised as a Christian in Johannesburg and converted to Islam when she married into the Cape Malay community. Growing up, her Christian family would eat pickled fish and hot cross buns for breakfast on Good Friday before going to a prayer service - a very long one in the Johannesburg City Hall - and have the same afterwards. Pickled fish with hot cross buns? Abrahams believes this cross-cultural tradition started in Cape Town's District Six where Muslims, Jews and Catholics once lived closely side by side.

On Easter morning we broke our fast with Jane-Anne's Hot Cross Buns Bread and Butter Pudding with Pears. It is an excellent way to use up those left-over Good Friday hot cross buns and it was delicious!

Why did I never think of using hot cross buns this way? It reminded me of Craig Claiborne's Egg Nog Challah French Toast recipe (NYT Cookbook, 1992) which we make every year on Christmas morning!

Of course the best part of making holiday foods from heritage recipes other than your own or eating the local food of a country you visit or live in during a holiday is that the food then becomes a part of your holiday tradition. We can make this hot cross bun recipe every Easter morning from now on and harken back to our first Easter breakfast in South Africa. And we will.

Mexican Hot Chocolate from Azteca

Hot Cross Buns Bread and Butter Pudding with Pears and a Caramel Amarula Sauce

Amarula Hot Chocolate with an elephant Peep and choco-rhinos!

"glub!"

elephant Peep eye!

And after Easter ...

Easter Monday egg salad and ham hot cross bun sliders

pickled fish pate and beetroot hummus on baguette slices

Happy Ndebele Easter from Valley Lodge!

Thanks Heather for my awesome Ndebele Easter table runner!

Joyce's, my and Esther's Ndebele Pysanky

A Ndebele Easter calls for Ndebele Pysanky. The one on the left was made by Joyce Ndimande, daughter of Francine. The one on the right by Esther Mahlangu and the (comparatively sad) one in the middle was made by moi!

Vince's Easter "basket" for me - a boiled wool vase!

chocolate dung and a tin can lion

safari animal wine charms, beaded dessert forks, sardine run paper clips and trophy key hangers

Cadbury creme eggs, marzipan, and candy animal paws

choco-rhinos and painted eggs

safari Peeps!