Of course we braai’d while we were away. Several times. This was a traditional chops and ‘wors (boerewors) braai that we fancied up with some salad and corn. I think we were supposed to just eat meat really, possibly with some soft rolls for the boerewors, or some pap but the fridge was full of salad and I don’t really like the sound of pap.

This particular boerewors didn’t behave very well and despite Stephen’s excellent technique with the braai tongs, it fell apart. We got it from Woolworths (Marks and Spencer is called Woolworths in SA), perhaps if we had stopped trying to posh everything up and just got it from Pick and Pay then it would have stayed in it’s spiral. It didn’t affect the taste though, obviously, and it was good. Mostly beef I think (again, not traditional I don’t think) and with a good amount of spice.

Our first braai of the holiday, this one to celebrate New Year’s Day and made with fish that we picked up on the way back from a visit to the Waterfront. We’d actually already eaten two big plates of fish for lunch at Quay Four but there’s something about the warm weather that makes fish so appealing. It helps that fish is so fresh and plentiful in SA too. And much cheaper than here in the UK too.

The shrimp were cooked simply and then drowned in garlic butter and the angelfish was grilled with lemon, garlic and thyme. Angelfish has a meaty texture, a little like swordfish and works brilliantly on the barbecue since it remains firm and doesn’t fall apart. While it doesn’t have a hugely strong flavour, it certainly stood up to the marinade and the smoke.

We’ve been so busy lately that although we have been doing some cooking, we haven’t found the time to blog about it. What we have been cooking has mostly been quick and easy and not all that interesting which makes things difficult to write about. I’d completely forgotten about this until I found the picture while clearing out the camera and remembered that we ate it almost two weeks ago.

Stephen picked up some trout on his way home from work and since the weather was so good, we stuffed it full of herbs and cooked it on the barbecue. I remember it being good but since it was so long ago, I can’t remember much more than that. The picture does remind me that I enjoyed the impromptu barbecue and the al-fresco eating though and it’s these reminders that I enjoy when I look back through old posts so that’s why I’ve written this up. Hopefully soon things will quieten down and we’ll have more time for both cooking and blogging.

After not barbecuing very much so far this year, we seem to have gone a long way to rectifying things this weekend. The first weekend that arrives after a holiday is always a busy one and we didn’t have much time to think about what we were going to eat, steak on the barbecue takes very little effort and always provides good results so that’s we decided on for this evening.

We had some gardening to do this afternoon and a healthy prune of our herb bushes was much needed. It provided us with a bumper crop of herby green stuff which we put to good use when cooking our dinner. Some of the herbs went on to the fire to sizzle and flavour the steak as it cooked and the rest went into the blender with some oil, lemon juice and seasoning to make a tasty dressing for the cooked meat.

I sliced my steak up, spread some of the herby sauce on to a wrap and then loaded it up with steak and lettuce. A little salad and some more dressing on the side and we had ourselves a quick and very tasty dinner.

So, apart from cheating today and buying beer and cheese to represent Holland, we did a pretty good job of exploring some new cuisnes and finding some new favourite dishes.

We started with South Africa and cooked every Saffer’s favourite, the milk tart. I ate a lot of this while I was there but have never thought to cook it myself. It’s really just a baked custard and is very easy to make yet still impessive enough to serve to guests. We took it to a barbecue and it was well received. Definitely one for the make-again-soon list.

There was a lot of steak, all of which was good, as steak generally is. Stephen’s improvisation with the steel strip from the hardware shop in place of a long skewer was genius though. I’m not sure if we’ll employ that technique again but it made a good talking point and it might be useful in the future if we ever get a bigger barbecue.

Other highlights were the Japanese clams, just like moules marinere but with Japanese flavourings and the minestrone soup for Italy. I’ve been meaning to make that for years but never got round to it, this gave me the push I needed and has become a real favourite – we’re having it for lunches this week. The Greek stiffado was another revelation, for it’s sheer simplicity and big flavour delivery. Probably more suited to the colder weather but it’s something to look forward to in the winter.

The Spanish entry gave us a good excuse to visit a local restaurant and meant we found a new favourite place to eat tapas. Although we didn’t actually cook anything ourselves, this was still a good discovery which was part of the point of the exercise.

Now it’s over, I feel a bit lost. While it was a little difficult eating tastless Ghanian stew while my favourite peas and broad beans where appearing, it gave us a good focus to our meal planning and forced us to try dishes we weren’t familiar with. A success I would say, something many people would have liked to say about Fabio’s contribution to this year’s world cup.

We had lots of errands to run today and, when we were finally finished, we realised we hadn’t thought much about dinner. We’d discussed going out to eat but when it came to it, we were too hot and tired so decided to head home and barbecue something instead.

Earlier this morning, I popped into the new Union Market food shop that has opened near to us. It’s a beautiful shop, on the site of the old Walhmam Green tube station near Fulham Broadway. It used to be a TGI Friday’s and thankfully, someone had the good sense to tear it down and replace it with this brilliant new place.

While I was there, I tasted some really good sausages so, after the barbecue plan was formed, we stopped off to pick some up. They didn’t have any soft rolls or baguettes left so we grabbed the last packet of wraps to, well, wrap our sausages in. Some fried onions, barbecued peppers and aubergines later and we had ourselves a somewhat fusion but very fine dinner.

We haven’t done nearly enough barbecuing this year so, as we had a little more time than normal tonight, Stephen rolled out the Weber and got busy with some veal chops.

While we were away our herbs flourished and we’re now more than a little over-run with tasty, green stuff. This Valentine Warner recipe was ideal for our predicament and also used rose veal which we both like but don’t eat nearly enough of. Stephen was able to find some locally and get it marinading for a decent amount of time which, combined with the herby-dressing, led to some really tasty meat. It was cheap too, around £7 for two large chops which, had they been beef would have probably been twice that.

So, onto the USA, which is of course well known for burgers, amongst other things. As it was such a lovely day, we continued the barbecue theme. My sister and her husband came round to visit and brought my little niece along, who ran around a lot and tired everyone out, but it was a lot of fun.

The burgers were made from mince from our local butcher, which we have used before and was really good. It probably didn’t need a lot of seasoning, but we put in some Tabasco and some Worcester sauce along with salt and pepper and a little chopped red onion. We find that we don’t need any breadcrumbs or egg to bind it together, they are generally quite happy to remain in a burger shape until cooked.

We didn’t have any American cheese slices and weren’t planning to buy any as we never eat them, so tried to cut a slice of cheddar very square, which almost looks right but not quite. Added some lettuce, tomato and sliced pickle and we were ready to go.

We also barbecued some sweetcorn, which worked out well but is presented here in a totally non-American way on a Cath Kidston plate:

And then to finish, some pecan pie which was really good and was quite simple to make. We followed this BBC Food recipe but used ready-made pastry instead of making it. The pastry wasn’t a great success even though we bought it – I rolled it out and then because it was such a hot day it started falling apart when I tried to put it into the pie dish. I managed to do a bit of patchwork though and it somehow held together and more importantly, it tasted good!

This is a traditional style of barbecue which originated from the gauchos (i.e. cowboys) in southern Brazil – meat on long skewers cooked over a barbecue pit and then sliced off with a knife. Not having a barbecue pit close at hand, we made do with a normal barbecue. Also not having a really long skewer at hand, we had to improvise. I had considered walking into a kebab shop and asking to buy a skewer, but a quick visit to B&Q yielded the “skewer” that you see in the pictures, which is also known by its more boring common name of something like “2mmx16mm rolled steel strip”.

We simply seasoned the steak with a generous pinch of salt before cooking, which turned out to be all that it needed. As with the other steaks that we have cooked on the barbecue recently, it was a ribeye steak that we cooked quickly over high heat, which gave it a lovely char on the outside and left it pink and tender in the middle. Delicious.

A very popular ingredient in this sort of barbecue is chicken hearts on a skewer, but we sadly failed to find a ready supplier of large quantities of chicken hearts. Maybe next time!

In an effort not to eat a diet completely consisting of meat, we also had some sweet potatoes and salad. We could have been more authentic and cooked the sweet potatoes on the barbecue, but did them in the oven instead.

When thinking of what to cook for Argentina, we automatically thought of this dish. Having cooked it before though, we felt that maybe we should be a little more creative and try something else, but we remembered it having been particularly tasty and were keen to eat it again. As it turned out, we were at a friend’s barbecue and he kindly allowed us to hijack the barbecue briefly to cook the steak. After cooking it, we sliced it up into strips and added more sauce so that people could share it.

The beef wasn’t actually Argentinian because we couldn’t find any unfortunately. We had put it onto the barbecue first when it was still too hot to cook most things, which gave it a delicious char-grilled taste on the outside after just a few minutes, leaving the middle succulent with a slight sweetness. The sauce was a perfect match and we added it to a few other barbecued foods later on too.