Bits and pieces

It's been radio silence for the last few months, but not for lack of delicious regional adventures! Here are some bits and pieces…





Anri, Katrin and I had one of our last roommate lunches at Birds Boutique Café (127 Bree St., Cape Town) back in November. They offer an organic box scheme and emphasise fresh, seasonal, ethical eating.





I've been getting my fruit and vegetable boxes from the Ethical Co-op, which delivers to a supermarket near my house. The Co-op also offers pretty competitively priced dried goods and home products. Even though you're still getting your food from a middleman, it's a time-pressed regional eater's dream: it lists where every product comes from and lets you order everything together once a week. The online experience can't compare to chatting with producers at a farmer's market, but it still beats supermarket strip lighting.



An epicurious friend of mine came down to visit from the U.K.—we visited Eight, of course, where she was extremely impressed by the zucchini soufflé, chicken and leek pot pie (below right) and especially by Spier's Organic 2009 Sauvignon Blanc (I'll admit that I bought the first bottle only for its pleasingly graphic label and well-written copy). Forgive the following point-and-shoot pictures, but I was relatively lax with my camera...

We also visited Solms Delta's Fyndraai restaurant; I was a little disappointed to find that only one of the dishes on the menu appeared to use ingredients from its culinary Fynbos garden, Dik Delta (a vegetable bake that was tasty, but not particularly special). We did love their wine tasting (below left) and the extensive displays dedicated to educating visitors about the history and perspectives of slaves and workers on the farm.



We both liked the food and coffee at Loading Bay, one of those far-too-cool clothing cafés, and the menu claimed that they bought directly from producers.





Last but not least we stopped by the Fresh Goods and Neighbourgoods markets; the second was an absolute zoo! Arrive early and you might be able to nab some produce from the Drift Farm stall. They're growing some beautiful heirloom vegetables (golden zucchini, purple beans) which you can also order directly from them.

A few other things I'm loving:

- Foxenburg Estate goat's milk yogurt. The grenadilla flavour (ingredients: goat's milk, grenadilla) is like eating cheesecake filling. You can buy it from certain Spars and at the Wellness Warehouse (the one at the Cavendish Centre carries 1L buckets for R64. More expensive than cow's milk, but believe me, it's worth it).

- Wild-caught honey available at the Sustainability Institute's A Green Café (R25). It has a very rich, complex flavour.



- Mint lemonade (above, sweetened with stevia). I didn't follow exact quantities, but if you've got a few fistfuls of mint, five lemons and a few drops of stevia you're in business. I know a lot of people dislike the flavour of stevia and it's not regional, besides... but it pairs really well with the mint. Rooibos iced tea with honey is perhaps the better regional choice, and is even easier to make.

- The prospect of a visit to Joburg/Pretoria this weekend! I'm counting on Anri to introduce me to Gauteng's very own regional buffet.

Our first recipe: Banana cake with a cinnamon-sugar crust

Bananas obviously aren’t regional, but they are in season and by my (admittedly slapdash) calculations, this cake turned out 55.5% regional. Since this blog is about making gradual changes towards sustainable eating, halfway seems like a fine place to start.



You don't have to be a cross between Marie Curie and Harry Potter to turn eggs, flour and sugar into something gloriously edible. This is particularly true of banana cakes, which are among the most stable of baked goods—it’s unusual for them to crack, fall or rise wonkily (the technical term), and they tolerate a fairly wide range of oven temperatures. They’re also the perfect solution for the spotty, neglected bananas haunting your fruit bowl.

The first time around, I overfilled the pan; as the cake rose, a large quantity of molten batter escaped and dripped all over the oven, filling my apartment with the unappetizing aroma of a culinary Krakatoa (or Eyjafjallajokull). No matter—the cake was still wickedly scrumptious and disappeared in fifteen minutes flat.

Banana cake with a cinnamon-sugar crust
Adapted from Orangette

Regional ingredients included: cake flour from Eureka Mills, Fair Cape plain yogurt (you might be interested in The Aspirant Locavore's review of their Durbanville farm), regional honey from Divine Foods and olive oil from a friend's farm. I've since acquired some super-local free range eggs (thanks Jess!), but I'm still on the lookout for bulk honey and regional canola oil to bring down the cost.

This cake has a very light texture and the banana flavour is relatively mellow. If you’d prefer a more pronounced banana taste, you can swap out the yogurt for an extra banana.

A word on pans: I’ve used the traditional 8 x 10 loaf tin, which takes about 55 minutes to bake, and the overfilled bundt pan was done after 50 minutes. If you have two 8-inch round cake tins, you could use those; they shouldn’t take much longer than 25 – 30 minutes (I’m going to try this soon and report back). Use what you’ve got and keep an eye on the oven.

1 ½ cups (270g) cake flour
¾ cup (130g) sugar (I've used both brown and white)
1 teaspoon cinnamon
½ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon baking powder

2 eggs
2 bananas, mashed
¼ cup (60ml) plain yogurt
¼ cup (60ml) honey
½ cup (125ml) vegetable oil
¼ cup (60ml) water

2 tbsp brown sugar
2 tbsp white sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon

Preheat the oven to 180°C. In a small bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, cinnamon, salt, baking soda and powder. In a separate bowl, beat together the eggs, mashed bananas, yogurt, honey, oil and water. Add the dry ingredients to the wet and stir until just combined (overbeating will give it a gummy texture).

Pour the batter into your greased pan—if you decide on a loaf tin, I’d recommend lining it with a single sheet of parchment, with the paper hanging over the edges, so that you can pull the cake out in a single motion. Stir together the sugars and cinnamon and sprinkle evenly over the batter. Pop it in the oven; it’s ready when a knife or skewer inserted in the middle comes out clean. Leave it on a rack until completely cool. Share with friends.