Marabastad pampoen*

I was in Fruit 'n Veg the other day ( you will notice that I quite like this store) and they had a special on : R10 for two enormous zucchinis. By enormous I mean the size of my arm - huge. Since I am unable to let anything go that seems like a bargain, I bought them without knowing what to cook with them. 

The first one I halved, stuffed it with a chorizo-mixed veg-couscous and topped with some cheese. I used a third of the other one to make rather boring fritters. I guess because the vegetable is so huge it loses some of that zucchini flavour. My mom came back just in time to also get her share of what she called a maranka. Aparently my grandmother used to make the giant zucchini with sugar and cinnamon. I am unsure if it is the same vegetable. 

So for the last 2/3 of the green monster, I cut it in rings, scooped out the seeds in the middle and stuffed them with a toasted bread/carrot/danish feta/coriander/patty pan mix with lots of spices. In hindsight it might have been better to peel the entire zucchini because the skin was not very tasty. It was an ok dish. Maybe it just needs more experimenting. Fruit 'n Veg is just around the corner, I'll have to go get more R10 specials :)

The maranka.

Cut in rings.

Stuffing

Topped with cheese.

I fixed our oven so now it has light again.

The final product.

  * meaning Marabastad pumpkin, because I could not remember the word "maranka" and Marabastad is a slightly dodgy shopping area.

Sundried

Fruit 'n Veg had a special on: 3 packs of tomatoes for R12. So I bought them and dried them. Normally I halve the tomatoes ( the small Roma ones), arrange them on baking trays, sprinkle over a salt/pepper/sugar/spices mixture and bake them at 100°C for a few hours. But yesterday the oven stopped working in the middle of my drying-out session. I figured out one of the fuses had blown ( a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle, hey?!).

So now the tomatoes have been actually drying outside in the sun for two days and it worked pretty well.
When they are dried to your taste ( I like them to still be slightly "wet" and then I eat them like candy) you can fill them into some glass jars and top the jars up with olive oil until all the dried tomatoes are completely covered.

Nice.

Rhubarber

I have never cooked with rhubarb.
It is strange to me that these green-pink stalks can become anything delicious.
However, the other day a bunch of rhubarb only cost R 9.99 at Fruit 'n Veg so I grabbed a bunch and headed home to find out what one could do with them.

I found a whole selection of recipes on smittenkitchen and through foodgawker, but they all appeared to take a lot of time and I prefer mixing something, throwing it in the oven and taking it out hours later to marvel at how tasty and beautiful it looks.

So ultimately, I adapted smittenkitchen's original recipe:

Strawberry-Rhubarb Crumble

Yields 6 to 8 servings.

For the topping:
1 1/3 cup flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
3 tablespoons sugar
3 tablespoons Demerara sugar (or turbinado sugar aka Sugar in the Raw)
Zest of one lemon
1/4 pound (1 stick or 4 ounces) unsalted butter, melted

For the filling:
1 1/2 cups rhubarb, chopped into 1-inch pieces
1 quart strawberries plus a few extras, hulled, quartered
Juice of one lemon
1/2 cup sugar
3 to 4 tablespoons cornstarch (some commenters found the flour option a little too, well, floury so this has been updated)
Pinch of salt

1. Heat oven to 375°F. Prepare topping: In a mixing bowl, combine flour, baking powder, sugars and lemon zest and add the melted butter. Mix until small and large clumps form. Refrigerate until needed.

2. Prepare filling: Toss rhubarb, strawberries, lemon juice, sugar, cornstarch and a pinch of salt in a 9-inch deep-dish pie plate. (I used an oval dish this time, because they fit better in the bottom of a shopping bag.)

3. Remove topping from refrigerator and cover fruit thickly and evenly with topping. Place pie plate on a (foil-lined, if you really want to think ahead) baking sheet, and bake until crumble topping is golden brown in places and fruit is bubbling beneath, about 40 to 50 minutes.

So, instead, for the topping, I did this: 

3/4 cup flour

1/2 cup light brown sugar

150ml oats ( slightly more than half a cup)

1ts cinnamin

1ts nutmeg

 ( I wing these until it looks to be the right amount)

100g cold butter

100g chopped walnuts ( I usually just use whichever nuts I have, and am not too specific about the amount)

Place everything except the nuts together in a bowl ( it would be wise to cut the butter into small squares) and rub it all until it is crumbly. You could also do this with a food processor but I like the way your fingers have to rub everything together. 

Add the nuts and mix it well. It should be like slightly wet sand. 

For the Filling: 

I used about 6 stalks of rhubarb

one large Woolies punnet of strawberries ( think that should be round 600g)

Added 3 TB of lemon juice

3 TB of cornflour

1/4 cup sugar

Cut the rhubarb into small pieces ( about 1cm thick) and also cut the strawberries. Place the fruit in a bowl and add the remaining ingredients. Mix everything carefully and make sure everything is well coated. I would adjust the sugar depending on how sweet the strawberries are and how sweet you want your crumble to be. 

Then I placed the fruit in the bottom of an oven-proof dish and crumbled the sandy dough evenly over it. 

Bake for about 40-50 minutes, and whambam: delicious. 

Instead of rhubarb, you could also use frozen berries or apples or pears or nectarines or peaches or plums. Hmmmmm you could basically take any fruit. Imagine a cherry crumble. 

To finish the crumble of I added a scoop of frozen mixed berry yoghurt ( available at Woolworths, where else).

My sister did appreciate it.

nom nom nom