Sweet Challenge
Where to start? Again, it's been a while, so I sit here wondering whether I should be wishing you all Happy New Year when the year is six weeks' old? What a year it's been: not quite like the beginning of last year which was really sad, but because it's really been hectic.
Today, I am breaking one of my blogging rules because it's also one of those days on which many South Africans reflect on where they were on 12th February 1990. I remember that day. Vividly. I was living in Johannesburg and it was also a Sunday. I had for a few years been involved with a street children organisation in Hillbrow and we had taken the children out for a day in the sunny Magaliesburg. After returning the children safely to their shelter, I parked the Yellow Peril in her spot in a bay rented a garage up the road from my Yeoville flat. Then I went to visit a friend: a fascinating woman, already elderly and ailing but in her own way, still young and heart, full of life. It was her birthday and she had stories of the struggle and of her youth in and around Yeoville in the 1950s and 1960s. As she reminisced, we shared a glass or two of something (wine, I suspect), and sat glued to the television waiting for a moment neither of us thought we'd ever see.
Nelson Mandela walking free, down the road from the Drakenstein Prison and then, making his first speech as a free man.
Over the last days, not unlike then, many of us have been glued to the television and social media. Waiting for an announcement of a different nature; one that will finally confirm an end to the Jacob Zuma era.
Many of us set a great deal of store in the man who held the microphone for Mandela as he made his first public speech as a free man. Cyril Ramaphosa has an enormous challenge ahead of him.
Ramaphosa holding the microphone for Nelson Mandela. The gentle Walter Sisulu, whom I had the privilege of meeting, is on the left of the picture. Source: IOL, Picture: Leon Muller
From that challenge to one much more banal: I nailed my colours to the mast when I started this blog: I do not have a sweet tooth, so when I embarked on the Sunday Supper journey, my dessert repertoire was extremely limited, at best, messy.
A sweet challenge, indeed!
A few people have come to my rescue and have shared recipes with me - and I will post about those in time, but it was a chance conversation with my hairdresser that sent me in search of the recipe for a dessert from my childhood. For some of us, the ginger tart from the 1970's is as South African as American apple pie. It was one of the ones my mother made regularly (and successfully - she claimed that she had no baking skills, but that's another story), and as summer approached, a baked dessert became less and less attractive. Especially on days when the temperature can exceed 40° Celsius (well over 100° Farenheit), when one can be cooking serving dinner when the temperature hasn't dropped much below 30°.
No recipe in any of my favourite books, so I took consulted GoG* and came across a website in New Zealand no less, that is rich with old South African favourites. Oh, good, I thought. Until The Husband went on a fruitless quest for a jar of preserved ginger.
I don't do well being thwarted.
Fresh ginger abounds in said supermarket, so surely, preserving it couldn't be so difficult. GoG. Again. This time a local website. So now we were set.
Preserved Ginger
This is really easy to make. However, as with any sugar syrup, be careful not to stir it too much or to cook it for too long. This last is a challenge - a bit like the proverbial piece of string. The recipe I found is as follows, and which I adapted only so that I had no waste, and made more than the cup that this recipe yields:
Ingredients
200g fresh ginger root, peeled and diced into ½ cm pieces
2 ½ cups water
2 cups sugar
What to do
Put the sugar and water in a heavy based saucepan. The recipe says that one should stir to dissolve - I don't recommend this. Watch the pot and the water carefully - the sugar will dissolve without it's being stirred. Then add the ginger and simmer gently until the ginger is soft and translucent - about an hour.
Pot in one or more sterilised jars.
Preserved ginger in the pantry, the menu was planned and published.
Retro Ginger Tart
Crust
150 g ginger biscuits (see notes)
50 g butter
Method
Melt the butter in a saucepan over a low heat. Blitz the in a food processor and add to the melted butter, and mix together. Then press the mixture firmly into a pie plate and put it in the fridge to firm up - at least half an hour. This is a little counter-intuitive when one sees that the mixture is added when it's still hot, but trust me (really!) this is a better route to go - the crust is much firmer, and is easier to cut and serve.
Filling
1 cup (250 ml or 300 g) golden syrup
1 cup (250 ml) boiling water
1/2 teaspoon (2 ml) ground ginger
2 tablespoons (30 ml) chopped preserved ginger - reserve the preserving syrup
2 tablespoons (30 ml) custard powder
2 tablespoons (30 ml) cornflour/maizena
2 tablespoons cold water
1/2 cup (125 ml) cream
Chop the preserved ginger - or not - it depends on how chunky you want the ginger. Combine the golden syrup, the syrup from the preserved ginger, ground ginger and boiling water. Add the chopped preserved ginger. Mix custard powder and cornflour into the cold water. The recipe says to add this to the mixture. I find that if one does that, one can end up with lumps, so what I do, is to use a slightly larger bowl than one would normally use and then to spoon some of the hot syrup mixture into the cold powder and water mix, and then to return the lot to the pot. Boil for 3 minutes and pour the mixture into the prepared crust. Refrigerate the tart to allow the filling to set.
Decorate with whipped cream.
Ginger tart with squiggly cream
And to end...
That dish was my mother's and the same one she used for her ginger tart.
The pile of squiggly cream was necessary because, for some reason, the filling cracked. I have given you the quantities as they are in the recipe, but the next time I make it, I am going to reduce the quantity of cornflour and see if that solves the problem.
As wrote, I was glued to the television, as I was, 19 years ago, and watching someone as presidential as Madiba was then. Cyril Ramaphosa, addressing the Mandela centennial celebration from that same balcony, is committing to ridding the country of corruption and state capture, and returning to the values Madiba espoused. I do hope so.
That it will make for a happy year.
*Good old Google
Sources:
Drizzle and Dip