I don’t even remember making this one, so maybe I was just hanging around and someone called me to eat breakfast and this is what was available. That salad, especially. A lazy person like me wouldn’t have time to make a salad like that. And the tea bread doesn’t look too fresh – you can tell by the way the ends broke off instead of pulling out all stringy like with fresh bread. Ei. Beggar with a choice. I’m sure this breakfast was delicious with some hot tea (tea-tea, not milo-tea) with not too much milk. Ah, I wish I could have it again.
Enough reminiscing. Next time I’ll have a recipe for Taiwanese Three Cup Chicken!
I like eggs. They’re cheap and tasty and can be cooked in 2 minutes or less. In a pinch some people eat them raw, but I’m not that hardcore yet. And even picky kids can be coaxed into eating a fried egg or two, so it makes a good bribe.
I also like mushrooms. Not as much as eggs, but they’re supposed to be really good for you and we have a regular oyster mushroom supplier, so I eat them quite a bit. Most often as a meat substitute in a quick gravy when all my meat is frozen or I just can’t be bothered to fiddle with meat.
So you put the eggs and the mushrooms together and you get a mushroom omelette! Or omelet, if you’re American. In the past I’ve experimented with slicing the mushrooms really small and beating them into the omelette, but I didn’t quite like the taste. It still seemed a bit undercooked, and rather flavorless. So this time I had a new idea. First prepare the ingredients as usual:
Mushrooms, onions, eggs, pepper, salt, any other seasoning you wish to add. I then fried up the onions and mushrooms with the seasonings:
Just a few minutes over medium heat so the mushrooms are a little wilted and soft but the onions still have some crunch. Then I started beat the eggs with some salt and pepper and poured it into the pan:
This was where I was supposed to put the mushrooms on top of the egg and fold it over. I would have liked the middle to be slightly creamy and the outside not too dry, but I think I left the heat on too long. It still turned out relatively nice:
But it was more like a plain omelette wrapped around a mushroom filling rather than a mushroom omelette. I.e. I didn’t get that mix of egg and mushroom I wanted, each is still very much its own entity. It was still delicious though. Went great with some hot buttered toast and tea. And a very good time was had by all. If/when I get a better camera I’ll attempt this recipe again and see if I can get it just the way I like it. Until then!
What do you do with a box of green, underripe pears? Ablotsii pears oo, not avocado pears. Ei wait, where do you even get such a box in Accra? As for that one, you’ll have to thank a generous uncle for that. If you don’t have a generous uncle, sorry oo. Or you can just buy pears. A few of them were ripe or almost ripe, and it’s likely that the rest would have ripened with time. But what if you want to eat them now? Or you just want to try your hand at stewing some fruit?
And that’s how we got Exhibit #25 in the “Chief Foodian need a new camera and much better plating skills” series. I really should start taking photos expressly for the purpose of this blog so that I show the whole process from start to finish. Most stewed pear recipes call for a little wine or other alcohol, which I imagine improves the taste, but I didn’t have any wine on hand and most of the people in my house can’t have alcohol anyway (too young/on medication) so it’s just as well.
Here’s how I did it:
Wash the pears, cut in quarters, remove the cores.
Put them in a small saucepan with a little water (enough to come about 1/2 way up the pears), a spoonful or two of sugar, a teaspoon of cinnamon and a handful of cloves.
Cover and bring to a boil.
Reduce heat to a simmer and cook for another 15 minutes until pears are soften. If a toothpick goes through easily, that’s enough.
Remove from the heat. Serve hot or cold. You can also cover them and keep them in the fridge for up to 5 days. Stewed pears probably don’t freeze well unless you intend to blend them into smoothies or drinks.
That’s it, pretty simple. I kept mine in the fridge and had them with oats or yogurt every morning for the next couple of days. Pretty tasty and a good way to get a sweetish kick without adding sugar to the rest of the meal. You don’t even have to stew the pears with sugar if they’re sweet enough for your tastes. In that case just add spices and water and cook.
Still clearing up old photos I have on my hard drive for some reason. The disadvantage of that is that sometimes I can’t remember exactly how I cooked something. Or even why. I think in the case of the egg drop soup I had some leftover tofu I wanted to use up. I tossed in some other stuff as well. It’s a very simple breakfast to make when you don’t feel like the usual bread and tea or porridge. You just need:
Ingredients Eggs – as many as you want
Stock/broth. Powdered is fine, and in a pinch you can dissolve a maggi cube in some water
Thinly sliced or precooked vegetables, meat or tofu as needed
A little light soy sauce for extra salt and flavour
A pinch of powdered pepper or curry powder
1. Bring the stock to a boil. No quantity given because it’s a very versatile recipe that’s hard to mess up.
2. Throw in your veggies and any meat if you’re using it. In this case I added some grated carrots, glass noodles and tofu. It would have been nice to get some green veggies in there for added colour.
3. Beat the eggs in a separate container until frothy.
4. Take the soup off the heat, stir the soup till you get a good circulating motion going then pour the beaten eggs in in a thin stream.
5. Wait a minute or two for the eggs to set then return the soup to the heat.
6. Bring it to a simmer again. Stir gently and add pepper, soy sauce and other spices to taste.
7. Serve immediately with rice or plain noodles.
There, that was simple enough, wasn’t it? It’s too late now, but I think it would have looked great if I could have stirred some chopped green onions in at the end. Or if I served it with a leafy salad on the side. I like a mix of colors in my dishes, though you wouldn’t know it to look at the stuff I’ve posted so far. We have a lot of dandelions growing in our backyard because of the rainy season, so they would be a good addition.
So that’s it! One day I’ll do a proper recipe with quantities and everything, but that day is not today. Enjoy!
Another day, another experiment gone wrong. This is a photo I took last year, so I don’t remember exactly what I was trying to make or why, I just remember it didn’t turn out the way I wanted it to. I think I was aiming to make a big omelette filled with tomatoes and onions? No… Or yes… Actually I seriously don’t remember. But looking at the photo triggers memories of too dry, too-finely scrambled eggs, all boring and grainy in my mouth.
It would have been better if I had just fried the eggs separately and the veggies separately and eaten them with my rice for a tasty breakfast or light lunch. The thing is, I make Chinese-style egg and tomatoes all the time so what went wrong here? The onions? It was the onions, wasn’t it? Anyway, I’m just clearing out old photos of stuff I’ve made in the past and came across this one. I have about a 7:3 ratio of success to failure when I cook stuff, so you can expect more stuff like this in the future. See ya!
One of the things I thought I would do when I started this blog is product and restaurant reviews. If I tried anything different or went somewhere new, I thought I would come back and write down a few thoughts on the place. It just so happens that shortly after starting Foodian for Life, I turned into a complete homebody who almost never goes anywhere non-essential.
Not only that, but I’ve become very stingy and picky at the same time. I only want to go to the nice places, but when I think of the better ways I could spend that money I end up staying home instead. That means you can forget about seeing many reviews on this site. On the plus side, I’m more motivated to cook stuff for myself. Instead of spending 25 cedis on miso soup at Santoku, I can just make my own. But that’s a discussion for another day.
Bread, tea, bacon and sausage, not a vegetable in sight!
Today I just happened to find some pictures I took of a pack of sausages I bought at Shoprite so I guess I’ll say something about that. TBH I haven’t had any good sausages in Ghana. Full stop. I’ve had some that were close to okay, but that’s as good as it gets. No juiciness, no satisfying chewiness, just bland, salty, grainy, long things. And don’t get me started on the chicken frankfurters. But that doesn’t mean I have to give up.
So on a whim, I decided to buy this boerewors from Shoprite. South Africans are known as great meat-eaters, right? I heard that somewhere. And the price was right at only a little over 18 cedis for a long sausage. You could cook a whole meal with this if you were so inclined.
It’s actually almost 40 cedis a kilo, which triggers my “cheap” sensors, but I closed my eyes to that part. After all, if I were that cheap, I wouldn’t be shopping at Shoprite, now would I? It looks okay enough raw in the package. The blood is a bit off-putting and there’s a distinct lack of fat, which might be a good thing for some people. To cook it I pricked it a few times (even though I recently read that I shouldn’t prick sausages) and threw it in the pan for a while. Once the outside was cooked, I added a little water and covered the pan to let it steam and make sure the insides were done. Here’s the result:
Totally overcooked!!! You can tell by the dry, crumbly edges and the meat crumbs on the plate. The thing is, I deliberately overcooked it because no one in my house would have eaten it otherwise. They would say “Ebeko!” i.e. “It’s not cooked!” You have to cook the hell out of meat and fish, dry them out to all oblivion before you can get the seal of approval from my folks.
That said, Shoprite’s boerewors is still not a good sausage. A good sausage should be able to stand up to a bit of pricking and cooking and remain moist, tender and juicy. This one is dry and mealy, totally grainy in the mouth. All you taste is salty and grainy meat. I haven’t been to South Africa to eat a “genuine” boerewors before so maybe this is what they’re supposed to taste like? I’m not impressed and it’s not to my liking. On the other hand, the other people I fed this overcooked monstrosity to loved it and clamored for more, so I’ve bought it a few times from Shoprite since. I’ve also bought another brand there, Gold Medal Boerewors.
Looks and tastes exactly the same, same price too. Waste of good money, if you ask me, but whatever makes my loved ones happy.
Long story short: Shoprite boerewors is pricey and tasteless but popular with kids and old ladies. Avoid if you have any better options. To be totally fair to the sausages, next time I buy them I will cook them low and slow without pricking until they are *just* cooked and update this post if it makes any difference to the flavor. See ya!
