Outside my office, I hear lawnmowers going – gardening is an ongoing activity and can be very exciting.
I have often referred to it in this blog and I am still amazed to have started
with gardening. My wife was gardening since she was at school and I am a young
gardener; only started 1 January 2013 – yes, on that New Year’s Day she asked
me to “take over the veggies.”
And later it migrated to cooking and baking. I, however, promised her that I
will not bake puddings and cakes except for the once a year-end-function-fruit-cake
and the occasional cheesecake. My wife actually allows me into the kitchen to
bake; she does not wander too far off because I depend to a great extent on her
vast knowledge and experience.
That then leads to another activity and that is to learn to read
recipes, and to acquire cooking books. And to actually read those books. Jamie
Oliver’s curry recipes are the best. Normally, I make the curry the one day,
leave it to rest for at least one or two days, before I use it. Have you
watched Julie and Julia the youtube video? I have. And I have really enjoyed
it. Can I recommend it? Of course.
And then, for some unknown reason I sort of stopped it and during
November 2022 I started again. When I write that I stopped cooking and baking,
I never stopped with the braai activities at all.
I got some “potent and hot” chillies from my neighbour; these were harvested
fresh from the plants. All of a sudden, I had an incentive to do something with
it. He tells me that he cooks his and then preserve in olive oil. Well, I never
cook my chillies; I take my mezzaluna knife and cut it rather finely but not to
a pulp. Sterilize your glass container and put it in that and cover with a good
doze of extra virgin olive oil.
These were hot.
When we were still living in Morningside, Sandton, someone told me about
his father-in-law and how he boasts about his love for really very hot
chillies. He, so the story went, simply cannot get enough of it. It cannot be
hot enough. That is father-in-law’s scene; he knows that the best.
Well, I am not an expert on the Scoville Scale of chillies. We once went
to a garden show and admired the produce; we also did what about everybody
does, that is to watch the world and its people go by. Part and parcel were a
tent where you could taste chillies and participate in a competition. Those
chillies were really to the extreme. The organisers insisted on the
participants to sign a release and indemnity before you could participate.
Really that potent? Oh yes. It can be really dangerous. Then we saw a young
father, his wife and children on their way to their car and he sort of
collapsed. He was in distress and the wife and children were worried.
Well, to come back to my street-story, I simply don’t know what was his
father-in-law’s Scoville capacity. Nevertheless, I gave him a tiny bottle full
of my “concoction” and warned him that these chillies were hot. He took it and
left.
A couple of months later, I once again saw him and greeted the guy. He
was on top of it immediately and was almost yelling:
“Oh, where were you when
he tasted your chillies. And then he blamed me, his son-in-law, for giving him
that ‘hot stuff’.”
When I was much younger, I could eat the really hot ones. And,
afterwards, always suffered the most severe headaches and I bragged about it
that, that is the price you pay for having such strong ones. Then it dawned on
me: you cannot taste the food. Is that not the object of chillies? To enhance
the taste and not to “obliterate” it? Not so?
That olive oil reminds me of something we saw in Rome – those Italians
love their olive oil. We were sitting at a street restaurant when the owner
approached us and asked that we move from the one table to the next, because he
expects a delivery. What concerned me was that we were not blocking the
entrance to his restaurant – why was it necessary to move away from what? He
showed me that trapdoor behind our table. At that moment someone from below
street level, opened it and there it was: a polished concrete slab and chefs
waiting for the produce to be delivered.
Suddenly the delivery started in a frenzy. They were offloading their
delivery vehicle and rushing on the pavement to the open trapdoor. It was
obvious that these guys knew exactly what to do and how to do it. They did not
hesitate for a moment. Bags and bags of flour were put onto that polished
concrete slab to slide down to the kitchen that was below street level. The
chefs down below were grabbing it and stashing it in the storerooms.
Then they started carting litres and litres of olive oil in cans to the kitchen
down below. I have never seen such a lot of olive oil in my life. I said to
myself these Italians must be the world champions to consume olive oil; how
many litres per head do they consume? This question led me to do what the young
people do; I googled this question. And here is the answer: no, it is not the
Italians at all. They are the world’s leading olive oil producers, but that was
not the question. The question was who consumes the most per capita?
Click here and read for yourself.
Just for good measure, click here then you can satisfy your curiosity
about for instance: how many litres water was used this year? How many people
are born every day? How may abortions per year? How many cigarettes smoked
today? [Really, it is true]. You want to see for yourself, then click.
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Write me your story: neelscoertse@wirelessza.co.za
