More of the same

Monday - 06/05/2013

I arrived at Harare International airport on Thursday evening not knowing what to expect, but expecting the hassle of other African airports. To my surprise it was a painless affair. Traveling on a South African passport meant there was no need for a visa or to stand in the payment queue, one of the few benefits of having the little green books. My bag was ready and waiting form me when I got through passport control so I could breath a sigh of relief that I was not going to have to answer the question on the Barclays adverts lining the customs hall: How long do you wait until you accept your bags are lost?


Stepping out terminal building I expected to be hit with muggy air and the hostile barrage of taxi drivers trying to secure my business. Neither occurred, the air was cool and refreshing, the evening light making it welcoming and the few taxi drivers around appeared content to wait for business to come to them. It had been arranged that a friend of a friend would pick me up at the airport, though I had not spoken to her since we agreed this and that was a week and a bit ago, so when half an hour had passed I concluded that it had taken too long to get through customs and she had left already. I turned on my UK phone to attempt to call her, but nothing, apparently 3 does not work in Zim. Popping back into the terminal building I found a prepaid cellphone counter and the friendly lady there quickly had me set up with a SIM and mobile internet to boot.

That is when lesson one of Africa travel came in and I realised just how westernised I am. I had the number for my lift in a Facebook message though when trying to access it I discovered just how flaky mobile internet here is and there was no getting the number. Later this would also prove a problem when trying to access the pin codes for my travel money cards. So lesson one is : Don't rely on technology, it will fail you, use a pen and paper.


Shortly after my failed attempts at contacting her, my lift arrived and my bags were thrown into the back of her car as we zoomed off leaving the airport and my 13 hour flight a pleasant memory. Our zooming lasted all of 10 minutes which is when I experienced Harare's drivers reactions to traffic lights being out. It can be likened to driving in India only with about 100x less people. Despite our hold up, it could not have been more than 35min between leaving the airport and having my first beer in my hand. My welcome to Harare was to be the HIFI festival, which entailed music performed by D list artists from around the world and copious amounts of drink. The rest of my stay in Harare followed suit and saw me at various bars and clubs culminating in some bar on Saturday night where a glance around revealed that the average age of the patrons could not have been above 16. Despite the whiskey in hand, sobriety came fast at the realisation that all those around me where half my age. It was time to move on and make my way to Victoria Falls.

The whiskey from Saturday night dictated that I missed the bus to the Falls on Sunday and instead spent it lazing about my host's house, which to be fair wasn't the worst place I could be and I got to make a dent in Stanley's - How I Found Livingstone, which I thought appropriate considering the next leg of my trip.

 On Monday morning it was up early to the bus stop to sort out the journey to the Falls. The bus I needed turned out to be two busses and was going to cost me more than I had anticipated,  luckily one of the guys spending the night in the house was heading to Bulawayo which was half the way there, so I hitched a lift with him. The journey was pleasant and entailed much conversation about Zimbabwe and down south (South Africa).  We arrived in Bulawayo that evening and decided to check when the train was going to the Falls, as it happened the next train was in a couple hours. I jumped at the chance and got the second last ticket in sleeper class. Sheepishly I had to ask my lift to spot me a dollar as the drinking in Harare had seen me use up all my dollars and I was having trouble getting hold of more, it didn't matter, I had a ticket to the Falls and would be leaving in a couple hours.  

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A Creative Meal

I received the following task a few weeks ago:

Cook an original meal under the following parameters and document it:
1. Must be at least 2 courses
2. 1 element on the plate must be sculptural
3. Must incorporate alcohol as an ingredient
4. Must have a sauce
5. Must include a yellow vegetable
Points for creativity and presentation.


Since I recently moved to Stockholm and am still trying to figure out my life budget due to the high cost of living here, I have been trying to only shop once a week.  Thus in order to stick to this “budget” I decided to take everything out of my cupboards and fridge to see if this task could be completed with existing resources.

The image above shows what I found: broccoli, avocado, rocket, spinach, cream cheese, Gouda cheese, old (very old with shoots growing) carrots, tomatoes, grapes, kidney beans, black beans, chickpeas, crushed tomato, corn, quinoa, black rice, sweat chilli sauce, sugar peas, whiskey, gin and blossa (a Swedish drink).

I was going to need help. So I put the gin and the blossa away and poured myself a whiskey, one rock.

I have been reading http://www.fourhourworkweek.com, which commanded that I stop looking at the task as a whole, and deconstruct it. This was easy since the task already had sub tasks, so lets see how this went.

1. Cook a meal.
   Fortunately I can cook, some might say I am a half decent cook, so we had this one covered.
2. Must be at least 2 courses.
   While I say I can cook, I very rarely cook multi course meals.  This is mostly because I can never seem to get the timing right; which is why I cook stir-fries and risottos. This got me thinking, what exactly is a course? http://www.thefreedictionary.com/courses lists the following definitions for the word course:
   1.
      a. Onward movement in a particular direction; progress: the course of events.
      b. Movement in time; duration: in the course of a year.
   2. The direction of continuing movement: took a northern course.
   3. The route or path taken by something, such as a stream, that moves. See Synonyms at way.
   4. Sports
      a. A designated area of land or water on which a race is held: the course of a marathon.
      b. A golf course.
   5. A mode of action or behaviour: followed the best course and invested her money.
   6. A typical or natural manner of proceeding or developing; customary passage: a fad that ran its course.
   7. A systematic or orderly succession; a sequence: a course of medical treatments.
   8. A continuous layer of building material, such as brick or tile, on a wall or roof of a building.
   9.
      a. A complete body of prescribed studies constituting a curriculum: a four-year course in engineering.
      b. A unit of such a curriculum: took an introductory course in chemistry; passed her calculus course.
   10. A part of a meal served as a unit at one time: The first course was a delicious soup.
   11. Nautical The lowest sail on a mast of a square-rigged ship.
   12. A point on the compass, especially the one toward which a vehicle, such as a ship, is moving.
3. 1 element on the plate must be sculptural.
   Lets get this straight I have never concerned myself with the presentation of food. In addition I don’t view myself as much of a creative, my sculpturing experience goes about as far as filling in the gaps in my dovetail joints during woodwork class with polyfiller.
   Then the light bulb moment came which set the course for the rest of the task. Reviewing the list in 2 I saw:
      4. Sports
          a. A designated area of land or water on which a race is held: the course of a marathon.
          b. A golf course.
   That was it; I would make my meal in the form of a golf course, which meant that it would cover points 2 and 3. It would be a one-course meal, sculptured as a golf course.
4. Must incorporate alcohol as an ingredient.
   Well I was already drinking whiskey
5. Must have a sauce.
   I figured I would just put a bunch of things together and pour enough whiskey in it to make it a sauce.  So the ingredients I chose for this I put aside: cream cheese, spinach.
6. Must include a yellow vegetable.
   Corn is yellow and is a vegetable so I just needed to incorporate in the meal somehow.  With the golf course idea in mind, I concluded that they would make good sand traps.

All that thinking took it out of me so I poured another whiskey and put the quinoa and rice on boil while I took a moment to figure out how the hell I was going to turn a meal into a golf course with what I had at hand. 

While going through the cupboard I had uncovered a casserole dish.  I decided that I could use this to bake a “meat” loaf, which would be easy to sculpt something out of. The quinoa, black beans, kidney beans and chickpeas could be used as a base.  I was concerned this wasn’t going to work as it really needed something to hold it together, like egg, but I what do vegans do?  Here is the process:

1. Mash the beans and the chickpeas together
2. Add salt, pepper, some fresh lime juice and oregano
3. Add Gouda cheese.  Turns out this made a fantastic alternative to the egg for holding everything together. 
4. Add the quinoa, which was now cooked.
5.  Add some red curry paste for flavour. I had considered peanut butter though decided against it since everything was already sticking so well. 
6. Mix all ingredients together and place in casserole dish.  Place casserole dish in oven. I hadn’t the foggiest what temperature one should cook such a loaf on, but 180 seemed to be what everything is cooked on so I went for the standard. 

Pour another whiskey. 

The corn needed to be creamed to turn it into sand traps.  For this I really needed a food processor. I didn’t have one.  So my fist had to make do again just like it had done for mashing the beans and chickpeas. Only this time there was a satisfying pop as the corn screamed out in pain at my antics.  Once mashed to an adequate standard I cooked the corn with some pepper, margarine and milk to make it creamy. 

Moving on to the sauce. I chopped the spinach and some garlic, frying them together. To this I added some pepper and the cream cheese; plus a good sharing of whiskey and set it to simmer.   I might add that it smelt amazing. The whiskey used was a Bowmore, which is quite peaty and gave the sauce a sweet smoky aroma. 

It was time to put the whole thing together, so I poured another whiskey and started sculpting…

The “meat” loaf made for the T which grapes were used as the T-markers.  Rice made for the main composite of the course with the sauce forming a stream and the corn sand traps. Considering that a river runs a course, I think I should get bonus points for having 3 courses. For the green I used a slice of avocado and the pin was a grape stork with rocket flag. 

Once I finished taking the pictures I put the whole thing in the micro to warm up before eating, utterly defeating the point of not making a two course meal. 

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