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Welcome to my blog, these are the ramblings and musings of an (upper) middle aged biker and if you enjoy braais, (barbeques) beers and motorbikes then hopefully you will enjoy what Janet and I do; we do lots of braais, we drink lots of beer and we tour South Africa on our motorbike, which at the moment is a BMW R1200RT. Join us, read about what we do and please leave us your comments.



Sunday, August 3, 2008

The good and the bad

We had another good weekend, looks like the weather is improving so there's hope for next weekend's Polar bear run to Sutherland. It's still cold but at least the sun is shining so I want you all to hold thumbs and concentrate on good weather for next weekend ok?
I did rump steaks for lunch on Saturday and they were really good, if you start off with good quality meat that has been aged a bit then you have a good base to work with. We had another couple over for lunch so I did four 300g steaks and about an hour and a half before they came I marinated the steaks in a mixture of Olive oil, just a drizzle over each steak, then a liberal sprinkle of Aromat, a good amount of ground black pepper corns and then I spread a fair amount of hot English mustard on the steaks and then finally sprinkled with garlic flakes. Turn the steaks over in the dish quite regularly to make sure they are well marinated.
Use a dry (preferably a cast iron) pan which you then heat up until it is smoking hot, I did mine over a gas flame so it got really hot and then chuck the steaks in. Turn them regularly after you have sealed both sides and after about five minutes take them out of the pan and let them rest in a warmer, they will carry on cooking so if you want them medium rare take them off the heat when they are still quite rare. Janet did her creamy Aromat potatoes as an accompaniment and it was a delicious meal with some black olives.
Sunday was a bit of a disaster, it was a lovely day so we got on the bike and headed to Velddrif for lunch, we had eaten at "Die Vishuis" on the banks of the Berg River before and were keen to try that again but after a very pleasant ride we found that the place had been closed for the winter, the next stop was at a Seafood special place which was also not open, pressing on we tried the "Sundown Restaurant" next to the harbour; "Sorry we are fully booked."
I said to Janet; "What about going to Paternoster?" she sighed and said "I don't care, I'm just hungry." and I knew then that I had better find food quick or I would be in trouble, the spa bath in the morning hadn't been too good for a start because I used too much bubble bath and it was all slippery, we kept bumping into each other!
As we were leaving I saw the "Eigebraai restaurant" so we decided to try that, they had a good reputation for steaks but for some reason they kept us waiting for our food for more than an hour! They asked me how I wanted my Tee bone cooked and I said medium rare but when the steak came it was only a quarter of an inch thick! (thin!) so how the hell can you cook it medium rare anyway? We wont go back there again and I told them so but I don't think they were particularly interested.
A beer at the Blue Diamond on the way home was nice and cold and the ride was good.
Here's hoping for better weather from now on.

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