Steak braai and Cointreau

Man it has been a sad couple of weeks interspersed with some riding, first Dudley and Carolynn and now our brother in law Mike passed away this morning. Why does this have to happen? We will be going to the funeral on Wednesday afternoon, I'm dreading that, I'm terrible at funerals. Life goes on but the queue gets shorter!

I have lined up a ride tomorrow, we are going to ride with Frank out to the "Hacienda" in a little place called "Graafwater" which is about 200 -250kms from here for a lunch so I'll let you know all about that. The weather is fantastic at the moment, actually very warm - summer's here.

We had some friends around for a braai today, I marinated some huge steaks in olive oil, Aromat, garlic flakes, mixed herbs and hot English mustard powder for about two hours before braaiing them.

I also prepared some miellies in tinfoil, a drizzle of olive oil and a good pat of butter with some aromat and black pepper before wrapping them up and placing them in the coals.It was a very good lunch, Janet did some creamy Aromat potatoes and a salad and we sat out on the back veranda and had a feast. I bought the steak from my friend's place; Saldanha Vleismark and man was that good meat! If you are interested in the recipe for Creamy Aromat potatoes let me know and I will post it, that is assuming you can get Aromat where you are.

Talking about recipes; Janet made six chocolate fridge cakes for a function last week and the recipe called for an Orange liqueur, like Cointreau and we all know how expensive Cointreau is so we decided to make our own.

In the old days in Rhodesia (I was going to say when we were in Rhodesia, but that is why we are called "When-we's") one couldn't get the decent liqueurs so everyone made their own and on one memorable weekend we visited Graham and Anne Nicholls, he was the member-in-charge of Mphoenges Police station (say Mm-poings) and we sat out on the veranda looking out over the bush and getting pissed on home made Tia Maria and fresh farm cream, what wonderful stuff that was and what a wonderful weekend that was! Ok the next morning we didn't feel that great but that goes with the territory and anyway we were young and bullet-proof in those days.

Anyway all that is required for a really good Cointreau is a cheap bottle of Cane spirits which you pour into a saucepan and warm it up, do not let it boil otherwise you boil off the alcohol. Slowly stir in a half to three-quarters of a cup of sugar until it is all disolved and then pour the liquid into a wide mouth jar while it is still hot. This you then bung closed with a fresh orange.

Ideally this needs to stand undisturbed for at least three weeks and luckily we had planned our catering so that we had that much time.

This second photo was taken after two weeks and you can see how the orange is looking a lighter colour on the top half as all of the juice and essence is being drawn out, by the end of the third week we had a really delicious orange liqueur - give it a try.

I've got more things to tell you, some more "out of Africa" photos to post and tomorrow evening I will tell you about the lunch ride to the Hacienda - stay on two wheels and keep the shiny side up friends.