ready steady cook at earthfair market tokai

I was invited to participate in a ‘Ready Steady Cook’ at the Tokai Earthfair market a couple of Saturday’s ago. I teamed up with chef Stefan Wessels from Wild Marine Deli.  Stefan has a stand at both Tokai and St Georges Mall market and sells fabulous variants of fishcakes and gourmet  spring rolls like: yellowtail red curry, potato and cauliflower and chicken and sesame spring rolls.

We were competing against my fellow food blogger Bernice of  BettyBake and chef Ian Calkwell from ‘A Slice of Life’.

Julie Hartley was the MC of the event and the idea was to shop for the key ingredients at the market within a budget and then to assist each chef in the preparation of two dishes in 30 minutes. It was a brilliant way to showcase some of the exceptional and unusual products available at the market.

What a lot of fun it was, and since the pressure was on the chefs, I did a bit of chopping, stirring and of course sipping the wine.

Both teams easily managed to knock up the two courses in half an hour.

Team Stefan and Sam made a salad of tuna biltong (you read that correctly) on a bed of dressed rocket with roasted red pepper and a black wildebeest ragu with spaghetti.

The meat was bought from Rudi’s sausage deli at the market (fabulous, legendary meat and sausages) and went something like this:

• saute finely chopped onion, carrot and celery in olive oil and butter until soft. Add sliced or chopped garlic and then the meat, and brown (breaking it up).  The meat was quite lean so needed to be broken up a bit.  Adds some stock and a good dose of red wine and allow the liquid too cook off. Serve with spaghetti and Parmesan cheese grated over and chopped parsley to garnish.