koeksisters and blue cheese, its a delicious combination

This is an idea that I have been wanting to write about for a very long time. It’s so simple and hardly warrants a full blog post, but for me at the time, was revolutionary.

There’s also a story about how it came about.

And it goes something like this:

Many years ago I was on a romantic weekend away in Robertson which is one of my favourite wine regions of the Western Cape. I was with a new candidate boyfriend who was also a total foodie like myself. We had rented a cute cottage on a farm tucked up against a mountain. I had packed a few supplies for our trip, but the thinking was we would gather things along the way or just generally live spontaneously.

One of the things I had included was a large chunk of the most fabulous Gorgonzola cheese which I happened to have in my fridge.

On Saturday we ventured off from one wine farm to the next, somehow shot past lunch and then suddenly found ourselves hungry and wanting a picnic. It was at that stage in the relationship where sitting in a restaurant was not really an option. Too much distance, space or furniture between each other would have been unbearable.

We both however knew that we needed to find something sweet to eat with the Gorgonzola.

A fairly extensive hunt looking for preserved figs, or any other preserved fruit ensued, and which yielded no result. This was surprising considering we were in a small South African farming town.

We did however find koeksisters.

So with the meagre scrapings of odd food brought from home, we threw a picnic together.

And then it all just seemed to make so much sense. You eat blue cheese on a cracker with syrupy preserved fig or watermelon, which tastes just too beautiful. The salty and the sweet complement each other perfectly. So the one got slathered onto the other and quite frankly a magical food moment was made.

It’s fun to add a few koeksisters to your cheese platter at the end of the meal. If I have bought them in a supermarket I will sometimes heat syrup, maple syrup or even honey with lemon or orange zest, and give them a further sweet drizzle.

For this shot, I have used the fabulous Simonsberg Simonzola which is a locally made cheese in the style of a Gorgonzola and I totally love it.

There are a few more stories from the weekend that involved a fireplace, getting lost on a hike and stumbling down the mountain in the dark and being rescued by farmers, but my strongest memory was the Gorgonzola on the koeksister.

 I look forward to connecting with you again in the future.

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