Wednesday, February 26

Special Occasions!

Here in Dodoma, it is often the case that if you see something in a local shop and you like it, you buy it. Why? Because it very well may not be there again any time soon ... if ever! It can be very disappointing when you go back another time and it's not there anymore. It's a lesson you learn early on! 

You can work up quite a stash! We have had several things in our pantry that fit that category. That have been saved to only come out on a special occasion! Nutella, dried apricots, puff pastry, chorizo, white cooking chocolate, marshmallows, raisins ... the list goes on!

However things change and now we're faced with eating our way through all these treats and making every occasion a special one for the time being!

Last week, we cracked open the puff pastry and I made a Minced Beef Wellington! Yum! It felt very indulgent, which just shows how differently we value things living here!


Here's the recipe I used, tweaked to what I can get hold of here! ... (serves 4-6)
  • 1 medium onion
  • 1 carrot
  • 1 stick celery
  • 1 potato
  • 2 cloves garlic
  • 2 large mushrooms
  • olive oil
  • 4 sprigs fresh rosemary
  • big handful of frozen peas
  • 1 large egg
  • 500g minced beef
  • sea salt and black pepper
  • plain flour for dusting
  • 500g puff pastry, chilled
  1. Preheat oven - 180/350/GM4
  2. Peel, chop and dice vegetables (1cm) and grate/mince garlic
  3. Put oil in a large pan, add rosemary leaves and add veg - fry for approx 8 mins until soft
  4. Add peas & cook for another minute, then cool
  5. Beat egg and add half to the mixture and mince, salt & pepper
  6. Scrunch up and mix well together by hand
  7. Dust surface, roll out pastry to tea towel size
  8. Put mixture along long edge in a sausage shape
  9. Brush edge of pastry with beaten egg and roll until covered
  10. Dust baking tray with flour, place Wellington on the tray and brush with beaten egg
  11. Bake for an hour until golden

1 comment:

  1. True story! So funny how they stock things here in Tanzania. We've just bought the local shop completely out of raisins and are trying to ration them. I'm still waiting on these amazing (though we'd never eat them back in America) cheese puff chip things that I haven't seen in about 5 months to come back.
    Love it when you get something and get to indulge though!

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