Hot Dish Review

South African cooking is foreign to most of us. A fusion of European, Malaysian, and native African dishes, their unique cuisine is exotic and soulful. Spicy peri-peri sauce, sweet chutneys, and curries compliment grilled meats and fish.

LC and I had the pleasure to dine there recently as guests of the owner. Our evening got off to a fabulous start as our enthusiastic and practiced server, Jamie, explained the unfamiliar dishes on the menu (without making us feel dumb) and checked in throughout our meal (without being intrusive).

We have gotten into a routine of sharing small plates, particularly when I’m tasting for an article and need to try as many dishes as possible. The menu at 10 Degrees South is made for folks like us, with most dishes offered as small or large plates. Rather than ordering, we allowed our host, Justin, to choose a variety of the restaurant’s best. I ordered a glass of Sincerely by Stellenbosch, a deep and spicy South African shiraz, to sip while waiting for dishes to arrive.

He selected five of their most popular small plates to start us off. Bobotie is a sweet ground beef curry, traditionally topped with egg custard and baked until golden brown. Here, they also use the curry as a filling for long, crispy Spring rolls, great dipped in the sweet chutney. Another South African dish called boerewors was served on a Milano roll and cut into bite-sized pieces. In case you don’t regularly eat boerewors, it is sausage made of lean ground beef. I found the sandwich a tad dry, the bread unnecessary. I’d probably prefer the version sans bread with tomato and onion sauce.

Sosaties is another traditional dish….skewered, marinated beef filet glazed with apricot curry sauce. Fantasticly tender, the sauce gave the meat a subtle sweetness without overpowering it.

Two giant prawns, that were nearly the size of lobsters, were butterflied, marinated in spicy peri-peri sauce, then grilled. I was expecting a bit more fire out of the sauce, but I imagine it’s pretty hot for the average Joe. Nonetheless, the prawns were certainly one of our favorite dishes of the evening.

Everything was served with rice. LC pondered out loud to our server that he thought grits might work better with the prawns rather than the rice, to which Jamie returned with a mound of “pap”, a staple much like grits, just fluffier and drier. It was topped with the aforementioned tomato and onion sauce. I don’t like grits….or pap. I’ll stick with the rice.

Another favorite was the calamari, simply grilled with a lemon butter sauce and sprinkled with briny capers. JN, publisher of the new neighborhood magazine BuckHaven Lifestyle, happened to be at 10 Degrees during our visit and suggested we try the lollipop lamb chops, two marinated and grilled chops served over mashed potatoes. Delicious. The generous serving pushed us over the edge, but we still had one more plate to devour….Di’s Delight, a moist fruit cake drizzled with caramel sauce with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. Thankfully not overly sweet, the dessert was warm and comforting, with notes of cinnamon and nutmeg.

The only traditional South African dish we didn’t try was the cured beef slices, called biltong. Among the main courses not offered as appetizers, I would certainly order the char-grilled Cornish hen marinated with peri-peri sauce. Both are on my radar for our next visit.

After our meal we stopped by the bar for a nightcap and were happy to discover a guy playing acoustic guitar. A great way to end our safari!

4183 Roswell Road 404-705-8870

Yesterday I was shopping at the Ansley Kroger when I walked by the bakery department and was subjected to this garish display….yellow cake and cupcakes decorated with day-glo frosting.

What is the flavor of yellow cake? Yellow is not a flavor. The flavor of red velvet cake is red, I suppose. At least brown cake is chocolate. Why would anyone want to eat a flavorless sponge covered with bright green goopy frosting? Why?

Cake is so low-brow. Whenever I eat something that’s gonna add to my girth, it better be worth it. Like Babette’s dried cherry tart, for instance. Or authentic gelato in Europe.

Perhaps cake is the perfect dessert after a nice fat Knuckle Sandwich!

From the time I was a small child until just a couple of years ago, a visit to Germany meant coffee and cake every day, promptly at 3:00pm. I would gorge myself on several servings of Omi’s traditional homemade cakes.

Me, eating cake? Yes! But traditional German cakes are nothing like the common American variety one might find at Walmart. My favorite kind are made on a thin yeast crust, topped with sliced black plums, apples, or (my all-time favorite) schmand.

On our recent visit, everything was different. Omi wasn’t there to make her fall-off-the-bone schweinebraten or pflaumenkuchen. In fact, days went by without a sliver of cake or splash of coffee, save for my Sensio Presso each morning.

At the assisted living house where Omi now resides, they have a cafe’, so one day me and Mom split a piece of streusel topped chocolate torte and enjoyed coffee with her. The tables were decorated for Easter, in fact, there were eggs on trees all over town. In Deutschland, Easter decorations are nearly as abundant as Christmas decorations.

On another occassion, a relative drove us to the neighboring town of Wetzlar to shop at the mall, The Forum, where we met up with him for cappuccino and a cherry torte at Cafe’ Bohne.

But the best was yet to come. While retrieving brotchen from the freezer in the cellar for our breakfast the next morning, I stumbled upon a section of frozen cake. It was zwetschenkuchen, the slang term for pflaumenkuchen, or plum cake, made by my cousin Iris. Awesome!

We let it defrost as we spent the day with Omi, then stopped by Eiscafe’ Capri on the way home for my favorite gelato and an extra helping of whipped cream for the cake. We made some coffee and savored every bite of the cake.

Having learned how to make yeast cakes properly from Omi, my cousin offered to bring my very favorite, schmandkuchen, on her visit with her two daughters. It was our last day in Germany. We spent some time with Omi, then came home for kaffee und kuchen.

Iris made the schmandkuchen round, covering the surface with a thin layer of schmand, creating a dense, cheese-like texture when baked.

Omi always made it in a large rectangular shape, sprinkling the dough with sugar then randomly dropping big spoonfuls of schmand on top. The result was utter perfection. Browned areas of yeast cake with crunchy sugar interspersed with smooth and creamy indentations of schmand.

Some things will never be the same.

For the last several years at my office we have been celebrating our colleagues’ birthdays with Whole Foods’ strawberry cake. It’s become somewhat of a tradition but my disdain for cake has, until recently, kept me from indulging.

This, however, is no ordinary Publix cake with blue frosting. It is made by alternating thin layers of yellow cake with loads of real whipped cream and fresh strawberries. Finally, I relented and tried a small sliver. The cake was surprisingly light and not overly sweet. On the next occassion I opted for a larger slice. Can’t beat real whipped cream!

My colleagues had been forced to come up with an alternate treat on my past birthdays, but yesterday I was the recipient of “the cake”. I was thrilled and took a big slice. Despite its light and fluffy topping, the cake is richer than you might think. It took me several hours to recover from the fat overload, but it was worth it.

Thanks you guys! Guess I can’t say I hate cake anymore.

By now my disdain for cake is no secret. So why, you may ask, would I purchase such an atrocity?

Last February I met my friend AD in Rio, just in time for Carnival. King Cake is the traditional cake for Mardi Gras. Kroger had a display of them, although Carnival celebrations takes place in early March this year….probably why they were half price!

Last week I made moqueca, a Brazilian fish stew. I use huge prawns….delicious! In keeping with the Brazilian theme, and to commemorate the anniversary of my trip, I purchased the cake for dessert.

The King Cake, labeled as cinnamon, looked more appealing than cakes with thick white frosting. It was decorated with three colors of sugar….gold for power, purple for justice, and green for faith. Not a cake in the traditional sense, it was more like individual cinnamon buns that were baked too close together. Heck, maybe that’s what it was!

Traditionally the cake would be in the shape of an oval with a plastic baby hidden somewhere inside, originally signifying the difficulty the Three Kings had in finding the Christ child. The person who found the baby was bestowed with special honors, but these days it has come to be simply a symbol of good luck.

Nonetheless, the flavor of Kroger’s bastardized King Cake wasn’t offensive. Me and LC ended up eating one of each color. We ate more the next day but never found the baby!

MY BIRTHDAY REMINDS ME OF HOW MUCH I HATE CAKE!

Yes, it’s true. I hate cake….perhaps even more than clowns. The most offensive version being the dreaded yellow cake with white frosting. What is the flavor of yellow cake? Yellow is not a fucking flavor, neither is white. At least chocolate cake and frosting are chocolate flavored. If you’re going to make some boring ass cake, at least make it in a fun shape, like a big penis, like Hollis Gillespie did for her birthday!

German chocolate cake is not so bad due to the nutty frosting, although it is in no way German. My Mom, who is German, used to make a black forrest cake which is chocolate cake drizzled with brandy, layered with canned cherries and whipped cream. As far as cake goes, it is quite tolerable.

Another cake abomination is the grocery store birthday cake. White sheet cake (again the flavor is what? white) with gobs of colorful frosting. The photo above is an actual specimen from Kroger….we added the “69″ candles to make it extra classy!

The next time you are presented with a trailer trash birthday cake from Kroger or Publix be sure to thank the thoughtful buyer with a well-placed Knuckle Sandwich!