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Daily Maverick
07-07-2025
- General
- Daily Maverick
Lekker Brekker Monday: Cheese and spring onion muffins
This recipe can be cooked in a conventional oven or an air fryer. Cooking times are given for both. Muffins are wonderfully versatile. If you can master a basic recipe, give or take, you can adapt it endlessly. A good starting point is to look around to see what you have that you need to use rather than waste. What's left over in the fridge/crisper, what's forgotten in the vegetable rack. There was a smallish chunk of Cheddar cheese. In the crisper, a half pack of slim spring onions. They were all I needed, other than the requisite ingredients for a ubiquitous muffin. I found an old recipe for muffins I had made a few years ago and examined it. Sour cream was called for. I didn't have any, or even regular cream, but I had some low-fat plain yoghurt. That would do. The mixture needed a flavour lift so I looked around: a hint of mustard powder would add something, as would a half teaspoon of garlic powder. There you go. I decided to bake them in an air fryer, but the standard time and temperature for a wet muffin such as this in the big old oven would be 180°C for 20 to 25 minutes. Tony's cheese and spring onion muffins (Makes 6) Ingredients 2 cups/ 500 ml cake/plain flour 2 heaped tsp baking powder ½ tsp / 2.5 ml salt 1 tsp/ 5 ml Hot English mustard powder 5 ml garlic powder 2 heaped tsp sugar 150 g finely grated Cheddar cheese 4 to 6 slim spring onions 4 Tbsp butter, melted 1 jumbo egg, beaten 225 ml low-fat milk 1 heaped Tbsp plain yoghurt Method Preheat the oven to 180°C or preheat an air fryer to 180°C. Grease or spray the cavities of a large 6-cavity muffin pan, or spray the insides of 6 foil muffin tins with cooking oil spray. Sift the flour into a bowl and stir in the baking powder, salt, mustard powder and garlic powder. Stir in the sugar. Grate 100g of the cheese and stir it into the dry ingredients, using a fork. The fork helps you to distribute the fine gratings of cheese evenly. Reserve the remaining cheese. Melt the butter. In a second bowl, beat the melted butter with the milk and yoghurt, then beat the egg and whisk it into the wet mixture. Pour the wet ingredients into the first bowl and mix with a wooden spoon until just combined. Don't overwork it. Spoon the mixture evenly into the six cavities. Grate the remaining cheese evenly on top. Oven: Bake at 180°C for 20 to 25 minutes. Air fryer: Bake at 180°C for 14 to 17 minutes. Serve with butter and/or Marmite. DM Tony Jackman is twice winner of the Galliova Food Writer of the year award, in 2021 and 2023
Daily Maverick
02-07-2025
- General
- Daily Maverick
Chicken stir fry with aubergine and pak choy
With the headlong rush to cook everything in an air fryer, don't forget the wok at the bottom of that cupboard over there. There is at least one thing you can't cook in an air fryer. And that's pretty much anything that is stir-fried in a wok. When any new gadget comes along that takes our collective fancy, there's usually something else in the kitchen that starts to disappear into the back of the cupboard and slowly out of our lives. Remember the fondue? Let's not let the wok get relegated to history. This is a quick and easy stir fry for a family supper. The only seasoning is soy sauce, and no salt or pepper are needed. Ingredients 4 chicken breast fillets, sliced into strips 1 x 3 cm piece of fresh ginger, peeled and diced small 2 fat fresh garlic cloves, peeled and finely chopped 2 aubergines, sliced into strips 1 large red pepper 2 spring onions, sliced thinly A bunch of pak choy A splash or two of soy sauce Jasmine rice, as needed, cooked Wok oil, as needed Method Trim the root ends off the aubergines (eggplant, brinjal) and discard. Slice them lengthwise (pear-shaped) into thin slices, then slice those portions into thin strips. Remove seeds from a red pepper and slice it into julienne strips. Chop the spring onions and prepare the garlic and ginger. Chop the root ends off the pak choy and rinse and dry the leaves. Slice the chicken breasts into strips, and put the rice on to cook while you're cooking the wok ingredients. Add oil to a wok and put it on the heat (always start with a cold wok, then oil, then heat). Stir-fry the ingredients in this order, only until softened, so not long at all: the aubergines with a little of the chopped garlic; the red pepper and spring onions with more garlic and some of the ginger; then the chicken strips with any remaining ginger and garlic, adding a splash of soy sauce, not too much. Add more wok oil whenever needed. Remove cooked items to a side dish as you work. Stir-fry the pak choy in a little more oil until wilted, adding a splash of soy sauce. When ready to serve, add everything back to the wok and toss for a minute to heat through and have everything pleasantly mixed up. Serve with jasmine rice. DM Tony Jackman is twice winner of the Galliova Food Writer of the year award, in 2021 and 2023
