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Daily Maverick
01-08-2025
- General
- Daily Maverick
AirFryday: Cheesy stuffed mushrooms, air fryer style
There's a lovely bite to these mushrooms thanks to the red chillies in them, and they're deliciously cheesy too. Here's another mushroom recipe for the air fryer, not long after I shared this simpler one with you. The big brown fungi are in fine form right now, and when in season any fresh food is likely to be at its best, so take advantage. These are quite different though – this recipe is as much about the stuffing (and they really are stuffed, which I'll explain) as it is about the mushrooms themselves. Here's a tip: that little stem that stares at you when you turn a mushroom upside down is best removed. Its texture isn't nearly as nice as that of the cap, and – especially if you're going to stuff a mushroom – it gets in the way. So, just use a small, sharp knife to cut around the edge of it and pluck it out to be discarded. Another tip: don't just pack your ingredients in, one after the other. Chop and grate everything and put it all in a small(ish) bowl, mix it together with a fork (and season it as well in the process) and then spoon it into the mushroom. Pack it down firmly, using the pack of the spoon, and keep packing more stuffing in until it's all used up. If at this point the mushrooms are not yet full to the brim and you've run out of stuffing, grate extra cheese and pack it on until they're slightly convex at the top. Right? With an upwards curve, rather than down… a meniscus if you like. My stuffing mixture comprised a smallish red onion, grated cheese (I used a mixture of smoked Dutch cheese and Emmental, but any good melting cheese will do), chopped fresh parsley, 2 red chillies (that is, per four mushrooms), fresh garlic, salt and black pepper. I cooked them in the air fryer at just 160°C for 14 minutes, at which point they were beautifully browned on top. Tony's stuffed big brown mushrooms, air fryer style (Makes 4 stuffed mushrooms) Ingredients 4 big brown mushrooms 1 small red onion, finely chopped 2 garlic cloves, finely chopped ⅓ cup parsley, finely chopped 2 red chillies, seeded and finely chopped Salt to taste Black pepper to taste Olive oil spray 2 cups cheese, grated Method Cut the stems out of the mushroom and season the insides lightly with salt and black pepper. In a small bowl, mix all of the stuffing ingredients together, including the seasoning, and stir with a fork until properly combined. Spoon it evenly into the four mushrooms and pack it down tightly. Preheat the fryer to 160°C. Spray the bottom of the fryer with cooking oil spray. Spray some on top of the stuffed mushrooms too. Air fry at 160°C for 10 minutes, check to see if the top of the stuffing has browned to your liking, and continue cooking for 2 to 4 minutes more if you'd like them to brown some more. DM Tony Jackman is twice winner of the Galliova Food Writer of the Year award, in 2021 and 2023.
Daily Maverick
18-07-2025
- General
- Daily Maverick
AirFryday: Baby gem squash, cooked in an air fryer in minutes
Somewhere along the way, somebody decided it was a good idea to pick gem squash when they've barely started developing, whereupon lots of people thought, what a good idea, let's cook these flavourless little green things and pretend we like them. Baby gem squash need help. There's not much flavour in them, and I sometimes think it's a shame to cull them so young, before they have a chance to grow up and become those lovely adult gem squash that I like to cook with parmesan and lots of butter. Their one advantage is that you can eat the whole thing, their shells being so soft that they're merely a part of the fruit itself. Yes, squash are fruit. I have a similar problem with patty pans. They have hardly any flavour to speak of, other than tasting vaguely squashy. Or squishy. Like patty pans, baby gems need to have flavour added to them if they're to be at all palatable. But, just add flavour, and that little problem is solved. I decided to give them a go in an air fryer and see how they turned out. Not bad, actually. Tony's baby gem squash cooked in an air fryer (Serves 2 as a side dish) Ingredients 6 to 8 baby gem squash 3 Tbsp Tokara premium multivarietal extra virgin olive oil, or similar 2 tsp Rozendal fynbos vinegar, or balsamic vinegar 1 tsp garlic powder 1 Tbsp oregano leaves, or 1 tsp dried oregano Salt and black pepper to taste Method Add the olive oil, fynbos vinegar, herbs and seasonings to a bowl and whisk. Slice the tops off the baby gems, slice them in half through the middle, and add them to the bowl. Toss well. Preheat the air fryer to 200°C. Cook for 15 minutes, shaking the basket after 5 and 10 minutes. If not soft enough for your liking, cook for 3 to 5 minutes more. They should be ready to serve as a side dish. DM Tony Jackman is twice winner of the Galliova Food Writer of the Year award, in 2021 and 2023.
Daily Maverick
11-07-2025
- General
- Daily Maverick
AirFryday: Zesty brown mushrooms in your air fryer
Mushrooms cook madly quickly in an air fryer. Put them in on the highest heat, as the last element you cook before serving your meal. Mushrooms can be seasoned with salt and pepper and one or two extra seasonings of your choice, then cooked in 10 to 15 minutes. These mushrooms were intended as a side-dish to chicken portions I had cooked in my large air fryer. But they can serve other purposes too. Once cooked, they can be scooped out, cooled, sliced and used as a stuffing for an omelette or in a frittata. Or spoon them onto buttered toast and pour the pan juices over to be soaked up by the bread. I like something zesty with mushrooms. I often use a squeeze or two of lemon juice and also lots of garlic when cooking them in a pan. To achieve that zestiness in an air fryer I avoided using juice, as the mushrooms have plenty of their own juices which they release during cooking. The juices render out into the pan – in this case the air fryer basket. You can cook them for less time or more – cooking them for longer will enable their juices, which they release when very hot, to cook away to a degree. The longer you cook them, the more the juices will evaporate. But those juices have their own value. You can think of them as a sauce, to be spooned or poured over the cooked mushrooms when serving. I sometimes pour mushroom juices onto a steak if they're accompanying that. Instead of citrus juice, however, I decided to use lime zest, from a lime so ripe that it had turned yellow to resemble a small lemon more than a lime. But taste the juice and it is unquestionably just a very ripe lime. The only other seasonings were salt and black pepper, but you can use some garlic and/or chilli, or a powdered chilli spice such as cayenne pepper. I also grated some fine zest onto the mushrooms when serving. These brown mushrooms were medium in size, not the huge ones often found at vegetable markets. I used a very high-quality olive oil for these – De Rustica Estate Collection Coratina olive oil. Its green olive flavour profile adds some intrigue to the mushrooms' own taste. Note that mushrooms soak up olive oil, which is why I used more of it than I might normally use in an air fryer. Tony's zesty brown mushrooms in the air fryer (Serves 2 as a side-portion) Ingredients 8 medium brown mushrooms 4 to 6 Tbsps De Rustica Estate Collection Coratina olive oil Salt and black pepper to taste Zest of 1 lime Method Put the mushrooms in a bowl and add the seasoning, olive oil and half of the zest. Toss well so that everything is evenly coated. Preheat the air fryer to 190°C. Cook at 190°C for 15 minutes, shaking the basket after 5 and 10 minutes. They should be soft with some firmness by now. If you're not happy, put them in for 2 or 3 minutes more. Sprinkle the remaining lime zest over when serving. DM Tony Jackman is twice winner of the Galliova Food Writer of the year award, in 2021 and 2023.
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
