Juicy Delicious Recipes with Stone Fruit
Stone fruit recipes
Stone fruit is a fleshy type of fruit that a hard pit or stone inside that houses the seed. Examples of stone fruit are peaches, nectarines, plums, apricots and cherries.
Juicy Delicious asked me to create several recipes with stone fruit to help promote South Africans cooking more with stone fruit. In South African cuisine we have a lot of bold flavours and a blend of different cultures that come together. If you're willing to experiment with flavours, herbs, spices, different stone fruits and meats, we just need to be a little bit more brave.
The South African food industry is really maturing and we're starting to believe in ourselves and actually trust that we've got the hero ingredients and that our local dishes are something to be proud of. After trying to replicate what is happening in cuisines across the world, South African chefs are now focussing a lot more on local ingredients, to celebrate what we have right here on our doorstep.
Stone fruit is grown in South Africa and we have some of the best peaches, nectarines, plums, and cherries in the world. If you think about it, stone fruit is generally well-integrated into South African cuisine, from our aunties making jams to chutneys served with bobotie, curries and other Cape Malay dishes. But the collaboration with Juicy Delicious was about integrating stone fruit into the cooking that South Africans really love: the braai. Featuring stone fruit alongside meat is a great pairing. You can hear me talk about stone fruit, and some of the dishes that are featured below, in this radio interview by Clarence Ford from Cape Talk.
Stone fruit recipes
Peach, Pancetta and Mozzarella Calzone
If you love calzone, you should really make your own from scratch. I have included a simple bread dough recipe, but you can make this pizza with fresh bread dough which you can buy at Pick n Pay as well.
For toppings, I used pancetta, which is different to bacon in that it is cured in a generous amount of salt and a spice mixture, whereas bacon is cured in just salt. Sometimes, bacon is also smoked to preserve the meat and enhance the flavour.
By grilling peaches they become more soft and sweeter and on the grill lines you can taste the caramelisation - great flavours paired with the salty, dry pancetta!§
The melted mozzarella finishes up this dish. A calzone is not a calzone unless you get long strings of cheese with each bite.
Grilled Lamb Loin Chops with a Mint & Grilled Peach Salsa
Having a braai (or, for non-South Africans, barbecue done authentically, ideally with wood and not briquettes) is a quintessentially South African cooking method. One of my favourite types of meat on the fire, is lamb loin chops. This recipe pairs the lamb with mint and grilled peach salsa, which is a delicious combination!
I also cooked this one on Cape Talk, when Clarence Ford interviewed me.
Ostrich Fillet Kebabs with Nectarine and Rosemary
When you braai Ostrich meat, you can’t become more South African. Ostrich meat is a great tasting lean red meat. It is low in fat and high in protein. It is no wonder that my blog post with easy steps to prepare ostrich steak currently gets more hits through Google than any other page on this website. Many people are not confident enough to cook ostrich. And for good reason; when not cooked well, ostrich can be tough and dry.
Cutting an ostrich steak in smaller chunks and braaing on a sosatie stick like a kebab, creates an even higher risk of the meat drying out, so it is important that you follow all the steps from my recipe to still get juicy pieces of meat.
Smoked Snoek on the Braai with Plum Jam and Grilled Peaches
If you live in the Western Cape, in or around Cape Town, you will be well familiar with putting snoek on the braai.
Snoek is a long, thin species of snake mackerel. It can reach a length of 200 centimetres must most are no longer than 75 centimetres, according to the Masifundise Development Trust.
Because it is quite an oily and salty fish, it is often paired with apricot jam as the salty/sweet combination goes well together. To change it up a bit, I made a plum jam and served my snoek with grilled peaches and it was delicious. Try it for yourself, and let me know what you think.
Plum, Beetroot & Blue Cheese Salad
If you find a salad as a side dish boring, let me change your mind! We are often unadventurous when it comes to salads, when there are so many components that you can add other than the standard lettuce, tomatoes, and cucumbers. In fact, my favourite salad includes none of those!
Crispy Pork Belly
Pork belly dishes have always been my favourite to cook. I have smoked pork belly, oven baked, braised, pressure potted and put it in the Weber. But ultimately I have found the best pork belly is done in an oven where consistency and accurate temperature control can be kept. The biggest challenge with cooking pork belly is that we all want the crunch and rendered fat on the top and a succulent pork beneath. This can sometimes be trickier than we often realise to perfect but after tons of trials I formulated my favourite recipe for pork belly.
Served with with a Nectarine and Wine Sauce, the flavours come together beautifully. You should really give this combination a try!x
Peach, Pancetta and Mozzarella Pizza
If you love pizza, you should really make your own from scratch. I have included a simple bread dough recipe, but you can make this pizza with fresh bread dough which you can buy at Pick n Pay as well.
For toppings, I used pancetta, which is different to bacon in that it is cured in a generous amount of salt and a spice mixture, whereas bacon is cured in just salt. Sometimes, bacon is also smoked to preserve the meat and enhance the flavour.
By grilling peaches they become more soft and sweeter and on the grill lines you can taste the caramelisation - great flavours paired with the salty, dry pancetta!
The melted mozzarella finishes up this dish. A pizza is not a pizza unless you get long strings of cheese with each bite.
I cooked three of my stone fruit recipes for Clarence Ford recently. You can listen to the interview from Cape Talk’s ‘Views & News’ below, or read a summary of the Cape Talk interview:
Enjoy! Please tag me on Instagram if you make any of my recipes, I love to see it!
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About Shawn Godfrey
Photo credit: Niki M Photography
Shawn Godfrey is an entrepreneur based in Cape Town, South Africa. After the Covid-19 lockdown saw his business in financial distress, cooking was the creative outlet that helped to keep him sane. To keep track of his recipes, and encourage friends and families to join him, he starts his instagram account The Roasted Dad.
Fast-forward to late 2021 - on a whim Shawn (encouraged by his wife Lianne) enters MasterChef South Africa. It is a crazy time of life: running a 200 people business and struggling to keep it profitable, two small children with a third on the way, and about to move into a new house. But when Shawn gets selected to be one of the 20 contestants participating in the fourth season of MasterChef South Africa, he decides to go all in. Leaving his 7-month-pregnant wife to look after their then three and one-year-old children, he battles it out and comes back home five weeks later with the trophy and a million rand prize money in his pocket.
It all started with an Instagram account, but The Roasted Dad is so much more now. Shawn has stayed his entrepreneurial self and whilst he hosts Private Dinner Parties and Cook-with-Me Demos, does Restaurant Take-Overs, he still runs the lighting company and several other businesses.
On his blog, Shawn shares Restaurant Reviews and Accommodation Reviews, and gives an insight into the wild and wonderful life he leads together with his wife Lianne, and their three children Aiden (6), Olivia (4) and Harvey (2).
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