When someone says “sorrel” these days, what typically springs to mind is the green leafy vegetable, or herb to some, that has trendily showed up on menus in the past few years.  Though it might be delicious in jelly form, that is definitely not the sorrel in this recipe…I’m actually referring to the sorrel flower I mentioned in a previous post that’s used to make a popular West Indian drink.

The first time I tried sorrel was with my husband at the Trinidadian-Chinese spot in Brooklyn I wrote about a few months back.  It’s a blood-red drink – tart, sweet, floral with an underlying taste of cloves.  Unusually delicious.  The sorrel flower is actually hibiscus, so it’s not a far stretch from your basic hibiscus tea.  And similar to tea, sorrel is made from steeping the flower with sugar and spices.  A similar drink is also widely consumed in parts of Africa where it’s known as roselle or bissap rouge in Senegal or even karkadeh in Egypt.  Jamaicans use ginger to flavor the sorrel, but you know I had to stay true to the Trinidadians, so I stuck with their tradition of cinnamon and clove.

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In a previous post on luscious bobotie, I mentioned some fun cooking I did while travelling around South Africa and a dessert I had there, Cape Malva pudding.  When Americans think pudding, it’s usually the sweet, cornstarch-thickened milk kind or, more often, the Jell-O sort.  But, historically, puddings are sweet or savoury and actually take a more solid form (like a Yorkshire or even a bread pudding).  In Europe or in places where Europeans migrated, these sorts of puddings are really popular, and this one is Dutch in origin, brought to South Africa sometime after the Dutch East India Company established Cape Town in the 1600’s.

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I was reading this article in the New York Times on what the French call a cake salé, and it inspired me to create my own exotic version.   A cake salé is close to what we call a quick bread or a quick loaf in America (think zucchini bread, cornbread, or even muffins).

The main ingredients of any quick bread are flour, baking powder (and/or soda), fat, eggs, and liquid; the flavor is really up to the imagination.  It’s chemically leavened, so it’s much faster to make than traditional bread, which requires a whole process leavening with yeast.  This loaf is incredibly easy to make and really versatile. I’ve been serving it warm for breakfast, but it would also make a delicious lunch paired with a simple salad.

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