Flavours of South Africa: Bobotie

Being part of a large blogging community has some interesting side effects. One of them being the greater awareness of what goes on around the world in terms of culinary arts, if you will.

You also get ideas about the mood of the month and what is fashionable or not. I am also a member of the Flavors of the World community on Google+. This is quite interesting from a historical perspective, as South African cuisine is a fusion of flavors from the Far East, East Africa and Europe.

This is a result of the closure of the overland silk and spice route through the Middle East and Constantinople (now Istanbul) around the early 1400's. This led to the opening of the spice and tea route around the southern tip of Africa and the eventual establishment of the victualing station at Cape Town. Which led to my being a white African, so to speak. But that is another story.

The resulting food is quite delicious and flavourful, known as the Cape Malay style of cooking. This style of cooking is kept alive by the very colourful Cape Malay people in and around Cape Town. And the rest of South Africa as well, especially for a dish like bobotie.

Pronounced boh-boo-ti. “Boh” as in “bottom,” “boo” as in “booty,” “ti” as in a short cuppa. Close enough phonetics, I think.

The dish originally was made using minced lamb, which is relatively scarce or unobtainable. Unless you mince your own leg of lamb, of course. Lean ground beef works as well. Bobotie is a baked dish, consisting of spiced minced meat, covered in an egg custard. The flavour is on the sweet side and may be made mild to quite spicy. It is usually served with yellow rice with raisins as a very traditional South African dish. It is quite easy to prepare and well worth the little effort for the exquisite result. It took me longer to do this write-up than to prepare the dish, bar the baking.

The dish will go well with a fruity dry white wine, perhaps even slightly off-dry, depending on the spiciness of your specific version of bobotie. I normally have a light red wine with meals like this, where the South African Pinotage variety is the wine of choice.

I used fresh masala paste instead of the garlic and chilli. There is also some chopped up dried apricots to add to the sweet and tangy taste. Don't fret if you don't have chutney, just use a little more apricot jam and chilli. Or just a little more chopped up dried fruit. The vinegar and other spices will do the trick just fine. Or add some raisins.

I only used the freshly toasted almonds and chopped dried apricots. The result was outstanding. Toasting the dry almonds strengthens their flavour by a large margin, so you can use less, lest the nutty flavour dominates the rest of the spices. The bay/ lemon leaves I substituted with dried curry leaves.

This recipe will be enough for about four to six servings, depending on who dishes up!

Ingredients

500 g lean ground beef

1 thick slice bread/ 2 normal slices

2 large eggs

1 cup milk

1 onion, chopped

1-2 cloves fresh garlic, chopped and minced

15 ml curry powder of choice

15 ml turmeric

15 ml apricot jam

15 ml chutney

5 ml of brown vinegar or lemon juice

5 ml Worcestershire sauce if you feel like more flavour.

50 ml almonds, preferably freshly roasted, then chopped/mashed finely.

50 ml seedless raisins. I substituted 50 ml dried apricots, chopped finely.

some salt to taste.

8-10 lemon leaves or bay leaves.

  

 Process

Chop the bread into small cubes/large crumbs and soak it in the milk. Toast the almonds whole in a dry pan. When they are brown, mash them into coarse crumbs. Squeeze the milk from the bread and keep the milk, add the soaked bread to the meat. Add the chopped apricots, the almond crumbs and all the wet ingredients, except the milk and eggs. Mix this thoroughly.

Rather use less of the vinegar, chutney and apricot jam than more, as these may dominate the other flavours.

Fry the chopped onions until they start to caramelise. Add the garlic and fry until the garlic is also done. Add the dry powder curry and the turmeric and fry for 10 seconds, then add the meat mix to the pan and fry until the meat is done. The meat will turn a nice brown if you used duck fat instead of cooking oil for the frying.

Whisk the two eggs into the milk. Add a little more milk if required. You need about 1 to 1½ cups of the egg mix. Spread the meat in a shallow oven proof dish and arrange the bay leaves/ curry leaves/ lemon leaves in the meat. Pour over the egg mix, then bake this at 180ºC / 350ºF for twenty minutes or until the egg custard has turned a nice light brown in spots.

Remove the dish from the oven and let it rest for another twenty minutes to develop flavour. Or switch off the oven and leave the dish inside for another fifteen minutes.

You can remove the leaves before serving, but it is rather nice to lick them off during the course of your meal...

Serve with yellow turmeric rice.

Bon appetit!

Authored by Johan Zietsman

Adapted from this recipe.

Last updated on 2013-04-29

The Obiquitous Hot Dog

Not inimitable. Omnipresent, yes. Big words. Especially for an Afrikaans-speaking person. The glut of reading during this convalescence is beginning to show, I think.

I am still on convalescence after my operation, hobbling about and dragging my sore leg after me up the stairs. The knee complains by getting back at me for a whole day after one hour of standing in the kitchen, so cooking is out.

But I have friends. In the immortal words of one Joe Cocker, I can get by with a little help from my friends.

My sailor friends at the Gordon's Bay Yacht Club asked me to focus more on hand-held food, as most of their sailing is of relatively short duration and one does not want to waste time standing at a bouncing galley when there is much exciting sailing outside to be enjoyed. The sailing is typically overnight trips to Cape Town or Dassen Island, where food will stay fresh in a cooler box. So fast food is in order.

Now, fast food is one of my pet hates. But food prepared properly, even though it may be fast food, is OK. Especially on board small sailing yachts. Just don't rush it and neglect the attention it deserves.

I was casting around for ideas, when a dear food blogger friend posted an article on hot dogs. I contacted her and after a brief discussion, I was in business, feeling like Joe Cocker; getting by with a little help from my friends.

Zirkie Schroeder is another well-known name in the food blogging world in South Africa. She publishes a blog under the nom de guerre of Pink Polkadot Food.

Being a wife and a mother of children, albeit now somewhat grown-up, she understands the vagaries of feeding hungry mouths. She was also a finalist in the recent Dinner Diva cooking competition for food bloggers on South Africa's SABC2 TV channel. The contestants were required to post their recipes on their blogs too.

So here we have a wonderful recipe from a real pro when it comes to fast food made with love and passion.

This one is for hot dogs, which can be very bland. However, the Pink Polka Dot version is sure to tickle your taste buds!

Read all about it here

I shall be back soon with more culinary adventures for your next sailing trip.

In the meantime, Bon appetit!

Authored by Johan Zietsman

Last updated on 2013-04-18

This blog post compiled for the GBYC newsletter.

Forget your low GI diet: Sourdough Babka alla Ziets

I recently had another chance at pondering life and my experiences in general, having had a knee replaced. The time in hospital, drifting in and out of a pain killer induced daze, is quite useful for this sort of pondering. I pondered about my cooking and my lifestyle. And then some more. I thought that it was time for some baking again.

The operation went super well, everything just fine. The problem is now that I need to take things slowly, lest I damage the new joint in its settling period. So I have to slow down, take it easy. Lots of rest.

This had me reminisce about my hunting and fly-fishing days. I realised, after a number of unsuccessful outings, that you don't see anything until you slow down to the rhythm of the veld. Then suddenly, life explodes before you and you are swamped with images of movement and happenings.

Like seeing a fish jump out the water and take an insect from the air. Or, once on a memorable occasion, a bass taking a malachite kingfisher in flight. But that is a different story.

Getting back to cooking and baking, I thought that there must be a similar golden rule in preparing food. And then it jumped at me:

SLOW DOWN

I realised that fast food is just what the name says, not really prepared with love and care. Quite noticeable in the food served to you in some restaurants. Or cooking things fast instead of simmering. Or using a pressure cooker. I may be on thin ice here. Another argument discussion for tomorrow.

So this is exactly what I did in my next affray into the wonderful artful world of baking with sourdough. I slowed things down.

I wanted to bake something different for a change. And I had the notion of having a celebration. Seeing that it was close to Easter, I thought babka may be in order. Something people make after a time of fasting. Something to eat in celebration.

So babka it was. Slowed down. I used a cheesy babka recipe from Comfy Cuisine.  I imagined the cheese part would blend in extremely well with the sourness of the yeast. And then there is the vanilla, of course. I tried to stick slavishly to the recipe, but had to compromise on the yeast, of course, as well as the vanilla.

I used the real thing, scraping the seeds from a pod and using those neat in the cheese filling. We don't get farmer's cheese here, so I substituted cottage cheese. And I used brown sugar, because that is what I have.

In addition, I made a mix of one cup of cake flour to three cups of white bread flour. Partly because I had run out of white bread flour and partly because I reasoned that babka should be rather more like a cake than a bread. Therefore I would need some refined flour in there to make the whole thing a bit smoother. And lighter, but that is where the slowing down bit comes to bear.

I made up a starter using a cup of white bread flour in my sourdough. This I let ferment at room temperature for 12 hours. Then I made the main dough mix, leaving out the raisins. Having had my doubts on the vitality of my home-captured yeast, I let this lot rise for a full 20 hours.

Wonderful idea. The dough almost tripled in volume. The raisins were added and the dough kneaded back to the original volume. I kept the dough on the soft side, in accordance with the recipe. I also reasoned that a softer dough will give a lighter crumb in the end.

The dough was rested only for the time it took to make the cheese filling. I rolled out the dough as per the instructions on the recipe and added the cheese filling as per instruction.

The cheese filling came out a bit too runny for my taste, so I added some cake flour to get it to the required consistency.

The loaves were prepared as per the recipe, then I left this lot to rise (second rise) for two and a half hours. The yeast performed like a champion and the loaves almost doubled in volume, looking for all the world like crocodile torsos.

The oven was heated up and the loaves popped in for the requisite period of 35 minutes. I went overboard with the egg-white wash, so the loaves came out quite brown. A very nice thin crust and a beautiful airy crumb.

Chalk one up for slowing down!

Voila! Your very high GI babka alla Ziets. To be consumed in small quantities, this one is very rich. And the sourness of the various components blended very well too. I shall keep this one for special occasions. It is very much worth the effort.

This blog post also linked to Yeastspotting!

Authored by Johan Zietsman

Last updated on 2013-04-06

Very Fast Pizza? Try the Zoobiscuit Version

Anél's picture of what this looks like. Yummy!

This week's recipe is not from me, I am going in for a knee replacement. Fair wear and tear, says the doctor. Which leaves me unserviceable for any cooking, baking or other activities in the kitchen.

Well, all is not lost. A fellow food blogger has a brilliant idea which works for one or many mouths to feed. Anél Potgieter does not need an introduction in South African cooking circles, having won the Dinner Diva cooking competition recently. This competition was to find the best food blogger-cook in the country.

Which Anél won with aplomb. As well as the 2013 Eat Out DSTV Food Network Best Local Food Blog Award.

So we are especially honoured to have her recipe for a fast pizza as the boat food recipe for this week. This one is quite delicious. And also a no brainer. Well, almost. You do need to think up your own variations. But the recipe is quite simple.

You do need a rolling pin. Else use a bottle. I am sure you will find one somewhere on the boat. Other than that just the normal kitchen tools that you will find in the boat's galley.

Read all about the recipe here.

And thanks for stopping by, I shall be back...

Authored by Johan Zietsman, with gratitude to my fellow food blogger Anél Potgieter.

Last updated on 2013-03-26

Compiled for the GBYC newsletter

Eat a Piece of History: Jaffles

History for me and my age group in South Africa at any rate.

Jaffles.

A very South African variation of a sealed toasted sandwich from the days before snackwich toasters. These are made using a jaffle iron over a camp fire, over the coals or over a gas hob. Take your pick. They used to be very popular at church and school fund raising events. Then fashion changed, the snackwich toaster came to be and that was the end of the jaffle.

 Well, that is until recently, when I found a jaffle iron at my local sports equipment chain in the camping goods department. I believe our local builder's supplies chain also keep them in stock. There is a round one and a square one available. Buy the round one, it always seals the sandwich all around the edges.

The jaffle, like the snackwich toast, has one up over a normal toasted sandwich.

It is sealed. No mess. You can use a saucy ground beef filling and it still doesn't spill when you eat it. And the jaffle has more capacity than a snackwich toast. Which means more meat, almost like your standard meat pie.

Or other filling.

We all tend to forget that there is no law that requires a meat filling only. This is the beauty of the jaffle. Standard shape, standard capacity and sealed all around the edge. And fillings to you heart's content.

Which translates to interesting fillings, like tuna or chicken mayonnaise. Or cheese and mushroom. Or combinations of cheese, tomato, onion, jalapeno, gherkins, mixed diced veggies and what not.

Meaty fillings include ham, salami, ground beef, biltong, sliced leg of lamb or pastrami, bacon, chourizo, smoked salmon.

For a sweet one, use banana and golden syrup or honey. Or try sliced apples, cinnamon, nutmeg and honey or golden syrup. I have made these and they are all wonderful fast desserts in the camp. Or when you have lots of children around wanting to keep busy.

I still have to try one adding nuts of some sort. Could be decadent. I have had sweet pizzas of this nature at a gourmet pizza parlour in Pretoria by the name of Toni's Fully Furnished Pizza. Exquisite!

The filling list is endless. Use a filling or combination that is not too dry, else you may have to take water to swallow the jaffle.

Another useful aspect of the jaffle is that you can eat it cold. It is good picnic food that can be prepared the previous day. Quite useful for a day sail or an overnight trip where you may feel like focusing on the sailing experience rather than spend time cooking.

Boat food par excellence.

I decided to test my new jaffle iron by following the recipe on the label. Biltong, cheese and tomato. I used brown bread and butter as per normal sandwich. Extremely simple. It took me longer to take the pix than to prepare the food!

Close the jaffle iron around the sandwich, cut off the excess, it will burn. Then heat over a small flame on the small burner. My jaffle iron is made of cast iron, so it takes a while to heat. Once hot, it toasts the bread very nice and evenly. And I get the heat back at the end, when I can turn off the hob and leave the last jaffle to “bake” to perfection.

How cool is that!

And then there is the ultimate dessert, courtesy of one of the participating teams in the Ultimate Braai Master competition: Bread and butter pudding jaffles.

Start with the standard two slices of bread. I used brown bread. Spread some butter. And some apricot jam. Actually a lot. As in copious amounts. Soak some warmed raisins in brandy. Make a runny batter with an egg and some milk. Add a dollop of ground cinnamon. Soak each slice of bread briefly in this, then stack in the jaffle iron. Soak briefly, else you will have a runny mess. Remember to add the boozy raisins in between the slices.


You will be surprised at just how much brandy it takes to make these!

The batter will boil out if you have too much. Don't fret, the stove is easily cleaned afterwards. Fry until the bread is nice and crispy outside. Mix a little icing or castor sugar in fresh cream, beat until stiff and mixed properly, then add a dollop  of this with each serving.

You may have to make two per person...

Authored by Johan Zietsman

Last updated on 2013-04-03

Compiled for the GBYC newsletter

Cricket Bats, Skillets and Other Weapons of Anger

After the whole Oscar Pistorius scandal and the ongoing saga surrounding the happenings, I thought at length about the weaponry available in the kitchen. That is, apart from the obvious supposedly sharp knives that are quite blunt in fact. Well, in my experience, mostly anyway. And apart from the other obvious weapons in the hose, like cricket bats and baseball bats and the more innocuous looking rolled up women's magazines.

And I wondered about the vagaries of using kitchen equipment as weapons. A cricket bat featured in the statements made and the evidence gathered in the Oscar Pistorius case. I wondered how many skillets have been used in anger as a weapon.

Perhaps the kitchen equipment have been used for millennia in anger to prepare angry food! I know of at least one case where policemen in barracks have been fed angry food with overdoses of various spices after they mistreated their hired cook. In such cases the skillet is most definitely a weapon, but used in a more subtle way, perhaps.

Blunt knives and useless kitchen equipment have become such an epidemic that I now take my personal chef's kit along whenever I travel. This kit includes three properly sharpened knives, including a large chef's knife, a solid bird knife and a small paring knife. Include a proper peeler that can also peel squash pumpkins, a small sharpening device, a GI can opener and a small cutting board.  The small cutting board is replaced by a big end grain cutting board when I am not flying or sailing. Add to this a proper silicone spatula from le Creuset and you are almost there.

And not to forget my spice box. It is horrendous how many people have no idea of using spices and just mix ready-made sauces, or even worse, ready mix dry powder sauces (read chemical concoction) in various brews and call it food.

But today I wish to discuss the various uses of a skillet. We have touched briefly on its use as a weapon, in direct and other subtle ways.

A skillet is heavy. With good heat retention characteristics and really useful to cook on. Or is it 'in'? Make no mistake, I regularly use my heavy cast iron utensils.  However, for my travel requirements I need something lighter. Something that I can use on the gas hob over the coals or over dancing flames. For use in grilling meat, making stir fries, pancakes, flapjacks and, last but not least, paella. My favourite Spanish food.

Kitchen weapon of choice for the moment

So I shopped around and found a real Spanish paella pan at Perfect Paella. At a really decent price, with sizes and finishes to satisfy even the most eclectic fashion tastes. And they are quite light. I purchased one in polished steel. These pans are nicely finished with no surface treatment other than a layer of oil. You clean them by boiling some water in it, drying, then oiling lightly with olive oil. The pan will get a layer of olive oil baked into the surface with use. Complete with the flavours that you use in the pan, rather like a wok. I like it this way. Over time the pan seals completely and nothing ever again sticks to it. You clean it by wiping with a wet cloth.

I went the whole hog and cleaned the pan as per instructions, not wanting to take chances. I bought some real Spanish paella rice along with the pan and used the recipe on the back of the pack as a broad guide to what I was about to make.

The pan performed way beyond what I expected from the first use. No burning, no heat spots, no discolouring of the steel. I used a stainless steel egg lifter to stir the food. One of the plus points of using a plain polished steel pan. No problem there. I  made a medium sized fire in the Weber kettle and plonked the paella pan on top of the grill. Be careful when handling the paella pan, the steel handles get hot. The pan needs a medium to hot fire. I think one will need to experiment a little with the size of the fire.

The beauty of using the kettle braai is that one can put the lid on the kettle and let the dish simmer. The fluid in the pan steams and it controls the fire a bit. The steam also heats up way past  the boiling point of water, adding to the heat distribution inside this makeshift oven. All of this work towards very good cooking.

This pan is getting an honourable place in my kitchen. It is a very good tool. In the house, on camping trips and on travelling holidays where you have your own travel medium. Like a car. This won't work when flying.

Al fresco cooking

The recipe for the paella is quite simple: Two diced tomatoes, a clove of garlic, two diced onions, two cups of rice, some sea food, some chicken, salt to taste, seafood stock, paprika or Spanish saffron. Some olive oil. Add water as necessary. Fry the chicken pieces until brown, remove from the pan then fry the sea food, using a dollop of olive oil to lubricate the pan as required.

Remove the sea food when almost done.

Then add the onions, fry until translucent, add the garlic and fry for ten seconds, then add the dry, uncooked rice. Fry this until the pan goes almost dry, then add some of the stock. Keep on stirring and frying, adding first the stock, then water as required until the rice is almost done. Add the paprika or saffron while the mix is still quite wet and runny.

Add back all the meat and fish, garnish with chopped parsley and a cupful of fresh garden peas and simmer until everything has cooked through.

Make sure that most of the water has boiled away or has been absorbed; this is paella, not risotto.

The result: perfect paella

I added a chopped Thai chilli, pips removed. The paella must not be too spicy. I also added some fresh coriander leaves chopped, along with the parsley. A sprig of chopped spring onion was added along with the peas. And I added some fresh turmeric in lieu of saffron.

Smoked paprika apparently works wonders too. I shall purloin some somewhere in the near future. It adds a very special character to the dish.

Allow the dish to rest for fifteen minutes before dishing up, as always. It allows the flavours to develop. Have a glass of red wine while you wait, it is good for you.

Buen apetito!

Leftovers

Authored by Johan Zietsman

Last updated on 2013-03-12

When you would kill for something to eat other than beer snacks: Wrap lunch

Sailing will make you very thirsty, mostly because of the weather that you are enduring. Windy conditions will dry you out faster. And of course, the effect of the sun. Sitting on a boat makes it worse, as you cannot escape the elements. Not really. So you eat snacks and drink beer and water. But you stay hungry.

Combine this with the efforts and work required to keep the boat sailing and you end up being relatively tired and really hungry. Nobody really wants to cook, but everybody agrees there need to be something more than the snacks.

This is fast food, but not in a derogatory sense. A variation on the pasta lunch. No cooking or boiling of water required, which makes it a cinch. Only some rudimentary preparation required.

If you are industrious, you can make the filling at home and stash it in a seal-able plastic container. This will keep for the day and the flavours will develop.

Take some rosa-, cherry- or chopped normal tomatoes. The smaller ones I just cut in half. Squash them with your fingers if you want to. A cupful of this. Add a cupful of chopped cabbage and a small chilli, pips removed and chopped. Add half a carrot, sliced thinly, julienne'd if you will, and an onion, chopped. The filling needs something crunchy as well as something a bit piquant. Sweet bell peppers will also help. Half a cup of bean sprouts or other sprouts. Mix thoroughly and add a blob of mayonnaise.

Get some spicy sausages, three or four will do the trick. Five if you are hungry. Slice them up into thin wheels. Add to the mix.

Done with the filling before the next tack!

For the wrap I used store bought rotis, a flat bread made with yeast. My readers in parts of the world other than Cape Town may find a normal pancake size tortilla wrap more readily available. It does not really matter. For a day sail, the easiest wraps are those that you get from your nearest food shop or supermarket.

Ladle a liberal dessert spoonful of the filling into the wrap, then fold the wrap around the filling leaving one side open. Wrap this lot in a paper napkin and you have your very fast lunch.

This lot will make about five portions, so you will need at least five wraps. Scale to your heart's content. And experiment with the ingredients, the variations are endless.

Voila! Lunch! And hardly any dishwashing required.

Bon appetit.

Lunch guest

Authored by Johan Zietsman

Last updated on 2013-02-26

This blog post compiled for the GBYC newsletter.