Table Mountain at the Cape |
When the Dutch first settled at the Cape of Good Hope in 1652 their job was to grow European vegetables for the ships going to the Dutch East Indies. The sailors needed fresh vegetables to prevent scurvy.
Melktert |
From the Dutch kitchens came the traditional hearty dishes for a cold climate: pea soups and hutspots, and sweet things like ginger biscuits and melkterts – cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger and cloves from the spice islands in the Dutch East Indies were key ingredients.
In 1688 the
French Huguenots arrived, bringing their Provençal cuisine which fused with
that of the Cape Dutch and enlivened it with the addition of fresh herbs and
wine to their traditional casseroles. They also brought with them grape vine
cuttings, from which they started the wine industry that flourishes in the Cape
today.
French Provencale casserole |
In the
1700's the Dutch imported slaves from their colonies in the Dutch East Indies.
They came to be known as Cape Malays. Many were employed as cooks and forever
altered Cape Dutch cuisine with the addition of tropical spices.
Sosaties, a Malay dish of skewered meat, marinated in a mixture of spices. |
When the
British took over the Cape Colony from the Dutch in 1815 they brought with them
the British-Indian cuisine (such as "curries" and
"chutneys") that they had come to enjoy during their colonization of
India.
In the late
1800's the British transported indentured workers from southern India to tend
the sugar-cane plantations in the Natal Colony. They brought their hot and
spicy curries, using a lot of chili, coconut, tamarind, garlic and ginger. They
also introduced the naan and roti breads which are first cousins to
"askoek" and "pannekoek".
Curries and naan bread |
Soon
merchants from the northern Indian state of Gujerat migrated to Natal
independently. (Among them was Mahatma Ghandi who lived in South Africa for 21
years.) With them, from the north of India, came their aromatic and complex, predominantly
vegetarian cuisine.
The
pioneers who trekked into the interior of the continent needed to take supplies
that were light and nourishing: from them we got biltong, dry boerewors and
rusks.
Dry rusks: delicious dunked in coffee! |
Until the
advent of the railways, “transportryers” with ox wagons took supplies to the
gold fields and to the outlying districts. They perfected “potjiekos”: a slowly
simmered stew of layered meat and vegetables, made in a three-legged cast iron
pot over a few coals at the outspan.
All these strands make up the tapestry of our traditional cooking. Over the centuries there have been outstanding exponents of the culinary art: Miss Hildegonda Duckett, Louis Leipoldt and SJA de Villiers to name but a few.
Miss Hildegonda Duckitt, the grande dame of Cape cooking, was a granddaughter of William Duckitt, who arrived at the Cape in 1800. She spent her early life on the farm Groote Post, baking mosbolletjies using fermented grape juice instead of yeast to make the dough rise. Her tea cakes, called oblietjies , were also a hit after she revved up an old Huguenot recipe and added cinnamon and white wine. And for children she would make tameletjies: sweets of naartjie peel and pine nuts. For the cold farm nights on Groote Post, egg flips would be made from a bottle of Madeira, five eggs, cloves, nutmeg and the ubiquitous cinnamon.
Hilda learnt her speciality - tortoise, scalloped with breadcrumbs, butter, lemon and salt - from Abraham, a Swahili cook on the farm. The trick was to scratch the tortoise on the back until its inquisitive head popped out - and then chop it off. Tortoise, like most exotic white meat, is reported to taste like chicken.
She also had an interesting list of home remedies: here are a few from ‘Hilda’s Diary of a Cape
Housekeeper’, published 1902:
Ø Cure for Toothache. – Mix
60 grains cocaine, 1 teaspoonful tincture of opium, and bottle. A tiny
piece of cotton-wool steeped in this and put in the cavity of the aching tooth
will give instant relief. (I
bet it will!)
Ø Overdose of Laudanum, etc.
- In case of an overdose of laudanum or opium or alcohol, immediately
administer an emetic of mustard-and-water, and above all keep the patient awake
and in motion, slapping him with wet towels and trotting him up and down the
room till a doctor can attend.
Ø Jaundice - The
yellow flowers of the wild hemp, known at the Cape as “Dacha”, Cannabis sativa
(the leaves of which plant used to be dried and smoked by the natives), made
into a tea and taken three times a day, is most efficacious. (Now that has to be better than Rooibos!)
"No, really, Sergeant,
trust me, the cocaine, the opium and the dagga are for medicinal purposes
only!"
Those were the days!!
The celebrated
Afrikaans poet C Louis Leipoldt (1880-1947)
wrote some fascinating and engaging cookery books. They contained not just
recipes, but anecdotes and musings of this great writer who was also a bushveld
doctor, medical specialist, botanist, chef and all-round epicurean.
SJA de Villiers is
South Africa's answer to Mrs Beeton. She will always be remembered for her
definitive Kook en Geniet, which first saw the light in 1951 and is to be
found in the kitchen of every South African housewife. The first English
edition, Cook and Enjoy It, appeared in 1961. Nearly a million copies
of the two editions had been sold by the turn of the century.
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