Recettes

South African Stewed Green Beans

Green beans cooked slowly with potato and onion until everything is completely soft, then roughly mashed and finished with butter and nutmeg. It is South African, and it is old-fashioned in the best sense. The dish exists for a specific reason and the source is refreshingly honest about it: this is what to do with green beans that have gone past their best. Beans that are too tough and stringy to steam and serve whole become excellent when cooked long and mashed, because the slow cooking breaks down exactly the fibres that made them unpleasant. It is a technique for rescuing produce rather than showcasing it, which is why it belongs to an older way of cooking. The potato is structural. It breaks down completely and binds the mash, which is why the dish holds together rather than being beans in water. Nutmeg with green beans is a Cape Dutch habit, and the same pairing turns up across South African vegetable cookery. It is not a garnish, it is what makes the dish taste South African rather than generically braised. The source is also honest that quantities do not matter much, which is true of most old traditional recipes and rarely admitted. Do not mash it to a purée. Texture is meant to survive.

50 minEasySouth Africa

Recette de FoodChef · Africook

Creamy Samp

Samp is dried maize kernels, stamped to crack the hulls and break the grain into coarse pieces. It is eaten in place of rice or mealie meal across South Africa, and it holds a chewy, distinctly grainy texture that neither of those has. Different communities cook it differently: with beans as umngqusho, on its own with a little seasoning, or with meat worked through it. Its defining property used to be time. Conventional samp takes about three hours, which puts it beyond a weekday for most households and placed it firmly at weddings, traditional ceremonies and funerals. There is a South African joke that turns on exactly this: warn someone about risky behaviour and the reply is that everyone will eat samp at the funeral, because that was the reliable place to find it on a menu. Quick cook samp changed that. Processed to cook in around thirty minutes, it moved the dish from the occasion to the ordinary week, and the reason it caught on is as much about electricity as about time. Three hours on a stove is expensive in a country with an unreliable supply. This creamy version, finished with mushroom, cheese and milk, is what samp looks like once it stopped being ceremonial.

★★★★★Les mieux notées

1 hr 10 minEasySouth Africa

Recette de Tshego Stone · Africook

Pap & Sous

Pap and sous is maize porridge with tomato gravy, and between them they account for a very large share of what is eaten in South Africa on an ordinary day. Pap is the smooth, firm maize meal that anchors the plate. Sous, Afrikaans for sauce, is the tomato and onion gravy that goes over it. The comparison South Africans reach for when explaining pap to outsiders is grits or polenta, and it holds up as far as the grain goes. What it misses is the position the dish occupies. Pap is not a side. It is the centre of the plate, and everything else is arranged in relation to it, which is why the quality of a household's pap is noticed and remarked on. The gravy is where the cook is visible. A sous is built from onion, pepper, chilli, garlic and tomato with paprika and a little sugar and vinegar, and every household has a version. Pap and sous is eaten on its own as a complete meal and served alongside grilled meat and boerewors when there is a fire going, which is the same dish playing two different roles depending on the day.

★★★★★Les mieux notées

1 hrEasySouth Africa

Recette de Chef.donkey · Africook

Pap En Vleis

Pap en vleis is Afrikaans for porridge and meat, and the name describes the whole of it. Maize meal cooked to a smooth, firm mass, and grilled meat beside it. Two components, no sauce required, and a dish that the entire country recognises regardless of which language its household speaks. Its natural setting is outdoors and social. Pap en vleis is what comes off a braai and what is served at a shisanyama, the grill and gathering place where meat is bought, cooked over open fire and eaten on site. The dish exists in the same space as the fire and the people standing around it, and eating it indoors at a table is possible but slightly beside the point. Maize is the foundation of the South African diet, and pap is its most direct expression: nothing added, nothing disguised, judged entirely on texture. The meat is whatever the household or the grill has, and its variability is why the dish has stayed universal rather than becoming the property of any one community. A dish defined by two nouns leaves room for everyone's version.

★★★★★Les mieux notées

55 minEasySouth Africa

Recette de Laila · Africook