Recettes

Cape Malay Pickled Fish

Firm white fish, floured and fried, then layered under a sweet-sour curried onion sauce and left in the fridge for at least a day before it is eaten. It is Cape Malay, it is South African, and in Cape Town it is inseparable from Easter. The Cape Malay community descends from people brought to the Cape from Southeast Asia, largely from the Indonesian archipelago, as slaves and political exiles by the Dutch from the seventeenth century onwards. Their cooking is the origin of much of what is now considered characteristically Cape cuisine, and pickled fish belongs squarely to it, the turmeric, the coriander seed, the bay leaves and the sweet-sour balance are all markers of that lineage. The Easter association is real but the explanations for it vary, and the dish is not exclusively Christian: it is eaten in Muslim Cape Malay households too, which is one of the reasons the "made for Good Friday" account is contested. Its practical origin is simpler. Vinegar and sugar preserve cooked fish for weeks without refrigeration, which mattered a great deal in the early colonial Cape. It genuinely improves with time. A day in the fridge is the minimum; two or three is better, and it holds for several weeks. The source's nutritional claims have not been carried across.

50 minMediumSouth Africa

Recette de Amara · Africook

Hertzoggies

A hertzoggie is a small tartlet: a short pastry base, a spoonful of apricot jam, and a coconut meringue topping baked until crisp and golden. It is called a hertzogkoekie in Afrikaans and a Hertzog cookie in English, and it has been made in South Africa since the 1920s. The name is political. The tartlet was created by supporters of J. B. M. Hertzog, the Boer War general who became South African Prime Minister, and it carries his name a century later. That is an unusually specific and unusually documented origin for a baked good, and it is worth recording plainly as history rather than endorsement. It is still widely eaten. Hertzoggies are a standard tea-time biscuit across South Africa and are made at home as part of the country's cottage baking tradition, alongside koeksisters and other well-known South African sweets. They are also strongly associated with Eid in the Cape Malay community, where they appear on the table among the other sweets prepared for the occasion. The combination of light pastry, sharp apricot jam and chewy coconut meringue is the whole appeal, and each of the three needs to stay distinct.

1 hr 5 minMediumSouth Africa

Recette de Nympha · Africook

Chicken Pie (Traditional South African Style)

South African chicken pie is distinguished from every other chicken pie in the world by one ingredient: sago. The pearls of tapioca are soaked and cooked into the sauce, where they turn translucent and give the filling a texture that is moist and slightly gelatinous without being wet. No other pie tradition does this, and South Africans who grew up with it can identify its absence immediately. The spicing is the other marker. Nutmeg and cloves in a savoury chicken filling reads as unusual to most palates and is entirely standard here, reflecting the Cape spice traditions that run through South African cooking. Lemon juice cuts it, and thyme and rosemary sit underneath. The source for this recipe is firm that the nutmeg and clove are non negotiable. It is festive food and family food. Chicken pie appears at Christmas, at Sunday lunches and at the potluck gatherings where South Africans bring a dish, and it is served hot rather than cold. Ham is scattered through the filling and slices of hard cooked egg are tucked in, which gives the cut pie its pink and yellow flecks against the white chicken. Yellow rice, roast potatoes, green beans and a tomato salad are the conventional accompaniments.

★★★★★Les mieux notées

HardSouth Africa

Recette de FoodChef · Africook

Boeber (Cape Malay Sweet Milk Drink)

Boeber is a Cape Malay sweet milk drink, thick with vermicelli and sago and scented with cardamom, cinnamon and rose water. It sits somewhere between a drink and a pudding, and Cape Town households do not find the ambiguity a problem. Its place in the calendar is precise. Boeber is served on the fifteenth night of Ramadan, marking the midpoint of the fast for those who have completed the first fifteen days. That single fixed date gives it a weight that a dish eaten year round does not carry: it belongs to a moment, and its appearance signals that the moment has arrived. The drink comes from the Cape Malay community, whose ancestors were brought to the Cape from Indonesia, India and East Africa, and boeber carries the marks of all three. It has close relatives across that map. Malaysians break the fast with bubur lambuk, a porridge; Trinidadian households serve sawine at Eid al-Fitr; kheer and payasam on the Indian subcontinent are its nearest kin, most likely carried to the Cape by enslaved and later indentured Indians. In South Africa itself, the Afrikaans melkkos is the comparable dish. Boeber is what all of those became in one place.

★★★★★Les mieux notées

55 minEasySouth Africa · East Africa

Recette de Jennifer · Africook