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

Dombolo (Dumplings or Steamed Bread)

Dombolo is South African steamed bread, and it occupies a particular place in the country's kitchens because it is bread that never sees an oven. Where a loaf is baked in dry heat, dombolo rises under a lid over water, and the result is soft, dense and slightly damp in a way no baked bread achieves. It belongs to the stew. Dombolo is not eaten alone and is not a side thought about separately. It arrives with chicken stew, beef stew, oxtail, lamb or tripe, and its job is to take up the gravy that the meat has spent hours building. In Zulu households the same technique produces jeqe, and the distinction between the two names is one that South Africans hold firmly even when it is drawn differently from one family to the next: broadly, jeqe is steamed as its own loaf, while dombolo is the dough set to rise over the pot the stew is already in. It is Sunday food and gathering food, made in quantity, cut into wedges at the table, and eaten with the hands.

★★★★★Les mieux notées

3 hr 30 minMediumSouth Africa

Recette de Amara · Africook

Potjiekos (Afrikaans Stew on the Fire)

Potjiekos takes its name from its vessel. A potjie is the round, three legged cast iron pot that sits directly in the embers, and potjiekos, pronounced poi-key-kos, is simply the food that comes out of it. The pot is a descendant of the Dutch oven brought to the Cape in the 17th century, and it is now found in households across southern Africa. The defining rule of a potjie is that it is not stirred. Ingredients are layered, meat at the bottom, vegetables above it in the order of how long they need, and the lid stays on. What comes out is not a stew in the ordinary sense: the layers hold something of their own identity rather than dissolving into a common sauce, and that separation is the point of the method. It is also a social form. A potjie runs for three to six hours, and the cooking is the occasion rather than the preparation for one. People sit around the fire while it happens. South Africans distinguish it from a braai, which is the other great outdoor cooking institution, and rank the two as the country's twin claims on the fire.

★★★★★Les mieux notées

MediumSouth Africa

Recette de Amara · Africook

Namibian Venison

Namibia is among the world's significant producers of game meat, and venison there means something more specific than deer. Kudu, springbok, oryx, impala and wildebeest are all farmed and hunted under conservancy systems, and the country's approach to wildlife management, which places conservation and controlled offtake in the same framework, is what allows game to be a normal food rather than an occasional one. That range of species is why Namibian venison is described in the plural. Each animal eats differently: springbok is fine grained and mild, oryx is denser and stronger, kudu sits between them. All are very lean, which is the single fact that governs how they are cooked. Fat is what keeps meat moist over long cooking, and game has almost none, so it is either cooked fast and served rare or braised long and slow with added liquid. Namibian cooking pairs indigenous foodways with the German and Afrikaner traditions left by colonial settlement, and venison appears across all of it: dried into biltong, cooked slowly in a potjie over open embers, or grilled at a braai. The recipe here takes a different route, treating the meat with a yoghurt and whole spice curry, which is a contemporary approach rather than a Namibian one.

★★★★★Les mieux notées

2 hr 30 minMediumNamibia · South African

Recette de Debby · Africook