Meal 82. South African braai (barbecue): boerewors, braaibroodjies, pap en chakalaka, milliebrood and melktert

Easy to find the location of the braai by the massive South African flag

I had been discussing a typical South African meal with Riaan, initially meant to be cooked for a small group at his place, when he reported the invite for a big braai in the next week, assuring me I would be welcomed by the other Saffas (= South Africans). I had often heard the braai (basically a barbecue) was a quintessential South African social and culinary experience, and now I could join one near me in the Netherlands.

Boerewors in foreground

The location in the park is easily found after I spot a huge South African flag fluttering in the breeze and a lot of people wearing Springbok jerseys (the national rugby team). After a quick look around, I introduce myself to the organiser of the braai, Cynthia, as Riaan has messaged me that he is running a bit late. She indeed welcomes me warmly and introduces me to another attendee, Renee, who turns out to be half-Dutch herself. Her grandparents emigrated to South Africa from the Netherlands when her mother was still a child. And now, facilitated by her Dutch passport, she has made the opposite move two generations on, with her husband and her own daughter. When I ask her what motivated the relocation, she does volunteer the classic (crime), which I have heard from South African emigrés before, but also highlights 'load shedding' which is new to me as a reason to leave. Basically, it covers the long-standing energy crisis where electricity is shut down during certain hours of the day, due to insufficient capacity. Renee's parents have adapted by getting solar panels and water tanks, living almost 'off grid' now. With regards to the increase in crime, she shrugs a bit and says that to some extent you do get used to it, but end up living a 'securitized' life within walled compounds. She does smile while sharing her 'method' to avoid carjacking: just get a brand and colour car which is not popular for resale...apparently a Mitsubishi is much less desired than a Toyota! As well, she touches upon the fact that many white South Africans who have career ambitions end up leaving, as they feel limited by the current quota system. Black professionals also emigrate for career reasons, but might be less likely to end up in the Netherlands than Saffas who speak Afrikaans (similar to Dutch).

Riaan displaying one of the huge packets of marinated meat

At this point, I have figured out where Riaan and his friends are, unpacking huge slabs of marinated meat. He explains that a lot of the ingredients of a braai are just thick cuts of steak, lamb chops or pork, but also boerewors, a specific beef sausage normally sold in a super long spiral. I get to taste some from a friend. He got them from an opportunistic Dutch butcher who figured out there is a market for it here too. I have to say that my favourite culinary element of the braai is the braaibroodjies, delicious smokey grilled cheese sandwiches with tomatoes and onions which are toasted on the coals. In some parts of South Africa, a traditional braai would be only on a wood fire, which adds a specific flavour. In other parts (and almost all city environments!), charcoal is the accepted source of heat and smoke. As I munch and mingle, I hear from two different groups the joke that they like their meat 'so raw a veterinarian could bring it back to life!'

Riaan manning the grill while his friends chat and salivate in anticipation

Saturdays are the traditional day for big braais like today, but Wednesday is the standard day for a braai at home. So much so that it is referred to as 'Klein Saterdag' (little Saturday), although this term is sometimes also used by people who feel Wednesday is the 'start of the weekend' and the night of the week to go out amongst students! To be fair, in my student town, it was Thursday when the weekend started, so not far off... Klein Saterdag is also the name of a popular song in Afrikaans by Kurt Darren, whose biggest hit (Kaalvoet Sokkie), is also played at this braai. Two of Riaan's friends dance the sokkie dance (also called 'langarm'), with a bit of a nostalgic giggle. It reminds me a bit of the two step I saw danced in Oklahoma; and the music is somewhat reminiscent of country music or German Schlagers, but not quite. As a side note, Riaan mentions that if anyone needs to extract top secret information from him, playing sokkie music 24/7 could be an effective method of torture...he would prefer an early death!

Could a good veterinarian still bring this meat to life?

For Riaan, he felt less of a 'push' out of South Africa, and more of a 'pull' towards Europe due to his sense of adventure, and search for broader horizons and new job opportunities. He mentions some Dutch recruiters actively seek out South African professionals, for instance those working as accountants, seemingly preferring those who speak Afrikaans as well as English. At the barbecue, there is some joking reference to the 'tensions' between the English and the Afrikaners. In Cape Town the English and Afrikaner neighbourhoods are even divided by a railroad. But a few couples here proudly explain they are mixed, like Riaan's friend Jade, whose mother was English Zimbabwean and whose father was Afrikaans. She says he initially hardly spoke English and ended up speaking it with his wife's Zimbabwean accent. I tell her I can understand Afrikaans reasonably well, and find it somehow a 'cute' version of my own mother tongue...she recalls she could not contain her laughter when she heard a Dutch lady looking for her cat on the street by calling "Poes! Poes!" as this is basically a very vulgar word for the female sexual organ in Afrikaans (similar to pussy, but apparently much more crude). The polite word would be 'wijfie kat', equivalent to 'lady cat' which I again find somehow endearing. She also shares an anecdote about 'vetkoek' (a fatty fried dough ball), a popular snack which can be eaten as is, or with a meat filling. When girls in high school started wearing lipgloss, they were teasingly asked "Ah, did you just eat some vetkoek?!" as the effect of gloss mimicked the shiny lips you got after eating the oily fried bread.

The meat, braaibroodjie and in the background the pap and shakalaka

As the crowd thins out, we are offered the last bits of melktert (custard pie) and milliebrood (a sweetcorn pie) baked in large quantities by another guest, Kirsten. She and her husband seem happy to find grateful recipients and bid adieu:"Till the next one!" hoping Dutch weather will allow for another outdoor get-together before the end of the year.

I am lucky enough to get both the very first and the very last slice of melktert!

Meal 81. Moldovan Shuba or "Herring under a fur coat"

After cooking the eggs, potatoes and carrots, the scraping begins

Alexandra has warned me that tonight's night might not be exclusively traditional for Moldova, and thinks most people from former Soviet countries will recognize the festive salad, prepared and served in a way that it resembles a cake. She came to Germany at 10 years old, but still remembers a few years of the Soviet era, and when I asked her if she also has the seminal memory of 'the first time eating bananas' which many of my blog hosts can recall, she confirms this is the case for her as well. She also mentions seeing packaged yoghurt as quite a novel product.

Chopping the herring for the next layer

Her parents and grandparents learned to be creative with a relatively limited 'palette' of ingredients. The 'classics' were potatoes, carrots, onions, cabbage and beets. These all have in common that they can be stored in the cellar for a long time. Tonights dish, the 'herring in a fur blanket' contains most of these staple ingredients. However, processed in quite a novel way for me! Alexandra shares that this dish is pretty foolproof. Though it is labour intensive, you do not need any special skills. She confesses to being 'lazy' by boiling the potatoes, carrots and eggs in the same pot, and by using precooked vacuum packed beets. The remaining two components are mayonnaise and salted herring, and onion (optional). Even for people who do not really like herring, this dish is palatable, as the salty fish is well camouflaged by all the other ingredients. Basically, you do a lot of grating to create a layered 'cake' on a flat round plate: boiled potatoes, (raw onions,) finely chopped herring, carrots, mayonnaise, eggs, beets, mayonnaise and eggs. I don't think I have ever seen anybody grate a boiled egg till now. The visual effect of the top layer is what gives this dish its name. It is indeed somewhat reminiscent of a fur coat. 

Grating the beet on top of the carrot layer

The mouth feel of the dish also pretty unique. It is funny, as all of the ingredients are so familiar to me, but the final dish is still surprising! Alexandra has told me it is a good partner food for vodka, hence we down an ice cold shot before starting on our festive salad. Not Moldovan vodka though. The country is better known for its wine, and at least in the eighties, most households would make their own wine. A popular tourist attraction in the country are the big underground wine cellars of Cricova; maybe also one of the relatively few well-known tourist attractions...

The final layer, the grated egg which is the 'fur coat'

Alexandra visited the Cricova wineries when she last went back, the only time she returned to the country of her youth, twenty years after having left. It was almost a different country, so much had changed! Even the language spoken by most people, which she remembered as being Russian, had shifted towards Romanian. This is quite a loaded subject, I later find out. Moldova, now basically the poorest country in Europe, is politically quite important due to current geo-politics. The main factions are 'pro-Russian' vs 'pro-Western'. At the moment, the government is pro-Western, and the war in neighbouring Ukraine has had a strong impact with bombing of electrical plants in Ukraine meaning Moldova lost electricity in half of the country as well. I myself knew very little about Moldova before meeting Alexandra, with the breakaway region of Transnistria ringing some bells due to clickbaity videos of people visiting the 'country that does not exist'... 

Beautiful cake salad!

When Alexandra mentions to Germans that she is originally from Moldova, the response is normally: "Oooh! Interesting!" and then silence...as, like me, they know extremely little about this country between Romania and Ukraine. Even the capital, Chisinau, is often mispronounced by news reporters (it's kee-shee-now rather than chih-zih-now). Alexandra came to Germany with her parents, grandparents and even her great-grandfather. As the latter spoke Yiddish, they initially just spoke that language in their new home, and most Germans could understand that perfectly well. Interesting to me is that Alexandra's father has by now moved back, despite all the struggles Moldova is going through economically and politically, it is clearly still home to him. When things calm down, I would be happy to come for a visit and taste the famous wines of Cricova!

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Moldovan cuisine in general has has a lot of similarities with Romanian food, and a very popular dish in Moldova is polenta, called mamaliga, much loved by Alexandra's grandfather. Basically the same dish prepared for this blog for my Romanian meal!

Meal 80. Russian salty soup (rassolnik), cabbage pancakes (kapustniye oladyie) and oat dessert (kisil)

Nelly with all the ingredients for the salty soup and cabbage pancakes prepped

Nelly is not quite aware how significant this meal is for me, as the original idea of this project was to travel ‘Around the World in Eighty Meals’ and she is number 80! It has been 17 years since I started the trip with a Dutch meal made by my own mother. After an initial head start of 46 meals in the first two years, with some nice publicity in Dutch newspapers, it has continued with a few (long) stops and starts.

The plump pearl barley ('pitted' like with cooked rice)

Luckily, Nelly has taken her task of thinking out a ‘traditional’ meal quite seriously. I would even say, more seriously than any other host! She describes in detail the type of ingredients Russians from her region (St. Petersburg) would have had access to historically. Only very occasionally will she make exceptions for ‘modern’ components like tomato paste or paprika powder. These only arrived after these ingredients were brought over from the Americas. We laugh about how this way of thinking would mean that pizza and pasta with tomato sauce would not be truly Italian, and potato stamppot not truly Dutch!

 

The cabbage pancakes crisping up in the hot oil

 

We start with rassolnik, ‘the salty soup’, which is supposed to be excellent if you are suffering from a hangover, in combination with a coffee. We start by toasting pearl barley, ‘the food of the gods’ according to Nelly, called perlovka in Russian. It is quite popular also in more modern dishes, like a variation of risotto wittily name perlotto (actually called orzotto in Italian). The toasting releases a lovely nutty aroma and gives the grains a golden-brown hue. Afterwards, we add boiling water and keep it on low heat till the perlovka becomes plump and chewy. The other ingredients are carrot, onion, garlic, salted pickles and a bit of the brine - crucial for this salty soup! Chopped parsley is added at the very end. It is a perfect savoury winter soup, even if you did not go drinking the night before! 

 

Nelly serving the salty soup

For the side dish, cabbage pancakes, or kapustniye oladyie, Nelly cannot stop herself from snacking on the crunchy raw leaves. She closes her eyes and almost hums with pleasure, she loves it so much. However, when it is boiling, she makes sure to cover the pot, as even she admits that "nobody loves the smell of boiling cabbage!" The pancakes remind me a bit of the latkes my father used to make (as well as the Belarusian host), except using cabbage instead of potatoes, and no egg. Nelly mentions that a lot of traditional Russian foods are actually vegan, as the Orthodox Russian church involves ‘fasting’ (no animal products) almost half of the year. Surprisingly similar to Ethiopian cuisine, which has a lot of vegan dishes for the exact same reason!

 

Cabbage pancakes with cream and parsley as garnish

 

Desert is an oat ‘crème’ called ovyosani kisil. It is made by soaking oats in water, blitzing them with a mixer, then straining this mixture through a sieve. Chopped hazelnuts and strawberries are added for a hint of sweetness. Nelly has even prepared fresh oat milk above the Arctic Circle, during a field trip where she taught English to biology students at a research station. She is a very entertaining host, as every ingredient has a story, and she herself has had an interesting and international life. She grew up in the Soviet Union, but because both her parents were diplomats posted abroad, she moved with them during their posts in Mongolia and Cuba as a child, and visited her parents in India. This exposed her to tropical fruits and other dishes not available in St. Petersburg (then Leningrad). Apart from exposure to new foods, Nelly even remembers standing in the burning heat for 45 minutes as a ‘young pioneer’, waiting for Fidel Castro to turn up to give a speech! 

 

Rassolnik, or salty soup

Meal 79. Croatian Škampi na Buzaru (King Prawn Buzara)

 

Jasmina mixing the ingredients for the sauce with the blender (Shock horror, not by hand!)

 As I arrive in Jasmina’s cozy kitchen/dining room, it is immediately clear she takes cooking seriously. She is a master of the ‘mise en place’, preparing everything in advance, so that when the actual cooking starts, all elements are ready to go. This apparently comes in handy at her job for an international IT company, as well as in the kitchen! For the Škampi na Buzaru, or king prawns with buzara sauce, Jasmina has prepped little dishes with the peeled carrots, celery, garlic and onion, and proudly resides over the kitchen area in her Croatian red and white checked apron. As I chat with her and her wife Jelena about the euro having been newly introduced in their country of origin, she confides that more traditional cooks might frown upon her not chopping everything by hand, and would be especially shocked by her use of some secret ingredients (two unusual spices I have sworn not to share with anyone). She also mentions she is suffering from mild ‘stage fright’, as the final guest is a friend, Domagoj, from the coastal region where this dish originates. Croatia has an extensive coastline and lots of little islands, which has been a large part of the reason the tourism industry has been able to flourish in the last twenty years. 

 

Showing off the marinated prawns

 

Jasmina mentions that the country, the people, and the cuisine have been heavily influenced by the different groups who have been in charge in past centuries, from the Ottomans, the Venetians, the Austro-Hungarian empire to the Yugoslavian government. An interesting side note is that the German occupation during the second world war crept its way into schoolground game, and Jasmina mentions “always choosing to be a Partisan when playing Germans and Partisans!” I assume this would be the local version of “Cowboys and Indians” a kind of group tag which kids might or might not still play on American playgrounds. Had never heard of this variation! During Yugoslavian times, which Jasmina still witnessed, it was a socialist country, but with "blue jeans, Coca-Cola and the ability to travel in the West"...as well, it was very normal for mothers to work full-time, with school and daycare options available with long opening hours. Jasmina gives credit to this custom for the fact that Croatian women still have the reputation for being quite independent.

 

Adding cognac to the prawns

 Due to the complex national history, the majority of Croatians have mixed roots, and it is common to find a diversity of dishes like schnitzels and strudel, goulash, risotto and pickled cabbage (a kind of fermented sauerkraut). When I ask Jasmina if she has ever pickled cabbage herself, she replies “Of course!” as if this is self-explanatory. On the other hand, she has lived in Berlin for six years and has not made it here yet, although she is considering the basement as a suitable location. She still goes back home frequently, and when not flying, tries to bring back lots of ingredients like homemade sausages, bacon and lard, produced by her relatives. However, many typical products are available in Berlin too at specialized shops, as there is a significant diaspora here.

 

The classic ingredients for the ‘red buzara’ we are having are onion, celery, garlic, carrot, tomatoes, parsley, olive oil, red white, cognac, salt, pepper and paprika. For the ‘white buzara’ alternative, the tomatoes are left out and white wine is used instead of red. The two kinds of prawns have been marinated ahead of time and once the sauce is basically ready, Jasmina fries up the prawns separately before adding them to the buzara sauce. A bit of fresh parsley is sprinkled on top, and voilà, the dish is ready to serve with bread.

 

The prawn buzara, sprinkled with parsley and ready to be served!

A generous supply of napkins are provided, as you mainly eat it with your hands. During my first attempt at peeling a huge prawn, bits of red sauce splatter all over the place, including the cream table mats. Jasmina assures me this is fine, and helpfully mentions that it is customary to suck the sauce off of the prawn first before peeling it. This actually ends up being my very favourite part of the whole dish, as it turns out you really get an intense umami hit from the shellfish as you suck off the sauce.

 

The sauce, about to be mopped up with bread or sucked off the prawns!

Only after finishing my first and second serving of the buzara, I realise I have not touched the delicious Croatian wine. Probably because I was so focused on the food! Once my hands are clean, I make up for this error, and because there is still a tiny bit of room left, Jasmina serves up batons of smoked goat’s cheese. It is moist, with a mildly goaty, smoky, acid taste. I have only had smoked cow’s cheese before, and I love this new variation. To round off the meal, we have coffee with rakia, the Croatian version of distilled spirit (similar to grappa, palinka or schnapps). It can be made with plums, peaches, grapes, apples (or any fruit, basically) and honey. I pick the honey one, and the sweetness and mild flavour are delightful.

 

The homemade lard prepared by Jasmina's relatives

 

At the end of the meal, I am ushered into the pantry to choose one of a dozen homemade jars of jam with handwritten labels. I feel spoiled for choice, as well as literally spoiled, and after careful deliberation, opt for sour cherry. As if this is not enough, I am handed a generous portion of the smoked goat’s cheese to take home as well. I protest that I cannot take so much of her precious  stash, but Jasmina reassures me that I need not worry. She will be heading back to Croatia in two weeks, so will be able to restock very soon!

 

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For other meals from the same region, please see the Bosnian, Kosovar, Serbian, Slovenian and Albanian entries, or click on the 'Balkan Meals' label in the sidebar.