Grub.

A South African Feast!!

By now you might have noticed that my favorite part of these adventures is the food.  I have always enjoyed trying food from different areas and now I have a great reason- educating my kids!!  So really I can blame them for the extra weight I'm gaining eating all this wonderful food ? I wish!  Let me tell you this- if you like flavorful food  South African food is awesome!! Because Capetown was a main port for ships going around the horn of Africa on their way to the West Indies for spices, there is a lot of interesting spice mixing going on.  It's spicy but not hot spicy.  My husband, brother and I ate this food all week and really enjoyed it.  My adventurous son ate quite a bit, my daughter ate the bread and fruit I served with it.  The cuisine of South Africa is heavily meat-based and a common form of cooking is barbeque or "braai", so I made a steak kebab dish called Sosaties - so good I used the marinade on some chicken and we had it again the next night.  Another staple dish is yellow rice, which was spiced with tumeric, cinnamon and raisins.  It was a little too strong for me but I think with a little less cinnamon I would've like it better.  The third dish we made was our favorite.  It was called Chakalaka (!) and was a real surprise.  The ingredients sounded really weird but it all came together well- much to my surprise :) It was good on the rice, it was good with flatbread dipped in it, it was good cold on a sandwich.  Chakalaka is as much fun to say as it was to eat. Chakalaka.
I will share the recipes for the sosaties and chakalaka- if you'd like the yellow rice recipe it is available online at www.food.com

Sosaties (South African Kebabs)

For the marinade:

• 2 T butter or olive oil
• 1 onion finely chopped
• 1/2 cup red wine
• 1/4 cup water
• 1/2 cup vinegar (I used red wine vinegar)
• 2 T curry powder
• 2 T sugar
• 3 bay leaves
• 1 T cayenne pepper
• salt and pepper to taste
• 2 T mustard
• 2 T soy sauce
• 2/3 cup ketchup
• 1/4 cup Worcestershire sauce
• 1/3 cup cooking oil

1.Heat butter in frying pan and cook onions until soft.
2.Add wine, water, vinegar,curry powder,cayenne,black pepper,bay leaves and sugar
3. Bring to boil and cook for a few minutes then remove from heat and cool til warm.
4. Blend in the rest of the ingredients.  Your marinade is done.

For the kebabs:

• a few pounds of beef cut into chunks
• 2 crushed garlic cloves
• 2 T crushed or finely chopped fresh ginger
• onion chunks
• dried apricots

Mix all ingredients in bowl, pour marinade over the top and let sit overnight.  Thread onto skewers alternating meat, onions and apricots and barbeque until cooked through.  If you're using wooden skewers make sure you soak them in water first so they don't burn.

Chakalaka

• 4 T oil
• 1 onion finely chopped (almost pureed if you live in my house)
• 4 - 5 garlic cloves, crushed
• 2 T fresh ginger, finely chopped or grated
• 1 jalapeno, seeded and finely chopped
• 2 T curry powder
• 1 (14oz) can of whole tomatoes
• 1 green pepper finely chopped (I don't like green so used red)
• 2 carrots, coarsely grated
• 1 (8oz) can pork and beans in tomato sauce (I used chili beans in sauce)
• salt and pepper to your taste

1.Heat oil in pan and cook onions until soft.
2.Add garlic, ginger and jalapeno. cook for a minute or two and add curry powder.
3.Add vegetables and beans, bring to a boil then turn down heat and simmer for 15-20 mins.

I served our food with some leftover Naan from India week and we really enjoyed it all.  Really.  I'd tell you if it was bad.  I'd love to hear if anybody tries it - I know there were a lot of ingredients but none were very fancy and it didn't take too long and as you can see it all looked delicious!

A fitting feast to bid farewell to South Africa!!