Tuesday, January 24, 2006
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A trip to South Africa always have something new to experience. Buying souvenirs is a nice way of remembering the exortic place one has been, but bringing back the indigenous spices and recipe allow you to relive the taste, the smell, and the feeling of that particular country.
The origins of Bobotie can be traced back to the eastern influence on South African culture. The Cape Malay society are famous for cooking this dish and it is usually served with yellow rice. This time I've used the Mexican cous cous, which is efforless to cook and taste quite nicely with the dish.
Easy to follow recipe: fry onion and curry powder, and add minced meat (mutton or beef give a richer taste, but as my friend is allergic to beef and mutton is not easily available, chicken is a nice alternative). Mash the thoroughly wet bread soaked in the milk, and add into the mince with 1 beaten egg. Meanwhile add raisins, vinegar, lemon juice, sugar and chutney/jam to the mince. Scoop the mixture into a pie dish, pour 1 more beaten egg and some more milk in the mince. Place 2 bay leaves on top and bake for 30 mins at 180C.
Cous cous is even easier: boil some water and oil in the pan, add the cous cous and some herbs. After 5 mins it's done!
Roasted vegitables - put some olive oil and butter in the baking pan, bake in the oven for3-4 mins. Drop in all the diced vegies and coat them with oil. Bake for around 30 mins. In the meanwhile prepare the sauce: mix one orange juice, green peppercorns and sugar together in a bowl. I do not have green peppercorns so used ground black pepper instead. Pour the sweet sauce on top of the vegies, and bake for another 30 mins.The sauce supposed to creat a golden brown coating for the vegies, but the turnips produced too much water that the sauce simply dissolved and produced something like a soup. The turnip is not as easily cooked as teh pumpkin, and therefore pumpkin should be added a bit later.
Nevertheless, very nice and healthy. Retained all the flavour and nutrition.
