Issue 2 Jamie magazine

Issue 2 • £3.95 jamiemagazine.com

FROM HAUTE TO HAM HOCKS Budget beef cuts from America’s best BBQ chef

CREDIT CRUNCH SPECIAL Over 120 recipes to help you revive and survive & FEEL GOOD INSIDE

A FRENCH ONE-POT FAVOURITE TO PLEASE A CROWD

* MZOLI’S RESTAURANT IN GUGULETHU

Mar/Apr 09

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JAMIE’S NEW PORK RECIPES, EASY GREEK STEWS AND A BISTRO CLASSIC

Cape Town s hotspots

ELIZABETH DAVID’S FAVOURITE RESTAURANT REVISITED

review travel

CAPE TOWN It’s South Africa’s second biggest city but population is the only respect in which Cape Town isn’t a winner. The climate is balmy, the locals are friendly and you can spend the morning in a vineyard and the afternoon at a beach. And, with bold, innovative cooking from chefs using world-class produce, Cape Town’s cuisine scene is thriving Words Jamie Oliver & Andy Harris Photography David Loftus

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SOAKING UP THE SUN In Kalk Bay, a fishing village near Cape Town, you can buy direct from the fishermen on the wharf or enjoy a lazy afternoon trying to land your own catch.

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n this job, I am blessed being able to travel to lots of truly beautiful places but, to be honest, I’m often more interested in the gritty underbelly than I am with the pretty stuff. I wasn’t travelling all the way to Cape Town to only eat in posh restaurants. I’d heard of a place called Mzoli’s that is 15 kilometres outside of Cape Town in the township of Gugulethu. This place does a proper South African braai, which is the Afrikaans word for barbecue. They’re a really important part of the country’s culture, and I couldn’t wait to experience my first one.

We landed on Saturday morning and within three hours Andy, our magazine editor, David, the photographer, and I were heading to Gugulethu. It wasn’t my first time visiting a township: I’d been to some in Johannesburg and Soweto a few years back for Comic Relief, which really inspired me. It’s a real experience, driving into serious poverty, no police around – it’s humbling and truly eye-opening. I knew we were going off the beaten track.

Our driver made it clear that, although the bad days of apartheid are over, there’s still a split in the country. Not because you can’t go into certain areas, but because things like dialect, where you live and the food you eat still depends on what colour you are. But this didn’t put me off. I don’t care what you look like, where you come from or who your god is. What I am interested in is what you had for breakfast, what you had for lunch, and what you eat on Christmas morning… Oh, wait. Christmas is religious. OK then, I want to know what you cook for someone you are in love with.

As we got further into the township we followed the plumes of smoke. The closer we got to Mzoli’s the more we could feel the atmosphere changing – it was fantastic. When we pulled up it looked like something from a movie. There must have been 500 or 600 people just chilling out in the sunshine. Car boots were up, people were bringing in their own booze, tunes were going off, the girls were pretty – and not just because of their big sunglasses, the boys were looking sharp. The place was kicking.

It wasn’t a rich neighbourhood – there were shacks with corrugated iron roofs and breezeblock buildings – but the vibe was brilliant, and I could smell that we were exactly where we needed to The Mzoli’s experience: choose what you want to eat in from the meat counter (top left) and take it to one of the grill guys (top right) who’ll cook it with a secret marinade (bottom centre left). Buy beers from one of the shops near the communal dining area (bottom right), then eat, enjoy and get to know your fellow braai enthusiasts (bottom left).

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The whole experience was sexy: the heat, the music, the food and the people

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SIMPLE FOOD

GREEK POTS Words, recipes & styling Andy Harris Photography David Loftus

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how me a kitchen anywhere in the great global Greek diaspora and I bet there’s a one-pot stew of some sort simmering encouragingly away on a stove. The Greek kitchen excels in these kind of easy, frugal dishes, combining lesser meat cuts and a few vegetables. They showcase its complex heritage to great effect, from the blackened pot of goat and chickpea stew perched over a wood fire on an Aegean island beach during Homeric times, to the legacy of more exotic spices left over from the more recent Byzantine, Venetian and Turkish occupations. Just add some quintessential Mediterranean ingredients such as garlic, lemon and olive oil and New World additions like tomatoes and squash for an always-intoxicating blend of flavours. Recipes have been handed down through the generations and remain little changed: pork is commonly combined with celery, celeriac or leeks; beef with quince or baby onions for intense sweet and sour flavours; lamb is enriched with avgolemono or tomato sauces heady with garlic and sun-dried mountain herbs. Often they need little more than a hint of musky allspice, cinnamon and nutmeg or a splash of vinegar or red wine to achieve perfection – and they all taste better the day after. It’s the reassuring, enticing smell that always attracts me down hidden alleys to tavernas in Athens and Thessaloniki, where stews in huge pots reveal that seasonal cooking is still alive and well in Greece.

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The train has long since stopped calling at Lamastre’s lonely station

There I was, stopping a battered Citroën 2CV in the middle of a quiet lane in the French countryside for a 300-kilo pig called Howard to cross the road.

It’s not often that a city boy like me gets to squire an inquisitive animal on his daily trot to the forest to forage for wild mushrooms with Marcel (an ex-gangster from Marseilles turned milk producer) in a scene that could have been straight out of a new Babe movie.

Life in this remote part of the Ardèche is filled with such unexpected moments, especially when you’re hanging out with local chef and author Stéphane Reynaud. His life, like his impressive cookery books, is populated by a cast of colourful childhood friends (mostly all now local producers) and villagers, and noisy extras such as goats, chickens, horses and cows.

Welcome to Stéphane’s world, and the village of Saint-Agrève, 1,200 metres up on the Ardèche plateau, where life carries on with all the hardships traditionally associated with surviving off the land. In winter, huge snowdrifts scour the harsh landscape, leaving roads impassible and the hardy villagers to fend for themselves with potent walnut liqueurs and warming chestnut soups. Even the summer months can be chilly as the winds rattle through the valleys.

Saint-Agrève hosts a bizarre summer rodeo, which attracts cowboys from all over France. It’s also famed for its curative air and fine food, and

every weekend faithful foodies drive up the tortuous roads from Valence to queue at Teyssier, the best local butcher’s, for caillettes and charcuterie such as saucisson and dry-cured hams. They also visit isolated fromageries, including La Biquetterie in nearby Chanteloube, where Jérôme and his 40 goats make some superbly piquant cheeses.

“Home is where the heart is. I love this place and I couldn’t exist without this magical part of France. It’s very wild but tender at the same time,” Stéphane says of his beloved Ardèche.

“Because we’re so isolated we’re obliged to uphold traditions because there’s nothing else around. We don’t have fresh fish from the ocean, for example; that’s why we still have the pigs and kill them every year for food.”

Stéphane’s first book, Pork & Sons, introduced the world to Saint-Agrève. It begins by detailing the ritual of the pig slaughter in February, when the snow was on the ground, it was -15C and many locals helped out. Eric raised the happy free-range pig on a gourmet diet of potatoes and cabbage; Blachou appeared with a roll-up in his mouth and sharp knives to bone and cut up the carcass; blue-beret brothers Pierre and Charlou drank copious glasses of red wine

Opposite: Restaurateur and author Stéphane Reynaud (top left), who, along with milk producer Marcel, accompanies the late, great Howard the pig on a mushroom hunt (top right). Fromagière Jérôme (bottom right), aka Monsieur Chèvre.

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