Memories on a Plate
Š Louis Rossouw 2011 First published in 2011 by Osborne Porter Literary Services, P.O. Box 1957 Westville 3630 South Africa info@osborne-porter.com
NOW PUBLISHED BY BK PRESS ______________________ ISBN: 978-0-9869919-5-0 Illustrations: Elouise Rossouw Cover design: Linda Rossouw Typesetting and Cover Design: Osborne Porter Literary Services All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the written permission from the author.
Memories on a Plate Unforgettable food in special places Louis Rossouw
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Contents Chapter 1
One fine evening on the Kwando…
1
Chapter 2
Xai-Xai Spur – really fresh flatties
10
Chapter 3
Curanto and the Devil’s Cellar
21
Chapter 4
The Serrano’s bounty
32
Chapter 5
Sancerre for dessert
41
Chapter 6
Lobster & Mosselen van’t Huis
50
Chapter 7
In the footsteps of William Wallace
59
Chapter 8
Sausages in the shadow of St Stephen
68
Chapter 9
Switzerland with Soul
77
Chapter 10
Escargots in a château
87
Chapter 11
Shellfish and salt marsh lamb in a citadel
97
Chapter 12
Chenin in a Cave
106
Chapter 13
Bream, Mukuyu & Mad Bob’s legacy
114
Chapter 14
Abalone on stilts
123
Chapter 15
Pisco Sour under a volcano
131
Chapter 16
Alto del Crimen to the rescue
140
Chapter 17
In Vino Veritas
150
Chapter 18
Los ladrones de la Plaza de Mayo
159
Chapter 19
Egli for Three
169
Chapter 20
Red Rum under a rubber tree
177
Epilogue
187
Introduction “The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only one page.” – St Augustine. To me, travelling is a celebration of sensory pleasures. It allows us to see, hear, smell, taste and feel new things. There is another - less obvious, but more profound – dimension to travel: it helps us grow and develop as human beings. Mark Twain once observed: “travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness.” I can’t think of anyone I know who is both well-travelled and bigoted. To travel means to go to places where you are the foreigner; where you are the one being critically observed by the locals. The language, the culture, the customs, the food - you name it, they are all part and parcel of the country in question. Travel opens our eyes and ears and helps us accept that we are ultimately all God’s children (however we perceive and worship Him/Her/Them). The wider our experience, the greater our ability to empathise, understand and forgive. There is of course a fundamental difference between a tourist and a traveller. A tourist is someone who focuses on the destination, and doesn’t actually enjoy the journey – he or she simply wants to be able to boast of the destinations he/she has been to at dinner parties. They are the people who will stay at Club Med and eat at Macdonald’s when they are overseas. A traveller, on the other hand, lives for the journey and will engage with people from other cultures in order to discover new and different perspectives on how to live life. A major part of understanding and accepting other cultures is to experience their cuisine. What people eat speaks volumes about who and what they are. It tells us much about the land and sea they live off, and provides valuable clues to their history, lifestyles, beliefs and values. Fernand Braudel put it in a nutshell, “The mere smell of cooking can evoke a whole civilisation.” Travelling and cooking are symbiotic pursuits; the one is just not complete without the other. I have not only been blessed with a love of both,
but providence has enabled me to travel more than my own means would have allowed. I hope that the insights I try to convey in these pages will whet readers’ appetites to experience different cultures with an open mind, rather than judge them. Apart from its outcomes - experiencing new places and the people who live there - travel affords us a third, harder-to-describe, privilege. This concerns the process of travelling: the wisdom and serenity acquired by having to cope with delays, disappointments, rudeness, danger, discomfort and boredom. This je ne sais quoi dimension was neatly summed up by Benjamin Disraeli: “Like all great travellers, I have seen more than I remember, and I remember more than I have seen.” This book is aimed at travellers who are also lovers of good food. If, like me, you enjoy taking the road less travelled on a full stomach, I hope that it will give you great satisfaction. It is not a travel guide, nor is it a cook book in disguise. It is a celebration of some magical places my wife Jakki and I have been privileged to visit, and a tribute to the special people and meals that have contributed to making them unforgettable experiences. I have also attempted to share some of the lessons about life we have learnt in the process. All the recipes are for dishes that we make regularly, and even part-time cooks should find them easy to follow. Another element of culture that features prominently in these pages is wine. No discussion about good food and special moments is complete without it. André Simon explained it thus: “Food without wine is a corpse; wine without food is a ghost; united and well-matched they are as body and soul, living partners.” I dedicate this work to Jakki, travelling with a true soul mate adds incalculably to the experience, and enriches one’s subsequent memories. I owe this wonderful woman a debt of gratitude, not only for being my muse but also for nursing me through the book’s birth pangs. I would also like to thank Helen Osborne for her professional guidance and editing prowess, without which the end product would not have been what it is. Lastly a special word of thanks to my parents, Thys and Louise Rossouw, for teaching me how to travel. In an era before i-pods, Twitter and e-books, they turned our journeys across South Africa into voyages of discovery by nurturing our intellectual curiosity.
Rather than wishing away the hours on the road, we spent them discussing the history, geography and economy of places we travelled through. Even though we never made it overseas together, they ensured that we got to know our home country in depth. Thanks to them I became a traveller, rather than a tourist. “Don’t tell me how educated you are; tell me how much you have travelled.” – The Prophet Mohammed.
Chapter 1 One fine evening on the Kwando… Caprivi Strip, Namibia, September 1986 “At a dinner party one should eat wisely but not too much, and talk wisely but not too much.” - W. Somerset Maugham.
The place The Caprivi Strip is one of colonialism’s oddest legacies. This elongated territory juts out for 450 km from the rump of Namibia, and is surrounded by Zambia, Zimbabwe and Botswana. At its eastern tip (Mpalila Island) the four countries share a common boundary. Being very flat and surrounded by big rivers like the Kwando, Chobe and Zambezi, a large part of the Caprivi consists of flood plains. The territory was ceded to Germany, along with the island of Heligoland, in 1890 in return for Germany acknowledging Britain’s claim to Zanzibar. It was named after Count Leo von Caprivi, the German Chancellor (prime minister) from 1890 to 1
1894, who had negotiated the exchange. The Germans were hoping that the access to the Zambezi they thus obtained would enable them to project their influence eastwards (and possibly link German West Africa with Tanganyika, another German possession). As it turned out, the Zambezi was only navigable as far as the Victoria Falls, named after Kaiser Wilhelm’s grandmother! As can be expected when borders are drawn at the whim of colonial rulers, some nations are summarily divided at the stroke of a pen (e.g. the Ovambo and BaTswana) and others forced together in an artificial way (like the Black Christians and Arab Muslims in many West African states, not to mention the Sudan). The Caprivi Strip is predominantly inhabited by Lozi-speaking peoples (the BaSubia and Mafwe) with ethnic and cultural ties to Zambia, as opposed to Namibia. An obvious manifestation of this is the Caprivians’ skill at boatbuilding and fishing – hardly common pastimes in an otherwise bone dry country. Since independence in 1990, Namibia has had to stare down a small but determined secessionist movement in the area. The territory was largely a backwater during the border war between South Africa and the liberation movements. The South West African People’s Organisation (SWAPO) was and is dominated by Namibia’s majority Ovambo nation, and most of its operations took place in the Ovambo heartland far to the West. SWAPO and the various Zimbabwean and South African liberation movements did have a presence in Zambia, however, and launched occasional rocket and mortar attacks on the border town of Katima Mulilo. For South African servicemen a posting to ‘Sector 70’ (the Caprivi) was a picnic compared to the dangers and hardships of Sectors 20 (Kavango) and 10 (Ovamboland). Their task was basically to fly the flag and discourage dissidents from armed resistance. Conditions were even safe enough to go camping and fishing in isolated areas during one’s free time. Unbeknown to the majority of troopies (and even most Permanent Force officers and NCOs) some of the toughest fighting men ever seen in Africa were quietly going about their top-secret business in a remote corner of the Caprivi Strip. The SADF’s elite 2