Joining us on our blog for Part II of Cape Town Cuisine: Inspire Your Palette to discuss South Africa’s culinary scene and traditional cuisine is Pam McOnie. Pam is a brilliant tour guide based in Cape Town. With an obvious passion and endless knowledge for food, wine, and her lovely city, Pam is the ultimate treat to anyone’s itinerary. She was kind enough to share with us some of her knowledge about Cape Town’s culinary scenes, history, and traditions.
If you missed Part I of this post, feel free to view it here.
Below is Part II of Pam’s entry on Cape Town cuisine:
Typical Cape Malay Dishes
Roti: The Cape Malay Roti is flakier, lighter and tastier then the Indian version. It also takes much longer to make then the Indian version! A Salomi is a Roti filled with curry and is sold as street food in the Cape. The curry inside is usually mince, chicken or lamb.
Roti
Samosa: Triangular pastry filled with minced curry, cheese and sometimes chicken or lamb. These are typical street food and can be found throughout the country. The taste is nowhere near as delicious as these are if you find them in someone’s home!
Samosa
Cape Malay Bobotie: Bobotie is a curried ground beef dish, baked in a rich egg custard.
Sosaties: Sosaties are kebabs marinated for a few days in a thick, sweet curry sauce. The lengthy duration of marinating ensures that the meat is tender. Sosaties can be made using mutton, lamb or chicken marinated in the same sauce and are a delicious and a popular choice at barbeques or “braais” as they are called here in South Africa.
Cape Malay Bredie: A Bredie is a slowly cooked stew, rich in meat that marries with the taste of tomatoes—a popular ingredient in a bredie—and other vegetables. This would also act as a versatile stew—when there is money, you could use lamb with the tomato stew, when times are harder, the base would be tomato with vegetables and “waterblommetjies.” Here in South Africa we get an edible lily called a “waterblommetjie” or little water flower which is often used in bredie cookery. Fruit is also sometimes used to make these stews, the gravy of which should always be thick and never watery.
There are too many to list! Other popular dishes include: curried pickled fish and many, many recipes including Snoek. Snoek is a game fish found off the Cape coast. It is eaten fresh, on the BBQ, dried and turned into interesting dishes at a later stage and most commonly as a smoked fish.
Black African cuisine varies slightly between tribes—but there is no dramatic difference. Once again this is mainly a home cuisine and as such it is hard to access on your visit. Hills of Africa offers a tour which allows you to experience this cuisine in Cape Town.
What do black South Africans eat?
The cuisine is not rated as a gourmet cuisine in this country and as such it is very much a home cuisine that you will not find in the restaurants. As 76% of our population is black, it is really important to sample this cuisine if you want to experience the cuisine of this country.
Pap
The staple diet of our people is maize. For the vast majority of tribes, the main ingredient in all meals is what we call Mielie Meal. This is quite simply dried corn that has been ground down to a fine powder (similar to Polenta—but white). For breakfast, most people would cook it into a porridge that is so stiff that it eventually starts crumbling—this is called krummel pap (this literally means crumbly pap). This is usually eaten with sour milk and sugar.
For lunch and dinner people eat “pap.” This is a fairly thick porridge and it forms the starch base much as rice or pasta would in Western cuisine. The exception to this is the Xhosa people (from the Eastern Cape); they eat samp. Samp is quite simply the dried corn. Often the samp is combined with dried beans for additional protein. In the rural areas, ladies will cook the samp in a black pot over the fire. It takes many, many hours to cook—thank heavens for Western cooking techniques—now it only takes about 3 hours on a gas stove to prepare!
NYAMA
Most of the black people in Cape Town are originally from the Eastern Cape and have moved down here over the last 100 years. As such a lot of samp is eaten in Cape Town. The consistent dietary theme across all of our tribes is the love of meat – NYAMA! A meal is not considered a meal without meat. As such, meat or a meat stew is served with lunch and dinner if you can afford it.
In the township areas, one of the main take-away dishes is meat from BBQ’s (called BRAAI’S in South Africa) on the pavements. People will stop and buy a piece of chicken or a lamb chop or a sheep’s head. Yes, you read correctly. Sheep’s heads are considered a delicacy by the Xhosa people and are called “Smileys.” The name comes from the fact that when you cook the sheep’s head, you will know it is ready when the lips curl upwards—it smiles at you!!!
Chakalaka
Chakalaka is a spicy vegetable relish that is often served with the pap / samp and meat stew. There are many variations of this recipe—often you’d use up the left over vegetables you have in the house for this dish and it’s usually quite fiery!
This Article was written by Pamela McOnie who contributes to the “foodie” side of this website and also offers private guiding services and gourmet & wine tours of the Cape region.
What’s your favorite South African dish? We’d love to hear about it in our comments section.
