The cuisine of South Africa is sometimes called “rainbow cuisine”, as it has had a variety of multicultural sources and stages Here are a few that we make here in South Africa, but can also be found in other countries.
Lamb chops and Boerewors (Sausage)
Bobotie is a South African dish consisting of spiced minced meat baked with an egg-based topping. Bobotok was an Indonesian dish consisting of meat with a custard topping that was cooked in a pan of water until the egg mixture set. Colonists from the Dutch East India Company colonies in Batavia probably introduced bobotie to South Africa.The first recipe for bobotie appeared in a Dutch cookbook in 1609. Afterwards, it was taken to South Africa and adopted by the Cape Malay community. It is also made with curry powder leaving it with a slight “tang”.
It is a dish of some antiquity: it has certainly been known in the Cape of Good Hope since the 17th century, when it was made with a mixture of mutton and pork. Today it is much more likely to be made with beef or lamb, although pork lends the dish extra moistness. Early recipes incorporated ginger, marjoram and lemon rind; the introduction of curry powder has simplified the recipe somewhat but the basic concept remains the same. Some recipes also call for chopped onions to be added to the mixture. Traditionally, bobotie incorporates dried fruit like raisins or sultanas, but the sweetness that they lend is not to everybody’s taste. It is often garnished with walnuts, chutney and bananas.
Although not particularly spicy, the dish incorporates a variety of flavours that can add complexity. For example, the dried fruit (usually apricots and raisins/sultanas) contrasts the curry flavouring very nicely. The texture of the dish is also complex, with the baked egg mixture topping complementing the milk-soaked bread which adds moisture to the dish.
From Wikipedia
Recipe here
Serve it with yellow rice
Each person has their own list of must have foods for Christmas. For me, one of them is a Fruit Cake.
Baking a Fruit Cake for Christmas will always bring back memories of my mom. She always baked a cake for each of our siblings.
To us Christmas is just not the same without it!
If you would like to get this recipe click here.
Fruitcakes for Christmas
Last Saturday my sister from flippenblog and I set out to bake our annual batch of fruitcakes!
Fruitcakes are often served in celebration of weddings and Christmas.
The earliest recipe from Ancient Rome lists pomegranate seeds, pine nuts, and raisins that were mixed into barley mash. In the Middle Ages, honey, spices and preserved fruit were added.
Fruit cakes soon proliferated all over Europe. Recipes varied greatly in different countries throughout the ages, depending on the available ingredients as well as (in some instances) church regulations forbidding the use of butter, regarding the observance of fast, Pope Innocent VIII (1432–1492) finally granted the use of butter, in a written permission known as the ‘Butter Letter’ or Butterrief in 1490, giving permission to Saxony to use milk and butter in the North German Stollen fruit cakes.
Starting in the 16th century, sugar from the American Colonies (and the discovery that high concentrations of sugar could preserve fruits) created an excess of candied fruit, thus making fruit cakes more affordable and popular.- Wikipedia
As I said before in a previous post, Christmas in our family is not the same without a fruitcake or 2……… That being said, we managed to bake 11 of them! ( click on the links for the recipes!)
Between mixing and waiting for the boiled fruit to cool down, we had time to admire the glorious weather and views from her balcony!
Now all we have to do is to wait for our other sister and her husband to join us this year for Christmas!!
Ingredients
8 Eggs
½ cup cream
1 cup grated cheddar cheese
1 cup fried bacon bits
¼ cup greenpepper (can use yellow, red and green)
¼ cup finely chopped onions.
Whisk the eggs and cream in a large mixing bowl. Stir in the cheese, bacon, greenpepper and onion.
Spray and cook a 20 cm square dish and pour the mixture into that.
Bake at 200˚Celsius for 20 min or until golden brown. Serves 6 people
This low-carb microwave bread is a compromise. It’s not true bread, of course. But if you’re trying to control your carbs, or need to avoid gluten, this microwave bread adds a nice variety to breakfast and lunch. The “bread” is ready in less than five minutes, and has a spongy texture that readily soaks up butter or honey . It’s also good topped with cream cheese and smoked salmon, or with mustard and ham.
6 x eggs, lightly beaten
1/2 c cheese
Salt en pepper
1/2 c other filling (Rosa tomatoes, green pepper, ham, fried bacon, mushrooms, etc)
1. Oven on 180°C
2. Mix all ingredients and put mixture ( ¾ full) in a greased muffin pan.
3. Bake for 20 minutes.
