Being a South African, in heart and soul, means being able to trace your heritage through the foods you learn to share and love.
My beloved uncle asked me an interesting question one day: “Do you cook and eat the same food you ate growing up?”
His tastes had moved away from the vleis, rys en aartappels of our Afrikaans ancestors, to more of a Mediterranean diet, and he regaled me with the story of my mother going to the chemist to buy medicinal olive oil to use in salad dressings, after he’d sung its praises.
The food we eat can tell us a lot about where we come from – and it was something I had to confront when I, essentially an English-speaking Afrikaner, married someone whose family was pukka English. My husband’s family moved to South Africa from the UK when he was six months old, and they brought all of their Englishness with them.
I grew up eating boontjiebredie, tamatiebredie and a host of other versions of this Afrikaans stew – mutton paired with onions and another vegetable and slowly braised till the meat melts off the bones, and the vegetables practically dissolve in your mouth. He grew up eating bangers and mash, braised steak, and sometimes, bacon and eggs for dinner – a practice I heartily endorsed.
Christmas dinner for me was roast lamb with all the trimmings – roast potatoes and cauliflower and cheese. In his household, it was turkey, roast potatoes and Brussels sprouts that were the vital ingredients. Padkos for me had to include boiled eggs and frikadels – his had to include pork sausages.
I had to get used to terms like ‘butty’ for a sandwich. I learned to eat pork pies – even though I was convinced someone had just forgotten to warm them up, and I wasn’t at all sure about that clear jelly stuff inside.
So when we married each other, we married very different menus. And slowly, we integrated those different foods, into a new way of eating. Add to that a sprinkle of my preference for a more Mediterranean menu, the fussiness of two small children, and a new hybrid diet was devised. It’s quite heavy on pasta, just for convenience’s sake!
When we think about heritage, often we think of the bigger issues – our nationality or our culture. For me, heritage is found in the food we eat or crave. And I find that for all of the changes I’ve made to the way I eat since childhood, I’ve recently started hankering after its tastes and textures: lamb chops seasoned with salt, white pepper and coriander instead of lemon juice and black pepper, warm aniseedy mosbolletjies with some butter, and a curious, comforting concoction my mother often made, called oukos, which was a mash made of potatoes, carrots and onions. I’ve tried, but I just can’t get the proportions right, and she’s not around to ask anymore.
My heritage is far more tied up in my grandmother’s recipes for milk tart and chicken pie, or my aunt’s massive enamel bowls filled with bread dough, rising in the warmth of a Free State morning, than it is in any kind of national pride or patriotism, even though I’m a fiercely proud South African.
Because ultimately it’s not so much about the food as the memories that come with it. Memories of eating and celebrating together with people we love, or the food we eat on road trips, or the dexterity of a grandmother’s hands as she kneads bread dough or presses butter into home-made puff pastry.
And I wonder sometimes, if we couldn’t embark on a nation-building project that involved sharing our culinary heritage with others. Because if anything has the power to unite people across the artificial lines we draw up for ourselves, I think it’s probably good food, made with love, and generously shared with those who cross our paths daily.
That’s certainly the heritage I’d like my children to have.
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