More food

Stanley - Thursday

It is an amazing coincidence that yesterday Sujata wrote about the role of food in stories because I planned to write about food in my blog today.

For those of you who have read any of our Detective Kubu series, you will know Kubu loves food and wine. He is a foodie - within his limited budget. When he's not investigating, he's thinking about food.

The whimsical drawings are by Tao Wedfall Lydiksen

Several years ago, we decided, in response to numerous requests, to share the recipes of typical foods that Kubu and his family would eat. The result was a small recipe book, to which we gave the title A TASTE OF AFRICA - A KUk BUk. The title came from one of our readers in Belgium - Vincent Moureau - and we know Kubu would have loved the wonderfully bad pun. 

South Africa was originally settled by Europeans in the mid Seventeenth Century to provide fresh vegetables and water to crews of the Dutch East India Company ships heading to and from the Far East - mainly Indonesia and Malaya. Of course, once the settlers realised what a paradise they'd found, they brought in slaves from the East to do the hard work, and invited their friends to leave the cold and damp of Europe to make their futures in the sun. 

As the word got out, initially Holland, then England, claimed it as its own. When fabulous diamond and gold deposits were found, the scramble was on and eventually Britain claimed huge swaths of land as being part of the British Commonwealth, from South Africa, through the Rhodesias, to British East Africa, not to mention West Africa. 

The result of all this international commerce, attention, and settlement, Southern Africa enjoys a wonderfully rich and diverse offering of foods. Not only is there indigenous African fare, but also rich Indian and Malayan, offerings, in addition to a panoply of European treats.

Kubu loves it all!

Here are three recipes for you to enjoy. The first is probably the best known dish among whites - a spin-off of having Malayan slaves. It is called bobotie - a curried, ground lamb (or beef) casserole. Serve it hot over rice with a good mango chutney. You can use the left-overs in omelettes, pita bread with sour cream, or on its own.

Bobotie

Even if you do not normally like curries, you will enjoy this delicious dish.

2 pounds (900 gms) ground lamb or beef

1 slice bread

3 cups (700 mls) milk

4 eggs

1 medium yellow or white onion chopped

1 – 2 tablespoons (15 – 30 gms) curry powder

1 tablespoon (15 gms) brown sugar

1 teaspoon (5 mls) salt

½ teaspoon (2.5 mls) ground pepper

¼ cup (60 mls) lemon juice 

1 tart apple grated

1 cup (225 gms) seedless raisins

½ cup (125 gms) slivered almonds

Several bay leaves

1.  Put the bread into a bowl containing all the milk.  Let stand.

2.  Lightly brown the meat in a skillet, breaking up any chunks. Transfer to a large container with a slotted spoon.

3.  Cook the onion in the remaining fat in the skillet until translucent. Don’t burn!

4.  Add the curry powder, salt, sugar, and pepper.  Cook for 2 minutes.  Add the lemon juice.  Cook for 3 minutes.  Pour the mixture over the meat.

5.  Take the bread out of the milk and squeeze out the milk back into the bowl. Put the bread with the meat.

6.  Add raisins, almonds, apple, and 2 eggs to the meat.  Combine.  (If you use your hands to do this, it feels great and you can lick your fingers afterwards!)

7.  Pack the mixture into a casserole dish.

8.  Combine the remaining two eggs with the milk and pour over meat.

9.  Push a few bay leaves into the meat.

10. Cook for 45 minutes at 300°F (150°C).

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A side dish of thinly sliced cucumbers in yoghurt (a cucumber raita) is a good addition. Kubu prefers a Riesling or Gewürtztraminer to drink with bobotie.

Pap (pronounced pup)

Pap is a traditional African dish made from ground maize (corn).  When part of a main course, it is usually cooked so that it is stiff (called stuiwe pap) and should be eaten with your fingers.  It is eaten with meat from a braaivleis (barbeque), or dipped into a nyama (meat) stew, or with chakalaka (see below).

4 cups (1 l) water

2 tablespoons (30 gms) butter

2 teaspoons (10 mls) salt

2 1/2 cups (575 gms) ground maize

1.     Boil the water in a heavy-bottomed pot.

2.     Add butter and salt.

3.     Pour the ground maize into the center of the pot.  Put the lid on the pot.

4.     Simmer for 10 minutes.

5.     Remove the lid and stir.

6.     Replace the lid and simmer for 15 minutes.

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7.     Take off the heat and set aside for 45 minutes.

Chakalaka

This is another very common dish in Southern Africa, which may have originated in the Black townships.

3 tablespoons (45 mls) cooking oil

2 tablespoons (30 gms) chopped fresh ginger

2 tablespoons (30 gms) chopped fresh garlic

4 teaspoons (20 gms) chopped chili peppers

1 cup (225 gms) chopped onions

2 cups (450 gms) tomatoes, roughly chopped

½ cup (125 gms) green peppers, roughly chopped

½ cup (125 gms) red peppers, roughly chopped

2 tablespoons (30 gms) garam masala (or curry powder)

14 ounces (400 gms) baked beans

2 teaspoons (10 ml) fresh coriander

1.     Fry the ginger, chilis, onions, and garlic in the oil.

2.    Add the garam masala or curry powder.

3.    Add the tomatoes and cook for 10 minutes.

4.    Add peppers and cook for 10 minutes. 

5.    Add baked beans and cook for 5 minutes.

6.     Remove fromheat and add coriander.  Stir.

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Serve with whatever you want, hot or cold.  Goes well with pap, stews, or curries.

Steelworks

Finally, Kubu's favourite non-alcoholic drink is the tangy steelworks. The main ingredient, kola tonic, is difficult to find in the USA. However, several US-based online South African stores have it.

In a tall glass, mix

1 shot Kola Tonic

I shot lime juice cordial

A generous splash of Angostura Bitters to taste

Top up with ginger beer (not ginger ale) or half-half ginger beer and club soda (Kubu prefers just ginger beer).

Always add ice cubes and a slice of lime last.

The book also has recipes for such classics as monkey gland sauce, oxtail potpie, and mope work stew.

Bon appetit!

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Upcoming Events

A lot of familiar names in the panels below. Very lekker!

Crimefest, Bristol, England

FRIDAY, 10 MAY
17:10 – 18:00
Sunshine Noir
* Paul Hardisty
* Barbara Nadel
* Jeffrey Siger 
* Robert Wilson 
Participating Moderator: Stan Trollip

SATURDAY, 11 MAY
11:20 – 12:10
10 Year Stretch: The CrimeFest Anthology
* Peter Guttridge 
* Caro Ramsay
* Zoë Sharp 
* Michael Stanley (aka Stanley Trollip)
Participating Moderator: Kate Ellis


Once Upon a Crime, Minneapolis

Launch of SHOOT THE BASTARDS (This is the US title for DEAD OF NIGHT)

TUESDAY, 18 JUNE
18:30 - 22:00 
Stanley will be in conversation with Kent Krueger. 
Refreshments

Deadly Harvest

Next week (April 30^th) sees the release of the new Detective Kubu mystery DEADLY HARVEST.  Naturally we wanted to tell you about it, but we decided to let Kubu himself talk about it instead.  

We were in Botswana at the beginning of the month so we lured him away from the Criminal Investigation Department of the Botswana police by offering him lunch at one of his favorite restaurants – the Caravela, a great Portuguese restaurant in Gaborone with an interesting background.  (We reported on it in an earlier blog.)

Once we had settled down and Kubu had regretfully passed on the wine because he was on duty, we chatted.  Of course we are old friends so we used his nickname “Kubu”, which means hippopotamus in the Setswana language.  Kubu doesn’t mind.  It is part of his persona and has been with him since his school days at the Maru a Pula school.

Michael asked him about being a detective in Botswana.

Kubu laughed.  “I thought you’d want to talk about food and recipes!  You know there’s a cook book out now as an e-book with my favorite African dishes?  Sometimes I think I’m better known as a gourmet than a detective.  But don’t ask me to be the cook!  By the way shall we order?  Joy says I should have a salad for lunch.  It’s part of my diet.  So I’ll start with the avocado salad.  It’s excellent.  Then I’ll have the peri-peri whole chicken.  I really recommend that.  We can wait till after the main course before we order the desserts.”

While we were wondering about the salad ‘diet’ and whether we’d brought enough pula to pay for all these courses, Kubu returned to the subject of police work.

“Michael, you have to understand that Botswana is a very big country.  The size of France.  Less than two million people though.  We have about twenty main police centers, but they all have a lot of area to cover and lots of places for criminals to hide.  And the countryside is very diverse.  We’ve got the huge Kalahari desert with very low population – mainly Bushmen.  There’s the lush northern area along the Chobe and Linyanti rivers, with all that spectacular wildlife.  But, at Kazangula, Botswana has a joint border with three other countries – Zimbabwe, Zambia, and Namibia.  Think of the smuggling possibilities that offers.  Then there are the cities like Gaborone and Francistown, nothing like Johannesburg, but they have their share of crime.”

We’re very interested in the situation with the Bushman peoples of Botswana, so Stan asked about it.  Kubu sighed.

“It’s such a difficult issue.  Some of the Bushmen want to live a nomadic life in the Kalahari like their ancestors, but most want the comforts of modern life, education for their children, health care, and so on.  The government is bound by the constitution to supply those things, but they can’t do it if people are in a different place every day.  One needs a consensus from the people involved – particularly the Bushmen - as to how to move forward, and that didn’t happen.  It ended up in the High Court, and Judge Unity Dow gave a judgment in the Bushmen’s favor.  But it will take time for the Bushmen to find their role in modern Botswana.”

Courtyard at the Caravela. Photo: J Everitt

We really wanted to know about muti murders: people – especially children – being murdered so that witch doctors can use their body parts for black magic.  It’s a scary practice becoming more, rather than less, prevalent in sub-Saharan Africa, and it provides the backstory of DEADLY HARVEST.  Michael asked Kubu how these cases were handled in Botswana.

Witch Doctor
Photo courtesy A Zaloumis

He hesitated, then said: “You must understand that most witch doctors do good.  They have a variety of herbal remedies, usually supplied with a dash of good advice or a prayer.  My father is a herbalist, although recently…  Well, that’s another story.  Now a few witch doctors might add animal parts – like the heart of a lion to give the client strength.  But a very few – reputed to be the most powerful – use human body parts.  Children are abducted.  It’s horrible.  And the culprits are very hard to find because the victims aren’t related in any way to their abductors.  Worse, everyone is too scared of the witch doctors to give information.  Even some policemen are nervous.  Not me, of course.”

Shangaan fetishes Photo courtesy Alex Zaloumis

We said we found it hard to credit that modern educated people still believed in these types of potions, but Kubu shook his head.  “It’s supposed to give the evil witch doctors tremendous power, shape changing, invisibility.  The witch doctor I had to deal with in the Deadly Harvest case was thought to be invisible. As you can imagine, it was a very hard case to solve.  Fortunately the CID has a new detective – a woman believe it or not – who really pushed us to make progress.  We got to the bottom of it all together.”  He paused.  “These cases really shake things up.  There is the infamous case of a young girl, Segametsi Mogomotsi, which occurred in Mochudi in 1994.  She and her friend were selling oranges and became separated.  Segametsi disappeared and her mutilated body was found weeks later.  Segametsi’s murder caused the community to come out in violent protests because they believed the police were protecting the witch doctors’ powerful clients.  One person was shot and killed by a policeman.  The government eventually felt it necessary to conduct an independent enquiry, so it called in Scotland Yard from the United Kingdom.”

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From The Star newspaper. Courtesy Alex Zaloumis

We nodded.  We had heard about that awful case at our first meeting with the previous director of the CID, Tabathu Mulale.  The Scotland Yard report was never released and the case remains unsolved.  To lighten the rather somber mood, Stan asked: “Have you ever met Precious Ramotswe?  You’re sort of in the same line of work.”

Kubu laughed.  “No, not really.  She’s that lady private investigator?  She solves people’s problems, but I’m after murderers.  She’s very resourceful, but our cases don’t overlap much.  Maybe I’ll bump into her one day.”

At that point the food arrived, and that was all we could get out of Assistant Superintendent David “Kubu” Bengu.

Michael and Stanley – Thursday
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