Table of contents for Issue 2, 2022 - '23 in Landbouweekblad

Potatoes my dad, and these days my boet Don, grow up on the family farm in the northern Eastern Cape can be astonishing. Nothing I’ve ever bought in a shop quite compares to the fullness of a fresh farm potato. That’s no doubt because any potato ending up on your plate first has to undertake an arduous journey. Lorries ferry them from the farm to fresh produce markets, then to supermarket depots and finally retail stores. By the time you buy them, they have been around the block a few times. But what makes farm products extra special, is that one knows the story behind the food you eat. My pal Danie Slabbert from Reitz in the Free State farms regeneratively and produces some of the best mutton I’ve ever…

The best snoek braai Basting (enough for one large snoek) • 125 g butter• 4-6 garlic cloves, chopped very finely• 100 ml fresh lemon juice• 3 ml freshly ground black pepper• 100 ml smooth apricot jam• 1 large snoek, butterflied, head and tail removed and thoroughly patted dry• A sheet of tinfoil• 45 ml olive oil Method Melt the butter in a small saucepan and fry the garlic in it until soft and fragrant. Add the lemon juice and black pepper and bring to the boil. Add the apricot jam and heat, while stirring, until a smooth, slightly thick sauce forms. Keep warm. Place the snoek in a hinged braai grid. Fold the tinfoil into a triangle large enough to cover only the belly of the snoek, and position it…

My introduction to heerboontjies (literally “the lord’s beans”) was at the dinner table of my Ouma and Oupa Nieuwoudt, who farmed near Trawal. I didn’t know then that I was eating a rare and special regional cuisine. The sousboontjies that were on my gran’s lunch table almost every day was always made with heerboontjies, my mother said. Why? “Because there are no other dried beans so velvety smooth and creamy as heerboontjies that go as well with the tangy sauce.” Ouma never used the precious beans for soup or stew, only for her sousboontjies. After Ouma moved to the old-age home in the neighbouring town in the 1980s, I only had heerboontjies again in the early 2000s in a fancy restaurant in Franschhoek. With my first bite, the unmistakable taste…

A HONEY producer SAYS Theunis Louw and his wife, Madalé, are second-generation beekeepers from the surfing town of Elands Bay. They call their honey Baboon Sugar, after the famous mountain in the area, but also because these primates seem to have a sweet tooth for the fruits of the hive. What sparked your interest in apiculture? My father, André, started out about twenty years ago with a few hives on our family farm in the Sandveld. Now he has around 400 hives. On weekends we always had to lend a helping hand, and over time we developed a love for the industry. Madalé and I now have our own hives and started Baboon Sugar a while back. Where does the name “Baboon Sugar” come from? The baboons often come around to…

A MUSSEL producer SAYS In the pristine, albeit icy waters of Saldanha Bay on the West Coast, Blue Ocean Mussels farm with black mussels on 50 ha of ocean surface. SJ Poggenpoel, production manager, explains the fascinating production process. How does the production process work? The mussels spawn when the water temperature changes, especially as the summer months approach. This is where we get our reserve stock. We have 44 rafts, each with an average of 800 ropes (6 metres each). The mussels attach themselves to and grow on these ropes. Each raft produces about 24 tons of mussels every six to seven months. We harvest daily, starting early in the morning until we reach our quota. During summer the southeaster poses a problem; therefore, we try and harvest the mussels…

DUINHUIS Isabella Niehaus is a former fashion editor turned West Coast food queen (her first cookbook, Duinhuis, won a prestigious Gourmand award), and the pop-up “langtafel” (long table) lunches at her home-on-a-dune have a cult following. The menu changes with the seasons and depends on what Isabella feels like cooking. On our visit, starters included platters of fresh oysters, crayfish tacos and baby griddlecakes stuffed with biltong and small cups of smoked snoek vichyssoise. Enjoyed on the deck with copious amounts of chilled wine and a glittering view of an aquamarine ocean. Mains included a mussel pot with home-smoked-bacon, and carpenter on the fire with roasted sweet potato. And for dessert there was dark-chocolate marquise with citrus and pistachio. My kind of paradise.…

WINNING LETTER I cannot let any more time go by without telling you how very much I have appreciated your first issue in English. I buy Landbou Boerekos regularly because I love it, but oh, how I struggle with the translation – I often have to give up. I made “Moms Christmas Cake” on page 37 for my husband, who loves fruit cake more than words could ever convey! It is the BEST fruit cake I have ever made – I cannot believe how well it turned out. I used a little bit of licence with the recipe and added ginger preserve instead of fig preserve. Then I was left with the ginger syrup in the bottle and I thought “why not” so I added that to the mixture as…

Iconic without being pretentious, the produce borne from this land has its place in history and memory.... 1. Rosemead Artisan Bakery Corner Park and Volstruis Street, Yzerfontein Unquestionably my first stop when heading up the coast, Rosemead Artisan Bakery can be found at the edge of the small seaside town of Yzerfontein. Owners Hannelie and Brett Nortier began their labour of love after swapping Stellenbosch for the West Coast. Both possessing a background in the culinary arts, the couple met over coffee and croissants – she as baker and he as barista in his aunt’s Kalk Bay bakery. Brett went on to bake bread at Schoon de Companje, with Hannelie working in the kitchens. Eager to escape to bustle of Stellenbosch, they started selling their bread from Beulah Farm Deli…

The road forks at the foot of a sandstone dome, pocked with hammerhead nests. Left is Elands Bay. My destination lies southeast. Leipoldtville. There’s a metronomic rhythm to the way the road dips and rises through the landscape of fynbos and strips of sand from which the Sandveld gets its name. Leipoldtville is a perfect speck of village of fewer than 300 inhabitants. A general dealer. A garage. A stack of blue post boxes nestling in a corrugated iron lean-to. A church. A schoolhouse. A dirt road runs through. FROM FARMER TO FOODIE The Sandveld is the heart of the Western Cape’s potato country. And Leipoldtville is the heart of the Sandveld. Rina Theron was once the “potato queen” and South Africa’s farmer of the year. Since retiring from commercial…

WITH HORSERADISH & MUSTARD Potato salad Everyone’s favourite braai salad with a slight twist. Horseradish gives the rich, creamy sauce just the right amount of bite. Keep the potato salad in the fridge, but always serve it at room temperature. Ingredients • 1 kg potatoes, peeled and cubed• 30 ml white-wine vinegar• 60 ml olive oil• Half an onion, grated• 60 ml good-quality mayonnaise• 45 ml sour cream• 15 ml horseradish cream• Juice of half a lemon• 15 ml whole-grain mustard• Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste• Thinly sliced red onions and micro herbs to garnish Method Boil the potatoes in salt water until just done. While the potatoes are boiling, whisk together the vinegar, oil, grated onion, mayonnaise, sour cream, horseradish cream, lemon juice, mustard, and seasoning to…

Soon after the first decent winter rains in the Sandveld and Namakwaland, you can start looking out for slim green shoots pushing up through the grass, sorrel, and reeds. This is veldkool (Trachyandra falcata or Trachyandra ciliata), an ancient veldkos that belongs to the cattail family. The Khoi and San, as well as the trekboere and Voortrekkers, depended on the veld for a lot of their food. Over the years, many of these wild foods, like sorrel, waterblommetjies and veldkool, made it to our ancestors’ tables. Veldkool has handfuls of nicknames: wild asparagus, poor man’s asparagus, Namakwakool, Strandveld waterblommetjies, wildekool and strandkool, to name a few. It is a smaller plant with fleshy leaves, thin shoots, and green flowerheads. The shoots and flowerheads are edible. “The Sandveld’s veldkool grows in…

We’d love to hear your thoughts on this issue of Country Cooking. Send an email with your feedback to our food editor, Arina du Plessis, at aduplessis@landbou.com before 1 March 2023 and stand a chance to win a fantastic gift hamper from My Butchers Block to the value of R1 500. The Large Slim hers product. This My Butchers Block is perfect as a his-and board is designed so both sides can be used. The one side (hers) is completely smooth and perfect for everyday kitchen use. Flip it over and the board has a routed edge right around, perfect for him to use around the braai. What is prettier than this Resin My Butchers Block Large Cheese Board for amazing cheese and charcuterie platters? Another one! This stunner also comes…

For the longest time I’d been wanting to write a story about snoek to share the recipes I love so much: smoorsnoek, breyani, crunchy fishcakes, fat snoek fillets lightly smoked over oak shavings on the coals, roe fried in garlic butter, and sticky honeyed sweet potatoes, without which no one should eat braaied snoek… It was early winter and according to the weather report, clear, windless conditions were forecast along the Cape West Coast for the following day. Perfect for a snoek shoot, I thought, and I let Berna know to pack her camera bags. At the crack of dawn we’d head for Paternoster to photograph the boats beaching on the sand with their catch. The colourful vessels of this picturesque West Coast village are known to bring in a…

WITH GARLIC Slow-roasted leg of lamb Ingredients • 1 leg of lamb of about 3 kg• 8 cloves of garlic• Olive oil• Worcester sauce• Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper• Few sprigs of rosemary Method Preheat the oven to 160°C. Use a sharp, thin-bladed knife to poke holes all over in the leg of lamb. Cut each clove of garlic in half (or even smaller) and place a piece of garlic in each hole. Rub the meat well with olive oil and sprinkle amply with Worcester sauce, sea salt, and black pepper. Place the meat in a cooking bag, along with a few sprigs of fresh rosemary, and tie thoroughly. Use a kebab stick to make a few holes in the top of the cooking bag so that the…

CHICKEN Chicken with Brussel sprouts in white wine Brussel sprouts don’t deserve their bad reputation. If you cook young sprouts correctly (not soggy) they are delicious. Ingredients • 3-4 chicken drumsticks and thighs• Salt, pepper, and chicken spice• 30 ml oil• 15 ml honey• 15 ml Worcester sauce• 3 garlic cloves, thinly sliced• 500 g young Brussel sprouts• 100 ml white wine• 100 ml chicken stock• 100 ml cream• Pinch of mustard Method Preheat the oven to 190°C and line a baking tray with tin foil. Lightly grease with oil or spray with non-stick spray. Season the chicken pieces with salt, pepper, and chicken spice. Mix half the oil, 15 ml honey, and 15 ml Worcester sauce and brush the mixture over the chicken. Oven-roast for 30-40 minutes until golden…

HOPEFIELD market The Hopefield market is excellently curated and beautifully presented. No wonder this small deli-style farmers’ market is becoming a serious foodie destination. Bunting hangs from the blue-gum trees outside the small barn, where the doors to the local artisanal food pop-up open at 10am every Saturday. I leave with a box of countryside treasures: fresh organic veggies, the most wonderful coriander chutney, fabulous chilli crisp, surprisingly tasty vegan lox (made from smoked carrot slices), a sourdough bread, a selection of piquant local cheeses, hams and chorizo, honey and preserves, and bottles of coffee and kumquat kombucha. LANGEBAAN…

VENSTERKLIP A beautiful 300-year-old barn on Vensterklip farm just outside Elands Bay has been transformed into a cosy pub and an exquisitely eclectic restaurant. Expect local cuisine with a Mexican twist. Chef-owner Jane Louw and her team prepare the food on wood fires in the large outdoor kitchen. Think fish tacos, steak with chimichurri, grilled yellowtail with salsa roja and lemon, spiced lamb and chips with salsa verde, Caesar salad with bokkom bits. And the crowd favourite: thick, meaty (but meatless) heerboontjie soup served in a small three-legged cast-iron pot with crème fraîche and chunks of fire-grilled bread. Interesting, super-delicious food and an other-worldly ambience make this a destination well worth the trek up the coast. And if you don’t want to make the trip back, there are wonderful farm…