One of the surest signs of my peasant ancestry is my absolute love of stews.  Call it what you will - cassoulet, ragout, chunky soups, potroasts; chuck it all in one pan and slow cook it till all the flavours have melded, the juice is viscous  and the individual ingredients are on the verge of total disintegration, and I’m a happy girl. 

My nephew calls it cowboy food but his version is a little different to mine.  He just throws everything he can find in the fridge or store cupboard in a pot and cooks it up.  I like to think I put a little more thought into mine.  Essentially though, they are almost the same.  Any odds and ends of veggies and herbs can go in and often do, root veggies being a favourite as they really lend themselves to slow cooking.

Another thing that lends itself to slow cooking is an old African favourite, the ’straw cooker’ more recently re-invented as the Hot Box.  It’s a simple principle really, start your meal off in a pot, brown and flavour your ingredients, add a little liquid, close the lid tightly, then insulate the pot in a hot box, and leave it to slow cook overnight or through the day. 

You can buy hotboxes all over Cape Town, and as well as being great for old-fashioned slow cooking , they are real energy savers.  I know people who are evangelical about them and think they are the answer to global warming. 

More immediately relevant  though, they are an ideal answer to the power shortages the Cape experiences every winter.  You can start your oats off the night before, leave them in the hotbox overnight, and wake up to hot porridge in the morning.  An extra 15 minutes to prep some onions, veg and some lamb neck, or stewing steak  in the morning, and your children can come home to a hot, nutritous meal after school. 

The value of this becomes clear when you think that a vast majority of Cape women are  sole bread winners for their families.  These women travel long distances to their jobs,  extending their working day to over 12 hours in some cases, so the children have to sort themselves out when they come home from school.  A hot meal filled with all the vitamins and minerals retained by the slow cooker method is a real godsend.  And of course there is the added advantage of reducing the risk of fire, as no heat source is required after the initial 20 minutes or so.  No going out and leaving your slow cooker plugged in.  No leaving pots simmering on the stove.  Actually, I think I am waxing evangelical about them myself.  A hotbox is definitely on my list of things to bring back from Africa.  Who needs an AGA?

But back to the food.  It’s difficult to get a picture of soup or stew that truly does justice to the dish.  Pictures are so visual, and lets face it , a whole bunch of things cooked together for several hours is almost always going to turn out in various shades of brown.  But close your eyes and remember for a moment curling cold hands around a deep bowl of warm winter food ; the heavenly smell wafting up, the depth of flavour always inherent in slow cooked food…Are you salivating yet?  I am. 

The dish pictured above is my version of Cassoulet.  Being French only by dint of long-distant nomadic ancestors, anything from my repertoire with a French flavour has been corrupted by the influences of the countries and cultures encountered in their (and my) journeys.  A Frenchman might immediately notice the lack of pork belly, so feel free to add some if you wish, and this version has no crusty bread crumb blanket, so go ahead and include that too if you’re feeling traditional.  Some might argue about the necessity for tomatoes, but that, I think , is a regional thing in France so I am still within the bounds of a cassoulet there.  Others may note the lack of goose in this recipe, once again my defence is that this recipe is as French as I am, which is to say partly, mixed in with Dutch, English, Irish, Scottish, Polish, Jewish and Malay…

Basically I just browned some onions and homemade sausages (which I will post about at a later date), threw in a load of veggies from the garden, topped it up with tinned tomatoes and beans, and left it to slow-cook its way to perfection.  If you require a more precise recipe, I’ve posted one straight to the Vanielje Kitchen Cook Book (VKCB) in the sidebar.

I’m was going to enter this dish into My Legume Love Affair (MLLA), started by Susan, The Well Seasoned Cook.  I’ve never joined this popular event before.  I don’t know why, I love legumes!  This 12th edition is hosted by Annarasa, who has a beautiful blog, and unfortunately (for me) she is restricting the event to vegetarian recipes.  So I guess I will have to join another round, but this event always draws a good crowd so mark her blog down and check out her roundup at the end of the month.  It should be well worth it.

whales are eagerly awaited and much loved visitors in our bay

For 3 days the ocean and the sky have wept.  Not those  great joyous, life giving raindrops hurled at the thirsty African earth, but a slow steady leaching of sorrow, cloaking the whole peninsula in grey depression. 

We seem to be lurching from one awful event to another.  The miners who forfeited their lives to the deep dank bowels of the earth, the awful loss of the French Airbus, and the heartwrenching waste of the pod of whales that beached themselves in Kommetjie over the weekend.

My parents’ home looks out over both sides of our beautiful peninsula.  The everchanging False Bay which embraces our deli, and the wilder Noordhoek side where the resident pod of False Killer whales came to such a tragic end.

No one seems to know why they beached.  Some say the navy exercises in the bay last week could have something to do with it.  Long range sonar has been linked with whales beaching, as apparently it messes with their ability to sense magnetic north.  But the navy deny the use of any sonar or underwater manoeuvres, and go so far as to assure us that they have spotters out when they do exercises, to ensure that they do not unduly upset the local marine life.

There is also the possibility that the whales could have been ill, and exhaustive tests will be done to rule this out.

The general expert consensus, however, seems to be navigational error.  It would appear  that the gentle underwater slope of this particular coastline means that the whales may send out a sonar beacon, receive no pingback and find themselves in trouble before they realise it.  It happened a century ago when over a 100 whales beached themselves.  This time the number was 50.  50 beautiful, social, family minded creatures, who are no  more.

The pod functions as a family and where one goes, the rest follow.  This proved a massive stumbling block to the rescue attempts, as those whales that rescuers managed to get back into the ocean, turned around and re-beached themselves.  Desperate to stay with their pod, in their confusion they could not wait for the rest of the whales to be helped back into the water. 

From sunrise to sunset the effort to assist these huge creatures continued.  Humans and whales alike becoming ever more distressed.  The unaccustomed full weight of the whales’ bodies puts gargantuan pressure on their inside organs and the desperate flapping and cries of agony were unbearable.

Eventually defeat was admitted, and the decision to euthenase the distraught animals was taken.  Tears streamed down almost every cheek as the crack of each gunshot reverberated down the beach and the outgoing tide ran red with blood, for once not stained by the sunset alone.

The horror and helplessness hang like a pall over the coastal villages still, yet this morning, as stygian black gave way to dawn, the surfers were out to greet the winter wan sun, and they were joined by a huge, rollicking joyous school of porpoises, racing across the bay.

The sky still weeps, the ocean is still cloaked in mourning, but the sun rises, the world turns and Africa absorbs the sorrow, as she has for eons, and as she will continue to do. My heart will be a little slower to heal. 

a lone dawn kayaker in our gorgeous bay

I know that I normally just write about food and family, but there is so much of my last six months in Africa that has touched me deeply that I want to share it.  These sights, smells, frozen moments that I’ve captured on camera have infused my senses and recalibrated my soul.  Like looking in a mirror, these African reflections remind me who I am.

This is one of a series of photographs I took one dawn in January.  It was very early and the sun was just rising over False Bay.  My heart swelled in instant empathy with the lone kayaker, surrounded by the rarely pond-calm sea.  He must have felt both huge, and mightily insignificant.  He raced across the bay from Fish Hoek to Muizenberg so fast, as if knowing that the sea might wake before he made it.  I scrambled to get my camera adjusted in time to snap him as he passed through the beam of sunrise, to no avail.  It was difficult to be disappointed though.  I still carry the vision in my mind’s eye, and at least I can share this pic, snapped a few seconds later with you.  Double click on it to bring it up full size, take a deep breath, and imagine for a moment that it is you who balances so precariously atop all the vast ocean….