Cooked in the Karoo, by Justin Bonello

Cooked in the Karoo, by Justin Bonello. The Penguin Group (South Africa). Cape Town, South Africa 2014. ISBN 9780143538189 / ISBN 978-0-14-353818-9

Cooked in the Karoo, by Justin Bonello. The Penguin Group (South Africa). Cape Town, South Africa 2014. ISBN 9780143538189 / ISBN 978-0-14-353818-9

Although Calvinia wasn't the first place the film crew travelled to, it makes sense to start Justin Bonello's book, Cooked in the Karoo, here for one reason: the annual Hantam Vleisfees, a meat festival where for two whole days the hero is lamb, celebrated in every form imaginable.

But why go there? You see, the reason the Karoo even exists in our minds as a hotspot is because of sheep. They are the lifehood of the Karoo and the people who live there. So here's the deal with Calvinia. It's a small town in the north-west of the Great Karoo, which lies at the foot of the Hantamsberg. This area is well known for its large-scale sheep farming, but also for its droughts. We arrived just before sunset, on the extreme side of winter. [...]

Calvinia Crumbly Chops with sweet apple and onion gravy

YOU'LL NEED:
10 bush pig/pork chops (2 crown roasts of 5 chops each)
a knob of butter, melted
sea salt and black pepper, to taste
2 cups of breadcrumbs
2 onions, chopped
1 apple, cored and chopped
a pinch or two of flour

Every now and then, when I walked past Jenny's kitchen, there were different mouth-watering smells wafting through the windows in my general direction. On one such evening she was in the kitchen making crumbly chops for dinner for Roy and herself. Unfortunately, I never got to taste these, because Megs (aka Cupcake), my production manager, is so efficient she'd got the crew's dinner ready before the sun had even set. I'm starting to think that I should leave her behind in Cape Town, just so I can go knocking on the farm kitchen doors at night with hungry eyes and an empty plate in hand! Anyway, Jenny very kindly shared her recipe with me and since then I've made it back in my own kitchen in Cape Town, and it's great. Because this book is all about gaining and sharing knowledge (and let's face it, I'm just a nice guy), I'll give it to you. Okay, let's get going ...

Preheat the oven to 180 °C Using a clean basting brush, baste the chops generously with melted butter. Now, using your hands, rub some crushed sea salt and black pepper into the meat. Jenny uses a Romertopf, which is a clay pot for roasting. This keeps the meat really moist. The basic gist of this is that you soak the Romertopf in water before you're going to cook with it. The clay pot is porous and soaks the water up like a sponge, which means you don't have to add any additional moisture while cooking because the pot slowly releases it as needed. If you don't have one of these fancy pots, take a normal roasting dish and add about a cup of water to it before adding the meat. Place the chops in a roasting dish or Romertopf, then take the breadcrumbs and pat them down onto the meat until covered. (You can sprinkle a bit of extra breadcrumbs over the top for good measure.) Arrange the chopped onion and apple all around the crumbed meat. Put a lid on the pot (or use some tinfoil for a roasting dish) and cook the chops in the oven at 180 °C for about three hours, then remove the lid (or tinfoil) to crisp up the pork fat (about ten minutes). Take the chops out the dish, and while they rest, pour all the juices (including the apples and onions) into a pot. Simmer on a moderate heat, add some flour to thicken it up, and if you need to, take a potato masher and mush the onions and apples into the gravy. Once it's thicker (and the flour taste has cooked off), plate up the chops and drizzle generously with the sweet apple and onion gravy. Now tell me that this isn't a recipe worth sharing ...

This is an excerpt from the cookbook Cooked in the Karoo, by Justin Bonello.

Title: Cooked in the Karoo
Author: Justin Bonello; Helena Lombard
Genre: Cookbook
Publisher: The Penguin Group (South Africa)
Cape Town, South Africa 2014
ISBN 9780143538189 / ISBN 978-0-14-353818-9
Softcover, 19 x 24 cm, 240 pages, throughout photos

Bonello, Justin und Lombard, Helena im Namibiana-Buchangebot

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