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Members of the South African community joined together once again at the weekend for a taste of traditional cooking, music, merriment and sporting fun.
Ambassador Saa’d Cachalia travelled across the causeway from the South African Embassy in Riyadh to join in the festivities and to judge a potjiekos cooking contest.
The annual gathering was staged on the Royal Golf Club’s (RGC) country club lawns close to the swimming pool, and attracted hundreds of families for the second year running … as well as inspiring one scribe in attendance to check out his family tree.
According to the ambassador, who looks after the interests of a growing flock of South African expats in Saudi, Bahrain and Yemen, now numbering around 6,000, although few, if any, remain in the latter country since hostilities erupted. "We work hard and play hard," he added with a smile.
Friday’s fun-day was coordinated by RGC executive chef Paul Gindra, now wearing his dual role hat as director of food & beverages, and party planner Elizabeth Botha of Moments & Memories Events.
On stage and keeping the party swinging was singer Paul ‘Toddy’ Adams, with songs and South African dance tracks. He was flown over from his current base in Germany especially for the occasion.
The kingdom has a soft spot in his heart and he’s appeared in recent years at the Bahrain Rugby Football Club and Upstairs Downstairs cabaret restaurant. The Cape Town-born entertainer has travelled extensively throughout the Middle East with a repertoire spanning from rock to reggae to classic jazz and his current album Daybreak even has a track entitled Bahrain Desert Child.
He proved his prowess as a charismatic compere too at the South African Family Festival, encouraging dancing and pulling in entries for an energetic bout of tug-of-war in a competition for men and another for women.
It all led up to the main event – the hotly-contested battle of traditional cooking. In South Africa, a potjiekos, which literally translated means ‘small pot food’, is a dish prepared outdoors.
Potjiekos is not really a stew, and most enthusiasts will frown upon this term being used, because potjiekos is cooked with very little liquid and it is not stirred. It is traditionally cooked in a round, cast iron, three-legged pot, the potjie, descended from the Dutch oven brought from the Netherlands to South Africa in the 17th Century and found in the homes and villages of people throughout southern Africa.
The pot is heated using small amounts of wood or charcoal. Traditionally, recipes include lightly-browned meat, vegetables like potatoes are added, along with whatever spices are needed.
The lid is then closed and the contents left to simmer slowly.
If your potjie is made properly you should still be able to see and taste all the ingredients separately as well as a delicious whole.
And, a potjie is a social activity, with guests generally engaged in fireside chitchat while the food cooks, typically for three to six hours.
So, you can imagine, there was plenty of pot-side conversation fuelled by South African beverages before the judges gathered to mark the competitors’ dishes.
Alongside the ambassador, the panel included Chef Paul, who has a bit of form when it comes to keeping a score. He has acted as a Level Two accredited judge in the South African Chefs’ Association, of which he was also vice-chairman. He has won numerous notable awards during his career including being the national winner of the MLA Black Box Culinary Challenge, going on to be a finalist in the global finals in Dubai and winning gold, silver and bronze medals in the Culinary Olympics in Germany. He is also a member of the Chaine des Rotisseurs.
RGC general manager Stephen Havrillam and yours truly, as a regular contributor to the restaurant review Eating Out page, stepped in to assist too.
Team-mates Michael Goodger, a senior account manager, and Gavin Elliott, a construction manager, came out on top, with an exquisite tender lamb shank, combined with potatoes, onions with a mighty Madras-inspired seasoning, making up for last year’s disappointment when they had to settle for second place.
They narrowly beat a fine seafood dish from the West Coast Boys and a Team Sea Thai-inspired offering too in the runner-up and third places.
The entries were not the only food that scored top marks with the Szecowka family either. Other culinary delights being served up by Chef Paul’s team included Chicken & Potato Bunny Chow and Vetkoek & Curried Mince.
My teenage son, Stan Jnr, went for second helpings from one of the side stalls, of which there were many featuring everything from leather goods to books, and a particularly popular one selling loose helpings of biltong.
It is a form of dried, cured meat that originated in South Africa. Various types of meat are used to produce it, ranging from beef and game to fillets cut into strips.
It is related to beef jerky in that they are both spiced, dried meats, however the typical ingredients, taste and production processes differ. In particular, the main difference is that biltong is typically much less sweet than jerky.
The word biltong is from the Dutch bil (rump) and tong (strip or tongue).
Meat preservation as a survival technique dates back to ancient times. Indigenous peoples of Southern Africa, such as the Khoikhoi, preserved meat by slicing it into strips, curing it with salt, and hanging it up to dry.
Those Dutch settlers added their touch too to help counter the deadly bacterium that causes botulism. The spices, for example, introduced to biltong by the Dutch include coriander.
Recent university research tested the antimicrobial properties of coriander oil (coriander being one of the main spices in the most basic of biltong recipes) against 12 bacterial strains, and found that 10 of the 12 strains of bacteria were killed with a relatively mild concentration of coriander oil. In the two strains that were not effectively killed, it reduced their growth significantly.
Young Stan went barmy for the biltong and reckoned he had developed a taste for it by sharing the snacks of many of his South African-born classmates in Bahrain. But it may have more to do with genetics and I later unearthed some fascinating facts about the Szecowka family’s Rainbow Nation roots.
My maternal grandmother Edith Head was born in 1900 in London. In 1925, Edith married my grandfather Louis Lithauer who had arrived in the UK in 1889 from South Africa.
That’s why we felt so at home at the festival and with the cuisine … it was a true family affair!
