Toit - Share

Published in 2019 by Struik Lifestyle (an imprint of Penguin Random House South Africa (Pty) Ltd) Company Reg. No. 1953/000441/07 The Estuaries, 4 Oxbow Crescent, Century Avenue, Century City, 7441 P O Box 1144, Cape Town 8000, South Africa www.penguinrandomhouse.co.za Copyright in published edition: Penguin Random House South Africa (Pty) Ltd) 2019 Copyright in text: Errieda du Toit 2019, unless credited otherwise Copyright in photographs: Penguin Random House South Africa (Pty) Ltd 2019 ISBN 978-1-43230-984-8Publisher: Beverley Dodd Managing editor: Cecilia Barfield Editor and Indexer: Linda de Villiers Designer: Marcus Viljoen Photographer: Ian du Toit Stylist: Hannes Koegelenberg, Food preparation: Daleen van der Merwe & Kaylen Rolfe Proofreader: Bronwen Maynier Props: Hannes Koegelenberg, Three Potters and a Painter, Caesarstone All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publishers and copyright holders. CONTENTS I GREW UP WITH community recipe books, and I still collect them obsessively. I am a great supporter of independent food magazines and fanzines, and consider community recipe books as the precursors of these popular genres.

These little books, with their smartly typed pages, neatly bound or stapled, reflect and preserve a very specific era of our food heritage. When I page through them now, I discover new gems and dream about family get-togethers at a time of my life when things were simpler a time of potato bake with white onion soup powder and lots of gouda cheese and crumbled Simba chips on top. And my favourite childhood dinner was vienna souffl. Nothing can excite me more than Errieda du Toits tribute to and carefully planned collection of these recipes she is so well informed and passionate about South African heritage food. Errieda has a thorough knowledge of our food treasures, as well as the wisdom to work gently with these memories collected so enthusiastically by clergymens wives, mothers, teachers and ladies of the VLV (Vroue-Landbouvereniging) or WAA (Womens Agricultural Association). During the planning phase of Share, we talked a lot, and Errieda brooded over the right approach.

She wanted to be sure the book would be representative and wholesome, the recipes genuine, and the ingredients still available. We live in a country with a rich, diverse food culture, where the food of some cultures is better recorded than that of others. I believe in writing down, collecting and taking part in as many South African food stories as possible. An easy way to make this happen is to make sure the simple yet rich culture of community recipe books lives on. Thank you, Errieda, for your honouring and recognition of the most modest recipes. HANNERIE VISSERDesigner and founder, Studio HCape Town I DEDICATE SHARE to my mother, Inez Espost. HANNERIE VISSERDesigner and founder, Studio HCape Town I DEDICATE SHARE to my mother, Inez Espost.

My love for writing, cooking and sharing recipes is very much a thing of the apple not falling far from the tree. The emotional role of home-cooked food in our daily lives has always been an ongoing theme in my writing, but the full impact of community cookbooks on my own identity only dawned on me when I found a recipe manuscript among my mothers own poems and journal entries. Clearly a collaboration with friends and neighbours for charity, the collection of shared recipes carried a sense of sisterhood and doing good. It had all the family traits of community cookbooks a generous spirit along with gift ideas for kitchen teas and a host of recipes calling for whipped cream and condensed milk or casserole dishes. Those of us who love food and recipe books see more in a recipe than merely a list of ingredients and instructions. Between the lines are the voices of all the cooks who have made it before us and shared the dishes with other cooks.

Recipes are not solitary; they attract one another and find ways of coming together. They congregate everywhere, in envelopes and old letters, in shoeboxes, scrapbooks with family favourites, and hardcover books with glossy pages. Recipes reach out to one another on websites, on blogs, in magazines and on yellowed newspaper clippings. Share is a celebration of an exceptional meeting place for recipes: the community recipe book. Such a celebration can only be a lavish story, full of shared kitchen experiences, table memories and well-loved recipes, all together on modest food-stained pages. These kinds of collections are usually compiled by a group of women to raise funds and are sometimes called charity books, church books or simply charities.

Based on long-established customs, you can rely on them for easy, tasty dishes and flop-proof baking. The reputation of these books is indeed built on their tried and well-tested recipes, such as Aunt Mienies foolproof chocolate cake, Mrs Dominees presbytery pudding and Grandma Sans sweet biscuits. The titles of these books reassure you, for instance Home Tried Recipes, The Happy Cooker, Women in Aprons, Some of Our Best Recipes, Food Which Interests, Queen of Hearts, and Find a Big Wooden Spoon. Theres just something about a collection of recipes compiled by the Ladies of the Koeksister Table to raise funds for building a church hall, or a charity book that tells you how to make jams with bragging rights, your own cough syrup and mix chicken feed. To page through these books is to be invited into many kitchens, to peek at whats in the oven, whats simmering in a saucepan, and form a clear picture of what people enjoyed eating and wanted to preserve when the book was compiled. As many differences as there are among communities, so are there many traits that these books have in common.

Its as if this excerpt from Treasured Recipes, a book my mother received as a gift from a friend in Winnipeg, Canada, could have come from the foreword of every book: Some of these recipes are traditional, others are modern, and some are very old; the best of our family favourites. They are all special because they are part of our community and heritage. To ensure peace of mind for less-experienced cooks and bakers, the recipes in this book have been refined and adapted to the present time. The recipes also provide for greater accuracy, new ingredients and items of kitchen equipment that are now available. Recipes from my own kitchen have also joined in.