Gordon Wright - Veld to Fork: Slow food from the heart of the Karoo

Published in 2013 by Struik Lifestyle
an imprint of Random House Struik (Pty) Ltd
Company Reg. No. 1966/003153/07
Wembley Square, 1st Floor,
Solan Street, Gardens 8001
P O Box 1144, Cape Town 8000, South Africa

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Copyright in published edition: Random House Struik (Pty) Ltd 2013
Copyright in text: Gordon Wright 2013
Copyright in photographs: Random House Struik (Pty) Ltd 2013, except pages

Reproduction by Hirt & Carter Cape (Pty) Ltd
Printed and bound by 1010 Printing International Ltd, China

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.

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PUBLISHER: Linda de Villiers
MANAGING EDITOR: Cecilia Barfield
EDITOR AND INDEXER: Joy Clack
DESIGNER: Beverley Dodd
PHOTOGRAPHER: Sean Calitz
STYLIST: Brita du Plessis
STYLISTS ASSISTANT: Yvette Pascoe
PROOFREADER: Samantha Fick

ISBN 978 1 43230 093 7

A few heartfelt thank yous to everyone who made this dream a reality.

Firstly, Linda De Villiers, that doyen of publishing, who saw my vision and believed in it. My editor, Joy Clack, who helped to shape the words that penned my vision. Bev Dodd and the creative team of Brita, Yvette and Sean, who did such an amazing job of helping me turn that vision and dream into this wonderful creation you have before you.

I need to also thank my lovely wife Rose and my two sons, Jason and Max for putting up with all the late nights and away time.

Roche van As, my brother from another mother, who has always inspired me to cook and cook well and, of course, to my own mom and all those Karoo moms and Ousies out there who lit that first cooking fire in my heart as a child.

Lastly, every one of our friends and family (not necessarily all featured in this book) who have walked this Karoo path with us and have been the true friends one can only find in the Great Karoo.

Its better to have shot and missed, than never to have shot at all

Contents

I entered this world in the early 1970s, in the coastal city of Port Elizabeth, the last born in a family of ten. Imagine my poor parents raising five sons and three daughters!

Growing up the baby in such a large family forces you to stand up and fend for yourself from a very young age. This I did, with varying degrees of success, as one can imagine. The one thing I was always very particular about was my food.

I was not a fussy eater, but I have always been very particular about the quality of the food and the preparation (the eggs had to be fried perfectly and presented well you know how it is). At just two years of age (and many shoddy eggs later), I took charge of the frying pan and decided it would be better to fry my own eggs to ensure a satisfactory result and thus fewer tears from both myself and my long-suffering mother.

Elizabeth Notwala (see pic ), my nanny who helped raise me and often cooked food for my family, had an enormous influence on helping to develop my adventurous pallet. She introduced me to traditional Xhosa dishes like offal, samp and beans (umngqusho) and morogo, and I loved exploring the range of flavours, textures and aromas that this added to my otherwise typical Eastern Cape diet of fish, meat, potatoes and veg.

Growing up in the leafy old suburb of Walmer, Port Elizabeth (PE to those who live there) during the 1970s and 80s meant that the annual Walmer town fair and
agricultural show was a large part of my life in those days.

I started taking part in the baking competitions from around age six. After taking first prize for my shortbread for three years in a row, I decided to take on the big guns and entered the highly contested chocolate cake competition. No easy feat considering my own Mom had been the undisputed chocolate cake champion for a number of years. Competing against formidable bakers like my mother and around 100 or so established (adult) bakers from the area, this cocky nine year old was the shock winner with an inspiringly rich and moist offering (as the judges put it).

I walked away with a handsome trophy and the grand prize, much to my mothers pride (and dismay) and evidently the chagrin of the rest of the adult competitors, as the following year it was decided that there should be a separate entry for children. The experience, however, had a lasting effect: this young cook had quite literally tasted success and was never to look back.

Like most kids, my early teen years proved to be a difficult time. The pressures of being at a big city school coupled with a tumultuous relationship with my abusive father added to the stresses of being a typical teenager. The resultant poor academics and social ills were, I suppose, mandatory.

At the end of my STD 7 (Grade 9) year, which I failed handsomely, my exasperated mother shipped me off to boarding school. Despite strongly disagreeing at the time, being sent to The Union High School in the picturesque and very rural little town of Graaff-Reinet, in the heart of the Great Karoo, had a massively positive impact on me, and my culinary love affair was rekindled.

Nestled in the bosom of the Karoo heartland, I was exposed to traditional Karoo boerekos (farm food) organic in the truest sense of the word homemade EVERYTHING, from the bread and butter to the tomato sauce, to the onion marmalade on the roasted vegetables that had still been growing earlier that morning. The meat, milk and vegetables all came from the garden or, at worst, the neighbours garden. Food was an enormous part of these Karoo families lives and meal times were spent together, either outside in the warm sunshine or indoors around the table (always set formally). These memories had a huge impact on me and created a yearning to continue these wonderful food-based traditions that seem to be slipping away in our busy modern lifestyle.

When I was finishing school in the early 90s, my dilemma then was that I had been accepted to study culinary arts in Cape Town, as well as a law degree at the then University of Port Elizabeth. What to do, what to do? Cooking was my first love, but I had also become a bit of an academic (read nerd) since my relocation to the Karoo, so it was quite a tough choice.

I decided that a bit of vacation work in the kitchen of a large city hotel should help confirm my choice to become a chef. Two weeks and about 1 million peeled potatoes later, I had made my choice. Much to my parents delight, the former delinquent opted for a career in law and off to the University of Port Elizabeth I went, where I discovered the joys of student life, rowing, parties, lovely girls and the occasional beer.

I even waded into the shallow end of the pool of culinary arts by way of residence food. My most memorable recollections of fine dining during my student years are bowls of stodgy microwave pasta and sauce washed down with a few cold beers at 2 a.m. on any given Saturday morning after a hard night of partying.

All this time there was a petite, strong-minded and unbelievably beautiful strawberry blonde waiting in the wings (I had met her in my first year at Union High, but she had refused to kiss me) and unbeknownst to both of us, she was to change my life in ways I could not imagine.