Winter can be somewhat of a bully. The relentless cold penetrating your soul, the wind tugging at window frames and roof tiles like an omen. The days are short and the sun wan. Yet no other time of year gives us as much reason to eat rich, bold food like this season does. We live snugly in our cocoons and self-imposed isolation.
While no-one really wants to be reminded of the 2020 lockdown, we do have wonderful food memories of that time - like the day we received our first farm-to-table vegetable box in the heart of winter. I remember the excitement when the doorbell rang. The friendly delivery person must have had such a fright at the sight of this masked woman taking a dive into the box that held treasures from the Breede River area. The box was then placed in hushed devotion upon my mother's trousseau chest, a worthy place for the jewels of the season. My head was spinning at the prospect of all the feasting possibilities: persimmons, baby beetroot, a bunch of carrots, guavas and sweet potatoes, a gigantic cabbage, kebabs and venison, pomegranates, oranges and mandarins, free-range eggs, mushrooms and spinach, green beans, honey, butter, bread, raspberry jam, country cheeses, home bakes, bottled salads, oldfashioned ginger beer and coffee beans. This was the "De Luxe" box, after all!
Although we couldn't receive guests that winter, every farmworker, farmer, farmer's wife, food entrepreneur, butcher and vegetable packer was present in spirit at our table. Together, everything was possible.
Since then, the Du Toits have kept the route of their food from field to table as direct as possible. We still appreciate that we are able to come and go as we please, travel where we want to, and gather at the table with whomever we wish to, whenever we want to, until as late as we please. With wine. This the exuberance and abundance of this winter menu.
huiskok.com@huiskok Tuistafel
この記事は go! Platteland の Winter 2024 版に掲載されています。
7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、9,000 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。
すでに購読者です ? サインイン
この記事は go! Platteland の Winter 2024 版に掲載されています。
7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、9,000 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。
すでに購読者です? サインイン
There are few secrets in Verlorenvallei
All platteland towns have that one famous (or infamous) character who knows everyone's business. Meet Livia Hoogenboezem, the keeper of every piece of gossip in Verlorenvallei...
Make magic with winter's abundance
This winter menu is our invitation to look beyond the bewildered herb garden, move out of your comfort zone and bake a loaf of bread, appreciate the beauty of a head of cabbage, and invite the rain gods to the table to feast with you on venison pie, pudding and cake.
It takes a family
Christian Fry and his fiancé, Pippa de Lange, arrived at Dombeya with just a day to spare before the Covid-19 hard lockdown commenced in 2020. Their purpose was to save the Fry family farm from being sold. They've settled into life in their Elands River Valley haven now but continue to dream big and work hard.
For the love of birds...
They may be called birdwatchers but they are in fact using their ears. As Johan van Zyl discovered on his maiden outing as an \"avian tourist\" with BirdLife South Africa to find the 450 bird species that live in the Garden Route and Little Karoo.
To the babbling brooks of Sabie
Roughly every five years, Jaco and Jens Reverchon get itchy feet. They hopped around Cape Town, moved up north to the Greater Kruger and then, recently, put down roots next to the Sabie River where they live a peaceful life with their animals.
Creativity & community in Dinokeng
The driving force behind the successful Makers Village in Irene has now implemented the same concept in Cullinan, creating an incubator and exhibition space for entrepreneurs and artists. Platteland dropped in at this budding creative hub to find out what it's all about and came away impressed.
Willie Strauss Never an idle moment
A variety concert... that is how to approach your life and career when you want to survive as an artist living in the platteland. So says singer, lyricist and radio food expert Willie Strauss, who entices visitors to Die Sinkstoor in Cullinan with traditional offal and his mother's Bushmanland boerekos.
To die for
How do you avoid the tourist avalanche if you live in an Afromontane forest where holidaymakers descend in December? You drive to lonely outposts in the mountains of the Cape, says photographer Obie Oberholzer, and you make pictures rather than take them.
1 Fiat 500 2ha 4 boys...19000 miles!
When the go-cart that an engineer father had built for his four sons couldn't handle the tufty terrain on their 2-hectare plot in Montana, Pretoria, they hunted down a Fiat 500 in a salvage yard. They only wanted its suspension system, but Mom intervened, the car was saved, and those little daredevils clocked up an impressive 19000 miles - all without leaving the plot.
SUTHERLAND Cold town, warm hearts
Life in Sutherland in the Northern Cape isn't always easy, but even those who leave tend to return. Come with us to find out why.
