Durban Fish curry

A Durban-style fish curry evokes memories of my childhood in Kwa-Zulu Natal and my grandmother preparing freshly-caught fish in masala pastes to fry or red-hued, gently simmered fish curries over the weekends to enjoy with the family at the table. The fresh, briny scent of the sea lingered on the fish and the house slowly filled with the aromas of spices tempering in hot oil and onions browning in rills of vegetable oil – the oily curries being a feature of old-school Durban curries.

The challenges of living under a pandemic in 2020 have meant that we, as a family, have been separated for some time now. I’m fortunate to have my mother with me in the kitchen, and watching her prepare meals that I recall from my youth, reminds me of my long-departed grandmothers. The spices are methodically placed on the counter in order of use. Curry leaves are picked from my little tree in the backyard. For my mother, the act of cooking is meditative and soothing. The fish arrives freshly caught from small-scale fishermen to my door, in much the same way my gran would buy a fresh catch from the fishermen standing with cooler boxes in the back of their bakkies after a long day out at sea.

When the mustard seeds start dancing in the oil, releasing their dusky, pungent perfume and the curry leaves fill the air with herbaceous woodiness, my home merges with my memories of a landscape so far from me now. I long to return to Kwa-Zulu Natal and its lush verdant hills, the thickets of banana trees and sugarcane dwarfing the narrow roads, the scent of afternoon rains soaking the black earth and the warm Indian Ocean lapping against my ankles as I stroll along it with a stick of ripe Victoria pineapple finely dusted in masala and salt in hand. Now, I am seven walking hand-in-hand with my grandfather as we wait in line for the rides at the beach-front amusement park. I know there’ll be candyfloss in store, and later back home, milky tea and hot samoosas and in the evening, a fish curry perhaps. The next day, we dip slices of fresh white bread in the leftover curry sauce.

It’s something I do today as well. My mother has switched to diabetic-friendly breads (SASKO has a low-GI loaf too). I toast the bread on the pan, smear it with butter and spoon over a thin layer of the fish curry sauce. For anyone who’s enjoyed Marmite or even mince on toast, this is the spicier east coast version, in my books. A taste of home, where you can taste the care.

Durban fish curry prep

Durban Fish Curry

This is a simplified version of my mother’s Durban-style fish curry. You can substitute fresh fish for frozen – just make sure it’s well thawed and pat it down with paper towels to dry. This recipe was developed for SASKO’s Taste The Care campaign. 

Ingredients

80 ml vegetable oil

1 medium onion, sliced

6 cloves garlic, sliced

1 T ginger, finely grated

1 tsp fenugreek seeds

1 tsp black mustard seeds

1 tsp cumin seeds

1 tsp turmeric powder

4 tsp hot masala (adjust to preference)

10 curry leaves (fresh if you can get it)

4 T tamarind (preferably black), soaked in 1 cup hot water

2 x cans tomato (chopped and peeled variety), liquidised until smooth

1 kg firm fish such as kingklip, bream, Kob or Red Roman, sliced into “cutlets”

handful fresh coriander leaves, washed

salt, to taste

Durban Fish curry with slices of fresh bread

Method

1. Heat oil in a wide, shallow saucepan on medium heat. Add onions and fry until translucent and soft. Add garlic and ginger and mix well.
2. Add fenugreek, mustard, cumin seeds and curry leaves and fry until mustard seeds start to pop. Add masala, stir well to avoid burning and after a few seconds and tomatoes. Stir and season well with salt at this stage. Cook for 8-10 minutes, lowering heat if needed, with the lid off.
3. Add the tamarind water to the tomato mixture taking care that no stones or fibres remain (you can push a spoon against the pulp to extract more flavour). Cook for another 5 -8 minutes with the lid off. You want the sauce to thicken slightly.
4. Pat the fish dry with paper towels and add to the curry sauce. Lower the heat if needed and place the lid on the saucepan. Flip the fish gently with a pair of tongs halfway through. The fish cooks quickly and the time needed depends on the cut and thickness of the fish you use.
5. Adjust seasoning to taste and sprinkle with torn coriander leaves.

Serve with slices of white or brown bread, rice or rotis.

Fish curry Durban-style

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On cold mornings, I recall my mother bustling about in our suburban South African kitchen, ladling out bowls of creamy mealie meal papor porridge. Hot from the saucepan, she’d stir in a little more milk and sugar, and occasionally, a cube of cold, unsalted butter and a tablespoonful of tinned golden syrup. A quintessential South African breakfast, pap is made from milled white maize and enjoyed across demographics. If not prepared as a slow-cooked sweet porridge then maize meal flour is stirred with water until stiff and crumbly (called phutu in Zulu) and eaten as a starch with savory meals and with tomato and onion smoor — a thick braised sauce. When you consider South Africa’s past, a system of extreme racial segregation, and my reality until I was 13, it’s pretty remarkable that maize porridge, in both the stiff and spoonable preparations, is loved by Afrikaners, Zulus and everyone in between.

Shot by Claire Gunn

We grew up as a fragmented society, but somehow, several food traditions like braai (barbeque) and our morning bowls of pap, seemed to have transcended the divide. As romantic as the notion sounds that the humblest of foods has the power to unite in this way, the truth is that mealie pap, an austere breakfast, was often made by Black housekeepers for their families, with a posh version (with butter and syrup) made for the children of the households they served. In a modern context (because the history of pap goes way back), this resulted in culinary crossovers that, at a stage, became openly accepted as something enjoyed across racial lines. In a way, pap has become the glorified poster child breakfast for Nelson Mandela’s Rainbow Nation.

Read full article here https://www.ishaygovender.com/reported-work/food/mealie-pap/

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Want to live to be over 100? In the Caucasus Mountains of Georgia, a region with no shortage of centenarians, one rumored key to longevity is a thin, mildly tart fermented dairy product called matsoni. Well-known for its probiotic strains that boost gut health, aid in calcium absorption and increase immunity, the yogurt-like substance is often served in clay pots at breakfast. In Georgia, I became quite attached to matsoni as a snack on long road trips.

Matsoni, the miracle soup.

Matsoni is generally made from some combination of cow’s, sheep’s or goat’s milk. “Almost everyone who keeps cattle makes matsoni,” says Chef Ketevan Mindorashvili, who runs a restaurant at the Pheasant’s Tears Winery in Khakheti. In the countryside and in cities, familiar morning cries of “matsoniii, matsonii” can be heard as door-to-door sellers make their rounds. Ia Tagabari, co-founder of the food tour company Living Roots, explains that her matsoni seller Inga is the fifth generation in a line of matsoni sellers. “I remember her mother-in-law selling matsoni to my mother-in-law,” she says.

Mindorashvili makes her matsoni with buffalo milk, serving the slightly stringy yogurt with foraged wild herbs. She strains and dollops it over minced lamb-stuffed dolmas, and in soups that are said to be terrific hangover cures. Bread starters and khachapuri (cheese-stuffed breads) also get the matsoni treatment. “It can be used to soothe sunburn, too,” she adds, confirming that matsoni’s benefits extend beyond the plate.

Read the full article here https://www.ishaygovender.com/reported-work/food/matsvnis-soup/

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In response to his intention to close Gaggan for good in 2020, Anand insists it’s best to “finish at your peak.” Passionate about the technique and produce of Japan, Anand, and his friend and frequent collaborator, chef Takeshi Fukuyama, plan to establish a 12-seater restaurant, GohGan, in Fukuoka. The idea, he explains, is to split his time between GohGan and Bangkok where his family will remain.

While juggling Gaggan and a hectic travel schedule, Anand has been investing in the talent of his Bangkok-based staff and friends who run the restaurants Sühring, Gaa, Meatliciousand wine bar Wet. “Success can make you power-hungry,” Anand says, “But at my restaurants, everyone is treated like a V.I.P” Bottom of Form

Read the full article here https://www.ishaygovender.com/profile/chef-gaggan-anand/

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Fish curry, tripe curry, mutton curry, you name it, Durban’s got it and it’s all mouth-watering.

On South Africa’s palm tree-lined east coast, within the humid port city of Durban and its surrounds, a unique style of Indian cuisine has evolved over the course of 158 years. Locals say you can’t leave before you try one of the Durban curries: smouldering hot mutton curry studded with potato chunks called “gravy soakers,” fiery fish curry spiked with black tamarind and curry leaves; or bunny chow, a hollowed-out quarter-loaf of white bread filled with curry. One popular filling is the finger-staining broad bean curry — the only way to eat it is with your hands. Durban curry and rice was labeled a “national dish” in 1961 in Indian Delightsby Zuleikha Mayat and the Women’s Cultural Group, an instrumental community collection that was also the first cookbook by local Muslim authors.

The dark, complicated history of Durban Curry

The story of this cuisine commences long before my ancestors, the indentured Indians, arrived in Durban. More than 150,000 Indians were sent to the South African port city at the request of the British between 1860 until 1911, mainly agricultural laborers from lower castes. They were destined for the unruly sugar cane plantations, railways, fishing and boating industries.

The history of Durban Indian food starts, of course, in India, with its bounty of staples and spices, and the way it became entwined with the food available in South Africa, which was cultivated and reared by the indigenous Zulu people.

Read the full article here https://www.ishaygovender.com/reported-work/food/history-of-durban-curry/

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Strewn across the Seven Hills, Lisbon’s azulejo (ceramic tile)-covered buildings stack together forming countless arches through which the famous yellow eléctricos, or trams pass, rickety over the cobblestones that are shiny with wear.

More tourists are flocking to Lisbon each year

The city’s transformation, immediately evident in the towering cranes to rival Manhattan (or Camps Bay) bending over these once-dilapidated buildings, transforming them into hotels or luxury apartments for short-term rentals, is fairly recent. Until 2015 Portugal was in the grip of an economic crisis after the catastrophic crash of 2010.

One of the sectors to recover, hand-in-hand with tourism, has been the restaurant industry. Now it’s common to stand in two-hour queues at the height of summer for bowls of ceviche at chef Kiko Martin’s A Cevicheria in Príncipe Real’s hip Rua Dom Pedro V; to three-month waiting lists for a table at lauded chef José Avillez’s Michelin two-star restaurant, Belcanto; or to swig beer-while-you-wait bought with plastic booze tokens at the no-reservation ticket system Cervejaria Ramiro, the city’s shrine to the finest seafood, in a working man’s tavern. From trendy to old-school, meat-eaters to vegans, in Lisbon there’s a restaurant or hole-in-the-wall diner to suit your taste and budget, and reciprocally, a market to support it, it would seem.

Read the full article here https://www.ishaygovender.com/reported-work/travel/https-www-ishaygovender-com-lisbon-a-feast-of-many-nations/

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An ode to Rooibos. Image: Shutterstock

You are ten-years-old when you first taste black tea and honey, only the tea is a rich amber hue and the honey is tempered with a slice of gnarly-skinned Eureka lemon from the backyard. Your grandma and aunties drink milky Ceylon tea like fancy Five Roseswhen there are guests or Trinco for daily consumption, with three teaspoons of white sugar, buttered Marie biscuits on the side. So does your father. No masala chai in this family. The tea in your cup, made by your mother who favors honey and unrefined brown sugar, algae-green spirulina powder in the mornings, stubbly brown rice when everyone else cooks short-grain or basmati – things you don’t see in your friends’ kitchens – smells of sweet, buttery caramels. And a whisper-swirl of smoke – your grandpa’s cigarettes. You take a careful sniff of the aroma wafting from the cup while the teabag sits in hot water, brewing.

Until 1920, the rooibos (African red bush) plant could not be successfully harvested. This changed only whenTryntjie Swartsand her neighbors brought the seeds to Dr. Pieter le Fras Nortier and Benjamin Ginsberg, a settler who was keen on cultivating rooibos for sale. Prior to this, the teeny seeds within the pods were at the mercy of the wind.

Read the full article here https://www.ishaygovender.com/reported-work/an-ode-to-rooibos/

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As they say, curry is always better the next day.

They say there’s nothing like the smell of bacon frying in the morning. That’s true, in part. After all we were also accustomed to the grand British fry-up thanks to our colonial past. But consider if you will, the pleasure of waking late on a Saturday to the aroma of lamb chops that have been slathered in a salve of hot masala and freshly pounded ginger and garlic, sizzling in a pan. Curry leaves that crackle on contact with the fat, scatter a trail of herbal perfume down the passage and into my bedroom. Once browned and cooked through, the chops scoot over into a saucepan of softened chopped tomatoes that simmer with the tiniest of bubbles – plop-plop – cooked with thinly sliced onions, slit green chilies, slivers of garlic and curry powder until thick and aromatic. The two fuse to become ‘chops chutney’, a beloved breakfast curry dish served on some weekends when we were kids. A thick fringe of cilantro on the stem, wilting over the steam, was mandatory.

Curry for breakfast is not a novel concept. We know that Asians, Africans and Middle Eastern folks are accustomed to savory morning meals that venture beyond the pale of Western bacon-and-eggs, as good as they may be. Think of more mainstream dishes like congee served with amber to licorice-hued pidan (thousand-year-eggs), Turkish-style poached eggs in garlicky yogurt, Southern African phutu(stiff maize meal porridge) and steamed rice-flour idlis to be dipped in spicy sambar. From all corners of the Indian subcontinent and Asia, to immigrant communities dishing up their home foods the world-over, curry or some form of it makes a daily appearance at the kitchen table, work canteen or hotel breakfast buffet.

Read the full article here https://www.ishaygovender.com/reported-work/food/curry-for-breakfast/

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Kobus serving some of his guests.

Read the full article here https://www.ishaygovender.com/chefs/kobus-van-der-merwe-forages/

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The future is female.. Image: Yandisa Nazo/Ekse Lens

Recently, a well-known South African chef with a restaurant brewing beer and serving American-style BBQ, in a public Instagram dedicated to the late American food critic Jonathan Gold, lamented: “I find no writers here have that absolute passion,” adding that journalists interviewing him sometimes had a “blank expression” when he referenced an international chef or trend and he found that “heart-breaking.” Coming from a famed Knysna-based restaurateur family he added that he hoped that before he died “we will have a decent writer in SA to tell our incredible food story to the world.”

We may not have met the chef’s expectations, and our publications have no budgets to support proper restaurant criticism, but I will add that it’s a thrilling time to be covering food in South Africa. Let’s start with the work of chefs Abigail Mbalo from Khayelitsha, Sowetan Lesego Semenya, and award-winning cookbook author/chefs Nompumelelo Mqwebu and Hope Malau who promote our intricate township cuisines through the medium of television, social media, print and restaurant spaces.

Read the full article here https://www.ishaygovender.com/reported-work/food/democratising-food-writing/

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