Regard the FIRST LAW of CULINARY DYNAMICS!

It is this:

READ ANY NEW RECIPE TROUGH COMPLETELY BEFORE EMBARKING ON THE EXPERIMENT!

Often there are ingredients which have to be prepared overnight, such as soaking dried beans, for instance, or there might be some which you do not have, and you will feel rather foolish if you are half-way through your preparations, when you discover one of these landmines!

The recipes in this section are particularly suitable for game, but can, of course, be used just as well for beef, lamb or pork. When using game, it is best to hang it in a cool-room for at least 48 hours. Several of the recipes below are traditional German dishes, or at least our versions thereof. Even traditional recipes tend to vary from region to region, and even from cook to cook! They were evolved to deal with game, or as accompaniment to game dishes. We have given you a translated title, but have also kept their German names as sub-titles. Though ‘Eisbein’ and ‘Sauerkraut’ need no translation: they are known by those handles throughout the Western World! Traditional Afrikaans dishes appear under their Afrikaans handles, with a translation where necessary.

DO NOT USE TAP WATER in your cooking, if you can possibly help it! The chlorine and other chemicals present tend to destroy the flavour of your ingredients. However, it cannot always be avoided. Some recipes specifically require water. In this case, pass the water through a charcoal filter first. (You can, of course, use water from any clear stream - camp on Whiskey Creek! - and most borehole water.) Use beer instead – beer made according to the old German Reinheitsgebot.{footnote} Edict of 1516 by the King of Bavaria, that beer may only be brewed from barley, hops and water. In spite of EU regulations allowing the use of chemicals in beer brewing, most German breweries still adhere to the Reinheitsgebot (purity law) and few Germans will drink beer brewed with the help of chemicals.{/footnote} In other words: beer free of any chemicals. Unless it clearly states ‘brewed from barley, hops and water only’ on the label, you can be sure that the beer contains chemicals. In many recipes you can use wine, or both beer and wine.

And while on that subject, NEVER USE POOR WINE in a marinade, or any other form of cooking! If you’ve been suckered into buying battery acid, pour it down the drain! Good food needs good ingredients. A poor wine will simply spoil your whole meal.

HERBS and SPICES:

No matter how much you like any one of these, use them sparingly! Remember the old French dictum regarding them: “If you can taste what’s in it, you’ve put too much!”

And do your seasoning early on during the procedure. Herbs, spices and salt must have a chance to permeate your food during cooking. If there is one thing I hate, it is a steak grilled without salt and spices, and being told to chuck salt and pepper on afterwards!

Oh, and don’t use any meat tenderisers containing MSG (monosodium glutamate), it is suspected of causing cancer! Use a paw-paw skin instead.

One of the problems with camp cooking is, that for best results you need fresh herbs – and you won’t find them in a hunting camp. You can, of course, bring some along in a cooler box, but they’ll give up on you, sooner or later; they won’t last for more than a few days. In some cases, the dried herbs can be used, but mostly it is not the same. However, if you are hunting on a well-established property, especially one, which caters also for foreign guests, there may just be a herb garden! Investigate this, it may prove well worth the effort.

OIL and FAT:

We are all diet-conscious these days, so butter and lard are usually frowned upon. Nonetheless, there are some occasions when they are preferable to oil. When a recipe mentions butter or lard, it means that they are preferable. However, only you can decide which to use. (When using butter, always put a little oil in the pot first, to prevent the butter from burning.) When using oil, use ‘extra virgin’ olive oil. If it doesn’t say this on the label, you are looking at a lower grade oil, which has been made from a second (hot) pressing, and which has been refined with the help of chemicals. It won’t kill you, but it will have little, if any, flavour. The Italians, particularly, import a lot of lower grade olive oil from North Africa and refine it chemically.

There is a good variety of olive oils available in the supermarkets. However, if you get bitten by the olive-oil bug, as I sincerely hope you will be, find a Greek delicatessen shop and buy two or three different olive oils. You will be amazed at the variety of flavours available, and the proprietor of the shop will be only too pleased to tell you for which purpose each oil is best suited!

Sunflower oil is fine, of course, but unlike olive oil, it does not help to lower your cholesterol level. It also doesn’t have any real flavour. I use it for frying chips, etc. Canola (rape-seed) oil I never use. I am sure that these days it is properly refined, but I remember it from my early days during WWII and just after, when it literally gave us all jaundice! (Remember, they also make bio-diesel from the stuff!) And don’t use peanut oil! It absolutely wrecks the flavour of most food, except some Chinese dishes.

Cooking is an art, not a science. In keeping with this doctrine, measures and times given in the recipes are meant as a guideline only, and are for home cooking. Cooking outside over coals has too many variables to give even approximate times. If you have experience of camp cooking, you’ll know your timing for various ingredients. If you are new to this game, check and taste often.

It is, of course, best to shovel coals from a separate fire under and around (to give some heat to the sides) your cast-iron ‘driepoot’ (three-legged pot) and, except for initial browning of meat and braising of vegetables, be sparing with the coals. Don’t scorch your food! Rather take your time. Slow cooking preserves the flavours best.

Alternatively, you can push two or three small logs, which are burning at one end only, close to your pot, regulating the cooking rate by moving the burning ends closer to, or further from the pot. You still want some coals under the pot, and these will help to keep the logs burning.

THE BEST FIREWOODS are leadwood (hardekool, Combretum imberbe), camelthorn (kameeldoring, Acacia erioloba) black ‘ebony’ (swart ebbehout, tsawis, Euclea pseudebenus), found only in the drier western parts of the country, but better even than leadwood. Mopane (Colophospernum mopane) is also a good wood to use.

When grilling meat over the coals, it is best to use a wood, which does not produce a strong resiny, acrid smoke. The above woods are by no means always available. Many South Africans have never even heard of black ‘ebony’, though it is pretty well known in Namaqualand and in Namibia, where it is known as tsawis. Leadwood is also getting scarce in some areas. One wood, which grows over much of South Africa and Namibia, is sweet thorn (soetdoring, Acacia karroo). This burns with a strong, oily, acrid, resiny smoke. It also doesn’t make very good coals. If you are forced to use this wood, make a bonfire, to get a large amount of coals, then let the flames die down, so that the smoke stops. You can then grill on it. If all else fails, you can always use charcoal!

And DO NOT USE TAMBOTI (tambotie, tamboetie, Spirostachys africana). IT IS POISONOUS! It occurs along the Natal coast, over most of the old ‘Transvaal’, eastern Botswana, southwestern Mozambique and southeastern Zimbabwe. It is also found in Ovamboland, in the north of Namibia.

THE POT:

If you are new to all this and are thinking of buying a cast-iron pot, buy the best quality you can find. The lid must fit tightly. (In all potjie cooking, the lid must be on the pot.) Look around and compare. Don’t be tempted to buy a small pot. The larger pots often come with a gadget to lift the lid off and then stand it up on this contraption. See that you get one of those! And take some care when adding cold liquids early on; you could crack your potjie! Pour, in small amounts, into the centre of the pot. Dumping cold liquids on the meat before everything has heated up also tends to make it tough!

If you have never ‘broken in’ a cast-iron pot, the simplest way is this: get yourself a ‘white’ cabbage, preferably with all the outer leaves still on it. Cram a lot of leaves into your pot, cover with water and simmer for an hour. Throw away the contents and repeat at least twice. (You can always make salad from what’s left of the cabbage.) This gets rid of whatever was used to blacken the pot, and the foul taste that goes with it.

Another method is to render down some fat in the pot and smear it over the inside, then wipe down with paper towel. This, too, has to be done several times. The ‘cabbage method’ is easier. But, whatever you do, USE A CAST-IRON POT, even in home cooking! Cast-iron distributes the heat more evenly than any other type of pot (except an unglazed clay pot), with the result that you can cook at a lower temperature. Excessive heat destroys the aromatic compounds in your food.

Here is another advantage of using a cast-iron pot: iron and steel absorb the full range of heat waves, but radiate back out only the waves at the longer end of the spectrum. So the cast-iron works like a filter. These long waves are easier on your food, which helps to preserve the flavours. To get this effect, you must have a thick-walled pot. It doesn’t seem to work effectively with a thin-walled stainless steel pot, though that is still better than aluminium.

And incidentally, all temperature references are to degrees C.

When you have finished using your pot, clean it out well, dry it and, to prevent rusting, spray inside and out with ‘Spray and Cook’ – soybean extract. All other edible oils will cake, or even go rancid with time. And do I have to tell you that you must not use any mineral oil? Bad for your health!

SOME GENERAL COMMENT:

In many hunting camps the cook’s job is rotated daily, to spread the load. This method is both fair and foul, as it usually means that you only get a decent meal every three or four days. Better appoint one man, who likes cooking, to the job, and have the other members of the party pitch in with the chores: collecting firewood, fetching water, cleaning of veggies and cutting up, washing up afterwards, etc.

If you are cook, you will get lots of advice. This is fine. You may pick up a good tip or two, and you can always ignore the rest. BUT DO NOT TOLERATE THE LIFTING OF LIDS, OR – HEAVEN FORBID - THE ADDING OF SALT, SPICES OR ALCOHOL TO YOUR WORK OF ART! I.e. discourage ‘stickybeaks’! Unfortunately, this can be a common species in hunting camps. Shoot them! If shooting is not politically correct, threaten to make them cook, so they can prove their prowess. This discourages all but the most hardened of wise guys. If one does persist, MAKE him cook! You may suffer for a couple of days, but this is the longest it will take: he will soon tire of the effort, not to mention his own cooking. If he turns out to be a good cook (about one chance in a hundred – good cooks don’t interfere in each other’s work) heap lavish praise on his head and elect him honorary camp cook for the duration. Give him a bottle of his favourite moonshine and let him get on with it. Relax; enjoy a well-earned break. You can get back to your own cooking just as soon as he leaves.

We would welcome your sending us YOUR OWN FAVOURITE GAME RECIPES, campfire tricks, etc. We will put them up here under your name, for others to enjoy. But remember: if you have had these published previously in Magnum, or anywhere else, you will HAVE TO GET PERMISSION to re-use them here. Since we are not in a position to do, or even check this, it is incumbent on you to do so. When you send us material, we will assume that it is either a first-off, or that you have got permission to have it put on our site.

MEASURES, etc:
Conventional measures and their abbreviations are used. I.e. 'T' for table spoon, 't' for tea spoon, etc. You will find a list in your cook book, if you need it. A temperature of 160° C for working on the hotplate, or 140° in the oven, may appear low, but is perfectly fine, when using a cast-iron pot. Using ordinary pots will require a higher temperature and will result in loss of flavour!

FINALLY:

Variety is the spice of life, and this applies particularly to cooking. So innovate when circumstances require it or whenever you feel like it. You will end up with your own set of special recipes.

WE HOPE THAT YOU WILL ENJOY OUR RECIPES! AND WHAT BETTER WAY TO START OFF WITH, THAN WITH SOUTH AFRICA’s OWN AND OLDEST TRADITION:


POTJIEKOS

No South African needs an introduction to potjiekos, but for visitors from other shores, here is a short description: kos means food, and potjie (pronounced poikie) is literally a small pot. However, it is usually made in a large pot! A cast-iron pot (don’t even think of using any other kind) and, if you are cooking over coals in the bush, a ‘driepoot’, a round-bottomed, three-legged, ‘potbellied’ pot, though you can also use a flat one, simply standing it on the coals. The diminutive form ‘potjie’ denotes affection – not pot size!

Potjiekos is about making do with what you have, turning it into a glorious treat. You can make it with meat or seafood. You can use any kind of vegetable. The only limitation is your own imagination!

‘Potjiekos’ is not just a simple word. It is an institution. It has an aura; an aura of culture, history and hunting. It cannot be translated into any other language; it is South African tradition! It goes back to the ox wagon and the trek with all your family and worldly possessions to some favourite hunting ground or new ‘promised land’. And to the ‘transport riders’ of old, who brought supplies from the Cape up to the Kimberley diamond diggings, and from Delagoa Bay to the new goldfields at Pilgrim’s Rest, Sabie, Barberton and the Witwatersrand. When The Potjie simmers, it whispers of the trek road, of Boere dances and of lonely hunting camps.

When I think of potjiekos I can smell the wonderful aroma of burning bushveld wood, and of meat and veggies happily simmering in The Pot. The Pot, which had been swinging from a hook at the back of the wagon during the day’s trek. The Pot, which was rarely empty. When you were in a permanent hunting camp, The Pot never left the fire, and new ingredients were added each day, as they became available. The result was a thick, rich gravy with freshly cooked chunks of meat and vegetables in it.  Some people would call this a stew, but that is almost an insult!

Of course, this state of affairs cannot be reproduced when cooking at home, but a good approximation can be achieved by cooking one half or so of your vegetables along with the meat for the full two to three hours, that the meat needs to get soft, and then adding the remainder of your veggies about three quarters of an hour before the meat is done.

The following is a good basic recipe for potjiekos. I have been using it – with variations on the theme – for about 40 years! You will find similar ones in many a South African cookbook, Magnum, Farmer’s Weekly, or other outdoor publication. I guess this just confirms the ancient law that water flows downhill until it meets the sea!

If you want to start an argument at a South African ‘braai’ (barbeque) expound on your favourite potjiekos recipe! It will cause as much heated debate as your favourite biltong recipe. For more potjiekos recipes, from aardvark - via fish and lobster - to zebra (well, almost) see Dine van Zyl’s Little Bible.{footnote} Potjiekos Cookbook by Dine van Zyl, Saayman & Weber, Cape Town, 1984. Sadly now out of print, but if you ever spy one at a jumble sale, pounce on it; it is worth its weight in gold! {/footnote}

You can use venison, beef, lamb or pork, or a combination thereof. You can use chicken or game birds – or seafood. This particular recipe is tuned to red meat, but throwing in a chook, or a guinea fowl sometime through the proceedings won’t do any harm at all. If venison, most game is fine. Of the large buck I have used gemsbok (oryx), kudu and eland and rate them in that order. Eland meat is usually highly praised, and hump or brisket is supposed to make an excellent potjie, even without marrowbones. But the only eland I ever shot – and it was young, but not really fat – was a disappointment. The meat was dry and had a peculiar flavour, probably due to what the eland was browsing on.

On the same trip I shot a gemsbok, an ancient, lone campaigner. So for a considerable time, I had both eland and gemsbok biltong. Whenever I set this out for guests, the gemsbok biltong would disappear in an astonishingly short time, the eland biltong took much longer. On a recent trip to the Kruger Park, I bought some packets of eland and gemsbok biltong in the Pretoriuskop camp store, which did nothing to change my mind – the eland biltong had the same rank taste as the eland biltong I had made myself. But the smoked gemsbok biltong we used to get in South West (now Namibia) was the best biltong I have ever eaten, springbok included!

The only member of the tribe of bigger antelope I do not recommend is waterbuck. I have stated my views on this subject in the  Of Honeyguides and Waterbuck story elsewhere, so will not repeat it here. As for the smaller buck, I am partial to springbok, but impala is also very good. I believe that many of the other small buck are just as good (and many people rate reedbuck tops) but have never had a chance to try any of them.

THE BEST MEAT I HAVE EVER EATEN WAS SABLE! But it is rare in SA; you have to trek north to get it.

When working with springbok, impala or any of the other small buck, saw up (crosswise, to have a piece of marrowbone in each piece of meat) the whole front leg, including the shoulder and the lower section of the back leg – from about a hand’s width above the ‘heel’ – right down to the shin, as far as it has marrow in it. Make your cuts about 3 cm thick. The meat and marrowbones from one side of the animal should be sufficient for one potjie. The neck, sawed into similar sections is also excellent. With larger game, proceed the same way, but the amount of meat you get will be far too much for just one potjie. Even the neck alone will be too much.

Quantities given here are right for a #12 cast-iron pot{footnote} 4,5 ltr – one (Imperial) gallon. {/footnote} , but need not be strictly adhered to. With venison or the leaner cuts of beef, it is a good idea to add some pork, as its fat will help to get this meat tender. If using beef, steer clear of ‘stewing beef’! Get brisket, oxtail and/or soft shin, plus some marrowbones. In fact you can usually get shin cut across the bone, so that each round piece of meat has a section of marrowbone in it. There is no need to use the more expensive cuts, but likewise, there is no reason not to do so.

Below, then, is a rough guide for you to follow. You can vary many of the ingredients, but onions, garlic, tomatoes and potatoes are not negotiable in this particular recipe. Once you have mastered the basic art, you can replace the spuds with sweet potatoes, or dried beans (washed and soaked overnight – they also need to cook about 4 hours, so adjust your timing) and any vegetable with any other vegetable. Use what you have available, that’s what potjiekos is all about: it is ‘the art of the possible’, and a whole lot more enjoyable than politics!

YOU WILL NEED:
1,5 to 2 kg of meat, including bones, about 1 to 1,2 kg net of meat. Allow 300 grams of meat, bones in, or 200 grams of de-boned meat per person. If there are more than five in your party, or you have some big eaters, you will have to use a larger pot (if you can get one), or two smaller ones. If you have a chook or a guineafowl to add, allow for its weight by using less venison.

6 or 7 small to medium size ‘Mediterranean Style’ potatoes from Woollies (about 600 grams) - the only spuds I know, which have a bit of flavour.

5 or 6 medium-sized, nice, sweet, juicy carrots.

The equivalent of 4 large tomatoes. This is a pet hate of mine: the large ‘tomatoes’ you get in the shops look like a million dollars, but are really just wooden mock-ups: no juice, no flavour! I suspect that they are GM rubbish! The only tomatoes, which still have some flavour, are the little ‘cherry’ tomatoes. Use these, chopped, and even then it is necessary to add some GOOD tomato juice. (I use Hall’s, and Hall’s only!) As for quantity, a fistful of ‘cherries’ about equals one large tomato. Total weight about 700 grams.

4 large onions; replace one of these with some shalottes (if you can) sliced and quartered, or chopped.

2 or 3 large peppers, mix your colours for effect.

6 or more (it improves the flavour) cloves of garlic, chopped. Do not crush the garlic and don’t use paste! I often get laughed at for this, but I am convinced it makes a difference, and you can overdo it with paste or crushed garlic. The only time when you use crushed garlic is when you rub it into a large piece of meat or fish, which you are going to grill, or when you are making up sauces, such as aïoli.

2 or 3 leeks, or the equivalent in spring onions, cut into about 15 mm sections.

4 or 5 celery stalks – cut off the leaves (they give too strong a flavour) and cut the stalks into short sections.

Zucchinis (courgettes), marrows, yellow or green, pumpkin, squash, green beans or peas, anything else that   takes your fancy. But do keep an eye on your quantities – even a #12 pot eventually gets full! In fact, wherever it says 2 or 3 (etc) start with the lesser amount and see how much you end up with, when you have assembled everything you fancy!

About 6 dried Chinese mushrooms. Wash these thoroughly, then soak them overnight. Squeeze them out, discard the stems and cut the tops in half, or quarters. Or you can add some fresh brown button mushrooms, cut in half or quarters, towards the end of proceedings.

About 1 to 1½ cups of pearl barley.

3 or 4 T of chutney, mild or wild – your choice. Actually, I just throw in a dollop! This business of giving ‘exact’ quantities is a pain in the afterburner!

1 tin (200 ml) Hall’s tomato cocktail (this also adds some salt and a little pepper). If this is not enough to give a    good tomato flavour, add a little tomato concentrate. Do NOT use tomato sauce!

1 or 2 (340 ml) bottles of beer– and I mean BEER, i.e. Windhoek or any other beer brewed according to the   German Reinheitsgebot.

About one third of a bottle of red wine - any kind. But use decent stuff: if the wine is so tannicky or sour that you don’t want to drink it, it’s no good for cooking either!

Olive oil. Sunflower oil will do in an emergency, but I NEVER use canola – rapeseed oil, and don’t even   THINK about using peanut oil – it absolutely WRECKS the flavour! If you like cooking with butter, put some oil in first, to prevent the butter from burning, then add a large dollop of butter.

Coriander (dhania), ground seed and a few whole seeds. You can also add some fresh leaves, chopped.

Sage – use it sparingly, it’s very easy to overdo things with sage! You can use rosemary, marjoram, oreganum or even thyme instead, but although they are not as fierce as sage, ‘watch it bub’, don’t overdo it!

Black pepper, coarse and freshly ground.

2 or 3 beef or oxtail stock tablets (this adds flavour and replaces much salt). I use Knorrox. If you prefer another brand, start with two tablets and see how you go. And do not use beef ‘flavoured’ powders, they are artificial and do not contain any beef! And, I repeat, do not use anything containing MSG!

Celery salt. (I’ve loved this stuff ever since I was knee-high to a grasshopper. I’d sprinkle it on buttered rye   bread and eat it like that, until mother would retrieve the salt and hide it!)

If you have a bird to add to the pot you need a lemon or two. But steer clear of the smooth-skinned variety, whether dark green or yellow – you might as well use battery acid. Use what’s called ‘Cape Rough’.

2 or 3 bay leaves.

1 or 2 cloves (optional).

1 stick of cinnamon – finger length (optional).

For best results, potjiekos must have ‘body’, i.e. a thick, rich, natural gravy. You can get this by boiling down some of your vegetables, and by adding pearl barley. The latter is an old German trick, also well known in the old South West (now Namibia), and it works wonders. Barley is a natural thickening agent and adds its own wonderful flavour. And talking of thickening agents: please do not use any commercial ones! Boil down about one half of your veggies completely, then add the remainder later. Dice the carrots, potatoes and other vegetables thinly for the first addition, and these will cook down to gravy. The rest you prepare later, cut in larger chunks, and add them in time to cook soft by the time the meat is tender, i.e. about 45 minutes before the end. This is one popular way to make potjiekos.

Some people swear by another method, whereby the vegetables are stacked in layers above the meat, toughest veggies first. In this method, there is NO stirring! This makes it difficult to get thick gravy. But it also works successfully. This topic, too, can make for some lively discussion!

In addition, in the old days a dough was often made (just flour, a little fat or oil, salt and water) and added, 20 or 30 minutes from the end, to the pot on top of everything else. This then floated and cooked/baked in the fat and steam above the potjie mix to ‘pot bread’. What better food for a hungry hunter?

Cut up all the onion, leeks and celery, and about half of your other vegetables, except the potatoes; they would go black, before you can throw them into your pot. Some recipes suggest dropping the spuds, and sometimes other vegetables, into cold water to stop them turning black. DO NOT DO THIS! It leaches out both flavour and vitamins! There is NO NEED to do it, as there is plenty of time between stages to cut up more vegetables and use them FRESH. Slice the vegetables in shavings, up to about 5mm thickness. Cut the peppers into strips, then halve those. Quarter the onion slices or chop them up. Slice the garlic cloves thinly; do NOT crush them!

On your largest hotplate, warm up your #12 flat cast-iron pot and cover the bottom with oil. Take your time. Heat the pot gently on your lowest setting. If you use a high setting to get the pot warm quickly, you will end up dialling the power up and down like a yo-yo! Remember that a cast-iron pot holds heat for a long time, and once it is too hot, you have to switch off, take it off the stove and wait for it to cool down again. So sneak up on the correct temperature on your lowest or second-lowest setting. Only practise will teach you which to use.

Trim off as much fat from around the outside of your meat as possible, but do not cut up the venison, beef or lamb! Use it whole, bones in place. If you are using pork, cut all the fat off, cutting the meat into large chunks. If using pork ribs, separate the ribs, cut off as much fat as you can, but leave the meat on the bones. As the oil heats up, throw in all the fat, to render it down. When the oil and fat are very hot, but not smoking, braise one third of the meat, browning it all over to seal in the juices. You cannot braise all the meat at once, as you would then have meat stacked on top of meat. This pulls out the juices, and you would be cooking the meat in its own juice, instead of braising it. The meat must be sitting in the hot oil throughout and be turned over constantly, so as to brown all over. Proceed the same way with the next two batches, adding more oil, as necessary. Then set the browned meat aside in a covered dish and keep it warm. You can, in fact, put it in your oven, set at 100°, or so. You will have to warm up the oven roundabout now, anyway. If you are using some pork, braise it last and keep it separate. It only takes about an hour or so to cook, so you will be adding it later than your venison or beef. But all of it’s fat goes into the pot early, for use in the braising.

If you have a chicken, guineafowl, or other game birds, clean these up, cut them up into large pieces, remove the small bones (ribs, etc) and the skin. (You can grill the skin with a little salt and pepper over the coals for a snack – except guinea fowl skin; give that to the cat!) Rub the meat down with lemon wedges, then braise it just like the other meat. Remove and keep warm. Their innards, stomach, heart, liver can also go in – in that order. The stomach may need as much as an hour; the heart somewhat less and the liver will probably cook away to gravy, anyway. No need to braise these, of course. The chook and smaller game birds require about 45 minutes of cooking. Guineafowl anything up to a couple of hours! The time required is in direct proportion to the bird’s antiquity! So throw it in early, it doesn’t matter if the meat falls off the bones, but you don’t want it tough.

If you are cooking in camp, you need a good few shovelfuls of coals, to get your pot hot and braise your meat and first batch of veggies. Once everything is in and simmering away, you need considerably less. When you have finished braising and have the pot simmering, rake your coals out into a thin bed, thereby controlling the temperature, but make sure that the potjie continues to simmer, i.e. keep adding fresh coals, as the earlier lot loses heat. Bank up some coals around the perimeter of the pot, to radiate heat onto its sides.

Another way of controlling the cooking temperature is to push two or three small logs, which are burning at one end only, close to your pot, regulating the cooking rate by moving the burning ends closer to, or further from the pot. You still want some coals under the pot, and these will help to keep the logs burning.

And regularly stir the mix at the bottom, to prevent it from burning (in an oven you don’t need to do this), at least in your first few experiments. Old hands, who have their temperature control and timing worked out to a ‘T’, disdain any stirring, and many refuse to lift the lid even once, after the last additions have gone in! Their trick is to listen to the pot: if it bubbles, it’s cooking too fast. If you can only just hear that something is happening inside, you’re OK.

If you are new to camp cooking, you will, of course, have to have a look-see, now and again. But also listen to the pot, to learn what it should sound like when it’s simmering. Use a very thick cloth or strong stick to lift the hot lid, and when lifting, let all the condensed moisture under the lid drip back into the pot, at least initially. Towards the closing stages, when you can judge how much moisture you want in your final product, you may want to let it drip off outside. Some of the larger pots are sold with a steel ‘leg’, a contraption, which has a hook at one end to lift the lid, with an insulated handle, and cross bracing at the other end, so that you can stand the lid up in the hook. These are an excellent idea: it’s no good to have the lid off, and then start looking around for a clean place to put it down on! You don’t want to put it in the sand!

And be careful when adding cold liquids, especially early on, when the veggies have not yet given up much moisture: you could crack your potjie! There is not so much risk of this with a flat-bottomed pot on the stove. Still, add cold liquids in small amounts and at the centre of the pot. Cold liquid added early on also tends to make the meat tough!

When cooking at home, this is about the time to start warming up your oven to 160°, while you continue with the preparation work. There is nothing more frustrating than having your potjie stop simmering, when you put it in the oven!

You may have to add more oil again now. When the oil is hot (but not smoking) again, put in all the onions, leeks, one half of the peppers and one half of the garlic to braise them. If you have some whole coriander seeds, roast a few along with the veggies now, and if you are using cloves and/or cinnamon, throw these in now, also; ditto the bay leaves. Stir them continuously a-la stir-fry, to prevent them burning. Continue until the onions are turning to a light golden colour.

Now lower the heat somewhat, put the meat (not the pork or birds) back in with the braised vegetables and gradually add all the tomatoes and Chinese mushrooms and let them get hot, stirring as you go. Then, again gradually, add the first half of the carrots, and other veggies (in that order – carrots are tough), plus all of the celery. You don’t want to suddenly drop the temperature drastically! Stir and let these warm up. While this is happening, peel and dice half of your spuds and drop them in as you cut them. Then add the tomato juice – one tin (200 ml) of Hall’s tomato cocktail is about right – and is absolutely necessary, if you use large tomatoes. If one tin of Hall’s is not enough (two are too much), add some tomato concentrate. Do NOT add tomato sauce! It contains far too much acid!

In theory, the vegetables and tomato juice should give you enough liquid to cover the meat, but tomatoes being what they are today, you may have to add some beer at this stage. In fact, if you need additional moisture, wherever possible (in potjies, curries, etc.) add beer or wine, or both. Water tends to destroy flavour; at least tap water does, as it contains chlorine and other chemicals, which cannot be completely removed with any of the charcoal filters I know of! I use up about three bottles of beer, only about half of that going into the potjie!

Put the lid back on the pot – in fact, have it on at all times, unless you are stirring or adding something. The trick now is to get the whole works just simmering, without any hotspots boiling. While this happy state is being reached, add beef/oxtail stock (remember that the stock also adds salt!) and spices to taste. In fact, make sure that the stock is fully dissolved, before adding any salt! Go easy on the herbs and spices (especially the salt and sage), you can always add a little more as you go along. Give your mix a gentle stir, every time you have the lid off to add something. It’s really quite important not to have it boiling anywhere. If you have some fresh coriander leaves, chuck them in now.

It’s time now to put the (covered) pot into the oven, where it gets heat from all sides; i.e. your mix will be heated evenly all round, rather than just at the centre. This allows slower cooking at a lower temperature than can be done on a hotplate. On the plate, the sides of the pot are colder than the centre, requiring a higher temperature at the centre to get the mix near the sides to simmer. Low-temperature cooking is the secret to most good food: excess heat quickly breaks down the aromatic compounds in your food, destroying flavour as well as vitamins. High-heat braising, or stir-frying, is only carried out over a very short period!

Give the pot a little time to settle down, then check that things are still ticking over quietly, and add a good fist-full of barley. You can then turn the heat down to about 140°.

Check occasionally that the meat is still covered with liquid and add more beer, if needed. But don’t overdo it, or you will end up with a watery mess! After an hour or a bit longer, add the remaining garlic, the chutney and red wine. If you have a guineafowl, throw it in now. Add your pork about an hour before the end. The chicken or small game birds can follow a little later. Taste now and again, adjust the seasoning, if necessary, and when the meat shows signs of turning tender, add another good fistful of barley, more if you like, or if your gravy is on the watery side. Also add the remainder of your carrots, potatoes and other vegetables now, cut into chunks about 3 cm thick. They should be cooked by the time the meat is tender. Give the barley time to swell up and thicken your gravy, then check the consistency. If you still have too much liquid, let the pot simmer with the lid off, for a while.

Game meat and dry (unfat) beef takes about two and a half to three hours to cook soft, and often much longer on the coals of a camp fire. Carrots take about 25 to 30 minutes, potatoes and other vegetables about 20 to 25 minutes except peppers, but I like those on the firm side. And remember that these are cooking times. As you are adding the veggies cold, they need 10 minutes or so to get to cooking temperature! The timing depends a fair bit on the size you have cut your veggies to. Here, only practise will make you perfect. However, if these last veggies and barley are not soft by the time the meat is tender, you won’t do the meat any harm by cooking a further ten minutes or so. If using fresh mushrooms add these about 15 mins from the end. At the same time, add a little more beer, for that extra flavour.

Well, we got here! But all good cooking requires time and effort! Anyhow, unless you’ve burnt it, or thrown in too much sage or salt, you now have a potjie fit for a hungry hunter! Serve on its own, or with ‘pot bread’, camp bread or rice (as per separate recipes). Enjoy with beer or a good Red Ned.

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