This is a somewhat roundabout way of approaching a discussion about the potjie, the braai and the Gatsby, and the belief that they set South Africans apart.
An old friend who I haven’t seen in twenty years once told me that I could never become a chef. This friend enjoyed the two or three dishes I prepared in about a week, including one for a dinner party of ten people, but, he said, I lacked consistency. He explained that people return to restaurants for particular dishes and expect them to be the same every time. He was right, but I wasn’t wrong.
The advantage of food preparation is its variability; changes and adaptations based on what is affordable, accessible and personal taste. I hated cabbage when I was a prepubescent boy, especially when it was in sandwiches the next day, and yet bobbejaan in kombers (cabbage roll) is one of my favorite dishes, and red cabbage is delicious in stir-fries and salads. The best cabbage rolls I ate were in the former Yugoslavia, Romania and Bulgaria (in the home of a self-proclaimed family of Turkish origin); the most surprising – after years of believing it to be a “colorful thing” – occurred at Mi-Vami in Hillbrow in the early 1980s.
Food, and some dishes, are sometimes presented as markers of identity and cultural artifacts, and are considered by ethnic purists to be the “property” of a people, as if identity, culture and belonging ethnic were all fixed. I say this knowing that it was my interest in Yiddish culture that first introduced me to Eastern European cabbage rolls. However, I have difficulty accepting the belief that any culture (often synonymous with race among more conservative people) has particular dishes or that a group invented a certain dish, and that this “culture » particular does it best.
I should add that I have no intention of telling people what their culture is or what it should be. It is laziness, opportunism, and intellectual despair to create cultures as we go along, in an age when, for better or worse, we are marked by the search for a home. self and a sense of belonging. Few of us don’t feel a sense of belonging when the smell of freshly baked bread fills a room.
The Fallacy of Food as Ethnic Property
Food has become, or perhaps always has been, a marker of ethnic or racial stereotypes and opportunism, while some dishes are presented with cultural pride. The idea of French cuisine unconsciously slips into discussions about food. There are, of course, unique aspects of French cuisine that can be admirable, but the social and political-economic transition from the medieval era, through feudalism, and into the modern era, is much more interesting.
For what it’s worth, there is probably a rich history of Imperial Rome’s influence on ancient French cuisine, which has been replicated in the modern era. I should add that I know Nothing specific on the culinary traditions of the Roman Empire. However, when I read about the greed and gluttony of contemporary elites, I think of the Bacchanalia festivities of the Greco-Roman era.
However, we persist and insist on racial, ethnic or cultural supremacy. In Al-Quds, a settler from Cape Town once told me that “Israeli hummus” was “the best”. I heard the same claims in Greece as I did in any Arabic restaurant and cafe on London’s Edgeware Road. Moroccans and Tunisians would have us believe that they prepare the best couscous dishes. The best couscous I ate was in Spain. It’s hard to follow.
In East London, someone explained how skop (sheep’s head) was “a Xhosa tradition”. I have also seen it served at Jozini. And in Reykjavik, I saw sheep’s heads packaged in blister packs and sold “to take away” in a shop at a bus terminal. When I was little, mutton was called mutton. In Mogadishu, goat meat was called “mutton”. I always imagined that the offal we ate when I was growing up, especially tripe, was unique to “us colored people” until I learned about offal. mogodu (tripe in the Eastern Cape) and trippa with fagioli (tripe and beans) and fried tripe in northern Italy.
Despite all this, and for as long as anyone can remember, foods have been culturally defined with a sense of pride, exclusivity, and exceptionality. This may not be entirely trivial. At the extremes, social control is exercised through diet and religion. It is also, significantly, an indicator of social class, privilege, poverty and wealth.
My curiosity about food, besides cooking which is my main source of relaxation, concerns how the roles of preparation, distribution and consumption of food are determined. In early adulthood, I became interested in the value of communal eating. When I thought very briefly about the idea of writing a history of the restaurant, I had the theory that it was born out of communal eating. It turns out that communal eating isn’t universally benign either. A particularly troubling recent event occurred when I was told to move tables before a meal because men and women had to eat separately.
Food and racial, ethnic and cultural determinism
I read a book about colored people in South Africa. I am not qualified enough to review the book, formally, and (regardless of my writing on the subject) I have no interest in the politics of color, the politics of people of color, much less cultural determination or stereotypes. The idea that “you are what you eat” is simply absurd. If that were true, I would be a lentil. But seriously, I must emphasize again that I have no desire to tell people what their culture is or what it should be.
Over the next week, South Africans will celebrate Heritage Day. The braai is one of the Heritage Day artifacts, another is the potjie. I have two knee-jerk reactions to potjie. The first, like the braai, is that it is a time when Men show that they know how to cook. The other is that there’s really very little culinary skill involved in throwing things in a pot and letting them cook. Yes, I know there are some skills involved. I just don’t have them and I don’t see them either.
I tend to believe that there is nothing particularly South African about cooking food in a cast iron or any other type of pot over an open fire. Braai is not unique to South Africa either. Rather, the braai is simply a throwback to a time when meat was cooked over open fires all over the world. The Gatsby so revered by the people of the Cape Flats is nothing new or unique. I had a chip bar on Anfield Road, which was as good as any Gatsby and, well, putting chips and stuff on bread is as old as bread itself. I ate a most delicious sandwich in Naples that tired me out for hours. We can thus forget the idea according to which the braai, the Gatsby or the potjie are specific to specific groups in South Africa, or that black people have the cultural monopoly on the consumption of offal or sheep’s heads.
Turns out I’ve never had potjie (even though I have oxtail that’s been slow-cooked for six hours and I have venison in the freezer for what I hope will be a killing spree). Osso Buco). I may be poking a bear/tiger, but a potjie, Gatsby or braai doesn’t make anyone more South African.
Location, location, location – and food
Traveling through Central and South America, as well as countries in East and Southeast Asia (unfortunately, I spent almost my entire visit to India in hotel rooms hotel and meetings), I learned that you could travel from one village to another and “the same”. the dish will be prepared and served differently. I experienced this in Colombia, where the “same” dish was prepared with a few different ingredients in Armenia and Barranquilla. It is the same thing for rendangmy favorite dish after Brazilian feijoada – and without some of the nasty elements that are sometimes included.
Rendang, Ostensibly a Southeast Asian dish, it is prepared differently in Borneo, Sumatra or the Malaysian Peninsula – almost always depending on the local availability of ingredients. There is an oyster version (which I’m not crazy about), but the beef version stands out. This is not to say that there aren’t specific communities spread across thousands of islands in Southeast Asia who won’t claim that rendang is a certain marker of their culture or heritage. For example, the Minangkabau, a massive matrilineal people across Southeast Asia, effectively assert that rendang is part of their heritage.
About this statement that you are what you eat, I’m probably up in ethnic, cultural, or racial storm. It’s hard to be a cultural stereotype, no matter what the identity mongers want us to believe. We can enjoy a potjie, a Gatsby or a biryani without adhering to the ugly version of identity politics. While this is all somewhat ironic, I seriously believe that industrialized food production (the McDonald’s or Velveetas of the world) is culinary aggression, and if I were king, I would ban it. DM
