Once Bitten

We tend to think of insects as invasive wildlife. We consider them health hazards, destructive pests, and nasty little critters that breed and do their private business in and on our food. Grub might mean food, but bug is a synonym for germs and synonymous with irritating behaviour or computer glitches. We spray, swat, and stomp on them. Many insects think we’re something to eat. We seldom bite back.

That may change. Actually we all eat insects without any harmful side effects; roughly 500g of creepy-crawly per annum. Unless you’re on Fear Factor or a similarly distasteful reality television show, if you live in the West you partake of bug unknowingly. Apart from the urban myth that we eat spiders in our sleep, scrunched up beasties find their way into processed foods such as tomato sauce, peanut butter and chocolates. There are regulatory tables limiting how much and what kind of arthropod is allowed in your food. 20 maggots per 100g of canned mushrooms is acceptable. When new US food labelling rules come into force in January, we may all be surprised by how many of the beverages and foods we consume contain the red dye from ground-up cochineal scale insects.

Most of humanity however eats insects as a matter of course. I first found this out backpacking through South-East Asia. In markets there, baskets overflowed with fried cricket, locust and even praying mantis. Termite flour is common in Nigeria, as are termite stock cubes; in Uganda, termites are lured to the pot by special drumming techniques, and palm grubs are sautéed in their own oil; there are sago grub festivals in New Guinea and Nigeria; in Algeria, locusts are cooked in salt water and dried. The variety is great, with flavours from peppery and nutty to salty and buttery, from charcoal roasted dragonfly in Bali to huhu beetle grubs in New Zealand.

And why not? We’ve watched David Attenborough eat live honeypot ants on camera. Heston Blumenthal, the celebrity television chef, sampled mealworms and canned silkworm pupae, before serving his A-list guests deep-fried crickets and tomato-filled grubs.

Some researchers estimate insects destroy 25% of world food production. As global population burgeons exponentially, the tables will have to be turned.

In a paper delivered at the Royal Entomology Society conference at Swansea University earlier this year, Professor Arnold van Huis of Wageningen University in Belgium (no reflection on his national cuisine) proposed insect protein as the most realistic solution to world nutrition.

The argument for entomophagy is compelling; rationally, there is no reason not to. We have run out of cultivatable land. To produce a kilogram of cricket meat requires less than 15% of the input needed to produce the equivalent amount of beef, a fraction of the cost and far less carbon emissions. Insect farming, even on a large scale, carries fewer health risks than conventional industrial agriculture. You’re not going to get mad beetle disease any time soon. Insect meat is high in protein, low in fat, and rich in B vitamins, iron and calcium. There are almost 1500 species of edible insect.

To boot, they’re kosher. Leviticus 11:21-22: “you may eat those that have jointed legs for hopping on the ground. Of these you may eat any kind of locust, katydid, cricket or grasshopper”. The Pentateuch however forbids eating sea goggas: “Anything living in the water that does not have fins and scales is to be detestable to you.” Were prawns land-based creatures (as some believe they are in Parktown), there’d be a lot of jumping on chairs and screaming.

Vincent Holt in a rather delicious little tract, Why Not Eat Insects? (1885), hoped he’d found the solution to malnutrition amongst the working classes. His menus read like a Monty Python sketch: slug soup, stag beetle larvae on toast, new carrots with wireworm sauce, caterpillar garnish, and curried cockchafers (no kidding).

In the downstairs food hall of Fortnum and Masons, London, I found translucent amber toffee containing a real edible scorpion, giant Japanese hornet in a bottle of clear honey, oven-baked whole Cambodian tarantula, and vacuum- packed, salted Mopani worms.

Like many Westerners, I’m irrational when it comes to eating grubs. The only caterpillar I’d ever chomped was in Mexico; the maguey worm at the bottom of a bottle of mescal, and only after I’d finished the mescal.

In South Africa, the vivid-coloured larvae of the Emperor Moth feed on Limpopo’s attractive Mopani trees, hence their common name. Mopani is now a multi-million rand industry. Harvesters extrude the green guts from a worm (Imbrassia belina, known as Masonja in North Sotho) as if milking a teat. The bigger the caterpillar, the better; young worms have less taste. The Mopani worms are boiled in salted water for 30 minutes, before they are dried in the sun by turning them every hour or so. This can take all day.

Not uncommon in Johannesburg, Mopani worms seem to have disappeared from the menus of most of Cape Town’s African restaurants such as the Africa Cafe and Mama Africa. One of the few places serving them is Marco’s African Place. Mopani worms (R85) on a bed of salad take about 25 minutes to prepare. They are salty and chewy, and they are quite heavy on the stomach; the word ‘delicacy’ didn’t spring to mind.

Thongolifha, an edible stink-bug (Encosternum delegorguei), considered a pest by some farmers, is a delicacy among the Venda, and in parts of Zimbabwe. The live bugs have to be provoked with hot water and repeatedly rinsed until they are void of their extremely pungent defensive pheromones. Protein-rich thongolifha are boiled live and dried.

The past decade has produced numerous insect cookbooks. If you’re bitten by this bug, you might put away the Doom and reach for the Spray and Cook.

Marco’s African Place, 15 Rose Lane, Cape Town. Tel: 021 423 5412.

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I I am hardly out of the car, and Guiseppe is there to welcome me with an all encompassing bear hug. We haven’t seen each other for seven years. He’s an unusual character; not exactly eccentric, certainly unconventional, always big-hearted.

Guiseppe Massolini was born in Dar es Salaam. His step-great grandfather (who passed away in 1976) was originally a Sikh. He cut off his kesh and turned Catholic, to marry and take care of the Italian widow he had fallen in love with and her 11 kids. Something about the romance of that act still informs Massolini’s life.

I met chef Guiseppe (he doesn’t care for being called Mr Massolini) in the 1990s, when he ran a very popular supper club in an old house on Buitenkant Street. I know many Capetonians who still pine for those celebrated evenings. The place was crammed with Art Deco furniture and light fittings. Three nights a week, he would have two tables with around 30 guests. It was fully booked for six months in advance. I’d stand in the kitchen (where he taught me to make potato gnocchi), paging hopefully through the reservation book, looking for an open seat. Sometimes, I’d simply end up in the scullery.

One day, I discovered Guiseppe had sprouted a large tattoo. Shortly afterwards, he sold up Buitenkant Street and moved to Barrydale – gateway to the alternative Karoo. We lost touch.

It is exhilarating to report that he is now back on the gastronomic circuit with a “supper club” that serves lunch. These lunches frequently end with a tarot card reading.

As long as I’ve known him, Guiseppe is teetotal, but that doesn’t stop the Paarl locals from affectionately calling him ‘Gesuipie’.

Guiseppe’s home is off the R101 on the Belair farm, which has a luxury guesthouse complete with Lombardy poplars and a full-size Chartres labyrinth of yellow gazanias. The farm was once a racehorse stud and home to multiple winner, Occult, the only South African-bred horse to win the coveted treble: Republic Day, Durban July and Gold Cup. You’ll find Guiseppe in the converted stables.

The driveway is bordered by lemon trees – the sweetish, wrinkly-skinned Cape lemons that turn orange, and the smooth Eureka strain.

Guiseppe leads me in through the back. The entrance has a peach pip floor. “You should take off your shoes, it gives a wonderful foot massage,” he says.

The grounds are populated by angels, Buddhas and garden gnomes. Guiseppe makes his own Madonnas and sculptures out of cement. To the rear is the folly, a mock classical Greek ruin with pillars. Granadilla vines shade an outside table. Hadedas and sacred ibis fly overhead. “Nature is my divinity,” he says.

In his permaculture garden, Guiseppe grows some of his vegetables, including tomatoes, bell peppers and a variety of bitter, reddish lettuce. He tries to source all his produce from within a 10km radius in the slow food way, though in Italy this is far easier to do. His cheeses come from Zandam, among the first local producers to make mozzarella, ricotta and provolone in South Africa.

The kitchen is a long, narrow galley. My eye falls on a photo of Guiseppe in uniform during his army year in Italy; he is putting on a brave face.

Together with 27 dolls of witches, his granny’s gorgeous, Art Deco, pink seashell light from Dar es Salaam, hangs from the ceiling in the informal dining room. The bric-a brac furnishings include Art Deco cabinets and chairs, and a 1960s Formica table graced with a vase of tall arum lilies. In winter, the fireplace is lit; in summer, it is possible to dine outside on hot days.

What little space is left, I must now dedicate to his glorious food. The antipasto is grilled crostini “alla moda” topped with pimento olives and tomato paste.

For his home-baked ciabattas, Guiseppe is particular about using Eureka Mills’ slow, stone-ground flours from wheat grown by crop-rotation and good-tillage practices.

His much-admired mains are: a “big fat” green risotto, with broccoli, spinach, zucchini and gorgonzola; homemade potato gnocchi with pancetta, chilli and tomato; osso buco alla gremolata; slow-roasted loin of pork cooked in sweet wine with caramelized Golden Delicious apples.

A typical set menu includes two salads. We had fresh lettuce with fennel bulb and an outsized green salad with balls of boccini cheese.

You need to pace yourself, as desserts are a strong point. There is double-chocolate tart, a sort of death alla Venezia; almond and butter tartlets; the type of strudel with which Marie Antoinette bankrupted the monarchy – pears, pink apples, cinnamon cloves in a pastry, with custard and gooseberries, blueberries and strawberries, with swamp mint and satsuma (a kind of naartjie), and garnished with lavender.

To wend one on one’s way, Guiseppe pours bottomless rounds of espresso, and offers plates of almond, apricot, and cherry biscotti.

Guiseppe’s Italian catering. Book three weeks in advance. R200 per person. A minimum of eight, a maximum of twelve guests. Arrive at noon, eat from 1pm “until whenever”. BYOB (bring your own bottle) basis. A donation for tree planting is always welcome. Over a hundred trees have been planted through this effort already. Tel: 021-863 1187.

This article appeared in the Mail & Guardian September 17, 2010.

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My first meal in prison was at Victor Verster. Lunch was a lavish, three-course affair with enormous plates of meat and roast potatoes sunk in gravy. I was on an indoctrination programme. As head boy of my school, the Nationalist government was grooming us for what they thought we as young leaders would have to take charge of; Nelson Mandela was already in Pollsmoor (since 1982), but still a long way off from when Verster would become his gateway to freedom.

The Nats failed. Before I turned 20, I’d read Michel Foucault’s tour de force thesis on the birth of the prison. Ever since, I’ve been firmly opposed to the behemoth Western carceral system. I hold such deeply unpopular beliefs as being in favour of prisoners exercising their constitutional right to vote. Otherwise, why would they reform or abide by laws in which they have no say or representation when released into a society that excludes them? We never want a society split into a ruling class and a vast, disenfranchised, recidivist prison class, as is steadily growing in the United States, no more than we want the Eastern European scenario of a criminal plutocracy.

Sadly, I do concede (with Charles Dickens) that some people are irredeemably wicked and there is no choice but to separate them from us. Yet they are the exception that should not prove the rule. When people call into radio shows and scream about how prisoners languish in luxury in secure buildings with electricity, sanitation, doctors and three meals a day watching television, I see red. If it is so gemütlich, why do these same people phone in to scream about how incompetent the government is because some kid they know was hauled in overnight for a minor offence and ended up gang raped and now has an incurable disease?

Fortunately for South Africa, many of our leaders have experienced injustice that placed them on the wrong side of the bars; for the most part, it has made them more humane, less judgemental.

Which brings me back to lunch, at what must be one of the most unusual restaurants in the world, Pollsmoor maximum-security correctional facility located in the heart of one of the wealthiest areas in Cape Town, on the border of Constantia. As part of its rehabilitation programme, the prison has a public restaurant. It caters mostly for the wardens and their families, but it also attracts some locals and even foreign tourists.

Most visitors to our country hope and pray they will never meet our criminal elements. But Munchkin has some peculiar friends. In February, an eccentric British couple decided to celebrate Valentine’s Day by doing something different; a breakfast for 60 of their closest friends; eggs scrambled, tomatoes grilled, bacon crisped by inmates, and served with croissants by murderers.

I was told only petty offenders qualified, but Munchkin insists the waiter admitted he was in for homicide. A few months later, he was parking cars in Muizenberg having served his time and told his story. Munchkin was glad they had given him his teeth back on release. (These days, unless you eat the victim too, perhaps murder is a petty offence.)

Several people at the Valentine’s party had some sort of banditory done to them in the past, so it was impressively good-spirited of them to be guinea-pigs for offenders. What if they suddenly came face to face with one of the men that had tied them up and held them at gunpoint in their home? wondered Munchkin. Ask correctional services to add on a few months for getting the eggs wrong? Now there’s a way to incentivize good table service.

On arrival, the guard checks our car boot at the gate. Then it is a bleak drive past the crowds of demoralized visitors waiting at the entrance, along a road of high security fences, face-brick bunkers, barred windows, razor wire, and an enormous guard tower (probably built in the 1970s) strong enough to withstand rocket attacks by one of our youth leagues.

The restaurant is as one expects – a public works canteen, tiled floors, utilitarian tables, and a few stabs at softness with those rattan, ceiling fans and faux nouveau lightshades. The radio is playing. Several wardens in their drab brown coats are watching the floor.

We’ve come for lunch. Our waiter, Waleed, is a friendly, well-spoken convict. Couldn’t hurt a fly, I think.

No alcohol is served; we order ginger beers.

“Suppose we can’t ask him what he’s in for,” whispers Munchkin. Neither of us can bring ourselves to be impolite in the face of his genteel manners; besides, there are actual metal knives and forks on the table.

The menu is an A4 page of yellow cartridge paper. It lists chicken schnitzel (R32), chicken cordon bleu (R24), chicken wings (R33); for beef: schnitzel (R42), Lady’s T-bone (R42), sirloin (R38), rump (R40), burger (R23). Pork spare ribs “large” is R60. There are “kiddies” choices too, such as two Russians for R18. Under a section of daily specials are tripe, lungs and hearts, vetkoek and ox head. Today’s special is a “Gatsby”, a Cape Flats sandwich consisting of a two-foot-long bread roll with various fillings. The classic version is stuffed with steak, salad, chips and spicy relish. It’s a truculent Cape take on Durban’s better-known, laid-back bunny chow.

Waleed recommends the calamari (200g, R32) and the deep-fried, crumbed hake (R33). It comes with “tossed”, which I discover means salad. Snoek ‘depending on availability’ is R25.

The food takes a while to arrive. It is over-salted, but not bad. I have had worse and paid more. Coffee is a sachet of Ricoffy with a pot of lukewarm water. Lunch for two comes to under R100. Does he get the tip? Waleed says not; it goes into a general fund. But, would we please sign the visitors’ book?

I hope habitually rude restaurant patrons will keep this story in mind. One day, they may meet their match, and come up against a waiter trained at Pollsmoor!

Pollsmoor Restaurant, Steenberg Road, Tokai. Tel: 021 700 1128.

Published in the Mail & Guardian, August 23

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Tea can be a confusing term. It may refer to any beverage made from pouring hot water over some part of a plant – fruit, flower, or leaf. True tea however, whether white, green or black, is made from a single species of the evergreen shrub Camellia sinensis, native to south and east Asia. The differences rest in its few varieties (such as c. assam) and in the way its leaves are prepared through wilting, bruising, and fermentation. Earl Grey tea for example is treated with bergamot.

From China, tea spread across the world, engendering a variety of traditions. The Arabs, like the Russians, drink it from glasses and prefer black tea with lots of sugar. The Indians boil it with spices to make masala chai. Tibetans mix it with rancid yak butter to form a paste. The English add milk to reduce its astringency.

Thanks to the British passion for tea, we are as much a tea drinking as a coffee-drinking nation. Apparently, we consume 23 million kilograms of tea per annum, most of which is imported. Ceylon tea consumption has surged amongst the rising middle class, yet overall, recent market research suggests that coffee is taking away market share.

An awareness of the huge variety of teas that exist and an appreciation for quality and the finer points of preparation is a recent phenomenon. You still see guests at the Westcliff and the Mount Nelson hotels looking slightly bemused when a glass teapot arrives with a separate filter and an egg timer. The tea for these Orient Express establishments is specially blended by Ming Wei, tea master of the Nigiro tea company.

Partitioned off by a glass wall inside the Origin coffee shop, is the tranquil, softly lit, Nigiro tearoom, where they offer a Taiwanese tea ceremony. A wall of clay pots is a showcase for the nearly 100 hundred varieties of tea they sell.

Seated at a black marble table, which has a slight depression in the stone to serve as a basin, Wei’s assistant, Nehemia Simons explains that the tea ceremony is about “sharing each other’s experience”.

First, all the vessels are warmed by filling them with boiling water (filtered) from a large and handsome earthen pot.

In this ceremony, oolong tea is chosen, as it is has a complex structure, somewhere between black and green tea, able to unfold over multiple infusions.

With a bamboo spoon, Nehemia gently places a layer of Ali High Mountain tealeaves in a tiny, clay pot. Ali is one of five mountains on Taiwan. The tea is grown at 2000 feet above sea level where the slow growth produces more intense flavour in the leaf.

After pouring the hot water over the leaves, Nehemia seals the clay pot by pouring over its lid the water used to warm the receptacles.

For this first infusion, the tea is left to steep for one minute, before it is decanted into a medium-sized, glass pot called ‘the sea of tea’. If poured directly from the clay brewing pot, each cup would be weaker. The sea ensures everyone enjoys equal strength.

The tea, a beautiful golden colour, is now poured into small, ornate, cylindrical, porcelain cups – the fragrance cups. These are capped with equally small, matching, porcelain, bowl-shaped drinking cups. With thumbs on top of the inverted drinking cup and fingertips holding the fragrance cup, one flips them over.

An air bubble is left trapped in the fragrance cup. You slowly release the fragrance cup, feeling the tug of the air pressure. Then you channel the empty cup to the nose. I can taste the tea just from the smell, the tannins at my sternum.

We now enjoy our first sip of the tea. Nehemia holds his drinking cup delicately on his fingertips with his thumbs up in the air. There is a buttery scent that becomes floral.

For the second and all the subsequent infusions, the tea brews for only 45 seconds. The clay pot is sealed with the remaining tea from the previous infusion. The aromas are very similar to the first, perhaps more subtle, and feel ‘warmer’. Nehemia finds it less milky now.

He opens the pot and takes out a few leaves with a pair of bamboo forceps. You can see the leaves have unfurled. Oolong always has three leaves, the first, second and third of the plant. Each leaf has a specific purpose. The first is the newest and most tender, used for white or green tea. Larger and more matured leaves are used for black tea. The floor sweepings and tea dust, politely called fannings, are used in Ceylon tea bags.

By the third infusion, we are picking up jasmine and sweetness. The water in the earthen pot has gradually cooled to about 80 degrees. It is not advisable to use boiling water on leaves that have already opened.

The fourth infusion Nehemia says is usually his favourite. The tea is now noticeably smoother, but we notice a grassy zest has mysteriously recurred that wasn’t present in the second and third tastings.

The tea is sweeter by the sixth infusion, and by the final seventh infusion we are relaxed and enjoying cup after cup of delicious smooth tea.

The second part of the ceremony is a demonstration of show flower tea. Dan gui piao xiang is a tea ball made of sweet-scented osmanthus, lily flowers and Yin Hao (silver needle white tea). The tea leaves are moulded into a tight ball (it takes up to 45 minutes to make one) and tied with almost imperceptible string. Placed in a glass pot of water at 80 degrees, the acorn-sized tea ball steadily unfolds, opening up like a flower.

One is now offered a pot of tea of your choice together with a delicious vegetable filled dumpling and sticky rice wrapped in a bamboo leaf from a bamboo steamer that has been cooking away during the ceremony. It is accompanied with a delicious, syrupy oyster sauce and a chilli sauce on the side.

The tea ceremony with the show flower, a pot of your choice, and the meal costs R125 per person. Gift tags are available, and this relaxing, novel ritual makes a superb present indeed.

Nigiro Tea Room, inside Origin, 28 Hudson Street, De Waterkant, Cape Town. Open Monday to Friday, 9am–5pm; Saturdays, 9am–2pm. Tel: 021 421 1000.

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Ever since bright yellow, spicy, roasted corn soup was ladled over a sprinkling of popcorn in my bowl at a gourmet Indian restaurant, I have been thinking about popcorn in a whole new light, as food rather than as packaging material or a crunching nuisance spoiling my cinema experience. Jokes aside, some overzealous eco-minded retailers did try using popcorn as an alternative to Styrofoam. It turned out to be both a hazard and a disastrous idea.

Perhaps those bags of coloured popcorn we pelted each other with as kids led me to forget it is a food. Then again, some of the popcorn served at one of the big movie chains nearby, especially if it is the morning screening, really isn’t edible; it’s not even warm; I think they use the leftovers that stood out all night. Unlike me, Munchkin is someone who goes to the movies in order to eat popcorn. Fortunately, Munchkin will indelicately hoover through a tub before the trailers are over.

Popcorn is a food, a good one nutritionally speaking, and it has been eaten for thousands of years. We certainly like the smell. I wonder what that first Native American who heard and saw how with a resounding pop a little seed magically transformed into a white puff thought. There is evidence of early man popping corn in heated sand. The conquistadors found it among the Aztecs and the Peruvian Indians, where it was also used in sacred ceremonies and for decoration. Some people still thread garlands of popcorn and even use it as Christmas decor. The American colonists had popcorn with milk for breakfast.

Popcorn received its big boost during the Great Depression when mobile steam and gas-powered poppers first appeared. At between 5 and 10 cents a bag, it was one of the few affordable treats. Consumption trebled during the Second World War, with the scarcity of candy; sugar being reserved for the military maw. Then, in the 1980s, microwave popcorn was born offering an assortment of flavours and a fool-proof method of popping. Heating from the inside produces larger and tenderer flakes, and Munchkin enjoys standing with an ear to the microwave listening to the comestible fireworks inside.

The biggest consumers remain North Americans who annually consume about 200 cups for every man, woman and child, only a third of it at cinemas and stadiums. The Midwest produces a staggering 400 000 tonnes; consider that 30g makes 4 cups when popped. The fastest growing markets are Mexico, South Korea, Japan and China.

Remember when ready-to-eat popcorn (with flavours such as white cheddar or green onion) packaged like crisps became a brief craze in the 1990s? Today, on limited shelf space in our supermarkets, local brands retail at about R100 per kilogram; imports at R200 per kg; weigh that up against unpopped which is only R13, and for my money none compare to home-made.

Popcorn is currently outperformed by sales of corn chips and many other snacks, so sellers are turning to its health properties: high fibre, low calorie, carbohydrate rich, sodium and sugar-free. Yet the calories can be deceptive. Air-popped popcorn has only 31 calories per cup; oil-popped has 55; most microwave brands more. However, when lightly buttered the calories can rise up to 133. Some movie theatres in the United States use coconut oil to pop the corn and add margarine; one of these supersized buckets can have far more calories than a double burger. Oh, and in case you’re wondering, popcorn is the one corn product that is least likely to have any genetic engineered modifications, although plans are in the pipeline.

The maize used for popcorn is zea mays everta. The kernel can be red and even black (I’ve seen these ears in Peru), but only white and yellow are in commercial use. Sweet and field corn do not pop, and neither does popcorn straight after harvesting. It needs to dry out a bit, ideally says the science to a moisture content of 13.5%. It keeps well, apparently they have even managed to pop 3000-year-old corn; but don’t store yours in a refrigerator as it may dehydrate the kernels.

This brings us to what the industry calls popability. Water inside the kernel heats up and turns to steam; at 180°C it reaches a pressure of about 930 kPa expanding the endosperm until it explodes through the hull to form that familiar little white cloud of starch and protein polymers, blossoming to up to 40 times its original size. But overheated popcorn forms hard balls. The unpopped kernels (in good popcorn this should be under 2%), those deadly bits that threaten to break your teeth in the darkness of the movie house, are known (stupidly) as “old maids” by the industry. There are tricks to resurrect them after a few days.

The flakes are categorized as either the large, fluffy, irregular “butterfly” or the ball-shaped, denser “mushroom”. To my mouth, the butterfly flakes are much more satisfying, but the hardier mushroom shape is usually what you’ll find in packets of ready-popped corn as they survive better in packaging.

If you search “Chinese making popcorn” on You Tube you’ll see how roadside vendors in Beijing heat the kernels in a cast-iron cylinder rotated over an open brazier. When hammered open the corn all pops at once with a spectacular explosion flying into a large canvas sack.

In South Africa we have amakiepkiep, the multicoloured sweet township popcorn. It comes from kiep-kiep, the onomatopoetic expression for calling chickens, itself derived from the Dutch “kip” meaning fowl.

To make amakiepkiep, pop 500grams of popcorn; heat butter (4 tablespoons), sugar (600grams) and water (125ml) until the sugar is dissolved; divide this mixture into several batches and colour each with blue, red, green, yellow or orange or whatever food colourant takes your fancy. Pour over the popcorn in separate bowls, coating it and stirring; too much butter though and it will go soggy.

For the more adventurous, there are even recipes (I haven’t tried any of them) where popcorn is ground finely in a food blender and used to make popcorn bread (with mielie meal), or muffins (with sugar and flour and almonds)or even used in meatloaf. Popcorn can be made into a crust for macaroni and cheese, or with peanuts to encrust deep fried Thai chicken.

If those recipes aren’t funny enough, let me conclude with the use of popcorn in humour. Archbishop Fulton J Sheen is quoted as having said, “Hearing nuns’ confessions is like being stoned to death with popcorn.”

To visit the heartland of popcorn you could visit the Popcorn Festival, next month, August 12 to 15, 2010, in Van Buren, Indiana, USA (it has been going since 1973) or join the many activities at the 30th anniversary of the Marion Popcorn Festival, September 9 to 11, 2010 in Marion, Ohio.

Published in the Mail & Guardian, 16 July 2010.

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Fifteen years ago, a distinguished Stellenbosch winemaker told me the west coast was in many respects better terroir for viticulture than the Boland. The soils have natural lime, which didn’t have to be imported (as was the case on his farm); the icy Benguela current brought fog banks that cooled the grapes perfectly; and although one thinks of the west coast as an arid, flat sort of skeleton coast, there is surprising elevation, with many vineyards sitting at 300 metres.

The last decade has proved him right. Grapes used to be sent to the local farmers’ co-operatives for bulk production wine, but now, small private estates are popping up like daisies. The latest to move from garagiste to label are Oudepost and Franki’s Vineyards (bottling Mourvèdre since 2007). The Spice Route (spearheaded by Charles Back of Fairview) led the charge in 1998; their pricey, high quality wines changed perceptions of the district.

Declaring Darling as a wine region in its own right has encouraged local producers to set up a wine route and open facilities on their estates. Tastings are still free, and prices close to wholesale. Combine this with the spectacular wild flower season, coming into bloom as I write, and you have a magical winelands trip.

Ormonde Vineyards has the advantage of being right in the town of Darling. The estate offers several wine ranges, something of a recent trend among South African producers. Their Alexanderfontein wines are easy drinkers made from vines grown in ribbons of terra rouge clay soil. The sauvignon blanc (2009) stands out, and at only R38 a bottle it trumps Groote Post’s flagship sauvignon going for R62.

The Ormonde range is presented as their finer wine with good ageing potential, up to 15 years for the Theodore Ecksteen red blend (2007, R180) of 65% shiraz and 35% Grenache; a new world wine with an old-red South African architecture to it. The cabernets franc and sauvignon blend Vernon Basson (2007, R170) is a ruby fruited juicy red, but with respectable dimension.

But it is the Ondine range, billed as their experimental wines, that caught my tongue. Named after the ballet that Sir Frederick Ashton choreographed as a vehicle for Margot Fonteyn, a pair of ballet slippers, a silver statuette and a photo of the prima ballerina are on display in the tasting room (where you can also buy pineapple flavoured olives!). The label was originally developed for a chain of restaurants.

Rather cleverly, and especially useful to visiting foreigners, a tag on the label can be peeled off to remember the wine by.

The 2008 shiraz is spicier and truer to the cultivar than the Alexanderfontein bottling; the 2007 cabernet sauvignon has an unusual nose, a bit like wet cement, and an earthy taste of tubers and beets; the 2008 cabernet franc has proved very popular and is the most easy drinking of this flight, and as a varietal bottling the only one in the region. The 2007 merlot is only available from the farm; I’ve used it to stunning effect both in and to accompany a French beef stew; at R59 it isn’t too expensive for the pot.

All the Ormonde wines exhibit a certain homogeneity, a slightly sweet, but pleasing, fruity finish. A winemaker I spoke to speculated that this was due to a fructophilic yeast that distorts the proportion of glucose and fructose conversion.

From Ormonde one heads out past fields of arum lilies to the Darling Cellars. Renamed in 1999, it was formerly the Mamre Co-operative (founded in 1948). It has that charming, old co-op feel: flat, functional buildings; walls covered by certificates and award diplomas in the pleasant little tasting area with practical, small round tables.

A big capital expansion and modernisation project in recent years is paying dividends. They have numerous ranges and a huge variety of cultivars, from the cheap and cheerful Flamingo Bay range (R23 to R25), and the low alcohol (9%) Zantsi sweet wines to their premium Onyx range grown on the best parcels of land with deep granite soils.

This unpretentious cellar concentrates on honest, easy drinking, good value wines. I found them rather shy on the nose, but the Onyx cabernet sauvignon (2007, R79) has that true Swartland style to it; the shiraz (2007, R79) is seriously oaked (22 months); the DC “six tonner” merlot (2009, R43) is exceptional value. They also do an unusual easy drinking 100% petit verdot.

From here, it is a five-minute drive past marvellous birdlife, a pelican colony, flamingos and flocks of herons, to Cloof. They’re a hip, slightly eccentric crowd. Many estates could learn a bit from them as far as marketing goes, as their informative, snazzy website attests.

Interestingly and contrary to brand orthodoxy, wines here are not in a range, but each given a clear identity and their own label, such as Lynchpin and Happy Dragon. A stylish Inkspot vin noir (2008, R45)); Dark Side Caberent/Shiraz (2007, R45), a rich and robust but smooth wine; Very Sexy Shiraz (2008, R75), a chic, integrated, full-bodied wine with a gentle nose. The whole region is gaining a shiraz reputation, though the Cloof Crucible shiraz (2006) at R450 a bottle is not offered for tasting. Probably just as well, as it is at a whopping 15.5% alcohol.

I am not a fan of pinotage, but the Cloof Pinotage 2005 (R75) is a gorgeous wine, and not to be confused with their rather musty Cloof Dusty Road Pinotage (2005, R35).

Also noteworthy is the Kalumpie & Co, made by the assistant winemaker, Frederik “Bolle” Kalumpie. Previously limited in his duties to farm labourer under the old SA, this was his first wine. All proceeds go to the farm school (2005, R45 a bottle).

Light lunches are served for around R35 to R50. Four little Jack Russells see you to your car.

Taking the R307 out of Darling through the wild flower reserves, freckled herds of Nguni cows, and if you’re lucky you’ll see blue cranes courting in the fields, you turn off to Groote Post.

In the ten years since their first release, they are a efficiently run, established and dependable brand.

Their salmon-pink, Old Man’s sparkle is the only méthode cap classique (Brut, R75) in the ward, and most unusual for its 59% merlot base (as opposed to the classic pinot noir). I predict this new wine is going to go places. They do have pinot noir growing on their south facing slopes, and they have the only bottling of this savoury wine in the region (2008, R112).

The Old Man’s red blend, sold also in magnums for R90, is a very quaffable, cabernet-based, red ‘cool drink’ with minimal consequences the next day.

Recommended among the whites are: the light, almost effete weisser riesling 2008 (R67) in a dry style, while the 2010 just released is sweeter; the award-winning chenin now back in stock (2010, R45) sheds a whole new light on this jug varietal; the reserve sauvignon (2009, R95) made only when the best grape quality is present (previously in 2005 and 2007);the unwooded chardonnay (2009, R62) is hugely welcome after so many bloated, over-wooded chardonnays of recent years.

All this tasting, entreats one for lunch, and Hilda’s Kitchen is the star restaurant in the district. Named after Hildegonda Duckitt (1840 – 1905), Groote Post manor house, now a national monument, was this grand dame of Cape recipe’s birthplace and home. Slaves liberated off the coast by the British squashing the trade were indentured as farm labourers. One of them was Duckitt’s cook. These days you’ll find cordon bleu chef Debbie McLaughlin at work in the kitchen.

You can dine in the homestead or al fresco. The staff offer the best Cape farm hospitality. Hung from the umbrellas are see-through plastic bags filled with water, apparently to keep the flies way.

The food is unfussy but not rustic and the portions large. If you ever come across Hildegonda’s original recipes you have to divide by four; they had large families and enormous appetites back then. The springbok carpaccio (R56) starter has sole-size slices (R56). In Duckitt’s day duiker was commonly used as springbok were rare in the Western Cape. Today, the 2000-hectare farm offers drives to see kudu, black wildebeest, red hartebeest, bontebok, springbok, eland and gemsbok.

For mains, the chicken (R90) cooked in wine with bacon, onions and button mushrooms (in which the drumsticks fare better than the thighs) is best eaten with its flowering basil garnish on top.

The tender lamb shank (R110) comes in a light gravy with tomato, carrot and green beans. The pork belly (R110) has a shy plum sauce, served with Asian noodles, sprouts and tatsoi, which seems to be more about having fun than creating fusion tastes.

Open in July for the first time, their special winter menu includes braised beef, lamb osso bucco and chicken tagine.

All of this is less than an hour from Cape Town.

Cloof Wine Estate, Mamreweg, Darling. Tel: 022 492 2839.
Darling Cellars, Mamreweg, Darling. Tel: 022 492 2276.
Hilda’s Kitchen, Groote Post, btwn Darling and Malmesburry. Booking essential. Tel: 022 492 2825.
Ormonde, Mount Pleasant Street, Darling. Tel: 022 492 3540.

An edited version published in the Mail and Guardian, 9 July 2010

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When Bill Clinton left the White House and set up office in Harlem, New York, my artist friends hastily removed themselves further up the A-line to Washington Heights, a largely Latino, mostly Dominican neighbourhood, with a declining white population, safely beyond the conservative forces of upward mobility.

Gentrification can be a mixed blessing. Property values go up, and with them rentals. The poor, the elderly, the small retailers, and the historical buildings they occupy, all of which gives a suburb its distinctive character, find themselves on the wrong end of a developer’s wrecking ball.

Few of us want to live in a crime-ridden slum no matter how characterful its architecture, but restoration and social upliftment is preferable to demolition and forced removals for profit.

My school geography teacher said it was only a matter of time before Woodstock would boom. That was 25 years ago. In the interim, there have been several waves of 30-somethings speculating with their professional incomes, believing they rode the crest of gentrification and would be afloat with the rewards of the imminent property boom. Many found themselves washed back out to rentals in the city bowl; Woodstock, even with its proximity to the city and ripe with commercial corridors, stubbornly refusing to be the next Green Point.

In the decade straddling 1900, the population of Cape Town exploded with new immigrants and brought into being the suburb of Woodstock, formerly the seaside bathing spot of Papendorp which had quadrupled in population in a little over ten years. A ‘grey’ area, never quite conquered by the apartheid Group Areas Act, it established its identity pretty early on; while in 1908, dry Observatory had 16 churches, Woodstock had 20 bottle stores.

Slow and uneven, but overall steady progress, from the Palm Centre to the Biscuit Mill, seems now to be gaining momentum. The innumerable paint stores on the main road have finally found application for their products within their own precinct. There is even the Upper Woodstock Aesthetics Advisory Committee. So it’s out with squatters and statutory tenants, and in with designer furniture, creative industries and art galleries. All this, and right now one is still hopeful, can only benefit the residents in their dilapidated buildings one block behind the new facades. A geriatric clinic and no less than five new neighbourhood old age homes are encouraging signs.

And where there are advertising agencies and office workers, restaurants soon follow. A good example of what can happen is the Bromwell Hotel dating from 1927. With 56 known tenants and only one working toilet, it festered on the market for three years. Finally condemned by the fire and health departments, instead of being knocked down, it was sold and renovated.

It’s now a boutique mall, boulangerie, deli and mildly pretentious café called Bread with off-street parking and a doorman outside in top hat and tails. The Italian coffee served in designer cups that favour the right handed is organic. The menu is simple and pricey, with three choices of each: petite sandwiches (R45), wholesome salads (R55), mains (R70 – R80) – ravioli, chicken breast, burger, and desserts.

Further up the drag is Superette, a café outlet for the organizers of the Neighbourgoods Market, offering locally sourced seasonal fare. It has a roomy, elegantly neutral interior, with soft greys and whites, with bowls of lemons and flowerpots as yellow accents, and pretty sprigs of fresh fynbos. There are bottles of agave nectar sugar and jars of organic vanilla pod. A long window table with magazines and bar stools allow privacy and comfort for solitary customers.

A daily menu, written up in Koki pen on the open kitchen’s tiles, offers good value. The all day breakfast sandwich (R35) of bacon, cherry tomatoes and scrambled egg is served on large plates on which are glazed somewhat oddly chosen quotations from Shimon Peres to Bill Bryson. For lunch, there is pork belly or lasagne or sandwiches (Chalmar steak, tuna, giant bratwurst).

The eatery that pioneered this gastronomic phalanx into Woodstock is simply named The Kitchen. It has that bric-a-brac feel of Woodstock main road, with a grid wall of wooden shelves and a glass display counter filled with old plates, bowls, cups, vases and tshatshkes.

I highly recommend the R40 salad plate with lentils, wild rice and mustard; beetroot, radish and coriander; mielies and yellow peppers; green leaves; to which may be added R5 extras such as feta, avocado, grilled aubergine and roast chicken.

The most recent to open is La Bottega, from the owners of one of my favourite little spots, Nonna Lina, in the city. Their enormous wooden deck (about 100m2) will work well on sunny days. Inside, the emphasis seems to be on the bar and a big screen television for sport broadcasts. Their special feature is build your own Italian piada (a thin flatbread) to which you add charcuteries and cheese; the kitchen then warms it up for you.

It’s still teething time; the lunches – panini, pasta, salad and pizza – don’t yet measure up to their standard in town. I had gooey penne in a sauce somehow at once stodgy and separating. But one thing seems sure; unlike the beurre blanc, the renaissance of Woodstock seems irreversible.

Bread, The Bromwell, 250 Albert Road, Woodstock. Tel: 021 447 4730.
The Kitchen, 111 Sir Lowry Road, Woodstock. Tel: 021 462 2201.
La Bottega, Buchanan Square, 160 Sir Lowry Road, Woostock. Tel: 021 461 9731.
Superette, 218 Albert Road, Woodstock, Cape Town. Tel: 021 802 5525.
All are open for breakfast and lunch.

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