At the Table: Food and Family around the World - Ken Albala (2016)

South Africa, Urban

Lexi Earl

This is the story of one South African family’s dinnertime. The family represents perhaps an example of South Africa’s urban middle-class, but that is not to suggest that this family speaks for all South African families. There is a great amount of variety within the cuisine we might call “South African.” South Africa’s history is one of conquest, contest, and colonialism, and our food culture reflects this diversity.

South African food culture is a melting pot of Bantu-speaking people’s foods (Zulu, Xhosa, and Sesotho people, for example) and our immigrant heritage. Waves of immigration, beginning in 1652 with Dutch settlers, has led to a food culture and heritage that features elements of Dutch, British, Jewish, Italian, Portuguese, Malay, Indian, and Chinese cuisines. Some would argue that a South African family dinner is a braai (barbeque), complete with braaivleis (barbeque meat) such as boerewors (spicy sausage), sosaties (meat cooked on skewers, similar to kebabs), or chops and sides of pap (stiff porridge made from mealie meal) and djelelo (tomato and onion sauce). Others would say that such a dinner is a Cape Malay curry or babotie (curried meat and fruit with a savory egg custard topping) and that dessert would be melktert (milk tart) or koeksisters (deep-fried plaited dough, soaked in syrup) or poffertjies (small fluffy pancakes coated in sugar). These examples merely explain that in the global age, South Africans, like many others, eat a combination of traditional foods as well as adopted ones.

Albala

The family sits together to eat, a special treat for Mae who normally eats first. (Courtesy of Lexi Earl)

What is told here is the story of one family having dinner on an early summer night in the city of Johannesburg.

The kitchen in the Baker household forms a central part of their home. It is a thoroughfare, with people coming and going throughout the day. The kitchen’s back door leads out into the driveway and along to the outbuildings, so the kitchen is the natural entry point to the house rather than the front door, which is located around the side. The kitchen is a large brightly lit space with terra-cotta tiled floors and large windows on three sides. The windows are fitted with cottage pane-style burglar guards. One window looks out over the garden, while the other two windows look out onto the driveway.

There is a large freestanding stainless steel fridge/freezer in one corner and a long row of countertops along one side. There is a double oven along one wall, with the range built into the countertop beside it. The kitchen has two sinks, a testament to the house’s history. The house is located in a historically Jewish neighborhood, and the purpose of the two sinks is to keep dairy and meat products separate.

At the far end of the room is a large white wooden table with six white chairs around it. The table is covered with day-to-day debris—a bowl filled with bananas and naartjies (easy-peeling citrus fruit similar to a clementine or mandarin), a radio, a vase of flowers, and glasses of water.

Dinner preparation has begun early today—before 5:00 p.m. Mae, the Bakers’ daughter, age three and a half years, is eating with her parents tonight. Usually Rose and Peter eat later in the evening, around 8:00 p.m., preparing their dinner while Mae eats hers. But Rose is heavily pregnant (their baby boy is born two weeks later) and tired, so they are planning to eat early, with Mae. They are therefore going to eat at around 6:30 p.m. Rose has begun preparation for the lasagna she is making before Peter returns home from work. She and Mae are in the kitchen when he arrives. Mae has been sitting at the table, with a green board placed in front of her. Rose has gathered various things for a salad—organic baby salad leaves, cucumber, black olives, black pepper feta, and rosa tomatoes (small plum tomatoes). When Peter comes in, Mae gets up to greet him and then returns to the table to help with the salad. Peter goes to put down his things and then joins the family in the kitchen.

The food for today has predominantly come from two large supermarkets—Woolworths and Pick ’n Pay. Woolworths is a higher-end store, providing not only food but also clothing and home goods (everything from kitchen equipment and crockery to bedding and lamps). Rose prefers their fresh produce—vegetables, fruit, and meat products—and the increasing variety; Woolworths now stocks heritage tomatoes and locally grown produce. Woolworths is regarded as a responsible retailer, with producers who use sustainable farming methods and give back to the community, but is reasonably more expensive, and so for staple items Rose shops at Pick ’n Pay.

Peter and Mae make the salad collectively while Rose cooks the lasagna sauce and béchamel at the stove behind them. She has set all the salad ingredients on the table. Peter tips the salad leaves into a white ceramic bowl and asks Mae if she wants to cut up the feta. She nods assent, so he extracts two rounds from the tub for her. When he puts it down onto the board and goes to fetch an ordinary knife for Mae, she exclaims, “We can’t eat that! There are ants in it!” Peter laughs and says to her, “No, those aren’t ants. That is black pepper.” Mae draws her hands toward her and refuses to touch the feta. Peter slices the feta into cubes and tosses them onto the salad leaves. Rose suggests that he get a bowl of water for Mae. She can wash the tomatoes for the salad as well as some extra for her lunch box tomorrow.

Peter fetches the bowl of water and a Tupperware container to put the tomatoes into for Mae’s lunch. Mae washes the tomatoes slowly, turning them over and over in the water and occasionally putting one in her mouth. Peter slices the tomatoes in half for her lunch and adds others whole to the salad. Then he slices the cucumber into pieces and saves some for Mae’s lunch. Next he opens a jar of black olives. Olives are one of Mae’s favorite foods at the moment, and he asks her if she would like to eat some now. She says that she would, and Peter pits several for her, placing them to one side on the board before taking more olives from the jar, draining them slightly, and adding them to the salad. He also snacks on a few as he works.

Peter fetches grapes and strawberries from the fridge. He asks Mae to wash some of these too, as they can be put into her lunch box now. She obeys, taking a strawberry to eat in the process. Peter then leaves the kitchen to pour drinks at their bar, and Rose comes to sit down at the table to supervise the washing of the fruit. Peter comes back with a glass of red wine for himself and a long glass of passion fruit cordial with soda and ice for Rose, who cannot drink alcohol due to the pregnancy. Mae requests some water, so he gets her water bottle—a green one with a purple lid and straw—fills it, and brings it to the table for her.

The family talks about the imminent arrival of their baby boy. They tell Mae that she will soon be a big sister, and she says she is going to be a good one. Once all the grapes and strawberries are washed, they are placed in a Tupperware container. The salad is placed in the center of the table.

While Mae and Peter have been making the salad, Rose has been busy making the lasagna. Peter and Rose often take turns cooking. They both like to cook, although Rose is more skilled. She took cooking at school, cooked with her mother and grandmother growing up, and is very interested in food. Part of her work entails teaching mothers ways to feed their children. She is also a baking enthusiast and likes to spend time in the kitchen. But Peter makes dinner fairly often, and he is in charge of braaiing, as it is South African tradition. (Cooking meat over the fire is a particularly masculine activity in South Africa and one that remains severely gendered. While men will gather at the braai and remain outside cooking for most of the afternoon, the women will be primarily in the kitchen making sides and salads or sitting on the stoep [veranda] talking. Everyone gathers together at the table to eat when the braaiing is done.)

Food Marketed to Kids

Baby food was an invention of the early 20th century in tandem with baby formula, developed by scientists who believed that they could feed infants better than with breast milk and puréed adult food after infants were weaned. Food marketed to kids came somewhat later and in many ways was more ingenious. Offering food that could be eaten with the fingers, such as pizza, hot dogs, chicken nuggets, and tater tots, and making an explicit connection between these foods and fun (since no utensils or manners were required), manufacturers invented a whole new category of food. Arguably, they also stunted the aesthetic development of young palates so that many children never learned to like the food their parents ate. Parents were forced to cater to their children’s tastes in a way that would have been unthinkable a generation before.

Rose sautés some sliced onions, carrots, celery, and leeks in a cream Le Creuset crock pot on the stove. Le Creuset is hugely popular in South Africa, and cooking enthusiasts often have at least one treasured pot that they use. Rose is no exception, and she uses the pot for the meat sauce. Once the onions are softened, she adds in some garlic. She then takes this mixture out of the pot, keeping it to one side while she browns the meat.

Rose uses a combination of beef mince, bacon, and pork sausage filling that she squeezes from the sausage casings, which she then discards. Once the meat is evenly browned, she adds the onion mixture back in, followed by some of Peter’s red wine (a South African pinotage), some tomato paste, tinned tomatoes, and beef stock. The whole mixture is left to simmer and putter away on the stove until Rose has finished the béchamel.

Rose is making extra lasagna tonight so she can freeze the leftovers. She has prepared several ready-made meals for the freezer that Peter will be able to reheat in the few weeks following the new baby’s birth. Perhaps because Rose likes to cook so much, the family hardly ever has instant meals or takeout. They eat out on the weekend, but during the week they eat freshly prepared made-from-scratch dishes. These dishes are often made using local products. Sometimes these are organic (such as the salad leaves), but elements may be bought already prepared.

South Africa’s middle classes tend to eat a variety of semiprepared and ready-prepared dishes. Rose’s cooking every night is therefore slightly atypical. Woolworths provides middle-class families with high-quality freshly prepared meals, such as the rotisserie chicken that can be bought still warm and carved at home and ready-made salads. In the summertime, South Africans eat a lot of salad. The heat in the summertime entices people to eat cold foods, and because vegetables form a staple part of the South African diet, these are consumed in salad form in the summer. Salad may be eaten as a side dish—for example, with steak and chips or with a cooked piece of chicken—or as an entire main meal. In this sense, Rose’s pairing of the lasagna with salad is very South African.

While the meat is simmering, Rose makes the béchamel. The béchamel is the first thing she can remember her grandmother teaching her to make, so there is a sense of comfort and continuity in its preparation. She does not weigh the butter, flour, or milk, having made béchamel so many times that the process is now second nature. She has two secret ingredients in her sauce—the mustard powder her grandmother insisted upon and an egg yolk. This innovation Rose saw once on a cookery program. It adds a silky richness to the sauce. Today she is using eggs given to her by friends who keep chickens in their backyard. She exclaims how orange the egg yolk is and keeps referring to its color as she whisks it into the béchamel.

Once the sauce is made, Rose layers the lasagna in a rectangular white baking dish. She uses green (spinach) lasagna sheets. She layers meat sauce and then béchamel and lasagna sheets until the meat sauce is finished. On the last layer she adds the béchamel, and she asks Mae if she would like to grate the cheese for the top. Mae says she would and goes to fetch her stool so she can reach the higher countertop. She grates the Parmesan slowly, with concentrated purpose. When she says she is done, Rose grates a little bit more onto the top and places the lasagna into the oven to bake. Mae and Peter go upstairs so that Mae can bathe.

Half an hour later, the family is ready to eat. Mae has changed into her pajamas. She takes her place at the head of the table. Rose has removed the lasagna from the oven, and it is cooling on a lower set of drawers next to the main counter on a potholder. She and Peter move around the kitchen, getting everything they need. Peter checks that they both still have drinks and asks Mae if she would like some juice. She says, “Yes please” and is given some apple juice in a clear plastic cup. She also has her water bottle on the table. Rose fetches two white china plates from a cupboard (their normal everyday crockery) and a colorful small plastic plate (pink and purple with butterflies) for Mae. Rose gets paper napkins with a floral design in a napkin holder from the counter. Peter gets the cutlery from the top drawer in the counter, a knife and fork each for himself and Rose and a special smaller spoon and fork set for Mae. Rose puts three florets of broccoli into the microwave to steam—this is Mae’s favorite food, so she has some every night.

Peter dishes up for Mae first, and Rose sits down next to her at the seat by the window. The family has a more formal dining room with a dark oak dining table, but they only use that space for dinner parties or special meals. Peter dishes some lasagna for Mae and then passes the plate to Rose. She asks Mae if she would like some salad and then gives her some salad leaves, tomatoes, olives, and cucumber but no feta. Mae is allowed to begin eating before Peter sits down or either of her parents have their plates. Rose asks Peter to fetch the Greek salad dressing from the fridge door. Mae does not have salad dressing, but Peter brings her the steamed broccoli and places it on her plate. He then dishes up for Rose and himself.

Peter puts their plates on the table but then decides that the overhead light is too bright. He goes to the pantry to get two fat red candles and a silver candlestick holder with three tapered cream candles. He lights these and then switches the overhead light off. The light on the extractor fan above the stove is still on, and the room is cozy. It is dark outside already, although they have not drawn the blinds in the kitchen. Rose waits for Peter to sit down before beginning to organize her eating. She cracks black pepper onto the lasagna and dishes up salad for herself. Peter avoids the black pepper but takes salad. They both put dressing on their salad and begin to eat.

Mae is an exceptionally slow eater, and most of the meal is spent encouraging her to eat more. She eats a few elements of her salad—the olives and tomatoes—then switches to a broccoli floret before consenting to have some lasagna. Rose and Peter eat and talk in between encouraging Mae to eat. Peter feeds her some of the lasagna with her fork to entice her to eat more.

While they eat, the family’s two cats come in via an open window. The first cat leaps onto the counter where the lasagna is still cooling and carefully steps around it to get onto the floor. Peter gets up and moves the lasagna to a higher counter, out of the way. Peter and Rose are both finished eating before Mae. They encourage her to eat a bit more, and eventually she finishes her lasagna and has one last broccoli floret. Peter helps himself to more lasagna and fetches an individual smooth strawberry yogurt from the fridge for Mae’s dessert.

Peter finishes eating while Rose feeds the yogurt to Mae, who is tired now and yawns at the table. Once she and Peter are both finished, Peter clears the plates from the table, putting them all in the sink for the moment. There is a little leftover salad and quite a lot of lasagna. Peter takes Mae upstairs to brush her teeth, and Rose stays downstairs. She puts the salad into a Tupperware container, puts the salad dressing back in the fridge, and carries their glasses into the living room. Later, Peter will pack the dishwasher. Rose goes upstairs to say goodnight to Mae. When Mae is asleep, she and Peter return to the living room to finish their drinks.

This dinner is an example of middle-class South African eating. The choice of lasagna suggests the globalization of food—Italian dishes such as pizza and pasta are South African staples now. Table manners and habits are typically Western, and although it might be fairly common for people to adopt more informal eating spaces—in front of the television, for example—Peter and Rose eat at the table almost every night, in part because they are educating Mae on acceptable ways to eat but also because it keeps to the traditions in which they were raised and the kind of family life they are trying to build.

Albala

Rose spoons the egg-enriched béchamel atop the ragu and pasta layers before Mae grates the cheese on top. (Courtesy of Lexi Earl)

Lasagna with Egg-Enriched Béchamel

For the meat sauce:

Olive oil

Butter

1 white onion, diced

1 large carrot, finely sliced

2 sticks of celery, finely sliced

1 baby leek, finely sliced

3 large garlic cloves, chopped

1 pound of ground beef

3 strips of bacon, cut into cubes

3 pork sausages

⅓ bottle of red wine

2 tablespoons of tomato paste

1 can of cherry tomatoes

Approximately 2 cups of beef stock

Lasagna sheets

For the béchamel:

5 tablespoons of unsalted butter

5 tablespoons of plain flour

Approximately 2½ cups of whole milk

1 egg yolk

Generous pinch of mustard powder

Parmesan

This recipe is infinitely adaptable. As Rose explained when she made it, she cooks dishes like this by instinct and feel rather than according to a recipe and particular amounts.

For the meat sauce:

1.In a heavy-bottomed large pot, heat a generous pour of olive oil and a teaspoon of butter until the butter is foaming.

2.Add in the onion, carrot, celery, and leeks, stirring to coat, and cook over a medium heat until the onion is translucent and the vegetables are soft.

3.Add in the garlic and cook for several more minutes.

4.Remove the vegetables from the pot, keeping them to one side in a bowl.

5.Add the bacon to the pot and cook for a few minutes to release some of the fat.

6.Then add in the meat, breaking it up with your hands.

7.Squeeze the sausage meat out of the casings directly into the pot. Discard the casings.

8.Stir the meat, breaking up the sausages as you do so, and cook until the mince has browned all over. Add the vegetables back into the pot.

9.Increase the heat and add in the red wine, allowing some of the alcohol to boil away.

10.Then add in the tomato paste and canned tomatoes.

11.Stir the sauce and add in enough beef stock to cover the meat. Bring this all to a boil and then reduce the heat so that the sauce simmers and putters on the stove until thickened and reduced, about 45 minutes.

12.While the sauce is simmering, make the béchamel. Melt the butter in a saucepan. Add in the flour and stir until the flour and butter are emulsified.

13.In a separate saucepan, heat the milk until scalding.

14.Slowly add the milk into the flour and butter. It may be necessary to use a whisk to ensure that the sauce is smooth. Cook the sauce slowly, adding the milk a little at a time, until the sauce is thickened, smooth, and bubbling.

15.Turn off the heat, whisk in the yolk and the mustard powder. Set aside.

16.Heat the oven to 325 degrees F.

17.Into a large rectangular baking dish, spoon some of the meat sauce, followed by the béchamel. Then cover with a single layer of lasagna sheets, breaking them to fit if necessary. Then repeat—meat sauce, béchamel, and lasagna sheets—until all the meat sauce is used up. For the last layer, place the lasagna sheets on top of the meat sauce and then spoon over the last of the béchamel.

18.Grate Parmesan over the top of the béchamel, using as much cheese as you like.

19.Bake the lasagna in the middle rack of the oven for about 45 minutes, until the cheese is golden and the lasagna is bubbling.