BOBOTIE PIES



Next up on the traditional South African menu is Bobotie. Below is my bobotie recipe but this time I used it as the filling for pies and not as a baked dish on its own.

Makes 18 small pies


Ingredients
1kg beef mince
2 onions, finely chopped
1 tbs salt
4 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 tbs coriander seeds, finely crushed
6 cloves, finely crushed
1 tbs turmeric
2 tbs medium curry powder
6 bay leaves
20 ml lemon juice
100ml apricot jam
1 tbs brown vinegar
A handful of fresh thyme
2 cinnamon sticks
8 slices of white bread, crusts removed
1 glass of milk
3 rolls of puff pastry
100ml fruit chutney (if necessary)

You can add 80ml of raisins if you prefer, not everyone likes them which is why I left them out this time round.

- Brown the onions and garlic in a bit of oil.
- Add the mince to the pan and brown.
- Add the salt, coriander, cloves, curry powder, bay leaves, thyme, lemon juice, sugar and cinnamon and let it simmer for 5 minutes, stirring continuously.
- Add the apricot jam, vinegar and turmeric.
- Pour the milk into a bowl, dunk the bread slices in the milk for a second and add each of them to the pan.
- Keep stirring until the bread dissolves into the rest of the mixture. You should see the colour suddenly change after adding the bread giving it that typical yellowish bobtie colour.
- Turn off the heat and remove the thyme and bay leaves.

If you want to make a traditional bobotie dish – see below.

To make bobotie pies - you need to let the mixture cool down first. I made the bobotie the night before.

- Pre-heat the oven.
- Roll the pastry out on a floured surface or alternatively cover the surface with cling foil.
- The pastry shouldn’t be too thin; I’d say you can roll it out until the surface of the pastry is roughly 30% bigger than the original pastry roll.
- Spray a muffin tray with Spray & Cook.
- Use something with a round shape to cut circles out of the pastry which are big enough to cover the bottom and sides of each “cup” in the muffin tray.
- Use a smaller object to imprint a smaller circle in the middle of the bigger circle; this should be the same size as the bottom of each “cup”.
- Form radio-active pastry shapes as in the photo below.



- Scoop the bobotie filling into each pie, add a dollop of chutney and cover with a pastry lid.
- Beat an egg and brush the top of each pie with it.


- Bake until the outside crust is golden brown; this should take about 30-40 minutes.

To make the traditional bobotie dish - simply pour the mince mixture into an over dish, pour egg-wash over it and bake at 180 degrees until the mixture has set and there are no runny parts anymore. Egg-wash: 1 egg mixed with 100ml of milk.

Bobotie is normally served with yellow rice:

Ingredients
half a cup of raisins
2 cinnamon sticks
2 tsp turmeric
2 tbs brown sugar
1.5 cups basmati rice
1 tsp salt
1.5l water

- Bring the water and salt to the boil, add all the other ingredients.
- Turn down the heat and boil for 14 minutes
- Strain the liquid and remove the cinnamon sticks.

SKUIMPIES



Following on from my lasagne post I am still busy with typical South African dishes/treats/desserts. Like I said before, I know not all of these originated in South Africa but that's not what I'm after. I want to learn how to make the food I grew up with before delving back into all sorts of other weird and wonderful things the rest of the world has to offer. You can't make bobotie wontons if you don't know how to make a bobotie! And that is the point - basics first!

So…meringues. Or in Afrikaans, skuimpies.


I must admit I am not the biggest fan of meringues but for some reason most people absolutely love them. I got an e-mail from a dear friend (who married my best friend this weekend) asking if I would make skuimpies for her dessert table at the wedding. Having never made them before and knowing that this will be on display for all to see and captured on the wedding photos to forever remind me of it, the first thought I had was "At least I can buy them at P'nP if mine turns out to be a disaster".

But I'm glad to say they turned out perfectly and made their way onto the Zandberg wedding dessert table!

Here's my recipe:

Ingredients

3 eggs
2 cups castor sugar
60ml boiling water
30ml white wine vinegar
4ml baking powder


Method

Pre-heat the oven to 100 degrees
Cover 2 baking trays with heavy duty foil (shiny side on top)
Separate the eggs - you only need the egg whites
Add the egg whites, castor sugar, water and vinegar into a mixing bowl and mix on a fast speed until the mixture leaves a stiff peak when you swipe your finger through it.
Fold in the baking powder
Scoop into a  piping bag and squeeze it out onto the foil just like the tannie in the ice-cream van used to do with your soft-serve! You are allowed to play better background music though.
Bake them for about 3 hours, then turn off the oven but leave them in there overnight.


Keep them in an air-tight container especially in humid conditions like we're having in Joburg at the moment.