Without traditional fats, cooks cannot convey South Africa’s ancestral tastes and textures.
What would Italian food be without olive oil? Is French food even French without duck fat? These and many other regionally specific oils do so much more than fry. They not only carry and concentrate the tastes and aromas of other ingredients but also add unique, layered umami elements. Take away the oil that has evolved to grease the wheels of a culinary culture and that cuisine is robbed of its flavour foundation.
Because both fats would constitute too much good living for one article, I am temporarily parking marula nut oil which I will come back to in a subsequent story. For now, let us look at rendered sheep tallow. Specifically fat tailed, indigenous sheep tallow. As the name suggests, these creatures concentrate almost all body fat in their tails. In some cases, the extremity constitutes as much as 15% of the total weight of the animal.
Vestiges of significant cross-cultural fusion at the Cape are apparent in food writer Errieda du Toit’s memory of: “My mother’s favourite treat of soft, white skaapvet with golden syrup on soetsuurdeeg bread. Mixing golden syrup with the fat is called ‘rekvet’ as mixing the runny syrup – a luxury – with the fat, prevents the syrup from dripping down the bread and wasting the precious sweet.
Translated: “My grandmother had a special pot in which she fried kaiings. Kept it in a consol jar in the fridge for a few days and made us the most delicious kaiing baked bread. The pure white fat was also stored like this in the fridge. Glass jars with screw lids. And it was later used to make food instead of oil, especially stews such as cabbage, green bean and carrot bredie. The fat was also shared with people who came to ask for it. Sharing food was nothing to her.
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