Last Saturday morning I was out running with my running crew. The amazing ladies who are helping keep me sane trotting up and down the hills of Ryde and beyond. While discussing our plans for the weekend I mentioned we were having friends for dinner and I was going to make bobotie. This was of course met with some blank, non-South African faces. I duly described bobotie to which the response was ‘that sounds like you just literally made up a dish on the spot. Who puts custard on bolognaise?’. It’s a fair point, on paper, bobotie should not work, but in the eating…….oh dear Lord is it delicious!

It’s not often I cook traditional South African dishes and I’m not sure why as I actually enjoy many of them but as the friends who came over are from my home country, I ventured into my ‘Traditional South African Cooking’ recipe book. This book is filled with all the good things – smoked snoek pate, potjie, milk tart, rusks and of course bobotie!

Bobotie is a curry-flavoured mince dish with an egg custard baked topping. Sound yummy yet? Filled with tumeric, raisins, almonds and chutney and served with piles of tumeric rice and chutney. OK, even I can admit it sounds odd. But look how amazing!

Bobotie

Ingredients (serves 6-8)

1 slice white bread
250ml milk (I used coconut milk)
1kg lean minced beef or mince (I used quorn)
1 medium onion, peeled and finely chopped
125ml seedless raisins
125ml flaked almonds
15ml smooth apricot jam (I didn’t have any so just put in extra chutney
15ml fruit chutney (it is vital that you seek out Mrs Balls original chutney for this. Regular other chutney will not be the same. You can buy it in Tesco or Sainsburys or any South African shop)
25ml lemon juice
5ml mixed herbs
10ml curry powder
5ml tumeric
10ml salt
10ml sunflower oil
3 large eggs
4 bay leaves

Method

Turn on the oven to 180 degrees. Soak the bread in 125ml milk, then squeeze it dry and reserve the milk. Mix the bread with the meat (or meat substitute in my case – bloody veggies!). Mix in all the other ingredients, except the remaining and reserved milk, the oil, eggs and bay leaves.

Heat the oil in an ovenproof frying pan or shallow casserole dish and brown the meat mixture lightly. Once cooked through, smooth out into the pan and tun off the heat.

Beat the eggs with the remaining and reserved milk and pour over the top of the meat – it should sit on the top. Garnish with the bay leaves and bake in the oven for 50 mins or until set and golden brown.

Serve with yellow rice with raisins. Had I actually read the recipe, I would have noticed that the recipe sent me off to page 72 to the ‘yellow rice with raisins’ recipe. I obviously didn’t follow this and simply cooked white basmati with tumeric. Page 72 offers a much nicer sounding side dish!

The meal was absolutely amazeballs! I’ve been enjoying the leftovers for days.

In other news:

• We have had LOD’s and EEROD’s parent’s evenings this week. Both children are apparently perfect. What kind of voodoo magic do teachers have that get my kids to help and tidy and stuff?
• I have no other ‘other news’. Crap 2020 is dull.