"Would you like to make bobotie?" "What did you call it?" "Bo-bo-tee," he pronounced slowly. "Sounds good. What is it?" "South African Sweet Curry." "Oh, it does sound good. Sure." A friend and I had been planning to cook together for some time and it was finally going to happen. His suggestion was to make South African bobotie and I agreed because I love to try new food. So we had a plan!

Earlier on the day, I received a few texts along the lines of "Do you have any...?" as he rounded up ingredients to make this exotic dish. Well, it was exotic for me and more like comfort food for him because he's originally from there.

That night, he arrived at the appointed hour carrying a bag of groceries. While I unpacked them and opened the wine, he told me about bobotie, pronounced bwo-bwo-tee, bwo-bwoo-tee, or bo-boor-tee depending on who is saying it.

I started chopping while he measured the spices and he began speaking.

What is Bobotie?

As the story goes, bobotie is a very old dish from South Africa. When early settlers were trekking through the transvaal, an area of dry scrub brush north of the Vaal River, they would hunt game and make bobotie with it using hollowed out termite towers for their ovens. This is a small termite mound.

The taste of African game is strong, stronger than North American game, so the spices and chutney in the dish were designed to hide some of that strong flavor. Nowadays, that's not so much of a problem since the dish is usually made with ground beef or lamb.

It is believed that the dish came with the Malays who migrated from the Malay Peninsula, eastern Sumatra and Borneo area to Cape Malay, South Africa. It's also possible that it arrived indirectly from there through the Dutch. At the time, both areas were Dutch colonies. There doesn't seem to be agreement on how the name was derived.

Bobotie recipes seem to be as diverse as its pronunciation. My friend called it a sweet curry but it's also described as a meatloaf casserole and a meat pie. Historically, the settlers would have used all dried fruit while on a trek but, like all people everywhere, you use what you have. We used fresh apple and raisins, which you can see above, and the tartness of the apples was good. What all bobotie recipes seem to agree on is that it's made with ground meat and it is baked with an egg custard on the top.

Bobotie Recipe

Ingredients:

• 2.2 lbs (1 kg) lean ground beef
• 1 large onion, chopped
• 5 tablespoons curry powder, mild
• 4 tablespoons tumeric
• 4 bay leaves
• 1/2 cup red wine vinegar
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 tablespoon salt
• 1 cup water
• 1/2 cup beef stock
• 1/2 cup fruit chutney (we used Major Grey mango chutney)
• 1/4 cup seedless raisins
• 1 granny smith apple, chopped
• 1 cup white breadcrumbs
• 3 large eggs
• 1-1/4 cups milk
• 1/2 cup oil, your preference

1. Preheat oven to 350° F (180 C).
2. Sautee onion in heated oil until translucent.
3. Add the ground beef (called mince) and bay leaves and stir-fry until brown. (You may remove the bay leaves.)
4. Mix curry powder, tumeric, sugar, salt, vinegar, water and beef stock. Add to the mince and bring to a boil.
5. Add breadcrumbs, apple, chutney and raisins, stirring constantly until cooked, approximately 5 minutes.
6. Beat eggs and milk together with a fork or whisk.
7. Add half of the egg/milk custard to the mince mix and stir through.
8. Spoon the mince mix into a buttered ovenproof dish and smooth the top.
9. Pour the remaining egg/milk custard over the top of the mince mix and bake in the oven until the custard has set and is golden brown, approximately 30 minutes.
10. Serve with yellow rice and chutney.

Serves 6

Options:

Other common ingredients are dried apricots and slivered almonds. You can use a different chutney. 4 bay leaves are often used to garnish the top.

We chose not to serve it with the yellow rice, which is regular rice with tumeric, and served it with salad. And it was delicious and very different than an Indian curry, more firm and almost sliceable.

References

Bobotie - wikipedia

Images

The termite mound is from Pixabay. All other photos are from the iPad of @kansuze.

Enjoy!
@kansuze