Cape Town - When Cape Town was a bustling seaport with great mailships steaming into the bay, tugs hooting and goods trains chugging into the docks empty and leaving again fully laden, there were scribes, ribald stories and bold people to tell them.
Louis Leipoldt, the writer and gourmand, was at the turn of the previous century a young reporter who did what intrepid war correspondents do today for CNN and al-Jazeera.
Leipoldt wrote stories about what was happening at the Cape during the Anglo-Boer War years of 1899 to 1902 for newspapers in Europe and America, and he had no help from the Cape colonial government of the day.
Leipoldt had to report from the shadows so that word of the fate of the Cape Boer rebels could get out to the world.
Ultimately came martial law, making his task yet harder, but he persisted despite draconian suppression of the British government at the Cape.
Sound familiar?
This is only one small example of the role of the reporter and the team of people back at the newspapers’ premises who backed the reporter by getting the stories into print at the Cape of Good Hope, way back in those colonial days and all the way to the present, via world calamities such as two world wars and our own struggle years.
During those Boer War years, several editors were incarcerated in Pollsmoor for daring to report the truth.
Again, this is familiar to any of us who lived through our more recent struggle.
Anyone who does not appreciate the role of the reporter or sees it as something to be disregarded or discarded is plain wrong and history, always, will judge any such attitude.
Because the society unpoliced by the freedom of the reporter to hold a mirror up to it is a society that’s heading for a bruising.
I identify strongly with Leipoldt, both because of my years of experience as a reporter and as someone who shares his passion for food and cooking.
We have sadly lost many of the traditions of the colonial Cape kitchen that Leipoldt loved so much. We have them in recipe books, sure. They’re archived. But by and large they’re regarded as museum pieces, rather than as dishes we celebrate in our restaurants and for that matter in our homes.
Imagine going to Britain and not finding roast beef and Yorkshire pudding on any menus, or to France and there being no boeuf Bourguignon in sight.
Yet visitors to the Cape would be hard-pressed to find a proper colonial chicken pie, the one made with sago and mace, and with lemon juice and white wine.
I’d like to see the Margot Janses and Peter Tempelhoffs do a cunning variation on the old Cape chicken pie, but keeping its essential elements as listed above. On top of that flavour base, I know that either of them, and many other chefs, could come up with contemporary versions of this lovely old classic.
Cape Colony chicken pie
4 large chicken breasts
2 medium onions
3 or 4 blades of mace
6 pimentos (allspice)
12 peppercorns
3 cloves
2 Tbs sago, soaked in cold water until soft
150ml white wine
1 egg yolk, beaten
Salt to taste
Juice of 1 lemon
2 hardboiled eggs sliced
Flaky pastry:
225g plain flour
pinch salt
80g lard or white margarine
80g butter
Cold water
For the flaky pastry, mix the flour and salt (no need to sift) and rub in 40g of lard, using your fingers. Add a little cold water and mix, adding a little more only until it becomes a sloppy but intact dough.
Mix 40g each of lard and butter together. Roll out the dough until it’s about 25cm long and 12cm wide. Dot two thirds of the dough with one third of the mix of lard and butter.
Fold the fat-free end over by a third, then fold the other end over. Refrigerate for 10 minutes. Repeat this process twice more, ending with 10 minutes in the fridge. Remove and roll out once more, but this time fold without adding more fat. Chill for half an hour. You’re ready to roll.
Soak the sago in cold water to soften. Saute the onions in butter with the spices. Add the chicken, cut into small pieces, and cook gently until tender. Remove any skin, bones and sinew from the chicken if you have used chicken on the bone. Stir the sago into the pot and simmer until it is translucent. Add the white wine and lemon juice and then stir in the beaten egg. Stir for the sauce to thicken and cool.
Line a pie tin or individual large muffin pans with flaky pastry, prick holes in the base, and spoon in the chicken filling. Eggwash the edge of the pastry and cover with pastry, pressing down round the edges.
Brush the top with milk or beaten egg, make a hole in the centre with a small knife, and bake in a 200ºC oven for 20 minutes or until crisp and golden on top.
Sunday Argus