Cradock - Ollie has become a regular visitor to Schreiner’s, notably at his (or her) dinner time.
We have not turned him (or her) upside down as he is a touch feral and likely to rip our hands to shreds, but when he is hungry, boy can he be cute. Let’s just presume that Ollie is a boy cat.
It’s hard to resist the little guy. He’s a street dude with a sweet nature and a tiny, girly miao (okay, he may well be a she), and after his supper he jumps on to my lap and settles down as if we’ve had him since he was a kitten. He hangs out in Market Street, begging in a way that would put a street pro to shame.
But no way would Sean and Chai, back home, welcome him into the household they rule with two tails firmly in the air. Sean guards his turf with the fierce, fixed gaze of a William Wallace daring the Sassenach hordes to take him on. Chai has a more eastern regard for the feline enemy, happy to let his Scots cousin take the dominant role. Chai can thus be found under a duvet when the enemy is near. To add a new, adult cat to this fray could only bring heartache and strands of fur on the floor.
This would all be fine had we not made a decision recently to make a key change to our business. Olive Schreiner – after whom Ollie is named – brought us to Cradock, and now we’re taking her home. A journey that began about 25 years ago when we visited the Eastern Cape town knowing nothing about it, to discover that there was a Schreiner museum in a house she had once lived in, eventually led to us making our home here and to me writing the plays I now write, about Schreiner and others of her era.
Now that journey sees us shifting our food business from premises in Market Street, among the lovely period Tuishuise, to much larger premises at our home, served by a very much larger kitchen.
Olive herself, in a trio of portraits I had framed in Cape Town, is readying to be ferried in a bakkie to be rehung in the new space, where we are offering lunches and dinners by arrangement, themed dinners, as well as flitting off on occasion to the various food markets in the region to set up a stall and serve hot food for the passing punters.
The thought of leaving Ollie behind brings out a guilt in me and this is scarcely assuaged by the knowledge that a friend took him home a few months ago and tried to domesticate him. He reminds me of the quiet, grey spirit of his writer namesake, treading the street, mulling over plot lines and dialogue before dashing inside to write again.
There will be many more olives than the great writer going home with us. I hauled from the Western Cape a giant green barrel of kalamatas in brine, and have barely gone through half of them for my marinated olives and olive tapenade. They have en extraordinary shelf life in that brine and are good for future batches of tapenade to take to food markets in Bedford, Bathurst and, for all we know, Fort Beaufort, places that are the new frontier of our lives. The olives became a motif for us, a signature taste of what we like to cook and the flavours we try to achieve.
Outside behind the bistro in Market Street, a trio of giant lemon trees hang heavy with bright yellow fruit. We’re told we’re welcome to help ourselves as the winter draws on, and the juice and finely grated zest to go into the marinade for the kalamata olives, a marriage of the way we’ve been doing things since we arrived here and the way forward.
With the future in mind, I’ve come up with a recipe for the next batch of kalamatas:
Kalamata olives in a spiced lemon marinade
1 scant Tbs ground cumin
3 star anise
4 cloves
2 cups kalamata olives cured in brine
3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 x 2cm piece peeled very fresh ginger, very finely chopped
3 bay leaves
2 red chillies, finely chopped
2 lemon leaves, shredded
3 Tbs finely grated lemon zest
3 or 4 mint sprigs, the leaves picked and finely chopped
1 tsp salt
1 scant Tbs black peppercorns, cracked
Toast the ground cumin, star anise and cloves in a lightly heated frying pan to begin to release their flavours, but do not allow it to smoke. Mix all ingredients together, drain the olives and stir into the marinade to coat thoroughly. Spoon into sterilised jars and refrigerate. I find they keep for several weeks.
Weekend Argus