Roger's View of the World, Love and Seafood Gumbo!
Seize the Day! Put no trust in the morrow! — Horace
“Hoender Pastei” is South Africa’s Dutch-Malay’s version on the humble “Chicken Pot Pie!” Served along with Saffron rice and Mrs. Ball’s Chutney…. aaaah Paradise!
Since this was one of Laura’s family favorite dishes, we decided to incorporate some of the wonderful ideas Karen brought back from South Africa! Here’s our latest recipe for a fun dish! enjoy!
Roger Freberg
In South Africa, the humble Chicken Pot Pie has a Cape Dutch-Malay heritage… but variations are everywhere. Most of the recipes are wonderful … although … many eliminate the potato … which I cannot.
South Africans seem to spend great attention in the preparation their foods…. and in particular, their meats … which I admire. In that spirit, in preparation for the Chicken Pot Pie ‘assembly’, I smoked and barbecued my chicken, ham and bacon over some of my favorite woody flavors: Southern hickory, California red oak and Texas mesquite!
Tomorrow, I put it all together for our anniversary.
Stay tuned… Recipe to follow. Jenny Craig, forgive me.
Roger Freberg
Now does this really look like “DIET” food?
It really really doesn’t look like diet food when I add a large serving of cooked French Beans, mushrooms, carrots, potatoes, pearl onions all dowsed with “Susie Q” brand seasoning!
Thanks to “Mama Laura” we are experiencing some of the ‘Meals-on-our-own” from the Jenny Craig Cookbook … wonderful.
We do plan ‘something special’ for our 35th Wedding anniversary on Wednesday… one of Laura’s family favorites of her youth… a Chicken Pot Pie but with a “South African Dutch-Malay” flavor. It’s called ‘Hoender Pastei’ down there… but it looks delicious. Here’s a sneak peek…
It takes a lot to make a Hoender Pastei!
Roger Freberg
Laura’s baking her wonderful Amarula Carrot Cake, too!
Well… I have dropped 87 pounds on Jenny Craig! I feel great and I am into size 32 jeans which is very cool.
However, I have come to realize that I still want and NEED great food! Jenny’s food is wonderful… but I do think about food a lot anyway, so this gives me a chance to plan something special now and again. (Our 35th wedding anniversary is on the 12th of September)
I am particularly fond of the Cape Town favorite “Bobotie”. I bake it often. I am also researching a few other South African and Afrikaner dishes that have caught my attention, like “Smoorvis” (smoked fish and rice) and “Hoender Pastei” (chicken pie).
We are also looking at preparing a ‘Bobotie hamburger”– which will require tweaking the recipe a bit — topped with baked egg, onions and Mrs. Balls Chutney Sauce which sounds very special. It’s in the lab for further study!
Roger Freberg
Here’s our “Bobotie” recipe that contains a lot of traditional flavors (Leipoldt) as well as many of the current wonderful variations out there.
I have thoroughly enjoyed baking up some ‘Bobotie” since Karen turned me on to it!
One might describe the dish as a ‘casserole’… but that says more about the container than what goes inside it. My adventure to discover the history of Bobotie, where it came from, who helped shape and develop this interesting dish was quite a journey of exploration. I also had the opportunity to investigate what is ‘curry’ and discover how that helped ‘simplify’ the recipe but how it also changed it.
It is clear that the Dutch brought this initially popular ‘Italian’ recipe to Southern African in the 17 th century… or at least that’s the story. From here, it is clear that the British and the Cape Malay’s had a distinct influence on it’s evolution. Today, there are a wide variation in Bobotie recipes… but they are more similar than different. The recipe substituting Yogurt for the 1 cup milk was one of the more interesting to me.
If you search Bobotie, you will find ‘modern’ recipes from all over the world, emphasizing their own personal seasoning preferences. However, most of the recipes I found were British, German, South African and –of course– Dutch sites.
So, I robbed from everyone without regard to expense… and here’s my recipe… sweet and yummy.
Fortunately, it’s very good on my ‘healthy food’ meter and great when you have folks hanging around to test things out!
Roger Freberg