When I arrived in South Africa way back in 2000, I took it upon myself to learn about the cuisine of my newly adopted home, so of course I set about interrogating my new-found friends. I would ask, “What is South African food?” For the most part people would immediately say, “A braai!”. Okay, but that’s a barbeque, not really a cuisine. Lets try this again, “What do you braai that makes it South African?”. “Wors!” would come the answer. Okay, that’s a sausage, again not really a stand-alone cuisine. Let’s try a different tack, “When you’re not braaing sausages, what else do you like to eat?”. “Sushi!”.

For a long while I struggled to get a real sense of South Africa’s culinary identity. Given its past struggles, surely this disparately diverse nation found some sort of cultural common ground through its food? Then it hit me, ask the one person whose tastes were uncluttered by the latest food fads, whose tastes stilled lingered in the 80s; before the outside world confused the collective South African palette. Much to my dismay, I turned to my flavour’phobic partner for insight into my South African food conundrum. And so I asked, “What is South African food to you?”. The response was almost instant, “A braai…but without any of that yucky basting sauce”. Okay, not a good start but I wasn’t going to stumble at the first hurdle. Time for a different angle. “What did you like to eat when you were a child?”. “Oooh, my Aunt in Milnerton made the most delicious tomato bredie, she put lots of sugar in it”. Finally I was getting somewhere, but he wasn’t finished, “Tomato bredie with rice. Not your funny foreign rice, normal Tastic rice”. Okay thanks for that, now shut up about tomato bredie. “What else did you like to eat?”, I ventured. “Sweet potato, glazed sweet potato. With tomato bredie and rice!”. Anything else? “Oh, and bobotie…and frikkadels, with glazed sweet potato…and pumpkin fritters with cinnamon sugar! And there’s melktert and malva pudding, hmm malva pudding”. Okay, I knew he had a sweet tooth, but at this point I was amazed he had any teeth left! Deciding that I had better wrap this up I asked, “Do most South Africans like these dishes too?”. “I guess so, everyone loves malva pudding, especially with cold custard!”. Cold custard?!? I had delved enough for one day.

Armed with my new found in-sight, I set about searching out these exotic sounding dishes but they proved elusive, forgotten in amongst the pseudo-Mediterranean fare and generic offerings that cluttered the local menus of the time. Sure, bobotie was relatively commonplace, as was melktert and malva pudding, but these felt like culinary tokenism, a lazy nod to the flavours of the past. Undeterred, I took it upon myself to learn to cook the dishes that were so dear to my partner’s heart, but I gave up trying to answer the question of what South African food was. A country’s food culture is something that must be born from the current tastes of its people, it is not something that can be defined by the antiquated tastes of a passing generation. In the past when I had visitors from overseas they usually ask me to cook them an authentic South African meal which typically resulted in the obligatory bobotie and malva pudding. Afterwards my friends inevitable ask the question, “So this is South African food, what else is there?”. Defeated, my stock answer had become, “They like to braai”.

However, as the years rolled by and my glimpses into the South African psyche expanded, I discovered that these elusive dishes had been there all along, but I had been looking in the wrong places. The food I had been searching for wasn’t the sort you’d order at a restaurant, it was food that was made for you by the people who loved you the most, your family – it was huiskos. I had wrongly assumed that South Africans would want to eat the same food they loved, the food that they would feed their families, when they went out to restaurants to eat but they don’t. I asked a friend once about this South African culinary bi-polarism and her response was simple, “Hell, why would I want to eat my food when I can go out and order sushi!”. Why, indeed. After that, I stopped looking for local cuisine on the menus of fancy restaurants because real South African food can only be found where is belongs, at home…or on a braai.  

If you would like to view my South African recipes, please follow this link: https://themuddledpantry.wordpress.com/category/south-african/

At first glance you’d be forgiven for thinking Vietnam is a country powered by phở. Phở is simply everywhere, from Hanoi in the North to the Mekong Delta in the South, phở is king.

When we decided to visit Vietnam in 2008 I was very excited about finally getting to sample its legendary cuisine first-hand. Vietnamese food was very much in vogue at the time, so my expectations were high. I had, of course, heard of phở but not being a great fan of clear soupy noodles, it wasn’t high on my list of things to try. It wasn’t until I arrived in Hồ Chí Minh City that I realized that phở was such an integral part of Vietnam’s food culture that I just had to try it. As with most countries in Asia, I figured the best food would be found in and around the local markets, so off I headed to lose my phở’ginity.

Well, the first thing I learnt about beef phở (Phở Bò) was that there are differing grades of the dish when ordering: there’s what I would term “classy phở” with thinly sliced raw fillet heaped on top and then ladled over with scorching broth to instantly poach the beef. Then there’s “poor man’s phở” which is topped with the shredded meat from the stewed beef and finally there’s my personal favourite, the “I want it all! phở”, which is a combination of the two.

The other thing I learnt about phở is that it isn’t pronounced like you’d think it would be – the ở is silent resulting in soft phonetic “frrr”. Locals seem to find particular mirth in watching tourists grapple with the simple act of ordering; you would say, “One bowl of beef frrrr, please”. And nothing. Their eyes would blink, mine would roll. A few seconds would pass and the phở vendor would flash their resplendent betel-nut smile and invariably say, “Phở? You want phở?”. Yes damn it, I want phở! Why else would I be sitting at your damn frrrr stall! Eating local food locally, isn’t always fun.

Anyway I digress. Back to the noodles. Phở wasn’t what I expected. Almost offensively fragrant, the broth was a deluge of flavours, contrasted by the silky ribbons of wide rice noodles. Adding to the heady mix, you have the zesty fresh herbs and zing of lime and then the bite of the chilli – it was a lot to process in a single bowl of noodles. I ate my noodles, paid my inflated tourist price and left feeling a little befuddled. Did I like it? I just didn’t know.

Much to my surprise, the next morning I woke up with just one thing on my mind, phở. I can only assume that during the night, my taste buds made sense of the bludgeoning they’d received. I woke up, hooked. I didn’t have to go far before finding my next phở fix. I ordered, I slurped, I sweated, I scoffed and before I knew it, I had the bowl to my mouth, gulping down the last of the fragrant beefy broth. I eventually emerged from the depths of the bowl to my partner (who had since returned from McDonalds) watching me. Bemused, he asked “I’m guessing it was good, then?” but he already knew the answer. Knowing all too well the warning signs of yet another of my food obsessions, he knew this was just the beginning.

By the end of our time in Vietnam, I had eaten my way from the South, all the way to the North. Some of it was good, occasionally it was excellent, but I found the best Vietnamese food inaccessible to your average tourist. Glimpsed in back alleys and ferociously protected by guarded vendors; this is where the really good food hides, all the rest felt like tourist fodder. Access to really good Vietnamese food takes time, certainly more time than a two week holiday; the good stuff is there, you just need to know where to find it, how to pronounce it and be brave enough to order it. And that’s what I loved about phở, it was everywhere, it was for everyone. As I slurped my noodles at one of the many phở chain restaurants, shoulder to shoulder with neatly dressed teenagers with their cellphones in one hand, chopsticks in the other and their flimsy motorcycle helmets perched on their knees; I felt accepted. Here I was just another person eating his phở.

If you are interested in making beef phở noodles at home, please follow this link to my Recipe Posts http://wp.me/p4JqRl-4h