A melting pot | Cape Town Partnership Mogamat “Kammie” Kamedien Heritage activist and researcher on South African slave history “Dishes like bobotie have become a world on a plate. They allow us to explore our culinary connections and reflect on Cape Town’s position as a cross-cultural bridge between the Atlantic and Indian oceans, apart from also being the gateway into Africa. The Batavian cultural food legacy at the Cape of Good Hope is sometimes forgotten or overlooked, but Cape Town was an outpost of the VOC with its administrative heart in the Dutch East Indies or contemporary Jakarta, Indonesia. From a Cape Muslim cultural perspective, the Indonesian roots of dishes like bobotie or boeboer are recognised, without discounting the fusion and creolisation processes that demonstrate the finesse of female slave cooks in adapting recipes to local ingredients. From the East African coastal belt of Mozambique and Madagascar, we also get the culinary and linguistic roots for ‘bredie’, all contributing to over 300 years of evolution of the cross-cultural continuum of a shared creole cauldron in the Cape kitchen space. “The idea of South African cuisine is closely connected to our national identity as citizens in the post-1994 South Africa. We’re still facing the challenges of true social cohesion and a common South African culinary citizenship because of the residual presence of national cultural group formations. “And while a shared identity, like our rainbow colours, is still emerging on our national plate, working-class families have already commenced with the assimilation process of adopting each other’s celebratory dishes. Cape Malay or Indian cookery books, for example, are popular in South African households, regardless of race, religion or creed.” What do you regard as authentic South African food? Bunny chow, or bobotie, boerewors or waterblommetjiebredie? capetownpartnership.co.za › Featured Oct 24, 2013 - A table of authentic Cape Town food. ... Slaves, merchants, traveller and settlers would also have brought ... Mogamat “Kammie” Kamedien. capetownpartnership.co.za/a-melting-pot/
Posted on: Mon, 02 Dec 2013 16:17:25 +0000
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