Rolled Shoulder of Venison, from Sydda Essop's book 'Karoo Kitchen'

I was sent a copy of this book because I'll be part of a panel discussion with the book's author, Sydda Essop, at the Franschhoek Literary Festival on Friday 17th May (along with Hilary Biller of the Sunday Times, and chaired by Abigail Donnelly).

Elsa Olivier's Rolled Shoulder of Venison. Photograph by © Craig Fraser, courtesy of Quivertree Publications.  

I have never met Sydda Essop, but I'm very much looking forward to shaking her  vigorously by the  hand; possibly flinging myself into her arms with cries of joy and appreciation. This is a remarkable book, and in my opinion one of the best to come out of South Africa for decades. I've no doubt it will become one of the classics of South African cookery writing, not least because it so skilfully records the complexities of this country's culinary heritage.

This is so much more than a cookbook: it's a piece of social history; a rich and nuanced weaving that has as its weft the resonant stories of South African families, and its warp the workaday recipes - several of them previously unrecorded in print, to my knowledge -  passed down through many generations.

Image courtesy of Quivertree Publications.

Linking these stories of hardship, deprivation, resilience, courage and triumph is the harsh and inexpressibly beautiful Karoo landscape. Essop could lazily have based her book on the simple farm fare of the Afrikaner land-owners and their workers, but she's cleverly cast her net much wider than that to include a fascinating assortment of people who've washed up in Noupoort or Beaufort West or Loxton or Hopetown for one reason or another, each one of them with a host of traditional recipes tucked into their knapsacks.

Their tales of derring-do and heartbreak are fascinating, sure, but it's the way the lives of ordinary people are expressed in recipes that really made me love this book.

You will find neither a speck of sumac nor a flurry of foam in this book. There is no big deal made about sourcing organic produce or foraging from the veld, because this is the way people have sustained themselves for generations. The recipes are utterly without pretension, and feel no shame in including those store-cupboard packets and powders that have to be relied upon when you live hundreds of kilometres from the nearest supermarket.

The venison recipe below, for example, by Elsa Olivier of Victoria West, unapologetically features a beef stock cube, a packet of oxtail soup powder and a seasoning of Aromat - ingredients much loved by South African cooks, although you'd be hard-pressed to find a food writer who'd admit ever to eating such packetstuff.

From Francina Nolsapho Blow of Beaufort West, we have a recipe for dombeling (dumplings) cooked, like ujeqe (steam bread), in a plastic supermarket bag submerged in water. Horiya Mohamed arrived in the same town in 1997 as a young bride fleeing the civil war in Somalia; she's contributed four recipes, including anjera (traditional pancakes) and shaah, a spiced Somalian tea.

A pellucid bowl of Chicken Soup with Kneidlach is a recipe from the collection of Dr Debbie Anstey of Courlandskloof, the granddaughter of Lithuanian and Polish Jews. Her father-in-law Isaac Antezorsky and his brother arrived in Biesiespoort in 1920 to set up as traders, eventually owning 100 000 hectares of farmland. We have slow-roasted Greek lamb from Elpida Iakovidis, and Baked Porcupine Backbone from Lena Oktober, both of Beautfort West, while Anna Vermeurlen of Victoria West contributes a heavenly dish of baked orange pudding, and another for pomegranate syrup.

I don't want to spoil the book for you by listing each one of its recipes (did I mention the venison pie, quince atjar and Prize-Winning Springbok Tongues?) and I hope you derive as much pleasure as I did from discovering these treasures yourself.

The book has been beautifully photographed by Quivertree's Craig Fraser, and I particularly appreciate the honesty and simplicity of the food styling. Each of the dishes is lovingly laid out on a selection of old china and lace and embroidered linen, with no scatterings of microherbs or ghastly skidmarks of sauce.  There are many compelling historical photographs drawn from family archives, and at the back of the book a few pages of home remedies - one for chilblains, another for earache, plus Bettie Jaftha's treatments for a Baby Born with a Caul and Mothers Whose Afterbirth Will Not Come Out.

As I said, no ordinary cookbook.

Elsa Olivier's Rolled Shoulder of Venison

1 shoulder of venison, deboned
½ packet (125g) bacon
1 container (500ml) buttermilk
2 tbsp butter
2 onions, chopped
1 beef stock cube, dissolved in 1 cup water

For the sauce:

½ packet oxtail soup powder
2 tbsp dry white wine
salt and/or Aromat seasoning to taste
1 tsp black pepper
1 packet (250g) fruit-cake mix

Arrange the bacon strips to cover the inside of the shoulder,roll and secure with kitchen string. Marinate overnight in buttermilk and pat dry with a paper towel the next day.

Heat the butter in a heavy-based saucepan and fry the onions until golden brown. Remove, add more butter to the saucepan, if necessary, and brown the meat.

Add the beef stock and fried onions and simmer slowly for 2 hours until the meat is tender. Allow to cool slightly before carving the meat into slices.

To make the sauce, dissolve the oxtail soup powder in 2 cups of water and add the wine, salt and/or Aromat, pepper and fruit-cake mix. Simmer slowly until the sauce is thick and creamy. Layer the sliced meat and sauce, and bake at 180°C until golden brown. Serve hot.

Serves 2-4

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The cover of my Scrumptious new cook book!

I'm fizzing with excitement about my cook book, which will be published by Random House Struik at the beginning of July 2012. At last I can show you the cover.

Shooting the cover. On the left is Kirk, Michael's assistant. Plus an

 interested  (interested in the steak, that is)  onlooker, my basset

hound Madame Velvet.

What do you think of the cover? I couldn't be happier with it because it sums up the mood, style, tone and content of my book. What I really love is its simplicity and elegance, and for that I have to thank the book's designer and creative director Beverley Dodd, and Cape Town food photographer Michael Le Grange, both of whom worked closely with me to come up with this image.

(For the back blurb of the book, scroll down to the end of this blogpost.)

We considered many shots from the inside of the book for a cover, but none quite fitted the bill. We wanted the cover to look simple, sophisticated, modern and inviting, but it also needed to reflect the book's theme:  good, accomplished home cooking and polished entertaining. For weeks we mulled over a location, but it was Michael who spotted this natural stone wall outside the front entrance to my home, and I slapped myself on the forehead several times for not having thought of it earlier.

When I planned the styling of this image, I chose a round table because these are so convivial, and 'ghost' chairs because they're unobtrusive. The plain white linen and worn silver cutlery echo the simplicity of the food-styling inside the book. I also wanted an indigenous flower on the table to give the cover an African stamp, and we tried several blooms before settling on a single hot-pink protea.

It took a little longer to decide what to put on the plates, and in the end I was guided by one of my children: 'It's easy, Mom,' he said. 'Just put your favourite special-occasion dish on the cover.'  So I did just that, because fillet, mash and rocket is just what I'd make if you came round for lunch at my house.

Only one individual in my family didn't enjoy this shoot. Scroll down to find out who.

 Here's our little basset Akamaru, sorely aggrieved about the steak situation. (Photograph by Michael Le Grange.)

Back blurb of my cookbook:

Creating memorable feasts for family and friends is one of life's great pleasures: how better to celebrate life and love than to gather at a happy table laden with scrumptious home-cooked food? You do not need to be an expert cook to produce heart-warming dishes that sing with flavour - all that's required is passion, patience and smart preparation well in advance. 

Jane-Anne Hobbs has created over 90 original, triple-tested recipes designed to take the fuss out of home entertaining and bring smiles to the faces of the people you love. Whether you’re planning a relaxed get-together over a homely dish of soup, stew or salad, or a lavish spread with all the bells and whistles, you’ll find plenty of inspiring new ideas here, plus top tips for planning and preparing a meal to remember.

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