World Aids Day and Bobotie

Today is World Aids Day. Sadly India has surpassed sub-Saharan Africa in the number of newly infected individuals. The good news is that two Indian companies have agreed to produce AIDS drugs at a fraction of the current price as a result of several large foundations guaranteeing sales at a profitable level (one of these is the Clinton Foundation if all of you red states can believe it). You can help when you are shopping for holiday gifts. Just go (red).

So it's fitting that I post the recipe for bobotie today given that it is a S. African recipe heavily influenced by south Asian cultures. The recipe comes from "Kook en geniet" by S.J.S. de Villiers. It is published in English but only in S. Africa and so is very hard to come by in the U.S.

What you need:

2 onions

cooking oil or butter (to fry above onions)

1kg minced meat (lamb or beef -I have never been served lamb just FYI, 2lbs works fine)

1 slice bread

1 cup milk

2 eggs

1 tablespoon medium curry powder (S. African curry powders are missing something found in U.S. versions so it will taste a bit different if you don't have a store nearby that imports the stuff)

1.5 tablespoons sugar

2 teaspoons salt

1/2 teaspoon pepper

1/2 tablespoon turmeric

2 tablespoons vinegar or the juice of one large lemon

6 almonds, quartered

1/2 cup seedless raisins

4 lemon or bay leaves or zest of one lemon (say from the one you are about to juice)

3 tablespoons chutney

What to do:

1. Preheat the oven to 350F

2. Slice the onions thinly and fry lightly in the cooking oil (note, if you're cooking the meat now you can probably just cook them together and leave out the extra oil), if uncooked meat is used, fry with the onions until slightly browned

3. Soak the bread in the milk, squeeze out the milk and mash the now wet bread

4. Mix all ingredients (except 1/2 cup of the squeezed out milk, 1 egg and the leaves or zest)

5. Spoon the mixture into a greased oven dish, roll up the leaves and insert them in an upright position in the meat mixture (otherwise you'll have to fish them out later, this way you can easily pull them out once it's cooked)

6. Bake for 1 hour if uncooked meat is used and for 45 minutes if cooked meat is used (for those wondering, this is a traditional way to use up left-over meat -yes, this is probably the only culture on the planet to have 2lbs of "left-over" cooked meat sitting around, but there you have it)

7. Beat the remaining egg with the reserved milk and pour over the meat 30 minutes before the end of the cooking time.

8. Serve with rice and chutney (traditionally Mrs. Ball's)

Okay, now for the reality check. I rarely measure any of these ingredients because it is VERY difficult to screw this dish up (unless your oven doesn't have any sort of temperature control in which case this could result in a very embarrassing moment for you and your in-laws, yes I've been there). Feel free to substitute apricot jam for the chutney in the actual dish (do not use it as a condiment though!), leave out the sugar, salt, and/or pepper), substitute other dried berries for the raisins (I used cranberries this time and it worked nicely) and substitute other nuts for the almonds (I used sliced almonds as you can tell from the photo below). As I wrote in an earlier post, there are as many recipes for bobotie as there are for meatloaf so it's a fun dish to experiment with. I even have versions that are vegetarian using steamed dried fruit instead of meat. The end result should look something like this:

When you dish it up, it looks like soggy ground meat with stuff in it but it tastes great and it's super easy. Enjoy.