Chakalaka
South Africa's spiced relish: onions, peppers, carrots and chillies fried hot with curry powder, sweetened with baked beans and tomato.
Overview
Onion is softened in oil; garlic, ginger and curry powder bloom. Carrots cook briefly to tender-crisp. Peppers (red and green) and chillies join. Tomatoes simmer everything down. Tinned baked beans go in last with a splash of vinegar to balance. Eaten warm or at room temperature; tastes better the next day.
Ingredients
- 4 tablespoons vegetable oil
- 2 onions (large, chopped)
- 6 garlic cloves (crushed)
- 4 cm ginger (grated)
- 3 carrots (medium, coarsely grated)
- 2 red bell peppers (chopped)
- 1 green bell pepper (chopped)
- 2-3 long green chillies (sliced)
- 2 tablespoons mild Curry Powder
- 1 teaspoon ground turmeric
- 1 teaspoon paprika
- 1 teaspoon dried thyme
- 400 g tin chopped tomatoes
- 1 tablespoon tomato paste
- 400 g tin Baked Beans (in tomato sauce - the standard supermarket kind)
- 2 tablespoons cider vinegar
- 1 ½ teaspoons salt
- ½ teaspoon black pepper
- A small bunch flat-leaf parsley (or coriander, chopped)
Method
Stage 1 - Aromatics
- Heat the oil in a wide heavy pan over medium heat.
- Cook the onions 8 minutes until soft and golden.
- Stir in the garlic and ginger; cook 1 minute.
Stage 2 - Vegetables
- Add the grated carrots; cook 4-5 minutes until starting to soften.
- Add the bell peppers and green chillies; cook 4 minutes.
Stage 3 - Spice
- Stir in the curry powder, turmeric, paprika and thyme; cook 1 minute.
- Add the tomato paste; stir 1 minute.
Stage 4 - Tomatoes
- Pour in the tinned tomatoes; add the salt and pepper.
- Cook 12-15 minutes over medium-low heat until the mixture has reduced and the vegetables are tender but still hold shape.
Stage 5 - Baked beans and finish
- Stir in the baked beans (with their sauce) and the vinegar.
- Cook 3-4 minutes more, gently - don't break up the beans.
- Off the heat, stir in the parsley.
- Taste; adjust salt, vinegar and chilli.
Stage 6 - Serve
- Eat warm, at room temperature, or cold from the fridge.
- Pile alongside bobotie, braai meats, boerewors, or pap. Or spread on toast.
Notes
- Baked beans are essential: This trips up first-time cooks. Yes, supermarket tinned baked beans in tomato sauce. They give chakalaka its characteristic texture and slight sweetness. Don't substitute fancy beans.
- Make-ahead is better: Chakalaka tastes deeper after a night in the fridge. Make a day ahead if you can.
- Chilli amount: Two chillies is moderate. Add a third for a properly Joburg version; reduce for a Cape Town gentler one.
Storage
- Keeps 5 days refrigerated; flavour deepens.
- Freezes 3 months.
Recipes mentioned here
Baked Beans
Navy beans soak overnight. Bacon and onion render in a wide pot; cooked beans go in with a sauce of molasses, tomato puree, brown sugar, mustard, cider vinegar and beef stock. Bake covered at 150°C for 3 hours, uncovering for the last 30 minutes so the sauce reduces and sets sticky. The beans hold shape but the sauce thickens to glaze them.
Bobotie
Bread is soaked in milk; mince is browned with onions; curry powder, turmeric and Cape Malay spices bloom. Apricot jam, mango chutney, vinegar and lemon balance the spice with sweet-sour notes. Raisins, toasted almonds and the soaked bread are folded through. The mixture is pressed into a baking dish; eggs are whisked with the leftover milk and poured over; bay leaves are stuck into the surface; the lot is baked until the topping is just-set with a faint wobble.
Boerewors
Boerewors, literally "farmer's sausage" in Afrikaans, is the national sausage of South Africa and the obligatory centrepiece of any braai. South African law actually defines it: minimum 90 per cent meat (beef the dominant component, often with pork or lamb for fat), no more than 30 per cent fat overall, no offal, and a defined spice profile led by toasted ground coriander. That coriander is the signature; combined with clove, nutmeg, allspice and black pepper, and brought together with a splash of malt or brown vinegar, it produces a flavour quite unlike any European sausage. The sausage is always coiled rather than linked, and grilled in a single long spiral that can be turned in one piece with a pair of long forks. Difficulty for the home cook is very low if you can buy ready-made boerewors from a South African butcher, deli or online supplier, which is the practical route for most. Making it from scratch needs a meat grinder and sausage stuffer but the spicing is straightforward. Cooking is the part everyone gets wrong: boerewors is a coarse-ground sausage with chunks of fat in the meat, and it cooks at medium heat, never high. Too hot and the casing splits, fat renders out and the sausage shrivels; just right and it stays plump, juicy, with a deep mahogany crust. The classic accompaniments are pap (a stiff white maize porridge), tomato-and-onion relish (sous), or stuffed into a fresh bread roll with tomato chutney and crispy fried onions as a boerie roll.
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