Get ready to braai

FOOD | Barbecue
Get ready to braai
Während die „Jungs“ bei der WM die Bälle ins Tor kicken, sollten Sie Ihren
Kugelgrill auf den Rasen rollen. Das machen die südafrikanischen Fußballfans auch.
CLAUDINE WEBER-HOF hat sich sagen lassen, was dort so auf den Rost kommt.
Spotlight: You live in Hout Bay, just outside Cape Town.
Does your location influence what you barbecue?
The king and queen of braai: Michael Snyman, chairman of
the South African Barbecue Association, with his wife,
cookbook author Lannice Snyman, at their home in Hout Bay
W
ho doesn’t love a barbecue? All over the world,
people gather round a hot grill, enjoying cool
drinks and preparing the food they’ve brought
to the party. Even in the late 1600s, the Dutch governors
of the Cape Colony — in what is now South Africa — are
known to have held barbecues, organizing spit-roasts for
the settlers. Much later, around 1830, Dutch pioneers
called Voortrekkers turned outdoor cooking into a cultural
statement related to settling
the land.
Over time, a special word
developed in the Afrikaans
language: braai, short for
braaivleis, is still used in South Africa to mean “barbecued
meat”. But braai (pronounced “bry”) has since lost its close
association with Afrikaner culture. General Motors even
used the word in a famous 1970s’ advertising jingle that
praised “braaivleis, rugby, sunny skies, and Chevrolet” as
truly South African.
ese days, says Michael Snyman, all South Africans
love a good braai. Spotlight spoke with the chairman of the
South African Barbecue Association about the art of
preparing food over a fire.
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Spotlight 6|10
pecially being in a little fishing village. I smoke just about
every type of fish you can get. I hot-smoke it very gently
for about half an hour, then eat it with a lovely pesto mayonnaise. It is delicious and so healthy.
Spotlight: When you say “hot-smoke”, does that mean
you have a special gadget for smoking fish?
Snyman: Yes. In fact, I’ve built myself a couple of different types of smokers. e one I use a lot is an old stainless-steel ice-making machine. I cut holes into it, put doors
on to it and cut a hole in the bottom for a little gas burner.
at’s what I use for smoking. I can smoke up to 10 or 12
fillets at a time.
I fillet the fish, salt it lightly and wait for half an hour.
en I rinse the salt off and let the fish dry for half an hour.
I smoke it with the skin side down on the rack for 25 minutes at 60 °C. en it’s very tender and delicious.
Spotlight: And your favourite “classic” barbecue dish?
Snyman: I love doing a boned shoulder of pork. I put the
pork into a net bag to keep it together, and do that on a
Weber grill. I put the pork on a rotisserie for about an
hour and 20 minutes. e nice thing is that you can put
the lid on the grill, and if you have the right amount of
coal or briquettes in it, you don’t even have to lift the lid
once, and it’s perfect every time.
Spotlight: Is there a rotisserie function in the grill?
Snyman: Yes, you can get
an attachment for the normal Weber dome grill. You
take the lid off, and this attachment sits on the grill
and extends it up by another 20 centimetres. You
can fit the lid back on top of it. It has a rotisserie bar with
a little battery motor that turns the meat at the perfect
speed so the juices keep running around the meat — selfbasting it instead of pouring off.
Spotlight: Where do you source your food for barbecues?
Snyman: e supermarkets here are not that fantastic, but
we’ve got some small boutique butchers around the Cape.
We also have a large pork butcher just outside Cape Town
who raises free-range pigs. We get some really good meat
from them.
Fotos: Neil Corder (5); iStockphoto (3)
Michael Snyman: We get a huge amount of fish here, es-
Spotlight: Which spices do you use to flavour the meat?
Snyman: My wife is a cookbook writer. She and my
daughter, who is a chef, are always making some new mix
of spices. ey make a masala mix of their own that is really nice. We love doing a beef fillet in that.
You roll the whole fillet in olive oil with these
masala spices and then barbecue it on a very hot
fire. You keep turning the meat so that it gets a
Snyman: We do butternut squash quite a lot. I cut it in
half and fill it with fried onions and some tomato, some
spices and quite a bit of butter. en I close the two halves
together, wrap the squash in foil and bake it on the fire. I
like to put bacon in it, too — but I like meat! Tamsin, my
daughter, likes to do eggplant, which goes golden brown.
Spotlight: Is there a black African braai dish you could
recommend?
The heat is on: fish, vegetables or meat — everything tastes good when it’s grilled South African-style
golden crust and it’s absolutely soft and tender inside. You
leave it in foil for 15 minutes afterwards and then slice it
thinly. It comes out medium rare.
Spotlight: Do you have any side-dish specialities?
Snyman: I’ll tell you a secret of mine: we get figs off the
tree — not ripe, but semi-ripe, just as they’re getting soft
— and peel them, wrap them in bacon and then braai
them on the fire. You roll them gently on the fire and
brown them all the way around until the bacon is done.
Spotlight: What do you offer guests who are vegetarians?
attachment [E(tÄtSmEnt]
boned [(bEUnd]
boutique [bu:(ti:k]
butternut squash
[)bVtEnVt (skwQS]
chef [Sef]
cornmeal [(kO:nmi:&l]
crust [krVst]
dome [(dEUm]
eggplant [(egplA:nt] S. Afr., US
fig [fIg]
fit [fIt]
foil [fOI&l]
free-range [)fri: (reIndZ]
gadget [(gÄdZIt]
hold [hEUld]
lid [lId]
masala [mE(sA:lE]
Zubehörteil
entbeint
gehoben, FeinkostMoschuskürbis
Koch, Köchin
Maismehl, -grieß
Kruste
Kuppel(deckel)
Aubergine
Feige
aufsetzen
(Alu)Folie
FreilandGerät, Einrichtung
abhalten; hier: machen
Deckel
indische Gewürzmischung
Snyman: Yes, that would be pap (we pronounce it “pup”),
which is cornmeal. People will make a big pot of it on the
side of the fire, with the meat cooking on the other side.
You scoop the pap out with one hand and have a piece of
meat in the other — that’s the way it is eaten. It’s fantastic.
When the pap has finished cooking, you can also make a
ball of it and then flatten it. en you roast it until it’s
golden brown. It’s also very nice like that.
Spotlight: What do you drink when you’re barbecuing?
Snyman: A nice cold beer. ere’s nothing better!
•
medium rare [)mi:diEm (reE]
pap [pÄp]
peel [pi:&l]
pour off [)pO: (Qf]
rack [rÄk]
rinse off [)rIns (Qf]
rotisserie [rEU(tIsEri]
scoop out [)sku:p (aUt]
self-baste [)self (beIst]
semi- [(semi]
side dish [(saId dIS]
smoke [smEUk]
spice [spaIs]
spit-roast [(spIt )rEUst]
stainless-steel [)steInlEs (sti:&l]
Weber grill [S. Afr. (wi:bE )grIl]
englisch
polenta-ähnlicher fester
Brei aus Maisgrieß
schälen
ablaufen, abtropfen
Rost
abspülen
Drehspieß
mit einem Löffel herausnehmen
sich selbst mit Saft/Soße
bestreichen
halbBeilage
räuchern
Gewürz
Braten am Spieß
Edelstahl
Kugelgrill der Firma Weber
6|10 Spotlight
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