Early Days at the Cape

I have just been reading Rogues, Rebels and Runaways by Nigel Penn. The first story: The Fatal Passion of Brewer Menssink must rate as one of the funniest stories I have ever read. I think the reason it is so funny is that it is written in deadly earnest. There is no attempt to be funny and it is precisely this tone that makes it so funny, along with the outrageous passions of its brewer.

In a later story, entitled: "Droster Gangs of the Bokkeveld and Roggeveld there is an equally hilarious passage which I am happy to post here:

"Oude Rooij, a Khoi, was known to his mother, Griet, as Jantje. In order, however, to distinguish him from his two sons, Klyn Jantje, Rooij and Rooi Rooij, he was commonly known as Oude Rooij. In 1792 he, along with his mother, sons, his wife Mietje, and his daughter Griet, lived at Klip Fonteyn, the farm of the burgher Arnoldus Vlok in the Zwarte Ruggens. That year the family was visited by his elder brother, Wittebooij, and his brother’s wife, Sara. Too much liquor was consumed and Oude Rooij, whilst under the influence of alcohol, hit his mother so hard on the head that she nearly died. For good measure, he then stabbed her in the leg. Wittebooij, who was also drunk, took exception to this unfilial action and assisted his mother by stabbing Oude Rooij so deeply between the shoulder blades that the knife point protruded from his breasts. Far from having a sobering effect, this thrust led him to stab his wife Sara in the left breast and then to slash her across the forehead. Although there were no fatalities, we must conclude that Oude Rooij’s 1792 family reunion was not a success."

Mildly horrified, even in the age of ultra-violence on the big screen, on TV and in our own country, I read this passage and it was only with the last line: "we must conclude that Oude Rooij’s 1792 family reunion was not a success" that I burst out laughing. Such is the nature of humour. And such is the nature of Nigel Penn's understated humour.

"As I ate the oysters with their strong taste of the sea and their faint metallic taste that the cold white wine washed away, leaving only the sea taste and the succulent texture, and as I drank their cold liquid from each shell and washed it down with the crisp taste of the wine, I lost the empty feeling and began to be happy and to make plans."

That is, of course, you guessed it, from Hemingway's "A Moveable Feast". If you haven't read it, it's worth every cent. In fact, it is one the books I always take with me wherever I go. I think perhaps that this time I did not bring it with me, which is a pity. My stuff is stored in Stanford and I'll have to buy another copy or wait till I am settled again.

There is another book of his in which he describes food and wine beautifully. He did this before food became people started to pay so much attention to food becoming, in fact, a global obsession. And that is what makes this so special.

He did much the same thing in The Garden of Eden, for me a wonderful novel, perhaps even my most favourite after A Moveable Feast!

This is what I mean: "They were always hungry but they ate very well. They were hungry for breakfast which they at at the cafe, ordering brioche and café au lait and eggs, and the type of preserve that they chose and the manner and the manner in which the eggs were to be cooked was an excitement. They were always so hungry for breakfast that the girl often had a headchache until the coffee came. She took her coffee without sugar and the yong man was learning to remember that.
On this morning there was brioche and red raspberry preserve and the ggs were boiled and there was a pat of butter that melted as they stirred them and salted them lightly and ground pepper over them in the cups. They were big eggs and fresh and the girl’s were not cooked quite as long as the young man’s. He remembered that easily and he was happy with his which he diced up with the spoon and ate with only the flow of the butter to moisten them and the fresh early morning texture and the bite of the coarsely ground pepper grains and the hot coffee and the chicory fragrant bowl of café au lait."

This follows after a lengthy description of the fishing boats and their nets in the water outside the village, so that by the time you get to the breakfast part, you yourself are ravenous! Surely the sign of writing of the first order.

West Coast

Since I was 21 I have undertaken six hiking trips through the Fish River Canyon which, I have to say, is not for sissies (although on one of my hikes a girl’s hockey team actually overtook us!). Be that as it may. It’s tough going but not as taxing, I thought, as my hike up the Cape West Coast. Melkbosch. Ever heard of it? Very few people outside South Africa have, but I will never forget it. It’s where we started. I think we walked for four or five days, all the way to Saldanha Bay and it was the most difficult hike I have ever experienced. You will have had to walk in sand to know what I mean, and I mean loose sand, not hard damp sad. My feet felt like lead. Here I was, at the peak of my youth, a mere 22 years old or so, and I felt like an old man, panting, concentrating only on lifting my foot and taking the next step.

You have to be really exhausted to appreciate the words from the leader of our group, “I think this is a good place to make camp.”

One of boys had a fishing rod with him – or was it just a line – I can’t remember, it’s so long ago. He separated from us and went to the rocks where he sat and dropped his line in the water. I took a bottle of white wine; I think it was a Cape Riesling and buried it in the damp sand to chill. The others started to make a fire.

We would sleep under the stars, no problem. We had ground sheets and sleeping back and, frankly, the weather was so perfect we had no needs of tents of further shelder. While it was still light we cleared the sand of rocks or shells or other objects and lay down our ground sheets. There were about ten of us, including Kiewiet, a lovely girl who was the niece of our leader, Piet van Zyl.

The smell of woodsmoke mingled with that of the ocean, as did the soft crackling, mingling with the sound of the lazy waves. Did any of really expect the youth to catch a fish? No, we didn’t. But he did: a huge galjoen easily weighing 4 lbs, which was just as well, because there were many mouths to feed.

Piet barbequed the fish on the coals. On another fire a stew was slowly simmering. I fetched the bottle of wine from where I’d buried it. It was ice cold. The Atlantic Coast is known for its freezing waters. We had the fish and drank the wine. It was not a very expensive wine, nor, I think, a very good wine but it is the best wine I have every tasted. We slept under the stars, happy.

In the morning I was awoken by Kieweit’s cry, “Look!” We sat up and looked. During the night a whale had entered the bay and had given birth to a calf. Now they were moving, how shall I put it, with a kind of quiet dignity in the waters, these torpid beautiful monsters.

Shortly before reaching our destination, Saldanha Bay, we were caught in a thunderstorm. We found shelter in a barn, where the farmer allowed us to overnight. Come to think of it, Johan Wicht’s parents owned a huge farm in the area and his father was at one stage captain of the academy. They were well known in the area, influential people which is probably why the farmer so readily gave us shelter.

The next morning when I woke, the first thing I saw was Johan in the drizzle – it was still raining and the skies were grey – stooped over a fire, the smoke rising into the air. On the fire was a pan. He was shaking it. In the pan was a huge orange blob. It was not an ordinary egg and it was enough to feed all of us breakfast. It was an ostrich egg, deep and rich and with a yoke that was intensely yellow. I have never forgotten that colour, although I don't think there's a name for that in the English language, such a yellow.

Bouillabaisse Elizabeth David
“I was a child of ten. He was called Bauzan, my fisherman at Canet, our fishing rendezvous on the bank of the ètang de Berre. And before eating his bouillabaisse, I used to savour the delight of watching him fish for it.

“Hardly had my grandfather’s creaking but reliable old wagon, dusty from having carried us so far through the scrub, come to a standstill than I, with what alacrity, leapt to the ground, and into the arms of my friend the old sea-wolf.
“Quick, let’s get off.”
“The mistral is blowing; we shall dance about a bit.”
“Oh, how lovely –“
“The more the little cockleshell danced in the waves, the happier I was. actually, there was no danger. Bauzan, who had been round the world five times, took the helm, and the ‘sailor,’ his third son (the two eldest were serving in the squadron at Toulon), was at the oars. How I should always have liked to have been “sailor’s mate – if only my parent had let me have my way!”

“Already, a league out, Bauzan’s still piercing eyes had caught sight of a little indicator buoy. Stop! Sailor pulled towards the guoy. We dropped anchor. Now, round a pulley and across the boat the long rope was coiled in, two metres at a time, and the baskets came out of the waves. After we had drained off the water there was gurgling inside – sometimes, however there was nothing.



It was I was had the excitement of undoing the catch which closed the lid. And there, in the bottom of the boat, multicoloured and sparkling and smelling good, lay the bouillabaisse; rascasses and canadelles, red mullet and gurnard and muggione (grey mullet) and other rock-fish whose names I no longer remember, but not forgetting the exquisite little favouillles (crabs) nor the eels, those viscous and slippery sea-serpents which Bauzan had taught me to catch with three fingers.

“We returned by sail., in ten minutes, for we were hungry. On the shore, in the wind, Madame Bauzan had lit a great wood fire upon which, in a huge cauldron, a litre or olive was coming to the boil, with four sliced onions, as many cloves of garlic with, of course, salt, pepper and saffron, with a few tomatoes in the season, and two or three potatoes, not forgetting, for Parisians, a handful of flour mixed with a glass of water.
“The mob of little Bauzans and their mother wasted no time in jumping on board, cleaning the fish and throwing it, all fresh as it was, into the saucepan, where the poor eels, cut in slices, went on wriggling in the boiling liquid. No more than a quarter of an hour’s cooking and the divine golden yellow bouillon was poured through a strainer over a mountain of large slices of bread, and the fish served separately. And then, my children, our stomach hollow from the sea-voyage, we stuffed ourselves up to the neck!”

“Nowadays, I still feast sometime on bouillabaisse – Parisian bouillabaisse. But in Paris, alas, the little crabs have been replaced by mussels, the the raacasses and the canabeblles with a modest langouste, and so on. A makeshift, in fact. And it is a long time since I was ten years old, and Canet no longer belongs to us, and what has become of my friend Bauzan

Paul Alexis:
Quoted in L’Art du Bien Manger by Edmond Richardin, 1915.

 

 

The Mystery of Shoes