Hello ladies and gents this is the Viking telling you that today we are talking about
SOUTH AFRICAN CUISINE
South African cuisine reflects the diverse range of culinary traditions embodied by the various communities that inhabit the country. Among the indigenous peoples of South Africa, the Khoisan foraged over 300 species of edible food plants, such as the rooibos shrub legume, whose culinary value continues to exert a salient influence on South African cuisine. Subsequent encounters with Bantu pastoralists facilitated the emergence of cultivated crops and domestic cattle, which supplemented traditional Khoisan techniques of meat preservation. In addition, Bantu-speaking communities forged an extensive repertoire of culinary ingredients and dishes, many of which are still consumed today in traditional settlements and urban entrepôts alike.
In the precolonial period, indigenous cuisine was characterised by the use of a very wide range of foods including fruits, nuts, bulbs, leaves and other products gathered from wild plants and by the hunting of wild game. The introduction of domestic cattle and grain crops by Bantu speakers who arrived in the southern regions from central Africa since 10,000 BC and the spread of cattle keeping to Khoisan groups enabled products and the availability of fresh meat on demand.
The pre-colonial diet consisted primarily of cooked grains, especially sorghum and millet, fermented milk (somewhat like yogurt) and roasted or stewed meat. At some point, maize replaced sorghum as the primary grain, and there is some dispute as to whether maize, a Central American crop, arrived with European settlers (notably the Portuguese) or spread through Africa before white settlement via Africans returning from the Americas during the era of the slave trade.
People also kept sheep and goats, and communities often organised vast hunts for the abundant game, but the beef was considered the absolutely most important and high-status meat. The ribs of any cattle that were slaughtered in many communities were so prized that they were offered to the chief of the village.
In many ways, the daily food of South African families can be traced to the indigenous foods that their ancestors ate. A typical meal in a Bantu-speaking, South African household is a stiff, fluffy porridge of maize meal (called pap, and very similar to American grits) with a flavorful stewed meat gravy. Traditional rural families (and many urban ones) often ferment their pap for a few days—especially if it is sorghum instead of maize—which gives it a tangy flavour. The Sotho-Tswana call this fermented pap, ting
And as always have a chilled day from the Viking
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