A spontaneous decision to go to African Relish, a recreational cookery school in Prince Albert, for the weekend ended up being the best last-minute weekend plan ever. I’d been to African Relish in February for a story in Getaway magazine, where I’d learned to make Karoo classics incorporating grapes (it was harvest season). This weekend celebrity chef extraordinaire, Reza Mahammad was the star of the weekend cooking course on Indian food.
Friday feasting
After a four-and-a-half-hour drive from Cape Town to Prince Albert in the Karoo after work, my boyfriend Joe and I arrived at African Relish just in time for dinner. Reza and the other cooking course participants had cooked up a feast of lamb pilau, beetroot raita, coriander chutney and a Mughal dish of onion, tomato and creamy hard-boiled eggs for us vegetarians. Dessert was a creamy cardamom panna cotta with rose coulis and berries It was delicious – the best Indian food I’d had in a long time.
Meeting Reza for the first time was a delight – he’s just like he is on tv – sparkling, energetic, hilarious and charming. Right from the start of the dinner, he had us giggling and laughing hysterically for the whole weekend, regaling us with tales of his travels, cooking anecdotes and colourful life.
After eating piles of food and working our way through a bottle of Bergwater Sauvignon Blanc Reserve, we fell into a hot water bottle-warmed bed in our sweet little Karoo cottage, Doringbos. Being a city person, I was awoken early by the unfamiliar sound of a rooster crowing. At 5 am. So, it was an early start for us and we were some of the first people at the Saturday morning market in the centre of Prince Albert. I loved this little market last time I visited the dorp, and I wanted to show Joe all its foodie treasures. We met Brett the vet, a vegetarian veterinarian (I love those two words together) who grows beautiful organic veggies, which he was peddling at the market. Kohlrabi, red carrots, Jerusalem artichokes and indigo-purple turnips covered his small table.
The R3 pannekoek at the Prince Albert market are famous, and justifiably so. The batter is perfectly airy and the sugar-cinnamon topping is deftly sprinkled. A great pre-breakfast treat. We strolled through the tables of roosterkoek, freshly baked pot bread, homemade jams and preserves and Karoo lamb pies, before heading to African Relish for a breakfast of yoghurt and muesli followed by perfect eggs benedict. Yum.
Saturday’s cooking lessons
Reza recommends that you buy spices whole, and then make your own blends (masala is a spice blend) using a coffee grinder, dry-roasting the spices in a pan first. We smelt freshly-ground garam masala (get Reza’s recipe here) and store-bought garam masala, which had probably been in a packet for ages. The difference was incredible. I’m put off packet spices forever. From now on, I’ll be buying my spices whole (apparently Atlas Trading in Bo Kaap is the best place in Cape Town to get spices).
Then we started cooking. On the menu for lunch was coconut and spinach dal, sweet potato and feta samoosas and onion-stuffed aubergines. Reza had us whirling around the kitchen all doing different tasks – cutting up onions, grating ginger, chopping coriander and folding phyllo pastry for the samoosas.
Reza is a whirlwind of energy, combining constant commentary on what we were doing (“˜Darling, let’s chop those onions the same size’; “˜Oh heavens, we’re going to need more ginger than that!) with hilarious foodie quotes: “˜This is just yumlicious, darlings!’. He’s such a treat to cook with, and his knowledge of Indian cookery is phenomenal. He never got tired of our never-ending questions about all things curry, and we soaked up his tips and advice like onions absorbing ghee in a pan (I make this analogy because we fried A LOT of onions that morning).
In between lots of laughs (“˜Darlings, aubergines do love a bit of rough handling, don’t they?’) we managed to put together a delicious vegetarian spread of the dal, samoosas (which were surprisingly easy to make) and the stuffed aubergines, which Reza calls a “˜regal dish’. My favourite dish of the weekend certainly is fit for royalty – the aubergines are melt-in-your-mouth soft and creamy, the spices delicately fragrant and the whole combination of onion, aubergine, mint and lime dressing so tasty. To top the lunch off, Reza had made a semolina and pistachio cake with rose petal cream which was just
After a quick siesta in our cute Karoo cottage, Doringbos, we headed back to the kitchen for an afternoon of cooking kudu pasanda, spicy vegetable koftas, chapatis, oven-roasted cauliflower with saffron and raisins and cardamom rice pudding with rose petal jam and meringue. The koftas were my favourite to make (pea, carrot and potato deep-fried balls cooked in spicy tomato curry) while Joe really got stuck in making the chapatis.
We tucked into the delicious results of our afternoon cooking over beer while Reza had us all in fits of laughter (where he found the energy to be entertaining after a full day of non-stop whirling around the kitchen I don’t know).
The next morning was a sad goodbye to our new friend, Reza. We felt so lucky to have met him and spent the weekend learning invaluable Indian cooking tips from a veritable master of the cuisine.
After the weekend I was so inspired to go home, chuck out all my store-bought spice packets, start up my spice larder from scratch and get cooking!
Reza Mahammad’s top tips for Indian cooking
– It’s all about the onions. Fry them gently for about twenty minutes in lots of oil or ghee until they’re caramelized and then drain on kitchen towel for a curry base. You’d be surprised at how cooking onions properly like this will add loads of flavour to a curry.
– When the onions are almost are golden and soft, add a bit of turmeric for colour (no more than half a teaspoon). If the onions start to stick, add a splash of water. When you add the rest of your spices make sure the pan isn’t too hot by adding a bit of water to cool it down.
– Take time to learn about spices and what goes with what. This is essential to Indian cooking. In summer in India people use spices that will heat you up so that you sweat to cool down, and in cold places in winter warming spices are used that will heat you up inside but not cause sweating.
– Reza refers to cloves, cardamom and cinnamon as the “˜holy trinity’ of spices. You can use the holy trinity in loads of dishes – the combination of spices is so fragrant and adds lots of flavour.
– When it comes to cooking spices, don’t heat them on a high temperature (apart from mustard seeds, which must cook in hot oil until they pop, otherwise they give you indigestion). Add garam masala at the end of cooking a curry, not at the beginning.
Reza Mahammad will be at African Relish this weekend for another cooking course. There are still some spaces available but you need to book quickly!
The weekend cooking courses at African Relish include two nights’ accommodation, all meals, and other activities like wine or olive tasting, ghost walks or walks in the Karoo veld with a renowned botanist. They start at R3850 a person.
For more information on the course and to book, go to www.africanrelish.com.
Photos by me and Joseph C Lawrence
