After our wine-filled evening the previous night, it was with a degree of grumpiness that Christie woke up at 6am to go for a walk on the Swartberg Pass. I was a naughty, lazy photojournalist and slept in until she returned to our cottage. I was quite jealous that I didn’t make it though – her photos of the beautiful morning light on the incredibly mysterious rocks of the pass were incredible.
Feeling famished, we headed over to African Relish for a sumptuous breakfast, only to be distracted by the lively Saturday morning market on the main street. The Prince Albert fresh goods market is not the Old Biscuit Mill, but that’s what made it so charming. There were old tannies making pancakes and moerkoffie, and selling homemade konfyt, some oupas braaing roosterkoek and boerie on roadside braais, a range of absolutely beautiful heirloom organic veggies on sale from the local GP’s garden, boxes of fresh figs from the Weltevrede fig farm (we greedily bought one box to ourselves), gourmet pies (apparently the lamb one was sublime), and some baked goodies that had Afrikaans names that we’d never heard of before. The market is obviously the place to be on a Saturday morning – old friends were greeting each other, village ladies were gossiping and everyone was going about their shopping while chatting to everyone else. It was unbelievably quaint.
After buying lots of konfyt, pannekoek, pies and soutertjies, we made our way back to African Relish and ate even more. The breakfast spread was fabulous – yoghurt fresh from Gay’s Dairy, homebaked breads, Gay’s Dairy cheeses, fruit salad, just-out-of-the-oven muffins, kudu salami and delicious honeyed granola. Needless to say, Christie and I did not hold ourselves back.
While the others headed off to SoetKaroo for a tasting, Christie and I wandered around town bumping into our new friends. We went back to the Prince Albert Country Store and had some organic lemonade with William while browsing the beautiful antique shop. I had a hard time deciding between a very arb photo from the early 1900s of a nurse and quadruplets and a 1920s wind up clock. After tweeting about it and asking for advice, I settled on the clock. I then realised that it was 11 am and I’d spent about R500. Prince Albert was turning out to be my most expensive assignment ever.
As the heat of the day started to fall on the town, we donned our very funky African Relish aprons and got down to the serious business of the cooking course. Jeremy Freemantle, one of the founders of the school, took us through making a foccacia stuffed with local olives and tomatoes. My only task was to push holes in the foccacia, which I did a bit enthusiastically, and ended up squishing it completely, so we had to let it rise again. Not very skilled for a food editor. Oops.
The other classmates prepared a surprisingly easy bobotie, while Christie and her cooking partner Paul made korrelkonfyt (grape jam) to accompany it. We enjoyed the fruits of our labours over a long, wine-filled lunch in the courtyard, complimenting each other on the success of our dishes.
It felt like about 40 degrees after lunch, and after drinking lots of Bergwater wine and eating loads of filling Karoo food, it was time for a short siesta as near as possible to the giant fan in the lounge area.
It wasn’t long before I had to rouse the troops for our second cooking session. We all got back to work preparing dinner: slow-cooked lamb shanks in red wine, balsamic roasted summer vegetables, spicy grape and tomato relish, a poached prune tart with red wine glaze, and chicken Veronique made with grapes, and grape cider cordial.
The school has a focus on local, seasonal and fresh ingredients, which makes a big difference to the flavour of the dishes – you can definitely taste the farm-freshness. Luckily local produce is not hard to come by in Prince Albert. African Relish also makes use of its own veggie and herb garden behind the kitchen: they grow pomegranates, quinces, all sorts of herbs, olives and veggies. We cooked with some of Brett the Vet’s organic veggies, which are just so beautiful that I wanted to take photos of them rather than cut them up.
After a long, hot afternoon of fun, wine and cooking in the kitchen, a storm that was looming broke with fat drops of warm rain. Luckily I had finished shooting all the dishes for the magazine. Christie and I had been searching for the quintessential shot of Prince Albert for the opening spread of the magazine feature (June issue) since we had arrived, and seeing as it was our last afternoon, we had to find it. Christie scouted out a few spots while I was shooting the food, and we went back to one that she thought was the best viewpoint in town. It happened to be on the stoep of someone’s house, but as Getaway photojournalists, we know that getting great photos is worth trespassing for. So, we nervously drove up a long driveway, parked the Clio outside someone’s garage, and proceeded to walk around the house to find the front door. It proved to be elusive, so we just headed out to the stoep trying to make our presence known. Despite shouting ‘Hellooooo!’ no one responded, even though doors and windows were open and we could hear music playing inside. The light was dying – we had to get the pics. I arranged myself on the stoep and started shooting frantically as Christie tried to find someone in the house.
Eventually a girl came out with her dog and we announced who we were. She seemed very happy to let us carry on taking photos, so we did. A few minutes later her dad came out and started chatting to us. He seemed rather chuffed that we had chosen his stoep for a Getaway shoot, and offered us a glass of wine. Never ones to say no to wine, we ended up sitting with the whole family having a fat chat over a rather lovely bottle of Sauv Blanc (can’t remember the vineyard, irritatingly). We discovered that the family were the Badenhorsts, who own the olive press, the Prince Albert Hotel, and a number of other properties in town. We had been trying unsuccessfully to get a tour of the olive press during our stay, and Fred Badenhorst was more than happy to offer to take us around the following morning, before we left town.
Having completely forgetten about the time, we rushed back to African Relish after finishing the bottle. We told everyone at African Relish about how we’d just about broken into the Badenhorsts’ home only to be informed that Fred Badenhorst is regarded as the JR Ewing of Prince Albert. So basically, we’d trespassed on the baron of the town’s property. I just hope that my editor decides to use some of the photos we took in the mag!
Dinner was a gourmet feast of all our magnificent dishes that we’d prepared in the afternoon. By this point, we had eaten so much Karoo food and drunk so much Karoo wine during the past four days that I think that we had really started to absorb the Karoo. It was going to be hard to leave.
Another early morning on Sunday: after coffee and rusks we drove out to the veld with Richard and Susan Milton for a veld walk. Sue is a renowned botanist (and a professor Emeritus) with a special interest in Karoo biome botany. The walk was fascinating. Sue showed us edible plants including skaapbossie, which is eaten by sheep and gives Karoo lamb its distinctive flavour, explained how some interesting looking plants are adapated to surviving the harsh Karoo climate, and told us about the relationship between the Karoo’s plants, insects and animals. Her husband Richard is a well-respected ornithologist, and while he was pretty quiet for the most of the walk, told us a bit about the Karoo’s birds. The Milton’s passion for conserving the Karoo’s biosphere was clearly evident, and it was totally inspiring. I have a whole different view of the Karoo now that I know about the incredible plants and animals that this seemingly barren land harbours.
We ended the weekend of food indulgence on Sunday after a lush breakfast of fruit, yoghurt, cheese, preserves and farm butter-rich eggs Benedict served on warm ciabatta straight out of the oven. After saying a sad goodbye to our new friends, we headed out to the olive press to see where the town’s award-winning olive oil is produced. It’s a small factory that smells delightfully olivey. The Badenhorsts kindly opened it up for us on a Sunday and gave us some of their olive oil in a funky retro petrol-can-like tin. It was a lovely way to end our trip to Prince Albert, and reminded us once again of the warmth and hospitality of the dorp.
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If you really want to experience the culinary traditions of the Karoo by cooking, eating and learning about food, as well as explore the wonderful dorp of Prince Albert, African Relish is definitely the place to do it in.
There’s a whole range of exciting cooking courses at African Relish coming up in 2011. There’s “˜Koekemakranka’ on 25 to 27 March – a course with cultural researcher and author Renata Coetzee inspired by the culinary customs of the Khoi Khoin people. From 8 to 10 April, the “˜Palate to palette’ JP Meyer and Jacques Erasmus will stimulate students’ palates and palettes with a marriage of art and food. Well known Capetonian food blogger JamieWho (Andy Fenner) will demonstrate traditional country cooking on a course over 6 to 8 May. Bakers shouldn’t miss “˜The artistry of cake making’ weekend with Roxanne Floquet from 13 to 15 May. There are also weekends aimed at food bloggers: 24 to 26 June; 21 to 23 October and 20 to 22 January 2012. For the more active, there’s a gourmet cycle tour from 14 to 18 September.
For a full list of African Relish’s 2011 cooking courses, go to www.africanrelish.com/courses-and-tours
It costs R3850 a person for a two-night stay and cooking course which includes accommodation, scheduled activities, meals, cooking classes, ingredients, soft drinks and apron. Accommodation is provided in the school’s stylish, country chic cottages, which are dotted around town.
For reservations tel 023-541-1381, [email protected], www.africanrelish.com.
