Homesick for food……

Proust may have been transported back to his childhood by the taste of the “petite madeleine” dipped in tea and wrote most eloquently about it in Remembrance of Things Past, but there is nothing like the longing for the food of childhood – especially when it is 6,000 miles away.  

When I first moved to London when we married in the 1960s I was overcome from time to time by homesickness. Telephone calls had to be booked 48 hours in advance and cost £1.00 a minute at a time when my gross salary was £15.00 a week.  Only birthdays and anniversaries were important enough – and tragically in extreme circumstances when you could put a call through in two hours, which is how I learned of my father’s death. (Note to grandchildren – we did not have the internet, email, FaceTime, WhatsApp – landline or nothing!)

I learned to cook some of the foods of my childhood but there were some things like boerewors, biltong, Peppermint Crisps, Chocolate Logs, dishes made with Peri Peri – the list is quite long – that were not available.  

Strangely enough I was never nostalgic for cakes and biscuits – we certainly had them.  My treat was a “shop-bought” biscuits especially chocolate.

I grew up in Johannesburg – city girl – Number One Husband grew up in the country – Upington, on the edge of the Kalahari Desert. No shop-bought there – everything was made at home. This introduced me to some traditional South African dishes which we had never had at home.  While there are several butchers in London and mail order companies that sell South African specialties (including all the ones mentioned above), these are best home made. They are called Boere Beskuit – literally “Farmers’ Rusks” but normally known as Buttermilk Rusks.  They keep for weeks, in any climate.  I have added a few tweaks and here they are.

 

Buttermilk Rusks

 

300 grams butter                                   

200 grams brown sugar

200 grams Bran flakes (Fruit and Fibre works!)

75 grams raisins 

80 grams bran

125 grams sunflower/mixed seeds 

500 ml buttermilk

2 eggs

1 Kilo self-raising flour                          

15 ml baking powder

 

Melt the butter and sugar and cool slightly. Mix the flour, baking powder, bran, seeds, raisins and bran flakes in a large bowl. Beat the eggs and buttermilk

Add the butter mixture to the buttermilk mixture and pour into the flour mixture. Mix well – add more flour or milk if necessary.

Form the mixture into balls and put them next to each other in baking trays (I find they all fit into an oven/roasting tray).  Bake at 190 C till light brown – about 25 – 30 minutes.  Remove from the oven and break apart and put some onto a second baking tray so that they are separate. Reduce heat to 100C for 4 hours, switch off the oven and leave overnight.

Note: if you don’t have buttermilk you can substitute with one tablespoon of lemon juice or vinegar per 250 ml of milk. 

Store in a tin. They are best eaten dunked into tea or coffee – eat your heart out Marcel…..