African Safari - July '13 - Day 6 in the Bush

One of the most important things about being in the bush, or life in general, is the quality of food and beverages one partakes in. Most of you who know me well know that I'm not a fan of fussy, haute cuisine type food, moulded into cylindrical shapes with far too much ponsiness, hand to ingredient ratio and more concern about impressing the eye rather than flabbergasting the tongue. Having had my fair share of 'fussy food' and 'stuck up' wines that people think aught to be drunk in my time, I have settled into a far more brutally honest perspective in taking pleasure in the 'real food' and quality accompanying beverage, and not worry about what other people might think.  Of my greatest disappointments in wine many have been some of the most expensive interestingly enough.

Some of my finest moments have been spent around an alfresco table in rural France or Italy, or a tiny table for two in a tratoria near Grieve in Chianti or beside an out of the way canal in Venice (where I intend to retire intermittently with the bush and write a book or two one day soon..). The food often described as peasant food by somewhat embarrassed hosts, strangely enough, yet prepared with only the finest of fresh ingredients one couldn't find in any fine grocery store. The Rialto Market off the Grande Canal perhaps or merely stopping one's Fiat or Alfa (or Citron for Pierre the French Fighter pilot fans) on the side of the road between Todi and Montepulciano in Umbria and Tuscany or between Saint-Émilion and Pomerol in rural Bordeaux to pick the freshest wild herbs and mushrooms has to be the ultimate. 

So, cooking and eating in the bush (as with just about any other place for me), is more of a ceremony than merely a meal eaten for the sake of hunger and wine or beer drunk merely for the sake of quenching a thirst. Life is just too short for that. 

Family in the boma

In the bush I love to have a fire, no matter what we're eating. It needs to be prepared properly preferably with wood or at least wood charcoal (otherwise it's not a fire and definitely not a braai). Yet it need not be artistically prepared, but must burn large for a while whilst we sit around it and chat about the day's events and pause to listen to the sound of silence mesmerized by the licking flames. In the bush however, the 'sounds of silence' are anything but silent. Anything from crickets to lion and hyena or grunting hippo, which make it all the more rewarding and a little nerve wrecking at times with the odd rustle of a bush or crack of a tree nearby in the pitch dark.

So today we had left over risotto for lunch. It's the kind of 'extra peasant' leftovers one has from the 'peasant' meal the previous night. Now I'm talking proper risotto, with porcini and portabilini 'shrooms, great white wine (Brothers possibly), home-made stock and other ingredients mixed with love and a decent sized bicep or two, what with all the necessary stirring required. The left overs are however too good to go to waste and deserving of Arancini di Riso (risotto balls with mozzarella and salami, dipped in egg, flour and rolled in bread crumbs), fried 'til crispy and all eaten by hand, dipped in a caramelised onion or olive marmalade (the only marmalades made for normal people under 70!). Just ask me and I'll tell you how.

Tonight it was springbok fillets from my old school mate Steve Botha-Maresch, with his own secret sprinkling of The Local Grill spices, straight on the the hot coals, with butternut and butter and a few fresh herbs wrapped tightly in tin foil, cooked on the grid alongside. All accompanied by a Wendouree Shiraz-Motaro 1995 from my very generous, Aussie grand relative-in-law in, Graeme Muller. It was superb.

After all had headed for bed, bar Dyl and I this time, sitting back at the fire with a few fresh logs (leadwood me thinks as they just burn and burn..), listening to the calls of lion and hyena again tonight, and the rustling of hippo out if the water grazing beside us, I just can't get enough!