Wending your way over mountain passes and through the small towns in the Western Cape, you are sure to find signs of South Africa’s sweet centre . . .
Boerekos. The real heart and soul of the South African platteland comes in all shapes and sizes. We all are familiar with and love our South African favourites like biltong, rooibos tea and blatjang. While cruising around the countryside, I decided it was time to give the rest of our farmstall fare its due. It was now time to explore the sweeter side, those sugary delicacies that capture summer sunshine and the country’s bounty in a bottle – and have a bit of a kick, to boot!
Like all great discoveries, the search started off with a spark, and a story. A very sweet one at that. My good friend, a solidly-built typical South African male and his cousin’s husband from the UK, went driving around the Swartland in a quest to buy a few jars of Boeremeisies. The cousin had apparently eaten up all his host’s supplies and was trying, unsuccessfully, to replace them before he flew home. The pair stopped at many a country farmstall asking for Boeremeisies. They received a lot of strange looks and responses, delivered with a wink and a nudge: “Well, there were some pretty ones here earlier, but they left a short while ago.”
It was impossible not to smile – and prick up my ears – when I heard the amusing tale. And, I had to ask myself “Well, where are all the Boeremeisies?” and “Do people still make these old traditional delicacies?” For those who don’t know, allow me to explain. ‘Boeremeisies’ (translated from the Afrikaans as ‘Boere girls’ and also known as Kaapsenooiens) are bottled apricots preserved in a syrupy juice, infused with either brandewyn or witblitz; a combination that is sure to excite any palate.
I set off on a search and eventually found a proper Boere tannie in Wellington, someone who was a creator of all things sweet and South African. When I asked Elsabe du Plessis about Boeremeisies, I received the reply: “Well, actually, I am making Kaapsejongens at the moment, I’ll make Boeremeises again at the end of the year. Come tomorrow morning at 11am.” She added: It’s vrek warm here, 45° in my jem stoor.”
The next morning I was off to Wellington to visit Elsabe’s small jam factory. Her farm staff sorted and bottled the fresh Hanepoort grapes, while the syrup mixture warmed slowly on the cookers, to be poured into jars with a generous measure of KWV. On the other side of the room, red globe grapes were being bottled for a variety of Kaapsejongens, a treat Tannie Elsabe has dubbed Suid Afrikaanse burgers in celebration of South Africa’s diverse and colourful rainbow nation.
We left the women bottling in the jem stoor and I followed Elsabe into the cool farmhouse to enjoy a cup of tea and a chat, and to taste the ‘jongens’. We toasted to Gesondheid (Health) with her husband, Niel, while sipping small glasses of her buchu brandy - or ‘Boere shooters’ - as Niel fondly calls them. Like the grapes, and most of the produce used for Elsabe’s preserves and jams, the buchu is also grown on the farm. It is known as a cure for stomach ache – and a variety of other ills. As we gingerly sipped, Elsabe chirped “Laat dit val waar dit wil” (Let it fall where it wants to, i.e. Let it reach where it’s meant to).
When asked how she started her bustling industry, Elsabe humbly replied, “I’m just a housewife, doing jams.” She started making jam fifteen years ago when her busy schedule raising five children, marketing the farm and doing the farm books slowed down. Niel had just harvested a batch of Pinotage grapes. She looked at the gorgeous grapes and decided to make a genuine South African Pinotage jam. She experimented with a basketful and gave some of the bottled jam to a nearby farm stall. They liked it so much they wanted to buy the lot. That got Elsabe thinking that this could be something she could do with the ladies on the farm who had retired or were expecting. She started to experiment with the other cultivars - Merlot, Cabernet and Shiraz - and in between bottled olives and olive oil. Next, her sister asked her for something exotic to sell at their butchery and she had Elsabe making a curried sultana marinade for their pork chops, which soon turned into a bestseller. Elsabe was on a roll and started to make many of the old traditional favourites, even trying a few lesser-known items she makes just for family and friends like a veldkos speciality - Spekboom atjar - and siter konfyt, pieces of thick grapefruit skin matured in a sweet syrup. Although Elsabe’s knowledge of boerekos is vast, with her many years of being a farmer’s wife, she found that she was unable to track down one or two of the old recipes no matter how hard she tried. Her search for traditional recipes like moskonfyt eventually led her to a 90-year-old man who had many old secrets stored in his memory. She laments the loss of traditional South African recipes and is working to persuade her children to learn the old recipes, lest they disappear with the dust of the centuries.
Before I left the farm with its vine-nursery, orchards, vineyards and buchu fields, I learnt two of Elsabe’s many Boeremeisies secrets – always use two measures of brandy to one of syrup, and the longer they stand the better they taste.
The road led me further east (with a box of Elsabe’s jams and a pungent-smelling bag of buchu perfuming the car) to explore some of the other fertile farming areas in the region. The Western Cape is an important part of the South African fruit basket, well known for its deciduous fruit, with its dry summers and cool winters providing ideal growing conditions. It’s not to be sneezed at; deciduous fruit, table grapes and citrus make up the bulk of fruit exports from South Africa. This abundant fruit-growing region includes Wellington at the foot of the Hawequa Mountains (which is still considered to be ‘Dried Fruit Central’), the broad Elgin Valley circled by the Overberg mountains, the Breede River Valley and the fertile Keisie and Koo valleys and farms surrounding Montagu and Robertson. A patchwork quilt of vineyards and orchards covers the generous Cape valleys in a show of glittering emerald bounty.
When I asked the helpful Montagu-Ashton tourism officer about Boeremeisies, she informed me: “We do indeed have some real Boeremeisies, still making this delicious preserve by the same name.” She put me in touch with another industrious Boerevrou, who keeps most of the farm stalls along the main byways and highways in the area (including Melissa’s) well-stocked with her bottled South African treats. Virtually every farm stall between Worcester and Montagu stocks her Boeremeisies, Kaapsejongens, slaphakskene (sweet-and-sour onion salad), pickled onions, piccalilli and curried peaches and beans, and they all consistently fly off the shelves. People still know and appreciate South African fare, after all!
Like Elsabe, Sandra Reichert was busy as a bee with her small home industry. I met Sandra at the Saturday morning market in Montagu, surrounded by the towering Langeberg mountains, as the mid-summer heat began to bake. We left the stall run by her son to find a spot across the road to sit and talk over a cup of coffee. She told me how she grew up on a farm in the Northern Cape where a lot of fruit was grown. Her mom was always making jams, pickles and chutneys. Sandra followed in her footsteps and learned to make jams the old-fashioned way. Fourteen years ago, she took over her friend’s business in an old milking shed on a fruit farm, 20km from Montagu. She continued producing the marmalades and jams, and gradually extended the range, making the ever-popular South African boerekos using produce from the surrounding farms. As all the fruit and veg is freshly picked, production is seasonal, with Boeremeisies made at the end of the year when apricots are in season and Kaapsejongens in February and March, when the Hanepoort grapes are ripe.
Sandra explained how to eat the delicacies I had searched for - and had, luckily, found - in the Western Cape. Boeremeisies, I discovered, can be eaten in several ways. They can be savoured with drinks and eaten with ice-cream, or you can remove the pip and fill the centre with cream cheese, to be eaten as a snack or entree. The apricot halves can also be served with meat, and are especially good with lamb. Kaapsejongens are delicious with drinks and coffee after a meal. Her handy hint, when time allows, is: “The longer the Boeremeisies are in the bottle, the more they will absorb the almond taste from the pip.” Magtig, maar jy leer mos elke dag iets nuut!
We strolled back to the quaint and bustling Montagu market, and to her stall, where I received a gift of a bottle of very healthy and happy looking Boeremeisies. Adding it to the many culinary treasures in my car, I left homeward bound laden with enough South African sunshine to keep me warm throughout the coolest winter days.
Contact details:
Elsabe’s: (Elsabe du Plessis): 082 800 8546, elsabe@ibits.co.za
Farm Fresh/Plaasvars bottled products (Sandra Reichert): 023 111 0044/082 843 8511, farmfresh@telkomsa.net