Sago. Tiny little white pearls of … what exactly? It’s a starch and it comes from the pith of palm trees, in particular from a palm called Metroxylon sagu (sometimes called the sago palm) which proliferates in New Guinea and the Moluccas (AKA the Malaka islands, or Malukken), an archipelago in the eastern region of Indonesia. It is sometimes confused with tapioca, which comes from cassava, a South American vegetable root. Sago and tapioca are often interchangeable, and the recipe I give below would work just as well with tapioca.

For those of us who grew up in the middle to late 20th century, sago pudding was a staple to have after supper, so we tended to think of it as something sweet. But sago is used in savoury preparations too, and in the old Cape cuisine it was an important part of the traditional chicken pies, or hoenderpastei, serving as a thickening agent and providing some buttressing to the dish. The sago in it works to hold it all together. I chose to call my version Cape Colony Chicken Pie when I wrote about it back in May.

When you boil sago with milk or water you’ll soon see how it thickens the liquid carrier and gives it a sensuous, silken quality. Because it has little identifiable flavour of its own, it can be used in a savoury sauce, or gravy, to both thicken it and lend it that silkiness, and a quick blitz with a hand-held blender will give you the smooth sauce you might want. But some actual sago pearls in a meaty sauce can give it an intriguing texture and prove to be a conversation piece too.

You do also get sago flour, to be used in baking or, again, as a thickener; the sago we know as tiny white balls is made by mixing sago starch with water and applying a little heat. None of which you need to do when making a simple sago pudding. And a sago pudding is all about those pearls.

The sago pudding you may have had when growing up was most likely served with apricot jam. For my recipe, I took the principle of this but made a syrup of it by adding hanepoot soeters (fortified wine) and the juice of an orange. All it needs is to be reduced gently together until it thickens, and the end result is a more grownup version of the old childhood favourite.

Sago needs to be soaked, usually in water, before being cooked. I chose instead to soak it in milk. I did wonder if this would prevent the pearls from turning translucent in the cooking process, but as you’ll see in the photo the little beads did indeed become pellucid and the sago still offered their little bursts of pleasure in the eating. Some traditional versions were topped with a simple meringue, and I did that too.

Ingredients

250 g sago pearls

1 litre full cream milk plus 500 ml milk for soaking the sago (or use water)

⅓ cup caramel sugar

1 tsp vanilla essence

Pinch of salt

4 large eggs, separated

1 cinnamon stick

4 Tbsp butter

For the meringue:

4 egg whites

3 Tbsp castor sugar

For the sauce:

½ cup apricot jam

Juice of 1 orange

2 Tbsp water

2 Tbsp hanepoot soeters

Method

Soak the sago in 500 ml milk for 3 hours, then drain. (If you want to reduce costs, use water instead.)

Preheat the oven to 160℃.

Put the sago, caramel sugar, 1 litre of milk, salt, cinnamon stick and vanilla essence in a heavy pot and bring it to a simmer, without letting it boil. With the heat lowered to a very gentle simmer, cook it until the sago pearls turn translucent, while stirring as needed. Remove the cinnamon stick. Stir in the butter and leave it off the heat to cool. Once cool, whisk 4 egg yolks and stir them in very quickly to avoid them scrambling. Keep the whites.

Grease an oven-proof dish with butter and pour in the sago mixture.

Whisk the egg whites while adding the castor sugar a little at a time, until it forms soft peaks. Pour the meringue over the top of the pudding, swirling it with the back of a dessert spoon to create an attractive pattern.

Place the dish in a deep oven pan and pour in warm water until it is a third of the way up the pudding dish. Bake for about 40 minutes or until the meringue topping has turned a pale golden.

While it is in the oven, simmer the jam, orange juice and water together until it thickens a little, stir in the hanepoot soeters, simmer again for it to thicken, then set it to one side until the pudding is ready to serve. Warm it up to pour over each individual serving.

Dig around in the cupboards and see if you have a lovely old pudding bowl to serve it in, such as the one in the photo given to us by our friend Larry Collett the other day when she was clearing out the old farmhouse. The one in the picture. Because that’s how we roll here in the Karoo. Thank you, dear Larry. DM/TGIFood 

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To enquire about Tony Jackman’s book, foodSTUFF (Human & Rousseau) please email him at [email protected]