At the annual shows, whether the old-style agricultural “skou” or one of the cool newfangled affairs modelled on the smart ones in Cape Town where men with beards and ponytails buy organic courgettes and craft beers, in the Winelands or at trendy escaperies like Clarens or McGregor, we Karoo people have a habit of spotting the treasures before the rest of you do. This is a result of many of our small towns lacking those special ingredients that those with a Woolies just down the road take for granted.

Last week, for example, there were punnets of fresh asparagus at my local superstore. In the city this is just another day. In the dorp, it’s an Event. Phones are pulled out of pockets, the special ingredient photographed and sent to friends with the name of the store. “Get to Spar now. Or do you want me to grab you some?” Followed by, “I’m on my way!”

At the fêncy store in Rosebank or Menlo Park, when we visit family or friends or pass through hurriedly on the way to somewhere quieter and with more sky, we spy the truffle oil and the squid ink and we know what they are and what to do with them, because like everybody else we watch cooking shows and know how to plate up and use garnish to make it look pretty. There’s a belief among the ill informed that Karoo people only know about fig preserves and sousboontjies, but we get around, believe me, and we feel perfectly at home in these palaces of the palate. And just one little unusual ingredient lights up our pantries just as it gets the blood flowing through that part of the brain that has to do with food and flavour.

We pop the fêncy-schmêncy goodies in our shopping basket so that they can sit on the shelf in our Karoo kitchens while we check them out and ponder what we’ll do with them. I bought two black summer truffles snuggling together in a tiny jar of salted water in David Higgs’s Marble Pantry in Rosebank last week on a business visit. You don’t want to know the price. We Karoo people have seen Higgs in My Kitchen Rules on TV and now we’re shopping in his larney store with the cool jazz playing and staff in smart suits. They’ll come out in several recipes, starting soon, but not today. And truffles are like saffron, not only in their price tags, but in how very little of them you need to use to have a lot of impact.

There were some very classy olives, black and green, in jars there too, but I already have five or six jars of them at home, picked up here and there in my travels. There are olives everywhere in the Karoo, and olive oil and all sorts of relishes and spice mixes, made by tannies in their kitchens and sold to the tuisnywerheid, the little shop in every town where the specialities made by local people are sold. Or from hundreds of farm stalls on every road through the Karoo.

When Karoo people move through the supposedly arid plains, which aren’t arid at all and which smell of the karoobossies that permeate the wind, we see the sheep and the cattle just as you city folk do, but we also see every cut of the beef and the lamb or mutton, we know what to do with them, which ones cook for longer and which for less. We remind ourselves to buy some brisket for a slow Sunday cook, or some skenkels (sliced knuckles) for a curry or potjie. We respect the animal, we love it, and we know the farmer cares for it, but we don’t shy away from eating it once the day comes. We respect the choices of those who shun meat but it is not for us, with a few exceptions here and there, because such is life.

We respect it to the extent that we eat all of it, not necessarily in one sitting like Americans in show-down contests on TV food shows, but in the spirit of respecting the entire beast. We savour the offal, from the liver to the brains, or at least the braver of us do. Brains and sweetbreads are delicacies of note, and I have a friend who gets really excited at the thought of a whole sheep’s head being cooked for one of our annual food festivals. But that’s not for everyone, and even I am squeamish about it.

But give me a piece of beef cheek and my imagination gets going, while the other extreme end of the beast is a treat for almost every Karoo dweller. Oxtail, the toughest of beef cuts, requiring hour upon hour to become tender but boy does it deliver flavour.

Beef cheeks. (Photo: iStock.com/Vladimir Mironov)

One thing a city denizen needs to consider when buying oxtail is that those neat little packages in the shops don’t tell the whole story. The thickest part of the tail is what you want; the chunkiest parts too often found in those packets are from about a third of the way down the tail. We might wonder what happens to the best bits. Maybe the butchers take them home, and who can blame them. So ask your butcher to cut you the thickest rounds of oxtail he has in the fridge at the back. One chunk of that is a full portion of meat for a hungry man.

I cooked oxtail the other day with black olives, quite different from my usual approach which is to include something sweet such as Port and perhaps a spoonful or two of quince jelly. But this time I wanted the deep, dark flavour that olives bring, as well as their brine. In solid Karoo tradition, I used coriander seeds, but also cumin, and I started it in the old tradition of a mirepoix of onion, carrots and celery. Find my recipe for oxtail and olive stew here. DM/TGIFood

Tony Jackman is Galliova Food Champion 2021. His book, foodSTUFF, is available in the DM Shop. Buy it here. 

Follow Tony Jackman on Instagram @tony_jackman_cooks. Share your versions of his recipes with him on Instagram and he’ll see them and respond.

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