We attend a local church service where we hear of their upcoming Potjiekos Competition Fundraiser. A potjiekos (paht – GEE – kos) is a 3-legged iron pot under which you build a fire and in which you cook a stew. The stew can be anything, but vegetables with a bit of meat is the usual fare. This is too good to pass up, and we decided to attend.
The big day comes and it’s cool and windy – perfect for a bowl of hot stew. The power is off (again), so wood-based cooking is the way to go. For 50 Rands (just under $3) we each buy tickets for the 12 contest entrants, 6 of which don’t show up. Not deterred, we commence with the tasting.
The recipes were all over the place. The fish stew was full of bones and the seafood stew was full of crayfish and mussel shells. The traditional vegetable and mutton dish was oh so bland, and the mutton was only chunks of fat. The Tripe & Trotters (tripe being the edible lining of a sheep’s stomach, and a trotter is a pig’s foot) was described to us as an “acquired taste,” an acquisition we didn’t make.
Then there was the pasta in cream sauce with pancetta-like bacon; it was so good, but so creamy you could actually hear some of your smaller arteries snap shut. Best of show was the chicken curry, sublimely seasoned with melt-in-your-mouth tender chicken pieces. With potjiekos, you never know what you’re going to get.
Potjiekos competitions are like what we do when coming to South Africa. We bring Whitman’s Sampler chocolates to our friends (easily packable and half-price after Christmas!). The South Africans have never seen a Whitman’s and they’re unsure what it is before opening. That’s when we say a Whitman’s sampler is like America, there are both darks and lights, and you’re not going to like some of them. And, like potjiekos, Whitman’s chocolates aren’t labeled. There’s no hint of what’s inside, like identifying solid milk chocolate with an “M,” or orange cream with an “OC,” or nougat with a Skull and Crossbones.
It was good to go the Potjiekos Competition Fundraiser. We hung out with a church congregation that would be called “colored” here. We watched the kids play and compete in a hula hoop (!) contest. We were blessed when the load shedding cut off the stereo system whose volume was set to “Everyone hears this Everywhere.” And we got to experience what they think good potjiekos food tastes like. The interesting things happen at the edges of your experience, not in the middle of a bubble of sameness and predictability. Who knows, maybe someday Tripe & Trotters will be worth a try – in the far, far, future!
