MAIN INGREDIENT

Take one Karoo farm. Add one or two Karoo dawns, a lamb, some olives from that tree over there near the windmill, and a few of those chickens near the old farm dam. Gooi in some of the kapokbos twigs from the bush growing next to Tannie Hester’s rusty 1962 Morris Minor, stir in a handful of wild garlic flowers and simmer all day. Or for the rest of your life.

You’ll be rewarded with serenity and that feeling of wellbeing you get when you’re standing midway between the past and infinity.

Out of the window in Richmond, the Northern Cape one north of Three Sisters, not the KwaZulu-Natal one, are low-slung Victorian houses, Mission olive trees and no sign of human life. It’s too cold to go out of doors; temperatures fell to -10 during the night and it’s -6 right now. We had delicious Karoo lamb curry for supper last night with slices of preserved quince and flatbreads made from stoneground flour.

Before that they’d brought us thick slices of crusty homemade bread and a bowl of tomato and sliced-onion salad in a dressing of balsamic vinegar and something hard to discern; I thought it might be caraway. It puzzled me at first, then I saw the reasoning. It’s a natural lead-in to a mild curry, sambal-like and Karoo-friendly; you take chunks of bread and dunk them in the juices, and scoop some of the tomato and onion along the way. Brilliant. There were fat wedges of yellow farm butter too for the rest of the bread. No way could we finish it, knowing what was to come.

This is the Richmond Café and Rooms, the last stop of our first holiday since the pandemic blindsided us all. We’d stopped by for supper one night a few years ago during one of Darryl David’s wonderful book festivals, and decided to stay here next time in one of the smallest yet most accessible of Karoo villages, right on the N1 about halfway between Cape Town and Johannesburg.

Everything’s been painted white since last we were here, with peace-seeking olive branches stuck in vases everywhere. It’s a place of happiness and owner Klaradyn Grobler’s peace and light. This is far from a mere stopover; it’s a mini-world of its own, drenched in serene character.

Also brimful of warm and fuzzy things is Prince Albert’s Dennehof guesthouse, where we had breakfast the previous morning. We’d known Dennehof since Elaine Hurford bought it in the early Nineties and turned it into a beautiful Karoo guesthouse. Way back then, she cooked us the best leg of Karoo lamb with lots of garlic and lavender and we ate it under the pepper tree near the main house, next to the old stone bread oven. That was where one of the earliest thoughts came to me about what has happened to us since: that we should live in the Karoo. Elaine went there for two years in 1994. She’s still there. That’s how the Karoo takes you.

Dennehof has had other owners since Elaine sold it many years ago, but the present owners have best captured and understood the spirit that she imbued it with. Now she lives just up the road and the new proprietors, Inga and Albert Terblanche, had wanted to have her over to see what they’ve done to her old place, so we all went along.

And what do I find but the best breakfast I’ve had anywhere in ages. I don’t remember when I had anything at that time of day anywhere near as delicious. Everyone else went the safe bacon-and-eggs route but I was captivated by the first item on the blackboard menu, which Albert told me later is Inga’s signature dish, “herby avocado butter on sourdough toast topped with poached egg and toasted sesame, blistered tomatoes on the side. Bacon optional”. Of course I had the bacon on the side.

As for the bacon and eggs the others chose, well, that was the “country breakfast with two eggs made to order, blistered tomatoes, bacon and sourdough toast”. So, everything I had, then, but without the centrepiece that