COLUMN: ABIGAIL GEORGE

Slap chips go with anything – fish and chips, chicken and chips, pie and chips, on their own, inside a soft hotdog roll… Abigail George can’t get enough.

“Those chips seemed to bring us students together. We sat down and ate our humble meal – a meal that became a meeting point of different cultures. We came from different backgrounds, different classes, we were different races, but none of it mattered. We were united by hunger, and by the glorious salvation of golden fried potato.”

All through my childhood, fish and chips was eaten a few times a month in our house. My family’s go-to place in Port Elizabeth was Seaflight Fisheries. We would stand in front of the counter and watch the ladies, with what looked like posh shower caps covering their hair, fry hake or calamari soaked in batter. The chips would be fried in hot oil until both fish and chips were mouth-wateringly golden and deliciously crisp.

For us, in our community, fish and chips was a miracle food. It was divine. A sacred food for the angels.

We also made our own chips. Chefs will tell you you have to use certain potatoes for the chips to come out crisp, but we never bothered with that. A potato was mos a potato. My mother would cut her chips into wedges like Nando’s did when we still had a Nando’s in our area. Those were the days.

The smell of chips is so tantalising; it still conjures many childhood memories.

I can fix my state of mind with a plate of slap chips and slices of wellbuttered white bread. (Sometimes, to fool ourselves into thinking we were being healthconscious, my mother would buy a loaf of brown bread instead of white.)

I think of the hopefulness, the expectation and the happiness that went with a simple visit to the local takeaway place.

The women at Seaflight were experts. They knew what to deliver to their customers. They did this day in and day out. I marvelled at the way they seemed to lift the steaming chips out of the fryer so effortlessly. They did it elegantly, with what looked like love.

The effect was magical.

Whether it came wrapped in yesterday’s newspaper, or in a greasy brown paper bag, that package was the beginning, middle and end of any hunger pang or craving. Heaven on a plate! A jukebox full of flavour tunes in your mouth.

“KFC? Roman’s? Samosas? Fish and chips?” my mother’s voice would ring out in our house. She hardly ever felt like cooking during the first week of the month when we were still flush with cash. “Oh, I can’t go to Seaflight again,” my mother said. “That man has seen me there twice this week already!”

But even though she had already been there twice that week, she went anyway, in her blue jeans, with her pearl earrings and bob-cut magazine hair, looking like she might be my older sister.

Fish and chips… Always such a welcome distraction. I thought of it as a staple food, not a takeaway. We all kidded ourselves that it had at least some nutritional value because of the fish.

When my mother arrived home with our meal, I would tuck in, gorging myself on chips that were so hot they burnt my fingers. There was always a neat lemon wedge. I squeezed the lemon over the calamari (which is like proper adult fish and chips) while the cat and her kittens hovered nearby, hoping for a tasty morsel.

Then there were family holidays in Johannesburg. One time we all went to Zoo Lake – my younger siblings, sister

Ambronese and brother Ambrose (my dad’s namesake), plus Aunt Babs and my mum Gerda. We were ravenous after our outing, so we found an outof-the-way café and ordered fish and chips. Obviously. At another café, not far from where Aunt Babs stayed in Coronationville, we’d get our chips with a half-moon Russian sausage.

Everybody has his or her own spin on slap chips, and what best to serve them with. Near month end in our house in PE, when we were feeling the financial squeeze, we’d share a gatsby with masala chips and topped with a fried egg. My mother was no domestic goddess. Yes, she could make chicken curry and fluffy, flaky roti out of thin air, tomato bredie, too; a mean trifle, divine milk tart… But that’s about that. She was really good at buying ready-made custard and jelly at the KwikSpar, and then burning the custard on the bottom of the pot.

It was my brother who introduced us to gooey rice pudding and blueberry cheesecake, and it was he who introduced us to Cooking the Grey Way

– a book of recipes gathered from mothers, staff and the matron of the boarding house at his fancy school, Grey College.

I do try and eat healthy. Aren’t all women forever on a diet or trying to lose a few extra kilograms, either for the person or the people in her life, or for health reasons, or just to look good for summer? I’ll make a green salad, or I’ll make lentil soup. Maybe I’ll put a cup of lentils in a curry. I’ll eat sweetcorn, albeit the kind that comes out of a can, and I’ll tell myself half-heartedly that it’s good for me. I’ll eat peas and spinach – even kale.

But the love affair I’ve had since childhood with slap chips – with battered hake, a Russian, chicken, or on their own – has never faded.

When I was a starving student at Newtown Film and Television School in the heart of Johannesburg, I would eat slap chips in a hotdog roll, washed down with a two-litre Coke. I would make a pocket in the roll for the chips to fit into, breaking open the bread with my fingers.

I can fix my state of mind with a plate of slap chips and slices of well-buttered white bread. (Sometimes, to fool ourselves into thinking we were being health-conscious, my mother would buy a loaf of brown bread instead of white.) I can drown my sorrows in vinegar and lemon juice. I know, I know: Ordering takeaways is always the bad choice, the bad life decision. Fried stuff is not good, anything with too much salt is not good, grease and fat will block your arteries. I know all this. But it still doesn’t change the fact that slap chips are sacred. Whether you like yours with an anointment of salt and vinegar, or spiced with masala from La Fiesta, or with tomato sauce, or just plain, you can’t beat them.

At film school, those chips seemed to bring us students together. We sat down and ate our humble meal – a meal that became a meeting point of different cultures. We came from different backgrounds, different classes, we were different races, but none of it mattered. We were united by hunger, and by the glorious salvation of golden fried potato. That was our community.

Thank you, slap chips. For everything.

Seaflight Fisheries is still going! There are numerous branches all over Port Elizabeth. Go get your fix.