THE CULTURE CLUB
It’s a simple, thick and deliciously creamy fermented dairy product with an intense sour taste, and the humbleness of the ingredient belies the contribution it has made to SA’s culinary heritage. Curiously, it’s also one of those anomalies where, commercially, it’s packaged under different names (amasi or maas and buttermilk) and, standing side by side in supermarket fridges, sold at different prices (amasi is cheaper).
“Amasi” is the Zulu name for cow’s milk naturally fermented in a calabash. It’s easily done in warmer climes, where cow’s milk will sour and coagulate in just two days. A favourite way to eat it is poured over pap, or it can be enjoyed as a drink or used in cooking and baking. It is said that milk fermented this way is more easily digested than unfermented milk.
On hot days — of which there are many in Durban, where I grew up — my mother would regale us with mouthwatering tales of the homemade ice-cold maas, as she called it, that she enjoyed as a child.
Looking back, I feel sure she was referring to what is described as “traditional buttermilk”, a byproduct of the liquid left behind after churning butter from cream. That is unlike the commercial amasi or buttermilk, which is a very different beast — it’s milk fermented using a culture and is known as “cultured buttermilk”, the variety we find in stores.
My favourite amasi story took place in Nelson Mandela’s kitchen in Houghton in 2002, with his cook, Xoliswa Ndoyiya.
Renowned food writer Madhur Jaffrey was in town, researching recipes for her new curry cookbook. Through Mandela’s friend Amina Cachalia, Jaffrey had organised a group of Indian ladies to prepare a South African biryani and a crab curry — among Madiba’s favourite dishes.
In one corner, Ndoyiya stood over a large pot stirring Madiba’s special umngqusho for Jaffrey, adding onion, garlic, tomatoes and chillies to the mielie and bean mix.
The kitchen, a hive of activity, was a heady mix of enticing, spicy aromas. Jaffrey, notebook in hand, stopped when a copious amount of maas was poured over the biryani meat.
“What’s that?” she asked. “Maas,” everyone said in unison. Ndoyiya explained how she made maas for drinking by leaving milk to sour in a warm place. The Indian cooks said it was essential to a good biryani as it tenderised and flavoured the meat.
At that moment the kitchen door swung open and in walked a very tall Mandela, who moved around the kitchen casually lifting the lids of all the pots, soaking up the mouthwatering aromas, saying they were making him hungry.
“It’s lunch time ladies. Join me in the garden for this special meal,” he said. And we did. LS
The kitchen door swung open and in walked Madiba