EATING, TRAVELLING CELEBRATING AFRICA
Africa Café owner chef Portia Mbau shares her culinary journey in her new cookbook, writes Ilana Sharlin Stone
Here lies the ultimate food irony: Portia Mbau, South African chef and author of the newly published The Africa Cookbook — who for 27 years has fed thousands of mostly foreign tourists at her Cape Town restaurant, The Africa Café — first discovered dishes of other African countries in the US. It was Africa Day at the Oregon university where Mbau was a bursary student. She will never forget the thrill of tasting dishes prepared by other African students from their home countries. In 2020, South Africans are still more likely to have tasted osso bucco than a groundnut stew.
Mbau notes an interesting connection she’s made: that Ethiopian food comes from one of two African countries never colonised . “As colonised countries, we’re still working through the fact that we believed what we were told; that we’re second rate. When it’s European, we elevate it; when it’s African, we downplay it.”
Her book — a collaboration with her daughter Lumai de Smidt — is a vibrant, contemporary celebration of African food, lifestyle and design. De Smidt, who did the photography and cover design, sees the book — with its easy-to-follow recipes and short ingredient lists — as bridging the gap between cuisines “perceived as new and exotic and an everyday cooking repertoire”. It’s also the story of her mother, an often-overlooked restaurant pioneer.
Johannesburg-born Mbau, who mostly grew up in Swaziland, was exposed to different flavours from a young age, with expat ANC activists regularly passing through her family home. Her parents travelled with their children all over SA, eager to expose them to different places and cultures. “It’s where I got my itchy feet and explorer’s spirit,” she says.
After university, Mbau returned to Johannesburg and married Jason de Smidt. The political environment made life difficult for this racially mixed couple, who relocated to Cape Town, where they opened The Africa Café in their small Observatory home. Later, the restaurant moved to Heritage Square in the CBD.
With their own kids, Portia and Jason would take adventurous travel to a new level, road-tripping all over Africa, even canoeing up the Niger River in Mali. Experiences such as these (and their food discoveries), combined with Portia’s family recipes and her interest in healthy eating shaped The Africa Café’s evolving menu. Today’s ‘Communal Feast’ takes diners around the continent in 15 dishes — from Africa Café cassava bread to Nigerian suya and Malagasy calamari.
Working with Lumai, a regular on Instagram and Pinterest, has helped cement the book’s relevance.
“For my generation, things are celebrated in the technological modern world,” says Lumai.
A percentage of proceeds from The Africa Cookbook will go to FutureMe, a social enterprise Lumai works with.
CAMEROONIAN GROUNDNUT STEW
SERVES 8
I usually put this on the restaurant menu in winter because it’s a rich, warming dish. A lot of meat and vegetable dishes in West Africa, from Congo to Cameroon, are prepared with groundnuts. The Ghanaians I’ve met speak fondly of peanut soup. The “soup” (which is more of a stew) may be made with chicken, beef, lamb or goat.
10 chicken thighs
15ml (1 tbsp) salt
15ml (1 tbsp) ground ginger 125ml (½ cup) peanut oil 250ml (1 cup) finely chopped onion
10ml (2 tsp) crushed garlic
5ml (1 tsp) finely chopped fresh ginger
Pinch (¼ tsp) cayenne pepper 5ml (1 tsp) white pepper 5 medium-sized tomatoes, blanched, peeled and chopped
60ml (¼ cup) tomato paste 4 cups boiling water
250ml (1 cup) peanut butter Lemon wedges for serving
Dry the chicken pieces with paper towel. Rub salt and ground ginger into each piece. Heat oil in a pot over high heat. Brown chicken pieces in the pot and transfer to a plate. Pour off some of the oil, leaving about a quarter cup in the pot.
Fry the onion over medium heat until golden brown. Add the garlic, ginger, cayenne and white pepper. Simmer the browned onions and spices for five minutes over low heat.
Add the tomato and tomato paste, stir and cook for 15 minutes. Pour in the boiling water, stir well and return chicken pieces to the pot. Cook uncovered for 15 minutes. Stir in the peanut butter, cover the pot and continue to cook for half an hour or until done.
Serve with basmati rice, roti or flatbread and lemon wedges on the side.