Mace, like its first cousin nutmeg, was one of the most important spices employed in traditional Cape cookery, figuring in the oldest recipes. The popularity of mace has gradually waned, to the point today where most people look quite blank if you talk about it. Let’s bring it back.
There followed a significant eyeroll.
Is a naartjie a Clementine? No, although sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference with soft citrus that loosens easily from its shell, like the naartjie. Clementine is
citrus clementina (there’s a clue in the name), whereas the naartjie is
citrus reticulata, a member of the satsuma, mandarin, tangerine clan. Arguably. It is confusing, because when you google both naartjie and clementine, descriptions for both come up which seem pretty interchangeable. But in the four years of living in Chichester I never once tasted a clementine with the naartjie texture and flavour I was hoping for. Naartjie has a sweetness just on the edge of sour, clementine is sweet all the way. Mandarin, quite different, even if the segments are also tiny.
First published in DM168
When my generation was growing up, nearly all the pepper was white and powdered. You could buy white peppercorns, but our parents, having survived a world war, weren’t given to fussing about matters of scant import. They just bought powdered white pepper, plonked it on the kitchen table, and sprinkled it over whatever food was in front of them, along with salt. There was no reason to question this. It was as it was.
Okay, we still flinch when our parents or grandparents pour salt and pepper over everything without tasting anything first. But that’s another story.
Dear mom,
How are you? I am fine. Remember that? The way you taught me to write to Molly when I was seven. We corresponded for decades, me in Oranjemund and later Cape Town, my favourite cousin in Quaker Lane, Liversedge, West Yorkshire, living in the house that was her mum Aunty Marian’s where you and dad had your farewell before leaving for southern Africa in 1952, just before the queen was crowned. Then in 1987 I finally went to England and met Molly, but not the queen. And suddenly all the cousins and uncles and aunts I had heard about were real and right in front of me, telling me stories, and Molly even showing me how to make Yorkshire puddings, properly. Exactly the way you had shown me.