a guest post by Nomfundo Sarah Msomi
*an editors note*
This long-anticipated post was written by a lady who has had a tremendous academic and epicurean influence on my life. I was first so delighted just to read it, having lived across oceans from her for some time now, and because (in her own words) “We reached a consensus on the critical role of food and travel philosophies in charting change, although they are infused, for better or worse, with whatever it is we currently stand for, and wherever it is we currently stand.” Nomfundo currently stands on Oxford University and, not only in the gastronomical sense, stands for originality – in her culinary courage and in the uniqueness of her taste and cooking. She reminds me that as we age we are able to trace our growing and changing personal flavors, the people that affect our hungers, the places that inspire new cravings. So, dear readers, what/who has affected yours?
xo, Pascale
How to Build a Country From Potatoes and Flour
by Nomfundo Sarah Msomi
Lack of emotional control is often associated with immaturity, effective and righteous anger with seniority, selfless nurturance with maturity, and jealousy with coevaleness. These associations mean that age and generational symbolism have often been used to naturalise situations of conquest…
– Jennifer Cole and Deborah Durham, Generations and Globalization
“How to build a Country from Potatoes and Flour,” or Eduardo’s recipe for potato pizza, marks the day I learned to eat again. I first tried it in Cape Town towards the end of a blue period where I craved only steamed vegetables, brown rice and aggression. Needless to say, my attitude towards food was an extension of my emotional well-being, and certainly a mirror through which I disapprovingly viewed myself; rough as grain, and dreadfully tasteless. I had left my home of five years (first love, first job, and a box that has since been discarded, despite my oath to return for it), landing in Johannesburg in the midst of a recession that was being vehemently denied. I attended interview after interview, and eventually grew tired of outlining the merits of a Liberal Arts education to strangers who cared only about whether or not I owned a car (but what did you study?). It was around the time my parents decided to renovate the house that I lost my appetite completely. I turned to Al Jazeera in a room that no longer had walls and developed a sour hatred for chicken in all its dry, pale forms. I buried myself in graduate school applications, emerging for the occasional cheerless howl on Garageband when the electrician allowed it. A few months and an adjustment of planets later, I took my miserable appetite to the Cape of Storms where I lived among ghosts, Europeans and revolutionaries. It was there that I met the sort of friends who would lend their last R15 to pay for parking at the airport, and sit while you look for his plane from the balcony as it heads towards Rome.
The first time I met Eduardo he was standing in the kitchen, obstructing the path to my room. I resented the presence of an Italian in my culinary safe space, and stubbornly declined when he offered helpings of his cooking. Faithful to roughage, my stomach tightened when he made carbonara (which I dared to attack with a knife), and I initially felt nothing for farfalle with butternut and sage butter. How that kitchen was a place of resistance! I suspect he could sense the antagonism, the stench of arrogance that cried out for bread and warmth, and my aversion to a male European, an Italian, rising to a clichéd gastronomic pinnacle on my turf. He attacked back by opting out of what I felt were delightful dishes of (mostly) cumin and beans. One evening I agreed to help him prepare pizza– he said it would be unifying, I figured I might as well learn how. Our housemates watched television as we cooked the first of countless meals together. He measured the flour and opened a packet of yeast, the same brand my mother uses for dombolo. I stood across from him in silence, helping to pour tepid water slowly into a bowl full of yeast, flour, salt and sugar. He maintained his stance, as a Taurus is prone to do. I watched the potatoes brown through the oven’s glass door, as I would many more times, cut uniformly and coated in olive oil. It was wonderful and unusual; the potatoes were soft in the centre and crispy on the edges, and the oil fried the dough ever so slightly. We shared the final pie after everyone had eaten, and reused the aluminium pans for quiche a few days later. Resistance did not crumble per se, but I ate. I ate out of curiosity. I ate to subdue butterflies. I ate for a painful transition. I ate for psychological violence and displacement. I ate for a relationship severed by youth and an ocean, not by a lack of love. I ate because I never got to say goodbye. I ate because my parents were hoping I would return healthier and more confident. I ate because I had been holding my breath. I ate for lack of emotional control and effective, righteous anger. We ate because we were building a country from carbohydrates, democracy and little else. We ate because we were home, even if we did not know how and why we were there in the first place.
I hardly cooked over the next three months, save a few stir-fries and a nutmeg-heavy lamb stew that we keep vowing to recreate. Everyday we ate homemade ciabatta; we cooked mfino, sweet potatoes, baked pumpkin with chevre, and occasionally enjoyed taleggio from the farmer’s market an hour away. I prepared the antipasto while Eduardo brought the sweetness out of the vegetables from our CSA box, courtesy of Abalimi Bezekhaya where he interned. My passion for making salad dressing returned with zeal. But ingredients and culinary romantics do not take centre stage this time. Stomach + psyche, patience and sincere appetite define this chapter, for not all things shared are appetizing, nor do we always wake up hungry. That potato pizza, starch-heavy, prepared as resistance, as stability, at the onset, initially in silence, with love, at least for two, re-ignited my desire to cook and eat.
Potato Pizza di Eduardo
300g bread flour
Powdered yeast (1 bag, or7g, I think)
2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon sugar
A tall glass of tepid water
olive oil
2 large potatoes
2 cloves of garlic, roughly sliced
A few sprigs of rosemary
Switch the oven on the lowest possible heat. It must reach at least 40 degrees Celsius.
Pour the flour into a bowl. Make two shallow holes (slightly larger than a thumbprint) somewhere on the surface. In one hole, add the packet of yeast and the sugar, and in the other, add the salt. Mix together by hand. Slowly add the water, mixing the dough (by hand) to avoid lumps – this may happen in five or six increments. It’s unlikely that you will use all the water. Your dough will be slightly liquid – easy enough to pour, but composed – a mass. Don’t be afraid! It’s not meant to be solid or bouncy, just slightly elastic. Your dough is ready when it (only slightly) sticks to your fingers, and is free of lumps.
Switch the oven off and cover your bowl with a moist tea towel. Place the bowl in the oven (switched off) for 2 and a half hours. This step depends on the season, on where you live and on your sensibility to climate change, energy etc. You can avoid the oven and put your dough in the sun, on the windowsill or on a radiator if the weather agrees, but a warm oven is reliable.
Slice the potatoes (you can peel them if you’d like, the thinner the better) and garlic, and place in a bowl with the rosemary to taste. Add olive oil, a pinch of course salt and mix.
Once your dough has risen (to at least twice the original size), coat your hands in olive oil to avoid sticking, and pour it evenly (you may need to stretch/pull it out of the bowl somewhat, since it will be malleable) into a baking pan lined with parchment paper (if you wish) and very lightly coated in olive oil. The more oil, the crunchier the base, but fried pizza is not optimum. Carefully add your toppings (see picture), and bake until brown (20-25 minutes, depending on your oven. Each to her own pizza!) at 220 degrees Celsius.
This is versatile dough and you can change your toppings. Add homemade tomato sauce and mozzarella if you wish, or bake it solo, adding fresh rocket and prosciutto just before eating on warmer days. Great for dinner parties, for lunch or with dinner. It keeps well, and responds favourably to a glass of wine while you’re preparing a meal.
