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MARIAN BETANCOURTDressed up or served plain, butternut squash soup encompasses the flavor of the country's "rainbow cuisine."
NEW YORK - Conversation with South Africans reveals that a lot of people think of butternut squash soup as the national soup of South Africa - it's served in restaurants, at home, even on safari.
"If there's not butternut squash soup on the menu, it's not an authentic South African restaurant," Nicolas Smallberger, a visiting South African chef, explained at a demonstration lunch. "I've traveled a lot in the world and people always are talking about the soups of South Africa."
"Butternut squash for us has big use," said Grant Cullingworth, executive chef at Table Bay Hotel, Cape Town, South Africa. "We call it "Boer pumpkin."'
Smallberger, Cullingworth, Earl King, also of Table Bay, and Johannes Mokae were among the chefs in New York for a week of events celebrating South Africa's 10 years of democracy.
The chefs prepared a five-course meal for lunch and again for dinner at the James Beard House in downtown Manhattan, and spoke with journalists about their home cuisine, sometimes dubbed "rainbow cuisine". In South Africa, they said, the melting pot is also a cooking pot, given the number of ethnic groups the country has - rather like the United States.
"We took a little from all of them, but basically we have peasant food," Cullingworth explained. "It's very rustic."
In fact, it was the search for food, and especially spices, that shaped the history of what is today's South Africa. While the Dutch East India Company was looking for spices and other treasure in the mid 1600s, its explorers found the tip of Africa a convenient place to rest and restock their ships. They planted a first farm, then brought slaves from Java, Sumatra and Malaysia to work in the fields because the local black population was not terribly interested in the Dutch (or their cuisine, preferring their diet of fish and game, wild greens, root vegetables, berries and grains).
Malay slaves brought their spicy, flavorful cuisine, now among the most popular in South Africa. The French Huguenots, who arrived after the Dutch, introduced vineyards, today producing the country's well-regarded wines.
Sugar farmers brought laborers from India to cut the cane. British and German immigrants added European embellishments to the mix. Today, South Africa's population of at least 44-million people represents many races and mixed races.
Nobel Peace Prize winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu dubbed the country the "rainbow nation" after it established democracy in 1994.
All these influences and the wide availability of ingredients might overwhelm a chef, but Cullingworth, for one, keeps it simple. His credo is to present no more than three items on a plate, and his cooking philosophy is "to create simple and unpretentious cuisine."
"We are starting to focus on what's in our own country," added Cullingworth, who was born in Zimbabwe, grew up in Johannesburg and now lives in Cape Town. "We have amazing wines. We have amazing grapes. We focus on what we have on our doorstep."
And butternut squash literally grows at the doorstep. Every variety of squash grows in South Africa.
"If you gather up all that grow along the side of the road and toss the seeds away, it will grow everywhere," King said.
Butternut squash soup can be plain or fancy. Some cooks add apples or tomatoes, some use nothing else at all.
"It's like a vichyssoise," Cullingworth said. "You can make it as thick or as thin as you like, for the summer or winter."
The roasted banana and curry spices that Cullingworth used in the version from the Beard House dinner (recipe at right) help make it a velvety emulsion that is at once savory and sweet. His definition of it: light in texture, but rich, smooth and creamy in taste.
* * *Cullingworth dressed the soup with a spicy grilled langoustine flavored with chernmoula, an African spice-paste of cilantro, parsley, chili, garlic and paprika. It was topped with fresh cilantro and pineapple salsa (diced pineapple, chopped cilantro, olive oil and lemon juice). A slice of mossbolletjie toast, a traditional Afrikaans sweet milk bread flavored with anise, was served with it.