Have you ever had the feeling that your heart lives in two places at once? I suspect anybody whose lover or child has ever lived far away from them knows precisely what I am talking about. Part of your heart lives where you physically find yourself, attached to things like friends, neighbours, pets, a garden or a house. But another part of your heart constantly lives elsewhere, stretching itself out like an elastic band, straining to be where the object of your affections is. It’s a little like that when you live in a foreign country.
One of the cravings that pulls my tastebuds (if not my heart!) back to South Africa is the craving for boerewors. Literally translated, boerewors (say boo-ruh-vors and try rolling the r’s a little) means “farmers’ sausage”, and it looks like a very long Cumberland ring sausage as it is always sold in a coil. But appearance is as far as the similarity goes. Boerewors is made of several types of meat – usually a combination of beef, lamb and pork, but sometimes ostrich or game meat – combined with cubed pork fat (spekvet) and natural preservatives such as vinegar and spices (coriander seeds play a large part). Each butcher has their own recipe for making the best boerewors and in most supermarkets in South Africa you will find a number of different types – but beware as these can vary vastly in quality! The best types are free from artificial preservatives and have a high meat content (as opposed to inferior types that can contain offal, bonemeal and soya). No South African barbecue is complete without it and on any given Saturday morning there will be someone selling “boerie rolls” (hot dogs made with bbq’d boerewors instead of wiener/vienna sausages) outside your local supermarket, with the smell driving you crazy the minute you get out of the car.
To see how I turned this rather large coil of boerewors into a perfect finger food, please click through to my guest post on Colleen’s blog. Colleen needs little introduction to South African food bloggers. She is the lady who bravely went where no SA blogger had gone before and founded the South African Food & Wine Blogger Indaba, now heading for its third year. She is a wise, sensible and compassionate friend and mentor to many South African food bloggers and always has time to help others with a kind word, some sound advice, or a joke. She is also my blogMamma and I love her to bits – so doing this guest post for her is both a pleasure and an honour. So what are you waiting for – click through to Colleen’s site for my boerewors mini sausage rolls recipe and post!
