Wow! Let's go to South Africa

Okay, seriously, I just made the most awesome dish, completely out of my comfort zone, within which I have cowardly been hiding (I’ve made vegan osh about 3 times, vegan lasagna twice). Sorry it’s been a while, but here I go.

First of all, I would like to thank a publisher from Peace Corps Writers, Marian Beil, who sent me an African cookbook from her Peace Corps Service. It served as a guiding force, although of course I made some changes (and incidentally some mistakes).

I made a meal combining 3 South African dishes: yellow rice, greens and peanuts, garnished with apricot blatjang (chutney). I made the apricot chutney first, as it does not need to be served hot, and then set it aside.

Apricot Blatjang

1 ¼ cups dried apricots, quartered
¼ cup onion, diced
¼ cup raisins
½ white wine vinegar
2 tablespoons cane sugar
1 tablespoon fresh ginger
3 cloves garlic
1 teaspoon cayenne
1 teaspoon ground coriander
1 teaspoon salt
¼ sliced almonds

Put the apricots, onion, raisins and vinegar into a saucepan. Add one cup of water, enough until all the ingredients are covered. Bring to a boil, but don’t start getting busy with anything else or otherwise spacing out, because you need to keep stirring the mixture. Reduce heat to medium. Now, this is where it gets tricky: you need to pound the garlic, ginger and cayenne with a mortar and pestle—at first I thought that was a joke. I saw a mortar and pestle at Crate and Barrel the other day and laughed at the thing, but those aren’t just for apothecaries. I think I could have used it today. What I did was stick the garlic, ginger and cayenne into a coffee cup and mash it with the end of a spoon, but that was a little frustrating. After that’s mixed decently well, add the salt and coriander (ah-hm, first time I’ve EVER cooked with that spice and it blows me away). Keep stirring your apricot mixture. Once the fruit is soft and the liquid looks like honey (about 15 minutes later), remove it from the heat. Combine the spices. Mix well and put in a serving dish.

Geel Rys

3 tablespoons butter substitute
2 cups long grain rice
2 cinnamon sticks
1 tsp salt
1 tsp turmeric
½ cup raisins
½ sliced almonds

Melt the butter in a large pot first. Then add the salt and turmeric. Add the rice and make sure to coat each grain before you add 2 cups water. Add your cinnamon sticks and cover, stirring every few minutes. In 20-30 minutes, your rice should be tender, but mine wasn’t. I had to add at least another 1/3 cup of water. I remembered to rinse my rice this time too.

UM’Bido

1 ½ packages or spinach
1 cup coarsely ground peanuts
1 tablespoon butter substitute
¼ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon pepper

Place one package of spinach in a pot with about 2 cups of water—I know, I said 1 ½ packages, that’s because I had to add more spinach to soak up all the water. Maybe you should start with 1 cup water. Heat on medium high. Now the peanuts gave me trouble. I didn’t have pre-ground peanuts and my blender’s broken. I got the bright idea to fix it with duck tape (the ring at the base was cracked), but that only made a HUGE mess and God-awful sounds that I’ll leave to your imagination. I thought about sticking the peanuts in the coffee grinder but even after I washed it, the scent of coffee was just too overwhelming. So I stuck the peanuts in a baggie—I even double-bagged it—and started beating the peanuts with a wooden spoon (it kind of reminded me of the way I used to beat Russian chocolate bars to make chocolate chips in Uzbekistan). That worked reasonably well, and after 20 minutes, the spinach was ready. I added my butter substitute and peanuts and mixed well.

South African poet Dennis Brutus was imprisoned and tortured by the authorities because of his anti-apartheid activities. After his release, he emigrated to the US.

At Night

At night
on the smooth grey concrete of my cell
I heard the enormous roar of the surf
and saw in my mind’s eye
the great white wall of spray rising
like a sheet of shattering glass
where the surge broke
on the shore and rocks and barbed wire
and going to the shed
in hope of a visitor
I greeted the great cypresses
green and black
dreaming of their poised serenity
in the limpid stillness of the brilliant afternoon
gracious as an Umbrian Raphael landscape
but more brilliant and more sharp.

-by Dennis Brutus

Vegan Osh

Osh is the national dish of Uzbekistan traditionally made with rice, carrots, onions, flavored with cumin and topped with goat meat. I liked it so much that I even served it at my wedding (Stateside), but my version is even better. I learned how to make it extra delicious (and vegan friendly!) with my own extra entertaining method.

1 cup rice
1 cup shredded carrots
1 sliced medium onion
2 tsp cumin
8 ounces of tempeh (I’ve always used three-grain)
Special tempeh sauce
½ cup dry red wine
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp soy sauce
¼ cup hot sauce OR 1 tsp cayenne OR both
Juice from 1 lemon
3 or 4 large crushed cloves of garlic
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp oregano


You will need three separate pots/pans: one medium-size pot to boil one cup of rice, and one pan to sauté the carrots and onion in the cumin, one small pan to cook the tempeh in the special tempeh sauce. That’s how I’m going to organize this post.

one medium-size pot to boil one cup of rice

You know how to make rice don’t you? I’m pretty sure it’s one part rice to 2 parts water with a tablespoon of butter substitute. You supposed to bring it to a boil and then simmer for 35 minutes, but for some reason it never takes that long for me. Oh, and seriously, I just made this: You need to rinse the rice before you cook it. Mmmm…earthy!

one pan to sauté the carrots and onion in the cumin

Drop two tablespoons of olive oil onto the middle of the pan and add the cumin (yes, 1 tsp is a little much, but I barely discovered the spice when I lived in Uzbekistan and I love it—you might want to try ½ tsp). Add the carrots (and if you don’t have whole carrots and decide to peel baby carrots, be warned—that is extra hard. Lay the carrot lengthwise on a cutting board and go to it. This is time consuming though). Add the onions (slice your onion, but then remember to cut it in half so that you’re dealing with semi-rings rather than inflexible, cumbersome rings). Cook for about ten minutes and then add the raisins. Cook until your good sense tells you to stop.

one small pan to cook the tempeh in the special tempeh sauce

Combine the special tempeh sauce ingredients into to pan and mix well with a spatula. Turn your burner to low while you cut the tempeh.
Most tempeh comes in an eight by four block of grain, a little less than an inch thick. Once you manage to get the tempeh out of its double-layer of plastic wrap without cutting yourself, cursing or otherwise destroying your composure, cut the tempeh in half so that you have two eight by four blocks of grain a little less than ½ inch thick. This description is going to get a little weird, but bear with me—I don’t read many recipes, so I probably don’t have the recipe jargon down, but ultimately what you want are a bunch of little tempeh right triangles. Cut the width in halves and the length in fourths. Cut these rectangles into two right triangles along the hypotenuse (but I do remember math jargon it seems).

Add the tempeh right triangles into the special tempeh sauce, assuring that all triangles are all or partially submerged. You shouldn’t have to stack them on top of each other. If they’re not all adequately covered in the special tempeh sauce, sometimes I add more wine. Cover. Cook for 20 minutes on medium to low heat . I usually (and unintentionally) start out cooking at a medium to high heat because I think nothing’s happening on a low heat, but then I quickly reduce to a very low heat, all the while I’m checking my tempeh right triangles and turning them over to make sure the pieces all get their share of the special sauce—did I mention how good it makes the tempeh? SO GOOD! Don’t let the hot sauce or cayenne scare you away. You could always skip one or the other. I wouldn’t skip both because one or the other gives it a nice kick. I haven’t had meat for over two years, but I am pretty sure this is full of meaty animal goodness! AH! Can a vegan say that? Homer-Simpson-esque growl and drool: Ohhh…vegan right triangles…yum-yum-yum. I hope other vegans don’t disown me when I say that I love meat (I just don’t love eating it). I have fond memories of meat. Fond, fond memories, and I have not so fond memories—rotten, spoiled, dysentery-inducing memories, but that’s beside the point because this tempeh is so good! And it’s really good for you, too.

Now the presentation of osh. Hopefully, you didn’t burn the rice—which is no small feat because you have had to tend to 3 (three!) separate pots! Put the rice evenly on a serving platter. Now hopefully you didn’t burn the onions and the carrots either, which again would be pretty incredible (yes it would be, if I didn’t do it—but it’s still good. My tempeh is perfect!). Put the mixture in a cookbook-photo fashion on the rice. Then add tempeh in the same stylish fashion. Enjoy, with a poem of course.

Now, you can’t enjoy the good without first acknowledging the bad. Poet Yousuf Juma is from Bukhara, Uzbekistan. He is openly critical of Islam Karimov’s oppressive regime, and hence he and his family endure constant police harassment and brutality, and he is banned from publication in his country. He wrote the following poem about the massacre in Andijon which precipitated the Peace Corps’ evacuation. The ghazal form beautifully embodies this theme.

The best men of the people were shot in Andijan.
Elders like Dukchi-ishan, were shot in Andijan.

People were shot in Namangana, shot in Fergana,
the very best lions were shot in Andijan.

The blind are alive, the jackals are alive,
Sharifjan Shokurovs were shot in Andijan.

Future Babarakhin Mashrabs were killed,
tigers like Babur were shot in Andijan.

In their hearts they were wild activists, endurers of the right way,
let their graves be full of light, they were shot in Andijan.

They went off faithful to their faith, they went off with open eyes,
the earth was left without men, they were shot at Andijan.