Squashed tomatoes – shooting Mynie

What a great name for a food writer: Dine van Zyl. So much better than poor Martin Crummy, who does wine reportage for The Drinks Business. Let’s hope Dine gets to join Judge Jay (UK foodie Jay Rayner) who fevered rumour reports is handling the judging for the controversial Eat Out Awards this year.  I’m reliably informed Louis Vuitton developed a special Titanic travelling trunk to accommodate his ego.  Be that as it may, the coming of Judge Jay frees up a previous incumbent to consult to restaurants that were conspicuously absent from last year’s Eat Out Awards! This does not work on so many levels, like farting in a lift. But then as they say in the Middle Kingdom “the foreign moon is always rounder.”

Judge Jay for Eat Out Awards?

Anyway, back on planet real food, seems that Dine is making a TV series on boerekos for KykNet, the best local TV channel by a country mile. Why is Afrikaans culture so much more vibrant that English cucumber sandwiches at the minute? Why will Dine’s boerekos extravaganza most likely make MasterChefSA look like a production of Germiston Primary School? Why is Chris Chameleon so much better than the Parlotones these days? Why are the best bits of David Kramer’s songs sung in Afrikaans? So many questions, so much cultural cringe!

With a boerekos bee in her bonnet, Dine headed for Lemoenfontein on the Paardeberg for an audience with Mynhardt Joubert, the Culinary King of Riebeek-Kasteel in his Bar Bar Black Sheep castle, who once danced with Diana Ross in London in his days in the Ballet. Neighbour Tina Schreiber had given Mynie a king’s ransom of tomatoes, so Mynie had peeled, boiled and simmered them for days and even put up a new shelf in his kitchen for all the jars of tomato jam. At 2am on the morning of Dine’s visit, Mynie was woken by a crash as 80 jars of tomato jam made like Newton’s apple and crashed to the floor. It was a scene straight out of CSI Miami, with tomato jam splattered all over the walls and floors, while Dine was dreaming of delicious hot-cross bun flavoured Ouma rusks, the latest addition to the Marie Biscuits and Mrs Balls’ Chutney (did you spot the SA product placement in Mrs Thatcher’s fridge in The Iron Lady?) collection of SA cross-cultural culinary icons.

In the end, the shoot went off fine. There was a moment when Dine denounced Mynie’s use of chicken stock as inauthentic, but her doubts were silenced when she ate the evidence. The shoot wrapped up with a sunset table in the vineyard, with the witroes infected Bukettraube vines a photogenic backdrop Almodóvar would kill for. Let’s see if MasterChefSA can beat that!

They certainly won’t beat Jasper Wicken’s Paardeberg oesaf party this Friday night, with prizes given to the partygoer wearing “the shortest denim pant. Pant not to be cut on site.” Partyberg indeed!