Afrikaans Sosaties
From Leipoldt’s Food & Wine
by C Louis Leipoldt
There is probably no other dish that can be regarded as more genuinely Afrikaans than
Tant Alie says: ‘Those aren’t sosaties – they’re just some of that French rubbish you get in their restaurants.’ She knows all about it because when she was still young enough to go a-courting, she paid a visit to Paris. According to her, it was then a very strange place, certainly not what it is today – or was in my day. I managed to avoid the misfortune of eating any rubbish in Paris, although I must agree that I never encountered any genuine sosaties there.
‘Nee,’ says Tant Alie, ‘the truth, my child… the truth is that you no longer get sosaties like Ouma Liesbet made them. Now those were real sosaties.’
She went on to explain at great length exactly what kind of sosaties they were. I must say Ouma Liesbet – I never knew her, for by the time I was born she had exchanged her earthly for a heavenly existence, and what remained was the lingering talk of her unrivalled cooking, especially when it came to making pannas, brawn and Spanish-reed chops, about which I may have something to say at a later stage – Ouma Liesbet was exceptionally orthodox and strict about following the rules for making sosaties. I can do no better than tell you how she went about it. …
13 June 1945
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