Meat
Sosaties with apricot
Lamb skewers in a curried apricot marinade, left overnight. The Cape Malay inheritance at the fire — sweet, sour and spiced at once.
The word joins "saus" for the spiced marinade and "sate" for the skewer. The combination of curry, fruit and vinegar comes from the kitchen of the people the Dutch East India Company brought to the Cape from Southeast Asia in slavery.
- Prep
- 30 min
- Marinating
- 12 hr
- On the fire
- 12 min
- Serves
- 4
Method
-
Cook the marinade
Soften the onion in the oil over medium heat, then add garlic and ginger for a minute. Stir in curry powder and cumin and toast them briefly in the fat — added dry, the spices taste of flour.
-
Deglaze and reduce
Add vinegar, jam and salt, bring to the boil and simmer gently for about half an hour. The sugars caramelise and the marinade thickens.
-
Cool it completely
This is not a footnote. Warm marinade part-cooks the surface of raw meat and makes it tough later.
-
Marinate
Mix the lamb cubes with the cold marinade, cover and refrigerate for at least twelve hours, ideally 24. Turn once or twice.
-
Soak the apricots
Soak the dried apricots in hot water for 15 to 20 minutes so they do not burn on the skewer.
-
Skewer
Thread meat, apricot and onion alternately, not too tightly — heat has to pass between the pieces. Keep the leftover marinade.
-
Boil the marinade
Boil the reserved marinade hard for five minutes. That turns it into sauce and makes it safe for basting.
-
Grill
Cook over coals at four seconds on the hand test for ten to twelve minutes, turning regularly. Baste with the boiled marinade only in the last five minutes — any earlier and the sugar burns.
Tips
- Some recipes put a bay leaf between every piece. That is the older Cape Malay way and worth trying — the leaves are not eaten.
- The meat needs the full night. After four hours only the surface tastes of marinade.
- Leftover sauce goes very well with pap and keeps for a week in a jar.
Sosaties show that South African cooking is not a grill culture with steaks but a cuisine with history. Curry, turmeric, fruit and vinegar — that combination did not come from the veld but reached Cape Town by way of Java and Malaysia.
In practice this means the meat is not seasoned but steeped, and for a long time. The vinegar works overnight, the jam supplies the sugar that later caramelises at the fire, and the apricots between the cubes soak full of marinade.
One detail makes the difference: the marinade is cooked twice — once before it meets the meat, for flavour, and once afterwards, before it goes to the table as sauce.