Bobotie

This is one of the very few dishes I did not learn from my mother (who taught catering back in the day). Bobotie is a South African dish that has been made there for three or four hundred years. A spiced-mince dish, baked with an egg and milk topping, there are dozens of variations online. This is my version, which seems to be simpler than most.

If you use the amounts I quote, you will get four generous portions - one to eat straight away, the rest to chill or freeze to eat later.

I used:

• 500g mince - I use beef, but some recipes call for lamb or pork.
• A medium-sized onion.
• Two cloves of garlic.
• Four teaspoons curry powder.
• One eating apple.
• Two-thirds of a mug of sultanas (most recipes call for currants, but my local supermarket only had sultanas available the first time I made it. I liked it that way, so the sultanas stayed.)
• Two dessert spoons of your favourite chutney. I used the small-pieces Branston pickle, since it was already in my cupboard
• Two eggs
• Two mugs of milk
• Oil for frying
• Salt & black pepper to taste.
• Butter or margarine to grease your tin.

You'll need a frying pan and a roasting tin.

Put on your oven at 180C.

Chop your onion and garlic finely, and your apple into small chunks.

(I don't peel my apples, but that's a matter of taste.)

While the oven is heating, put the onions and garlic into the frying pan with a little oil, and fry to soften.

Add the mince, cooking and stirring until it is no longer pink.

Add the apple, curry powder, chutney and seasoning to the mince. Stir well and heat for another couple of minutes

As the mince finishes it's time in the frying pan, grease your baking tin.

I use a piece of fresh kitchen towel, dabbed in my margarine and rubbed over the inside of the tin - repeat until the whole inside of the tin is greased.

(You can get away without greasing your tin, but cleaning up afterwards will take a lot longer.)

Pour your mince mixture into the tin, and spread it out evenly.

Beat your eggs in a dish or jug, then add the milk and mix well.

Pour the mixture over the top of the mince, and put it in the oven without a lid on

Bake the dish for forty minutes, by which time the egg mixture will have set.

Use this time to prepare the accompaniment to your bobotie - I like it with potatoes, chopped and boiled with the skins on; other folk serve it with jacket potatoes or salad.

I see bobotie as a comfort food - it's not hugely pretty, but it tastes good, as well as being warming and filling (especially when served hot with freshly-boiled potatoes).

You can divide the rest into portions for freezing, or chill it and use as a sandwich filling (I've never tried this, but it's a recommendation I've seen in several places).

From what I've seen online, bobotie isn't so much a recipe as a style of cooking - as long as there's some sort of mince, some sort of spices, and you bake it under a layer of milky egg, you can call it "bobotie".

Just about all of these ingredients can be varied in proportion or detail to suit what you've got in the cupboards, or to your personal taste. Swap out curry powder for paste, vary the amounts of garlic or chutney, use different chutneys or pickles, maybe even use a pear instead of the apple?

If you make it, leave a comment with your personal or family variations. I love seeing how different family food traditions.