Evita Bezuidenhout’s GNU koeksisters and ‘Reconciliation Bobotie’

Bobotie, complete with Mrs H.S. Ball’s chutney. (Photo: CharmaineZoe’s Marvelous Melange on Wikimedia Commons)

By Tony Jackman

28 Jun 2024

Having heard how jubilant she was about all the current gnus, we asked Tannie Evita to share a recipe with us. She chose a koeksister with a GNU look, and threw in some Reconciliation Bobotie for good measure.

We all know and love Evita Bezuidenhout for so many things, not least her role as a diplomat through (what seems like) the ages, but also for her winning ways in the kitchen.

She is not always easy to pin down (many have tried, as Pik Botha could attest were he still with us), but luckily a certain gentleman of her acquaintance, the satirist Mr Pieter-Dirk Uys, persuaded her to go through her (inestimable) drawers to choose a suitable recipe for us.

Evita came to mind when he (Uys, not Evita, though for some reason they always seem to pop into one’s mind at the same time) popped up in my inbox the other day. “Hi dear Tony J! One Man Shows: The Mbeki HIV Renaissance – the third volume – is now available free on http://pdu.co.za/OneManShows.html. Hope you enjoy the adventure. Feel free to share it. Much love from Darling and thumbs up for the GNU!” (Find more links at the end of the story.)

I don’t know if PDU is any good in the kitchen, but Tannie Evita is another story. I seem to recall that she even cooked for former US President Ronald Reagan once, and what Nancy made of that is anyone’s guess.

Legends abound. Is it true that Henry Kissinger kissed her under the mistletoe at the White House? Neither of them is here to deny it, and Tannie E never talks about these things. And the Denis Thatcher incident, well, let’s not talk about that. Skande! Of course, there’s most likely no truth in it. And our lips are sealed, those of us who were aware of the rumours at the time. And I was there right at the beginning, at the moment that Tannie Evita first stepped into our lives.

Veteran that she is, and despite what must by now be “the advancing years” (surely?), dear Tannie Evita jumped at the chance of updating her classic koeksister recipe for us, with Certain Developments in mind.

She still has it. Evita Bezuidenhout today, showing scant evidence of the years. (Photo: Hentie van der Merwe)

Her triumphs in the kitchen are legendary, and no, we are no longer talking about Pik or Denis. In the many decades, sorry, years, that she has graced our national discourse, Tannie Evita has launched two cookbooks, with Linda Viquery. The first was Evita’s Kossie Sikelela, with a foreword by Sophia Loren (who, incidentally, is also a lifelong friend of Mr Uys, but Tannie Evita knows everybody). The second book was Evita’s Bossie Sikelela, with a foreword by Charlize Theron. We decided it best not to ask whether Tannie regards herself as one of the 44.

Instead, Evita writes:

“The best lesson I learnt in my life as a diplomat is: the way to a politician’s mind is not through his brain; it’s through his stomach. That is why I cook for reconciliation. Put mortal enemies around a dinner table; they can’t fight. Too many knives and forks. They must listen and talk and realise that there is no need to fight for something they both love: South Africa.

“In the 1970s Pik Botha was the SA Ambassador at the UN and the person who suggested that I use my cooking art to fight sanctions and make friends for South Africa. Of course, we had no friends because of apartheid, so we invited our greatest enemy: Fidel Castro. Nobody on Manhattan would feed him, or let him use their toilets because he was a Communist from Cuba. I tested my bobotie on him! If I poisoned him and he died, no one would care. He loved the bobotie and said if Afrikaners cook so well, we can’t all be bad. He was on his way to Pretoria to taste my waterblommetjiebredie, but being a communist veered to the left and ended up in Angola.

“I was also invited by Queen Elizabeth to accompany President Jacob Zuma on his first State visit to the UK. She also asked me for my bobotie recipe. What a thrill. Of course, Prince Philip called it moussaka, but what do you expect from an old Greek.

Read more in Daily Maverick: Evita’s Real Fake News, Take 1: Tannie Evita Bezuidenhout with Cyril Ramaphosa (Video)

“And now, at last I can serve my special GNU koeksisters that Nelson Mandela so loved. He actually said: ‘I was in jail for 27 years and every day I just stayed alive so that one day I could taste your koeksisters!’ Such a sweet old fibber!

“Usually the koeksister is a plait of three strips. Our present GNU will demand a collection of at least seven strips so that no party would feel left out. With Helen Zilla’s free entry to my Luthuli House kitchen, I’m still not sure how it will all work out. Toemaar, boer maak ‘n plan!”

Evita Bezuidenhout’s GNU koeksisters

Bobotie, complete with Mrs H.S. Ball’s chutney. (Photo: CharmaineZoe’s Marvelous Melange on Wikimedia Commons)

Ingredients

500 g cake flour

2 tsp baking powder

4 Tbsp butter

2 eggs

1 cup milk

Syrup:

1 kg sugar

2 cups water

½ tsp cream of tartar

2 cinnamon sticks

½ tsp ground ginger

Method

First prepare the syrup. Heat sugar and water in a pan and stir until sugar has dissolved. Add the cream of tartar, cinnamon sticks and ginger and boil for a few minutes. Leave to simmer for 10 minutes, until it becomes syrupy. Transfer to a large bowl and allow to cool. Refrigerate for at least six hours.

To prepare the dough, mix cake flour, baking powder and a pinch of salt in a large bowl. Rub in the butter, using your fingers, until it feels like breadcrumbs. Beat eggs and milk together and add to the flour mixture. Knead into a dough. Form into a ball and cover with wax paper for 2 hours.

Roll out dough to 1 cm thick. Cut into strips about 8 cm by 3 cm. Make two cuts, 1 cm from one end of the strip, so that you have 3 strips, attached at one end. Plait together and pinch to seal at the bottom.

Heat cooking oil in a pan and deep-fry koeksisters for 2 minutes, until golden brown. Drain on kitchen paper for half a minute, then immerse in cold syrup until all air has escaped. Drain on a rack.

Tannie Evita’s Reconciliation Bobotie

Ingredients

6 dried apricots

6 dried apple rings

½ cup seedless raisins

1 cup cold black tea

2 large onions, peeled and sliced

1 cup orange juice

1 Tbsp curry powder

2 tsp turmeric

1 kg minced beef

2 thick slices stale, white bread, crumbled

3 ½ Tbsp vinegar

4 eggs

½ cup milk

fresh lemon leaves

Method

Soak the apricots, apple rings and raisins in the tea until soft.

Drain the fruit, halve the apricots and cut the apple rings into pieces.

Preheat the oven to 180℃.

Grease an ovenproof dish well.

Boil the onions in the orange juice until soft.

Drain and fry the onions lightly in olive oil.

Add curry powder, turmeric, minced beef, breadcrumbs, vinegar, salt and pepper, and soaked fruit.

Mix lightly with a large fork and place in the dish.

Beat the eggs and milk together and pour over the mixture.

Fold a few lemon leaves into triangles and tuck them into the mixture.

Bake the bobotie on the middle rack of the oven for 45 minutes, or until the egg “custard” has set. Serve hot. Bobotie is always served with rice, chutney and sambals. DM

The cookbooks are still available at Evita se Perron in Darling.

Pieter-Dirk Uys’s latest books, published by Missing Ink, are available free to read or download on his website: http://pdu.co.za/OneManShows.html

Visit www.pdu.co.za/OMS3.html for the third volume of One Man Show – freely available to all. Evita performs at Evita se Perron every weekend at 12.00 with two shows: Evita@88 and Tannie Evita Praat Kaktus. Book at Quicket.

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