The Art of Fire-Cooking in the shadow of a mighty oak

Roast strawberries, smoked honey and yoghurt and a chocolate ganache with a hint of smoke are a few elements of the gorgeous dessert. (Photo: Kit Heathcock)

By Kit Heathcock

25 Nov 2022

At Vuur on Remhoogte Wine Estate every dish has been touched by fire – a feast of smoke and caramelised sweetness that is so much more than a braai.

Vuur is tiny. From the Remhoogte Wine Estate tasting room where we gather with a glass of wine to await our hosts, the whitewashed converted stable in the valley below us is almost hidden by the canopy of an ancient oak tree that grows beside it. A farm dam glints with sunlight and those grazing figures in the paddock opposite aren’t cattle, but wildebeest, springbok and zebra.

It’s not far from the secure-estate spreading outskirts of Stellenbosch but a sense of rural tranquillity only deepens as we walk down the farm track and enter a bubble of alternative smoke-sweetened reality that is ours for the afternoon.

A leisurely feast of fire-cooking, Vuur (Afrikaans for fire) is the brainchild of self-taught chef Shaun Scrooby, his enthusiasm for cooking over fire ignited by Covid necessity. Pre-lockdown he had a thriving safari business travelling with clients all over Africa, eating great food and often making a braai or two for his guests here at Remhoogte to give them a taste of that ubiquitous South African tradition.

“I didn’t ever envisage a restaurant,” he says.

In lockdown he started smoking venison to sell, and then cooking paellas for delivery, just as a way to keep things ticking over. His safari business was just reviving when Omicron hit and he lost three months’ work in 48 hours. Nothing daunted, he revisited Remhoogte to chat to owner, Rob Boustred, about an idea for an eatery on the estate they’d casually discussed before.

This previously dilapidated stable provided the inspiration. Sheltered from the wind in the valley, shaded by the glorious oak tree, it provides the ideal small space for what Scrooby had in mind – an exclusive-use dining experience where the place is your home for the day: informal, relaxed, kick off your shoes laid-back, for great food and kuier – the expressive Afrikaans word for simply hanging out, chatting and being sociable together around a fire.

We’re there for one of the monthly shared tables, with another couple and a South African/Italian trio who quickly become friends. It’s a slightly (but not much) shorter menu, designed to make the experience more accessible for locals (usually it’s private groups of 4-10 people).

“We’re so fortunate here in South Africa,” says Scrooby as he introduces us to the concept. “It doesn’t matter what culture you’re from, your background, where you are, we all love fire. We all like having a drink and something to eat around the fire, as a nation we’re very good braaiers. At Vuur, instead of braaing, we like cooking with fire. Fire is such a versatile and wonderful thing. It’s primal, you need to think a lot and plan a lot when cooking, you can’t just switch an oven on. Here we start the fire in the morning, it’s a lengthy process but the flavour you get from this is next level.”

Vuur’s take on a boerewors roll served on the wide outside table under the majestic oak. (Photo: Kit Heathcock)

We’re already licking our fingers after our appetiser, the Vuur take on a boerewors roll: homemade baguettes toasted in slices on the fire, their own home-made warthog sausage, aioli, a blueberry honey vinaigrette, lemon gel. Boerie roll lovers might quibble at the fancy adjuncts, but it’s exceptionally delicious and sets the tone for what is to follow.

We elect to sit around the wide outdoor table where it’s spring-breezy but sunny. The cooking action is happening indoors in the huge purpose-built hearth of the open kitchen, so I wander in to watch the next course sizzling over the embers.

The hearth is what you might find in an old farm kitchen – fire burning merrily in a cradle at the back, a wide brick-lined space in front of it where you can draw out hot coals and a selection of grids to place over them, plus a well-built chimney that draws all the smoke up and sway – no braai-like smoke saturation of lungs and clothes here.

Leeks that have already been smoked for four hours are now turned over hot coals to caramelise, before being plated up on some quirky recycled bottle platters with a romesco sauce of roasted tomatoes and peppers, a touch of acidity from a sprinkling of dehydrated yoghurt. So good to see vegetables living up to their star potential with the full fire treatment.

The Remhoogte connection shines through in the wine pairings. “Chris (Boustred) is an amazing winemaker. It makes it so much easier doing wine pairings with so many great wines to choose from,” says Scrooby. The estate’s philosophy of minimal intervention draws forth wines full of character. With the leeks we enjoy a zesty Weisser Riesling from the Remhoogte small batch Free to Be range, made using grapes grown high up the mountain on the next-door farm.

As the plates are cleared and the fire-cooking team are putting the finishing touches to the next dish – roasting clemengold segments, it turns out – our cheerful hostess, Tina Boast, brings round new glasses and pours an orange-tinged chenin which has spent 55 days on the skin. It’s a wonderfully creamy accompaniment to the luscious prawns which Scrooby, and fire sous-chef Daniel Nel, have been plating up.

“We’ve done the prawns in a typical West Coast Afrikaans way with apricot jam, butter, garlic and chilli. Then we’ve braaied the romaine lettuce hearts with a marinade, and added some rooibos-pickled turnips and clemengolds on the fire to bring out their sweetness.” We all dive in, happy to eat with our hands despite the rather elegant cutlery provided.

Succulent prawns adorned with roasted clemengolds and paired with Remhoogte Free To Be Orange Wine (Photo: Kit Heathcock)

A touch of barista showmanship comes next, as Scrooby lights a slice of sicklebush wood and smokes the glasses for his signature braaied apple G&T. This is to accompany a palate cleanser sorbet of apple, celery and ginger, prettily adorned with tiny daisies. Then, because it happens to be Heritage Day, a tribute to that South African braai staple becomes an extra little snack: a miniature braaibroodjie (grilled cheese sandwich) with Dalewood feta, biltong, caramelised onions, dried balsamic olives. It’s hard not to love a melting cheese sandwich however simply it’s done, but this takes it to a new level of moreishness.

A small but perfect braaibroodjie as a between course extra snack (Photo: Kit Heathcock)

The breeze has picked up now and it’s turning chilly, so we move inside to the cleverly designed split table made from pine that has its own fire story; the wood was salvaged from the slopes of Table Mountain after the Rhodes Memorial fire.

After a superbly tasty Karoo lamb chop simply cooked over the coals, I slide out of the lively conversation and off the comfortable leather cushioned bench to watch the action at the hearth from closer quarters.

A supremely delicious lamb chop. (Photo: Kit Heathcock)

Scrooby has developed a whole raft of different techniques and it’s fascinating to see him and Nel at work, in their covetable leather aprons, deftly moving the various ingredients around on different grids. “There’s so much difference you get from every phase of the fire, from the beginning to the end,” he says. “We try and use it all.”

A whole ostrich fillet is searing on a low grid over hot embers pulled forward from the fire. At the back on a high rack directly over the flames, he’s tossing carrots in a wide long-handled sieve, spraying them often with water so they part steam, part broil. But it’s the next stage of our final meat dish that silences conversation with a flourish of showmanship.

Smoking, sizzling and red hot from the fire, the flambadou is one of the many fire-cooking techniques we experience at Vuur. (Photo: Kit Heathcock)

The swiftly seared ostrich has been cut into chunky slices, still completely rare in the middle. Scrooby draws what looks like a medieval instrument of torture out of the flames where it’s been heating, a metal cone on a long handle. It’s called a flambadou, he tells us. As we watch, Nel pops a chunk of wagyu fat into the red-hot cone, where it melts with a spitting crescendo of smoke and fire. The melting hot fat drizzles over the rare slices of ostrich to finish off the cooking process and add a caress of succulence and flavour.

“A chef in Scandinavia uses this technique for seafood,” Scrooby says. “It dates back hundreds of years and is a very simple and effective way of enhancing flavour.”

The flambadou isn’t easily available in South Africa so he went to a local ironworker to have some made.

“It’s trial and error, working out the best design to hold the heat. We’re on our fourth version now.” And he’s experimenting with different fats too – since our visit he’s been trying out a “lollipop” made with bone marrow, wagyu fat and stems of herbs, which he says adds an amazing flavour to the process.

The plated ostrich fillet at the indoor split table which makes the most of the tiny space. (Photo: Kit Heathcock)

While this is definitely the most visually memorable fire-cooking process of the day for its eye-catching theatre, he says, “I don’t want to be known only for the flambadou. There are so many ways of working with fire. We steam in small Dutch ovens and we smoke cold or hot. Now we’ve worked out a method of slow roasting in the top of the fireplace, and a suspended grid for cooking things slowly in the residual heat.”

In a spirit of emulation, not that any of us are likely to be refining our braai skills to this level, we ask about the best woods to use.

“We tend to use camelthorn and black wattle for the flame. Then fruit trees like plum give sweeter flavours that we use to smoke with.”

Scrooby is experimenting with using various wet leaves to throw on the coals for smoke and constantly tries out new techniques he’s read about or dreamed up himself – you can see ideas brewing constantly as he chats, and a simmering practical energy that needs an outlet.

Even though Vuur is getting busier and busier with private bookings throughout the week, Scrooby is already planning the next phase. He has his sights on the tiny island in the dam at Remhoogte for a stunning private picnic experience. All he needs to do, he says, is build a bridge and a deck (which he’ll do himself with a few extra hands), prune the willow and oak trees to create a shaded arbour, and devise the picnic offering which will include several offerings from the fire. He plans to have it up and running in time for the holiday season.

Strawberries roasting over an open fire… it’s time for dessert and I’m at the hearth, fire-watching again. Nel offers me a strawberry to taste and it’s an explosion of juicy flavour with a hint of sweet fire-roasted sugars. Along with a melting pot of smooth chocolate ganache sitting over the coals next to the grid, these are the garnish for a dessert that has been in preparation for hours.

“We smoke yoghurt and honey, we braai the strawberries, and use them to flavour the panna cotta.”

Then there’s the chocolate ganache, white chocolate soil, milk choc crumble, braaied strawberries, a berry foam, dehydrated raspberry powder and, for a rather surprising but delectable salty contrast, a crumbly sprinkling of crispy smoked bacon – worthy of a fine-dining restaurant in its plating and contrasts of textures and flavours.

Roast strawberries, smoked honey and yoghurt and a chocolate ganache with a hint of smoke are a few elements of the gorgeous dessert. (Photo: Kit Heathcock)

There has been lots of laughter through the afternoon and time has drifted by imperceptibly, so we’re surprised to find three hours have gone by, and there’s still a cheese course to conclude the feasting (Dalewood cured cheeses and a cheese foam infused with thyme and some biltong shavings). Everyone is so relaxed, the Remhoogte wines flowing along with an endless succession of stories, that it would be easy to settle in until sunset, and Scrooby says people often do.

“We end up chatting for another two hours after the meal and we enjoy the kuier as much as our guests, so we never tell you it’s time to go. The important thing is having fun. If people are happy then our job is done.” DM/TGIFood

Find out more about Vuur here.

Follow Kit Heathcock on Instagram @kitheathcock

The writer supports SA Harvest who address food waste by rescuing nutritious surplus food from farmers, manufacturers and retailers, and delivering it to the organisations who feed the hungry around South Africa.

Categories:

TGIFood

Tags:

DM is much better if you are signed in...

TGIFood