The Karoo Heartland has a very rich food heritage and one way visitors experience the Eastern Cape Karoo is through meals shared with friends and family, generations-old recipes and the short distance our food travels from field to fork. The Karoo Heartland is thrilled to be hosting a group of Dutch food writers this week as they eat and drink their way through our beautiful region, accompanied by representatives from East Cape Parks & Tourism and the Karoo Heartland, and photographer & blogger My Karoo Life.
Our guests are from “De Telegraaf”, the largest daily newspaper in the Netherlands, “Oog voor Afrika“, a seasonal glossy travel magazine and “Foodies Magazine Netherlands“, a monthly glossy magazine for foodies. We cannot wait to show them our beautiful region, as they do the “Karoo Crawl” road trip visiting towns in the Karoo Heartland, Eastern Cape.
Tney will be visiting the towns of Somerset East, Bedford, Cradock, Nieu-Bethesda and Graaff Reinet as they sip and savour their way through our Karoo food culture. Follow their foodie journey with us on the hashtag #KarooHeartland
Fresh and hot from the oven, these scones from Chantelle & Marizanne of Camdeboo Cottages and Karoopark Guesthouse in Graaff Reinet are made with a recipe passed down from their grandmother – it doesn’t get more authentically Karoo than recipes shared through generations. Happy baking!
560g (4 x 250ml) flour
2ml salt
250ml buttermilk or maas
2 eggs
40ml baking powder
80g butter or margarine (Chantelle says she always uses butter)
125ml water
Pre-heat oven to 240 °C
Mix all dry ingredients together
Rub in butter or margarine, handling as gently and lightly as possible
In a bowl, beat eggs, buttermilk and water together
Add the wet mixture to the dry ingredients, just enough to make a medium-firm dough
Pat out the mixture and cut scones 3cm thick
Place on a greased baking sheet and bake for 15-20 minutes
Slather with butter, jam, cream or cheese or any combination thereof! Enjoy!
Wrap up in the warm embrace of Karoo Heartland cooking this winter with this irresistable roast lamb recipe from Hillston Farm’s Chef Adrienne Southey.
How to make the easiest roast leg of lamb or mutton:
(mutton has more flavour, so we prefer it, you just have to cook it a bit longer than lamb to get it nice and tender)
Rub the meat with 2 teaspoons of salt and some black pepper.
Place in a roasting dish and pour 1 1/2 cups of water around the meat. Crush 2 cloves of garlic and slice an onion and scatter over the meat along with 3 twigs of rosemary and 7 whole cloves.
Cover and place in the oven at 180’C for 2-3 hours until the meat looks completely irresistible.
ABOUT HILLSTON FARM │MIDDELBURG
At Hillston Farm you’ll experience South African hospitality with a difference – farm style with a touch of class. Beautiful views, excellent photography, scenic hiking trails, more than 100 species of bird life including the rare Blue Korhaan, shearing shed tours (a former English Barracks in the Anglo-Boer War), and much more.
