Meet Tiaan van Tonder from South Africa

I am the cook at Reliable House, a community engagement center that houses and feeding 25 homeless men, mainly with addiction, substance abuse, and heavy criminal records. And doing skills developing workshops, as well as light work.

The center on-sight social workers, medical personnel, and therapists that provide counseling, a clean needle exchange facility, HIV, TB, and hepatitis testing as well as voluntary intervention.

At present, I have two men Oyama Faye and Molebogeng Mphiwa that’s working with me in the kitchen as part of a skill development project and we will be cooking for the competition.

Recipe: African Beef-bread

Ingredients:

Bread:

  • 8 cups brown wheat bread flour
  • 3 tbsp dried moringa
  • 1 cup sugar
  • 2 tbsp yeast
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 750 ml lukewarm 

Beef:

  • 500 g beef roast 
  • 1 tsp of whole coriander
  • 1/2 tbsp ground all spice
  • 1- 2 tbsp cayenne pepper or to taste
  • 1 tbsp mild curry Marsala
  • 3 tsp crushed pecan nuts
  • 2 large potatoes
  • 1 clove of crushed garlic
  • 1 tbsp of salty butter
  • olive oil and salt

Instructions:

Bread:

  1. Mix all dry ingredients together in big mixing bowl, shape dry mixture like a crater and then add 250 ml of luke warm water. With your hands or blender mix flour till it forms a no sticky ball of dough. If the ball of dough is too sticky, add small handfuls of flour until in becomes non sticky.
  2. Place ball of bread dough in a large bowl and cover with cloth and leave for 5 hours to rise. (The dough has to rise to about double it’s original size if not leave till it reaches double size.)
  3. When ready take ball of dough out and place on a flat surface sprinkled with a thin layer of  flour to prevent it from sticking to the surface, then give the dough a good knead for about 10 min.
  4. Put ball of dough back in large bowl cover with cloth and leave over night to rise.

Beef:

  1. Cut beef in chunks of 2 x 2 cm pieces, drizzle with olive oil.
  2. With a wooden spoon mix to spread the oil evenly over the meat. Cover and let it rest. 
  3. Excluding the curry, mix all rest of the spices together. Sprinkle spice mix over the meat in three separate portions, each time stir well so the meat is covered with the spices.
  4. Remove excess spice and leave to dry.
  5. Cover the meat and let it rest overnight with the dough.
  6. The next day chop the two potatoes in small blocks leave the peel on.
  7. Preheat some water to boil, enough to the chopped potatoes when it’s added, cover and boil for about 15 min. Pour water off the potatoes. Leave in hot pot for the excess water to separate then transfer potatoes in a bowl. Leave to rest.
  8. Finely chop crushed garlic add to butter and mix till creamy, then mix garlic butter to the potatoes. 
  9. Preheat a deep sauce pan to med high heat add some oil, then toss meat, left over spice and  curry together raise heat to high and continuously stir the meat to prevent it from sticking to the surface of the pan. Cook for about 15-20 min. 
  10. Lower the heat and add the parboiled chopped potatoes to the meat. If the juices of the meat is not enough add some water (1-2 cups) to create some sauce also to allow spices to be absorbed by the potatoes.
  11. Let simmer for 10 min.  Leave meat curry to rest.

Raised Bread Dough:

  1. Remove raised dough from bowl to a flat surface sprinkled with some dry flour to prevent the dough from sticking to surface.
  2. Roll out the dough to about 50 cm in diameter.
  3. Dish the meat curry in the center of the roll out dough, wrap the dough around the meat creating like sack around the meat.
  4. Using a 25 cm wide x 12 cm deep pot place the dough sack in the pot with the joint side placed at the bottom to secure to the seal.
  5. Then using a bigger pot 40 cm wide x 20 cm deep place smaller pot inside the big pot and add water about 10 cm deep or enough so the boiling water doesn’t spill over the sides of the smaller pot.
  6. Now wedge 4 raw eggs in the shell into the dough with more than half the egg covered with dough.
  7. Do not cover small pot. Now cover big pot and seal tight enough for the steam to stay inside, but for the steam to be able to escape slowly.
  8. Cook for 4 1/2 – 5 hours regularly checking the water level – don’t let the water dry up.
  9. Bread should have raised above the small pot and be gold brown. Check if dough is cooked by sticking a butter knife into the baked dough. If the dough is cooked the knife will be clean on removing it. If any dough is stuck to the blade of the knife cook for a bit longer.
  10. Remove the small pot from the big pot when bread is cooked and cover to cool down.
  11. Now remove the egg. It should have stayed on top as the bread was rising whiles baking. Carefully remove the eggs by opening up the top of the bread.
  12. Slice the eggs in half and serve together with a portion of slice bread with meat filling.

Recipe: Spicy Fried Green Salad

Ingredients:

  • 500 g Green beans whole
  • 5 larges Jalapeno chilli (fresh)
  • 1 med lemon
  • 1 tbsp crushed black pepper corn
  • 100 g danish feta cheese
  • fresh moringa
  • olive oil & coarse sea salt

Instructions:

  1. Remove only the stems from the green beans and keep then whole.
  2. Using a frying pan on high heat add some olive oil wait till the pan is hot then add your green beans to fry.
  3. Fry the beans until they have become bright in colour and the have become shiny.
  4. Remove from heat and let it cool down to room temperature.
  5. Slice open and remove pips then finely chop the Jalapeno chilli and toss chilli and beans together.
  6. Mix crushed black pepper corn and the coarse sea salt and add to salad to taste.
  7. Break the feta cheese up in small crumbs. Mix feta – using only the fresh moringa leaves, together and use as topping for the bean salad.
  8. Finally cut lemon in half and squeeze the lemon juice over the salad. Salad ready to service

Moringa Mint Iced-tea Infused with Ginger Rosemary

Ingredients:

  1. Moringa and Mint prepacked tea
  2. Ginger root
  3. Fresh Rosemary
  4. Lemon
  5. Fresh Mint leaves

Instructions:

  1. Make Moringa and mint prepacked tea.
  2. Add sticks of ginger rosemary in an airtight container leave in the fridge to cool down. When chilled remove the rosemary sticks.
  3. Serve it on ice with a slice of lemon and a fresh mint leaves.

FOR THE LOVE OF MORINGA