To all my South African friends on here. And those that are not friends but are South Africans. This ones for you! ❤️Chakalaka Relish | Pink Blocks Pantry pinkblocks.com/posts/chakal...
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Chakalaka Relish
Chakalaka relish is one of those South African dishes that is cherished by locals. It is a spicy vegetable relish, usually served with pap (a stiff maize meal porridge), bread, samp (dried maize kernels, often cooked with beans), stews or curries. It is also a regular at braais and Sunday lunches. There is no single correct version. Different families make it differently, and recipes can include beans, cabbage, butternut, tomatoes, onion, garlic and curry. It is often said to have originated in the Johannesburg townships or around the gold mines, where Mozambican mineworkers cooked tinned tomatoes and beans with chilli to make a spicy relish to eat with pap after their shifts. That story fits closely with South Africa’s mining and industrial history, when men were brought in as cheap labour from rural communities within South Africa and from neighbouring countries such as Eswatini, Namibia and Malawi, as well as places further north including Zambia and the Congo. Many lived in single-sex hostels near the mines and factories. Those hostels mostly had very limited cooking facilities. Meals therefore had to be cheap, filling and practical. Anything that could be cooked in one pot from a few readily available ingredients made sense. Whether every detail of chakalaka’s origin story can be pinned down or not, that background helps explain the dish: inexpensive vegetables, chilli and spices turned into something full of flavour that could be shared with porridge. Today it is served cold, warm or at room temperature and still turns up everywhere from family BBQ’s to supermarket shelves.
