This column is just ‘offal’

THIS column has a very melancholy origin. I was trawling through social media the other day, as I am fond of doing, and on Facebook popped up a familiar face and profile. It was former colleague, the late Deena Pillay, the legend, popularly known as Papa Bear to the kiddies.

- RAVI GOVENDER

He was a known gastrophile or gastronome. He did not just enjoy good food; he could put the ladle where his AMC pot was. He and I shared a penchant for what he called, as do many even these days, “running fowl”. Of course, you can only enjoy it when it stops running and is merrily simmering amid spices in the aforementioned pot.

We both also had a passion for all things offal - you know trotters, tripe, sheepshead and pluck. I know some talk it and not walk it. Therein comes another Indian delicacy for some. Walkies and talkies. Also known as chicken head and feet. Now I must fess up that personally I can’t stomach that. That's where I draw the line in my culinary ventures, although my maternal grandmother relished the dish.

As for fresh cut Cornish hen and cull (Zulu fowl), my dear late mom always said I cook it better than she did. I suppose the proof of the pudding is in the eating, but I will accept the compliment. The strange thing is when we have friends over for a meal and serve fresh cut fowl curry, the young ones invariably won't eat it.

Now I don’t know if it is because they genuinely don’t have a taste for it or they just want to be different and the poor sacrificed bird is their form of social protest. Well, when you speak to older ones about their childhood days it is eyeopening to hear about their eating regimen. Money being a scarcity, many had to subsist almost daily on a diet of mielie rice and dhall, with spicy pickles to flavour it.