Eat My Globe Part 10

The food too takes its lead from the legacy of the Portugue who introduced, among other things, chilli, tomatoes and garli to the cuisine. They also ate pork, untouched by Muslims ar Hindus in the rest of India but popular with the primarily Roma Catholic population of Goa. All of these ingredients cc together in the signature dish of the region, pork vindaloo, whic takes its name from its two key ingredients, vinegar and garlic.

Few dishes are more misunderstood than the vindaloo. It 1 become synonymous with the Friday-night 'curry house' me sopping up the hinging of weekend warriors in shiny suits have spent the hours since they left work swilling cheap lag in the local pub. This beautiful dish has become debased. It become all about the heat and all about making the experien as close as possible to eating broken gla.s.s.

INDIA: MUMBAI.

A 'proper' vindaloo is certainly fiery, with the pork being marinated for a long time in chillies. But there is so much more to it than that. The best examples involve chunks of pork shoulder marinated overnight in a mix of palm vinegar, ground spices (including cloves, chillies and lots of garlic) and then slow-cooked without added water until the meat is tender and the sauce a thick gravy with immense depth and layers of flavour. When well done, as it was at my chosen beach shack, it is one of the best Indian dishes of all, and I sat with the sound of the waves lapping in front of me, spooning hunks of flesh into my mouth with a large paratha.

My time in Goa was exactly what I needed. Each day I would head out for a breakfast of fresh fruits and curds from the market stalls in Cavelossim before taking a long, luxurious, barefoot walk along the beach until I felt it was time to have something else to eat. As I walked, I would watch the local fishermen beach their small boats, haul out their catch of local fish and seafood and take them straight to the shacks to be prepared immediately for waiting diners. I can't recall too many times when I have had seafood this fresh, and for relatively little money my lunch each day consisted of large lobster simply grilled and doused with limes picked from the trees behind the shacks or stir-fried and served in a sauce made of coconut milk and fresh green chillies. The afternoon was spent by the pool sleeping or chatting to the other guests, mostly couples who had been returning to the same resort for years.

To my delight I was soon included in their group as we congregated by the bar every evening to drink rather too much of the locally made spirits with names like Blue Ship Gin and Honeybee "Whisky before having supper at a local restaurant, which made the best chicken tikka I have ever eaten in my life - alive with spices and sparkling with drops of lemon juice sprinkled on it just before serving.

Towards the end of my stay Serrafino, the owner of the hotel, invited me to join him at a meeting of local businessmen and guesthouse owners who had created a forum for responsible tourism. Although the area around Cavelossim seemed like a paradise, under the surface many problems were becoming increasingly apparent - particularly, he explained, with the influx of new tourists from Russia.

'They see Goa as a brothel', he explained, sharing with me the horrific figures for s.e.xual tourism, drug-related crime and s.e.xual abuse of children. And the all-inclusive resorts, he told me, were owned by major international companies, which meant that little of the money generated found its way into the local community.

At the end of the meeting an owner of one of the local guesthouses provided supper for us all in the shape of a seafood thali, served in the traditional manner, on banana leaves, with a mound of rice surrounded by ten or so small portions of different dishes, including fried clams, shark cooked with kok.u.m juice and squid cooked simply with spinach. It was a simple meal shared with local people, and the talking went on until nearly midnight as we ate under the stars in the garden of the local church where we had gathered. As we drove back with Serrafino, 1 told him I hoped that tourism would not ruin what I considered one of the most beautiful places I had visited.

'The trouble is,' he sighed, 'we want people to come and see how beautiful Goa is. We want them to meet our people, eat our food and, of course, spend money in our community. But the very action of them coming changes for ever what we want them to see.'

It is the great dichotomy of tourism, of course, but with people like Serrafino, perhaps Goa may be able to strike that balance. I hope so.

After a welcome few days of peace and quiet, I was ready to get back in harness again. I was excited and nervous in equal parts, 1 was truly heading back to the land of my fathers. Next stop Kolkata.

Kolkata: Land of My Fathers I always compare Kolkata to an ex-lover, one who you know is bad for you, but about whom you cannot stop thinking. They have let you down over and again, treated you badly, and you have promised yourself hundreds of times that you are not going to spend any more time in their company. But then, just as you thmk you are finally over them, they do something so utterly alluring, so impossibly irresistible, that you fmd yourself falling in love again. That is my Kolkata, the land of my fathers.

Kolkata is not easy-access India. It is not like Rajasthan - India 'with training wheels', as I call it. It is not as easy to navigate as Mumbai, and it does not have the beauty of the south, with beaches and palms; nor does it have the mountains ranges of the north. Everything about it is a challenge to what you think you know to be right and proper: the sheer volume of people, some 15 million and rising, all of whom seem to be on the streets all the time; the stultifying humidity, which even in spring can have you and your clothes dripping in sweat within thirty seconds; and the pollution, which can have you and your clothes turning a lovely shade of grey in the same amount of time.

It is impossible to understate the scale of the deprivation and degradation under which large sections of the population in Kolkata live, clinging by a thread to life by any means available, foraging through piles of festering garbage in search of sc.r.a.ps to eat, hustling for work on the streets, selling anything they have to offer (including themselves) and, of course begging, always persistently and often aggressively. It is little wonder that few foreigners, if any, mark the city as a tourist destination. Ye( Kolkata is also a magical place, a city fdled with unexpect beauty, immense intelligence and pa.s.sion, astonishing sights J and some of the best food in India.

This is the Kolkata in which my father grew up and whe my mother spent the first year of her marriage learning how i cook. This is the Kolkata spoken of in the stories they regaled i with as children - stories of flying fighting kites from the roof c the family home, of playing cricket in the compound housing: the different branches of the family, of servants climbing trees) fetch the juiciest lemons to make cooling drinks and of Brahmid cooks producing meals of great simplicity but stunning flavou using few ingredients and even fewer spices. It is a city to whic I still have strong emotional ties because of this family histot and a city that never fails to astonish, whether it is your first vis or, as in my case, the latest of many.

I thought about all of this as my companion grabbed hold ^ my arm for support as we fought our way through downtov Kolkata, avoiding cracked paving stones, pools of stagnant wate mounds of festering rubbish and the inquisitive attentions everyone to my very white, very red-haired friend. Vanessa Sly eyes were popping out of her head, and she had a look on her fac that said 'What the f**k is a nice middle-cla.s.s girl like me froD Michigan doing here?' She looked like she wanted to be almc anywhere else in the world. Even Michigan.

Vanessa was responsible for the purchasing of tea at the famou Zingerman's deli in Ann Arbor. During my brief visit there had mentioned my upcoming trip to India and that it wouW include visits to Kolkata and a Darjeeling tea garden. Vaness asked whether I would mind having a companion. I was only toC pleased to agree, but I was sure that, as she began to see Kolkat in all its glory, she was regretting her decision.

'Loooook', she grabbed at my shirt sleeve and pointed. Ther was a woman washing both her clothes and her small, naked child in the same puddle of dirty water.

'You are going to see a lot more of that, I am afraid', I said, concerned that she might find it all a bit hard to take in.

'No, that', she pointed again, this time more firmly.

Behind the woman on the pavement were two small monkeys who were going at it like, well, monkeys. I made a note to myself to remember the sight - not that the image of two monkeys s.h.a.gging on the streets of the downtown area of one of the largest cities in Asia is one you forget in a hurry.

Finally we found the address we were searching for and were ushered into the quiet, air-conditioned rooms of Ashok Gandotra, one of the most prominent tea traders in Kolkata. As we arrived, a range of teas was being allowed to brew in boiling water and then laid out in a line with spoons for us to taste. Ashok explained what was in front of us: first- and second-flush single-estate leaf teas from some of the finest gardens in Darjeeling through to leaf teas from other countries so we could make comparisons, followed by blended teas, using whole-leaf, broken-leaf, fanning (basically left-overs after sorting) and dust. Each blend, he explained, was designed for the taste of a different region or country: thick, strong teas for the Middle East, for example, and consistent but mediocre blends for the UK, where, he explained we drink a huge volume of tea, but not of great quality. He was most disparaging about the tea drunk in the USA, where my own unscientific research shows it would be easier find Lord Lucan than a decent cup of tea.

'They basically just want a neutral liquid they can drink cold with ice. It could be anything, it just has to be brown and wet', he said slurping from a bowl marked 'US Blend'.

This was Vanessa's show, and I stood back as the two experts tasted together, sucking up tablespoons full from each bowl and rolling them around their mouths to release the flavour before spitting out.

'It is not just the taste that makes a good tea', Ashok explained, holding up a bowl to the light. 'There is colour and brightness.' First-flush tea, harvested at the end of March, is a greener.

astringent tea with a pale colour. Generally considered to weaker than the second flush, picked in May, which has mc depth of both flavour and colour, first-flush has, however, oped a large following for its ability to refresh. By comparisoij the teas produced from broken leaves or fannings were duller i the eye and to the palate.

Once the tasting was over and we had left the office, wanted Vanessa to get her first real taste of Bengali foe Before Independence from Britain, Bengal was one of the lar est states in India. It still is, even though is now split into West Bengal, where Kolkata is found, and East Bengal, whic became East Pakistan and then the beautiful but blighted natic of Bangladesh. Bengal in general and Kolkata in particular known as the literary and political heart of India. Kolkata was t capital before Delhi, and in India there is a saying 'What Kolls thinks today, India will think tomorrow.'

It remains one of the safest places in India, and Bengalis among the friendliest people you will find in the world. The J too is unique. Unlike in much of India, where the food can 1 characterized by strong tastes and pungent spicing, Bengali 1 or more accurately Kolkatan food, is subtle and understated, usit few spices to complement their cooking of ingredients. Turme mustard oil and powder, ginger and fresh chillies are commor used alongside the bony river fish with which Kolkatans have ; obsession. It is from these roots that my own obsession come With respect, I never thought it came from Wales.

The people of Kolkata spend most of their waking lives talkir about food, from the simple breakfast of luchi, the local version < puri,="" which="" are="" stuffed="" with="" potatoes="" or="" chickpeas="" before="" heir="" dipped="" in="" sour="" tamarind="" water,="" to="" pre-lunch="" snacks="" of="" shir="" the="" local="" version="" of="" a="" samosa,="" stuffed="" with="" cauliflower,="" to="" lune="" taken="" on="" the="" hoof="" or="" in="" a="" restaurant,="" to="" supper="" with="" their="" famil="" to="" a="" late-night="" snack="" of="" spicy="" fish="" rolls.="" when="" they="" are="" not="" eating="" they="" are="" arguing="" about="" eating="" or="" talking="" about="" past="" meals.="" it;="" sounded="" very="">

Kewpie's Kitchen was the real deal, like sitting in the front room of a traditional Bengali home. We chose a thali, a selection of dishes served together on a silver tray, and while we waited we jipped on an aampora s...o...b..t made from mangoes, black salt and c.u.min seeds to give the sour-sweet taste Bengalis love.

When the meal came, I used the fresh puri to help the varying plates of vegetarian dishes from plate to lips. Lao, a marrow-like gourd, was slow-cooked simply with nigella seeds and melted creamily in the mouth. Bowls of shukta, a mixture of hard and soft vegetables, were again cooked with the Bengali version of five spice: panch phoron, a mixture of fennel seeds, black mustard seed, fenugreek seed, c.u.min seeds and nigella seeds. There was aubergine dipped in chickpea flour and deep-fried until crispy and little b.a.l.l.s of steamed aubergine in a sauce made with doi, Bengali yoghurt. Best of all there was LSD, Life Saving Dahl - the Bengali equivalent of Jewish chicken soup, made with red lentils and, compared with many versions of this Indian staple, very thin.

When my father returned to India for a short while in the late 1950S, he took with him his young Welsh bride. The family were wary of a marriage outside the caste but took to my mother primarily because she developed an immediate and deep pa.s.sion for Bengali food which allowed them to rationalize that 'she must be a reincarnated Brahmin'. As I watched Vanessa scoop up her lunch with perfect hand technique, I could not help thinking my family would have approved.

When it comes to sweets, the pa.s.sion of the Bengali goes beyond obsession and becomes almost feral. Never, ever try and come between a Bengali and their rightful ration of sweets. These can be challenging to the uninitiated, however, and the textures of these delicacies, made mainly from milk, can be unpleasant on the tongue. The amount of sugar in them probably explains why the levels of diabetes in Kolkata are higher than those anywhere else in the country.

But Bengali sweets are incredibly addictive, and those at Kolkata inst.i.tution K.C. Das are produced to a quality that yc will struggle to find anywhere else. Pre-eminent in the panthe of sweets is mishti doi, a simple combination of yoghurt cream. (It may be simple, but it is mother's milk to most Benga and grown men in the Indian diaspora will become teary-eyed; the very mention of it.) It can come in many flavours but is 1 plain and eaten from a small, unfired earthenware bowl, whic can be discarded after it has been wiped clean, of course.

Alongside it are two more favourites: gulab jamun, popular j over India and made of milk solids mixed with cream and the served in a rosewater-flavoured syrup, and my mother's own ] sonal favourite, rasguUa, made from cheese rolled with semolir and then poached in syrup. They originated in the neighbou ing state of Orissa but were brought to Bengal by Brahmir employed as cooks by wealthy families such as my father's. K.C Das was one of the first places to sell them commercially, even now, some 130 years after it first opened, they remain popular as ever.

We would be heading back to Kolkata for a few days at end of our time in India, and I hoped then to have chance connect with some of my father's family. But after a long, wear ing day it was time to head back to the guesthouse and pack ou bags for the journey up to Darjeeling and the Goomtee estafi tea gardens.

33.

The Darjeehng Express Darjeeling produces the finest black teas in the world and has done so since the British first experimented with the growing of bushes there in the middle of the nineteenth century. Now there are more than eighty different gardens helping slake the world's thirst for this most refreshing of brews.

I am a self-confessed tea nut. I drink several cups a day, from the first one, to help prise my eyes open in the morning, to the mid-afternoon cup with a digestive biscuit to my post-supper quencher. I can't do coffee. It will empty my stomach quicker than a p.o.r.no film starring Andrew Lloyd Webber. It has to be tea. However, like many Brits, my knowledge of tea was limited to the strong, dark brews beloved of construction workers all over the country. Give me a large mug, preferably with a humorous motto on the side, filled with a threateningly dark brown hquid, and I am as happy as Larry.

It was nearly four hours to our destination from the nearest airport, Bhagdogra, which meant a long and perilous drive from the plains up towards the mountains before we reached our accommodation. There was rubble on the roads, we were told, caused by recent riots in favour of the separation of the region from West Bengal to become its own state of Ghorkaland. On every spare wall, graffiti had been daubed supporting their claims: 'Ghorkaland Is Our Demand.'

By the time we pulled into the Goomtee estate and settled into the guesthouse it was already dark, and because the air was rnuch thinner at the alt.i.tude of 4,000 feet, it was cold enough to catch US out and have us running to put on sweaters jackets.

Goomtee comes from the Nepalese word for 'turning poit and the garden, set in a fork in the road, has been owned by i same family since the 1950s, when it was bought from the Britis by Mahbir Prasad. Its reputation for producing some of the fir teas in Darjeeling made it the perfect place to watch the proce of production from picking to packing.

Our stay at the guesthouse included all our meals and, course, innumerable cups of tea made from the leaves harvest in the gardens. As we sat down to enjoy our first pot, served iij the British way, with milk and a tray of biscuits, Vanessa becar slightly alarmed when I took the tea cosy from the pot and place it over my head. I don't see it as particularly peculiar behaviou Most men have done it. I have always done it: it seems a perfect sensible way to recycle the luxurious warmth from the pot J do, however, sometimes forget to take it off and on more one occasion have opened the door to my apartment and treate the postman to the sight of me wearing a tea cosy shaped like i kitten.

In the Goomtee Guesthouse there was a permanent staff* five people, all of whom, given that we were the only guesti were dedicated to our care. If we wanted tea, we asked for te If wanted a snack, we only had to ask. After our hikes arou the gardens and the factory, there was precious little else left do but read, eat and sleep - a welcome relief after the last hectic couple of months. The cook at Goomtee had a great reputation and the food he prepared for us was simple but memorable, used few ingredients to stunning effect to produce dishes all parts of India, Nepal and Tibet, close neighbours to this; of India.

Breakfasts were small steamed rice cakes called idli, ser with a fiery sambar. Lunch, the biggest meal of the day, be Tibetan steamed dumplings called momo, served with salads, Bengali dahl, rice of course, and vegetables deep-friedj INDIA: DARJEELING.

chickpea flour batter. Best of all, for supper the staff" would bring out plates laden down with shingra, the Bengali samosa stuff"ed with spicy cauliflower. Food was brought in a never-ending succession to the table until we held our hands up in submission and went to walk it off"in the manicured grounds or flop on the sofa with a book.

Fortunately, we also got lots of exercise. Vanessa had timed our trip to coincide with the first harvest of the first flush from the Goomtee estate, and very early the morning after our arrival we were summoned into the impressive and slightly frightening presence of the estate manager, Mahesh Maharshi, who had run the garden with an iron fist for over thirty-five years.

'You see', he began, as we cowered slightly in our chairs on the other side of the desk. Every sentence that came from his mouth began with this booming introduction.

'You see. I have instructed the section supervisors that we should begin harvesting today. But', he warned, 'it is looking like rain and we may have to cancel until tomorrow.'

We headed out with him to the gardens armed with the k.n.o.bbly walking sticks he had insisted we would need to help us on the uneven roads. Already the supervisors were gathering to be given their instructions, and the pickers were arriving from the homes the estate provided on the grounds. As Mr Maharshi began issuing his instructions, the grey clouds in the sky began to shed their loads, at first in a gentle drizzle but then with increasing ferocity as the winds grew in strength.

'You see,' he boomed, pointing upwards, 'we can't pick in this. It will damage the leaves and make a bad end-result.' With that, be sent the workers back to their houses with strict instructions to be ready if the weather changed and sent us off" with Michael, ne of the managers, for a tour of the factory.

The processing of tea is complicated. First the collected leaves *te withered to remove as much moisture as possible and rolled 'o break up the buds into the recognizable strands we know as '^a- These are then fermented or oxidized both to change the colour to black and to increase the release of flavour. Fina before being packed, the tea is dried once more over blowers i hot air. As in so many factories I visited, levels of hygiene here and throughout the garden were high, and I found myself, for the lord knows how many times on the trip, donning a pair of j boots and a set of overalls before entering. Interesting though it may have been, I had seen enough factories on this tour to last me a lifetime, and I was pleased when we were finally able to head back to the guesthouse and catch up on some much-needed sleep.

Fortunately, the next morning dawned bright and clear. At' 6.45 a.m., as we arrived at the meeting point, groups of pickers, mostly immigrants from neighbouring Nepal, were already ] being sent to designated gardens with a yield target to harve during the day. I asked why all the pickers were women.

'You see,' Mr Maharshi explained, 'women have smaller hands I and are better able to pick the stems with two buds we need to j make good tea, without damaging them.'

We were sent with Michael to walk through the gardens to] watch the picking in action. Set against the snow-topped hills, j with the sun already breaking through the thin cloud cover, thel women were already hard at work filling the baskets attached! to their backs by a cloth draped over their heads. They stopped j picking as we approached, intrigued by Vanessa's fiery red hairj and pale skin but even more by her smooth hands. We watche them deftly snap buds from the waist-high bushes and toss the over their shoulders into the baskets, which can hold nearly kilogram of tea each. Every picker is given a target not just the amount they harvest but also for the quality of the buc they collect, and the details are filled into huge, handwrit ledgers.

The work is tough, that was obvious, but by comparison many in a region with crippling poverty and much unemplc ment, the workers in tea gardens consider theirs a lucky lot, wi( schools, hospitals, meals and houses provided.

'We work very hard,' Michael explained, 'but workers are treated well and stay here for a long time', he added, explaining that he too had been with Goomtee for over thirty-five years. Our time with them, however, was up, and after our tour we headed back for a taxi to Darjeeling itself The journey, a further couple of hours upwards, was even more terrifying than the journey from the airport to Goomtee. I was only pleased that we did not take up the option of using the 'Toy Train', Darjeeling's famous narrow-gauge railway, which chugs over several bone-shaking hours from the top to the bottom of the mountains every day.

Darjeeling is a pleasant town, but after the tranquillity of Goomtee, coming to a place predicated on serving tourists, who use it as a base before heading to Nepal, it was an unpleasant return to the real world. I was not sorry when, two days later, it was time to head back down to the airport and to Kolkata.

When I checked my e-mails, I was thrilled to see that I had received a note from two of my relatives. Baba's middle and older sisters had invited us to visit them on our last day in Kolkata. Baba had not been back to India for thirty years. As with so many in the Indian diaspora, he had always meant to return, but with the pa.s.sing of each year and then the pa.s.sing of my mother, it became increasingly unlikely. Now, as he had said to me in a phone conversation before I left on this stage of the journey, 'Britain is my country. India hasn't been my country for fifty years.'

Inevitably he had lost touch with his siblings, and I still wondered what reception we would receive. I need not have worried: they were, after all, Majumdars by blood even if by marriage rather than name. I warned Vanessa that food would be involved, but she wouldn't listen as she shovelled the delicious breakfast of channa masala and luchi down her throat in the guesthouse that morning.

'Sure, sure', she said as I dodged a volley of bread from her mouth.

At the first port of call my father's elder sister hugged us both and then led us into their apartment, where my uncle was already seated at a table heaving with food. 'We thought you would have taken breakfast already, so we just did some snacks', sht said, pointing apologetically at plates of spiced potatoes, mutton cutlets and a pile of balloon-like puri breads. Rather relishing Vanessa's obvious discomfort at the sight of more food, I added 'Vanessa loves Bengali sweets too'.

'I'll send someone out to get some', my aunt added, hollering into the kitchen for the maid to run out and buy some. We somehow managed to work our way through most of the spread, including the desserts, with some effort, before my aunt announced, 'We have a taxi coming to take you to your middle aunt. She just phoned. I told her Vanessa likes sweets, so she has just sent someone out to get some.'

Vanessa gave me a withering look, but it was worth it to see' her face turn almost as green as the top she was wearing. True to form, when we arrived at our next port of call, bowls of mishti doi and rasgulla had been laid out and my aunt stood over us as we force-fed ourselves spoons of creamy yoghurt from the store below my aunt's house.

'Much better than K.C. Das', she nodded approvingly.

By the time we left, we were both feeling decidedly peaky ai headed back to the guesthouse to sleep it off before it was time to ' take Vanessa back to the airport for the start of her long journey; home. I was not leaving until the next morning, which gave me time on my own to reflect on my visit to the land of my father Had I actually discovered anything? Not really. I felt no more Indian than I had before I arrived. I was pretty certain, however, that it would be a long time before I headed back to India againi It's just too crazy for a half-Welsh half-Bengali to cope with.

It's My Party and I'll Braai if I Want To 'Steaks should be juicy. They should be thick, and they should be saucy.'

I certainly wasn't going to disagree with Emil Den Dulk. For one thing he was well over six foot tall and built like a prop forward, and for another thing he was wielding a wicked-looking cleaver. He was using the knife to carve two-inch-thick steaks from a lo kg strip of sirloin, ordered for the occasion of my first South African braai.

Outside, Emil senior, his father, was busy stoking the flames of the barbecue and adding more wood to the fire, while back inside the kitchen his mother, Sonette, was fussing about preparing the traditional accompaniments. Neal McCleave, a friend of mine for over twenty years, turned to me, gla.s.s of wine in hand.

'It doesn't get too much better than this', he said, sipping on his drink and pointing to where the sun was dipping behind the mountains on the horizon.

I had been delighted to get an e-mail from Neal asking me if he could join me on my trip to South Africa and Mozambique. The appeal of solo travel was rapidly beginning to lose its shine. Neal likes his food but doesn't share my obsession with it and often deflates my long-winded descriptions of elaborate meals with a curt 'Just start wearing a dress and get over it'. His own favourite food story involves coming home from school one day and finding his father munching happily on a cheese sandwich that Neal knew for a fact had been in the bin twenty-four hours earlier.

I was on the road again. After a three-day stopover in Lond to visit my flat, I flew across the equator to South Africa, wh Neal would join me two days later in Cape Town. If there is i more beautifully situated city in the world, I would love to it. With Table Mountain towering over one side and the wat of the ocean lapping on the other, it is little wonder that Sou Africans go teary when it is mentioned, and before Neal arrive I spent two enjoyable days wandering around the shops of Loe Street and the marinas of the impressively restored waterfront,; I was less impressed with the food, however, most of options being ersatz versions of European and American taurants supplemented by cheap and cheerful food for the hu number of backpackers who use Cape Town as an easy acce point for their exploration of southern Africa. It says a lot th the best thing I ate was a boerwors, a spicy South African sauf sage, served from a night-time stall on Long Street. It was tas enough, but hardly the basis of an entire cuisine.

Cape Town, like all of South Africa, has its problems. Apartheid may have gone, but huge divisions still remain between the race The white, black and coloured South Africans are still separat by huge levels of mistrust and the even more powerful force of economics, which means that the black population still the majority of menial roles and live in the townships, wh the white population still controls the majority of the wealth Despite this, the South Africans have an almost insatiable pa.s.sic for life and for enjoying themselves, and few people I met on th trip displayed that more than Emil Den Dulk.

I had been given Emil's contact details by my friend Joh Glaser of Compa.s.s Box Whisky and first met up with him th previous night, when he had collected me and Neal, who ha arrived by now, at the end of a boat trip to the infamous isla prison Robben Island. We had both been silent and deep thought on the return journey, after a tour of the sombre build ings of the jail and a glimpse at the tiny cell in which Nels Mandela had been held for so many years.

Emil announced that he had tickets for the Taste of Cape povvn food festival and drove us to one of the most beautiful parts of the city, where local restaurants had set up stalls to serve two or three of their signature dishes each. We spent two or three hours wandering from stall to stall with Emil and his friends eating everything on offer and sampling South African wines before heading back to the city and the more genteel environment of Bascule, a bar with the biggest selection of whisky in the southern hemisphere. Some of the food had been good and some had been ordinary, but I couldn't help thinking that it was still a pale reflection of what I might be getting back in London or any other major city. I wanted to find something truly South African and, as Emil poured me a couple of fingers of peaty malt whisky, I told him so.

'Well,' he smiled back at me, 'you're certainly going to get that tomorrow. We're going to have a braai for you out at the farm.'

That was just what I wanted to hear. The braai is at the very heart of South African cuisine. It is not just a meal: it's a way of life and a celebration of South African culture.

We were waiting, ravenous and ready when he came to collect us late the following afternoon. We even tried to add in some pre-emptive exercise by attempting to climb Table Mountain, a feat that I singularly failed to achieve, in no small part thanks to the rather stupid combination of a huge hangover, malaria medication and a large fried breakfast, much of which ended up in a puddle on South Africa's beloved rock.

Emil's parents run one of the most prestigious wineries in South Africa, De Toren, in the heart of the Stellenbosch wine region, set in 26 hectares of the most beautiful land imaginable, with mountain ranges in the distance on one side of their house and the ocean in the distance on the other. Their wines from the estate are well respected, particularly one named Fusion V, made from the same five grapes as Bordeaux, and it wasn't long after we arrived that Emil senior had already begun to open two or three bottles from different years for us to try and Emil junior began to build the barbecue using wood from prui vineyards.

Soon he had a roaring fire going and had started to prepa the meat. The strip of sirloin was carved up into steaks, which 1 rubbed with a dry marinade. A large boerwors was formed int a spiral and skewered so it would hold together. Emil produc a dish of small round bundles called skilpadjies, made of mine lamb's liver mixed with coriander leaf and then wrapped in before being roasted.

There are a lot of rules and rituals when it comes to braaij The preparation of the grill and the cooking of the meat men's work. In fact, it is one man's work and, while the desig^ nated griller, the 'tongmaster', takes charge, the other men star around drinking, offering sage words of advice about the size i the flames and the position of the meat on the grill. The womeni task is to provide the traditional accompaniments to the meat: cheese sandwiches, grilled on the fire to be eaten as an appetiz and meili pap, a porridge made of ground maize and served wit a sauce made from tomatoes, onions and chilli.

Sonette introduced me to an Afrikaans word. 'Lekker,' she said sniffing the air filled with the smells of cooking, 'it's going to 1 lekker. It means lovely.'

When it all came together, we gathered around the far dining table and joined hands to say grace before sitting dov to one of the biggest meals I can remember. The steaks wer every bit as good as I had antic.i.p.ated, with a spicy crust forme by the rub giving way to a Hood of juices once I cut through th< flesh.="" the="" meat="" was="" fresh,="" not="" aged,="" reminding="" me="" of="" the="" steak="" in="" argentina="" rather="" than="" the="" ones="" in="" the="" usa,="" and="" the="" meili="" pa="" proved="" to="" be="" the="" perfect="" starch="" to="" soak="" up="" not="" only="" the="" juices="" bt="" also="" the="" innumerable="" gla.s.ses="" of="" wine="" emil="" senior="" kept="" pourir="" for="">

Above all, it was the hospitality of the Den Dulks that I shali remember. Neal leaned over to me as he was ripping apart hi^ dessert of koeksister, a dense, syrup-coated doughnut: 'It's bar to believe we had not even met these people twenty-four hours ago and now we are sitting in their winery eating their food and drinking their wines.'

Emil senior topped up my gla.s.s with more of that excellent Fusion V, and I looked at Neal: 'Welcome to my world, mate. Welcome to my world.'

Neal's world, however, is the internet, and he is good at it, having risen to a high level with a service provider in London. In a booze-addled moment of generosity he had offered to organize and pay for the two of us to spend a few days of rest and relaxation at one of Mozambique's secluded beach lodges, and after two more days touring the stunning wine country around Cape Town, we caught an early morning flight to Maputo, the capital.

Cape Town had not felt like Africa. It was developed and prosperous. Maputo felt like Africa from the moment we landed: the strong military presence at the airport, the chaos of clearing immigration and the inevitable battle for a taxi to our hotel. There too things were a shambles, and we entered our room to fmd that it had only one bed and that it was occupied by a large naked man watching football and scratching his gonads.

'Welcome to Africa', Neal gave me a thin smile and stomped off back down to the reception. He had that look of the consumer crusader about him which I liad seen many times over the years, so I waited with the bags while he went to give the staff what for. Eventually, after two more changes, we found ourselves in a room with air-conditioning, two beds and a working television.

The staff obviously planned their revenge, because the next morning Neal looked as though he might not live until lunchtime. We had eaten in the hotel the previous night, supplementing a few local beers with a plate of mystery meat, which was now happily making its way out of both ends of Neal.

He was determined to battle on, and we hired a taxi for a guided tour of the city. It's a hideously ugly place and reminded me of Salvador, Brazil - no surprise really, as both are for Portuguese colonies. Like Salvador, Maputo does not feel ticularly safe for the visitor and, as our driver deposited us at each point of interest to walk around, he watched carefully to see i we were not separated from our wallets or worse. There's ) lot to see: a crumbling old fort, a train station and a tin hoj built by Mr Eiffel, of Parisian tower fame. That's your lot.

More than anything, I wanted to sample the huge and culent prawns for which Mozambique is famous, so I asked the driver to take us along the coast road to Costa do Sol, a remnant of colonial days and still considered the best fish restaurant in the city. Neal was still looking a bit green, so I chose a young Portuguese wine to match the colour of his face and a plate of fried squid to begin with.

Then the main course arrived: twenty-four of those astounding sh.e.l.lfish, grilled simply and doused in b.u.t.ter. 1 ripped the sh.e.l.ls from the flesh and bit into one. It was beautifully sweet and meaty, and I did not care that the b.u.t.ter was dribbling down my chin onto my shirt. The ones on Neal's plate looked just as good and tasted even better when he finally declared he could eat no more without risk of vomiting. Of course, I helped him finish them, all the time making exaggerated yummy noises to emphasize just how good they were. He may never forgive me, and I don't care.

Neal had decided we were going to spend a few days at Guludo Lodge, a five-hour jeep ride from Pemba, in the north of the country. It was a small resort predicated on responsible tourism, which employed most of its staff from local villages and which was built from local materials. Our accommodation consisted of bandas, which opened up almost directly onto the powdery white sands of the beach and with no electricity: light came only from oil lamps. For the three nights we were there we drifted to sleep and were woken up by the sounds of the aqua-blue sea lapping gently near by.

The food was good, although limited by what could be llected from Pemba and what was brought up to the kitchen f[Otn the beach by local fishermen. Meals were served under the stars at tables set back from the beach, and Neal, who was obviously travelling light and could not pack more than one joke, came out with the same line every night, 'Shall we go to our special table, darling?' Oh, how we laughed.

[t was good to have a few days where food was not at the centre of my every waking thought, and I took the opportunity to do as little as possible, swaying gently in a hammock for hours on end while catching up with some reading. My only exercise came when I visited the local village with Neal, and we found ourselves being followed everywhere we went by a gaggle of beautiful, inquisitive children keen to see the videos and pictures of them we would take on our cameras. I could not resist it and was soon playing Pied Piper, hurtling around the narrow dusty streets of the town with half the childhood population in tow squealing and giggling with delight.

When it was time to leave the lodge and head back to Maputo and from there to Johannesburg, we were both slightly deflated. The pace of life at the lodge, or rather the lack of it, was just what we had both needed, for different reasons. I was heading on to the next stage of the journey and Neal back to work. I was sorry to see him go. There are few things better than a holiday with good mates, particularly when they are kind enough to pay for it. But it was time to head our separate ways, and I was off" to Senegal.