The flower that says it’s vleikos season

LET US not forget the pleasure C Louis Leipoldt can provide, even in 2024. I often wonder how the good doctor was able to know so much about so many things. The only places where he could learn about food, for example, were in Cape Town, the countries he visited on his few international trips, in the veld and in the pages of a limited number of library books. Yet he knew more about local food and veldkos than some leading chefs in Cape Town today.

When it comes to Aponogeton distachyos, Leipoldt speaks of the wateruintjie and of a stew as a skottel. What we know as a waterblommetjie stew was a waterblommetjie skottel to him. People also referred to it as milk food, dog with two tails, Cape pond weed and water hawthorn.

The idea of ​​an uintjie is not inaccurate, because Carl Peter Thunberg, the father of South African botany, wrote in 1796 that the country's indigenous people ate the small tuber at the bottom of the long stems of waterblommetjies. Leipoldt did not have much success with it: “The one time we tried to dig it up, we could only find potting clay and a dead shrew."

However, the late winter flowers are a wonderful thing: beautiful, subtle, fragrant. In a stew, you shouldn't play around and kill it with too many extra flavours. Leipoldt prescribed this in his classic Polfijntjes vir die proe: “The secret of a good waterblommetjie dish – like the secret of every leafy vegetable dish – is the marriage of the green – in this case white - vegetable with the fat. The foundation of every stew should be a few good pieces of fatty lamb rib, thoroughly browned, either in its own fat or with the help of a bit of suet. Aunt Tifrosa … once showed me how to use bone marrow for her stew, but it seems to me too much of a waste, especially in wartime, when we can't even get a good bone marrow for soup any more."

Nowadays, food people put a lot more emphasis on frying the meat beforehand in the pot to get a nice brown layer that releases lots of flavour. People sometimes talk of the meat needing to be caramelised, but what they really mean is that you have to fry the meat in a hot pot to get the Maillard reaction – the sticky brown layer from the reaction between the natural sugar and amino acids in the meat.

Our old people's stews were usually much blander than nowadays – in many cases they simply boiled all the ingredients in a pot of water from the start until they were cooked, and even that was surprisingly tasty. Leipoldt said you should braise the meat, not fry it. And you had to cook the flowers separately for a while to extract the “brown bitter juice from the stems". As soon as the water was reddish brown, you got rid of it through a colander, put the meat and flowers together, added the potatoes and sorrel and cooked it. Nowadays, cooks simply cut off the stems.

Waterblommetjies have been eaten for centuries but have only recently become so popular that it is sometimes a chore to get hold of them. The botanist Robert Pemberton says that until the 1980s, all waterblommetjies were harvested in the wild and sold by the roadside. It was only after Afrikaans singer Sonja Herholdt had a big hit with Anton Goosen's song Waterblommetjies that it gained the status of African cultural food and became popular.

It has also become a commercial crop, and farmers with dams make sure to manage it well. There has been pressure on the waterblommetjie population, but it is not yet an endangered species. Some of the lesser-known cousins ​​of Aponogeton distachyos, such as Aponogeton fugax, are critically endangered due to the destruction of habitat and the wash-off of agricultural herbicides into ponds.

Questions about waterblommetjies

What herbs and spices can I use in stews?

Just salt and pepper and lemon or sorrel will give you a wonderful waterblommetjie stew.

As for herbs, a bay leaf or two will work well, with a fresh sprig of rosemary (Leipoldt's Aunt Tifrosa liked it), thyme, a few basil leaves or marjoram. I only use bay leaf and one of the others, usually rosemary or thyme.

As far as spices are concerned, you can use white pepper and freshly ground black pepper, and if you want to add more flavours, grate a pinch of nutmeg on the green stuff. You can also throw in a cinnamon stick. Waterblommetjies and white pepper are a delicious combination.

What cuts of meat are good?

Leipoldt liked ribs, for the fat. Nowadays, people don't like a greasy stew as much, and if I use ribs I mix them with shank, neck or pieces of shoulder. My favourite combination is shank with either neck or shoulder. You don't want no fat, but rein yourself in.

Which liquid works well?

Two parts stock and one part white wine is good. To keep the stew light and not too rich, I prefer homemade chicken stock or even vegetable stock. Of course, you can also use lamb stock. The stew will be delicious even if you only use water, because the lamb cooks for such a long time that it makes its own stock, and once the waterblommetjies are added they also make a lot of liquid.

Lemon or sorrel?

To balance the fattiness and richness of the lamb, waterblommetjies need an acidic element. Traditionally, sorrels were used, because they could be picked anywhere in the veld or in gardens in winter, but lemon juice and a little peel are more common these days, also because people are wary of the oxalic acid in the sorrels. (The oxalic acid level in sorrels is so low that you have to consume a wheelbarrow full before a stomach or headache arrives. We wouldn't recommend that you eat waterblommetjie stew with sorrel every day for three months straight, but once every few weeks is absolutely safe.)

How much waterblommetjie should I use?

As much as you want. In recipes, I have seen anything from half the weight of the meat to twice the weight of the meat. It depends on whether you like a meat-rich dish or a vegetable-rich dish. The taste of the flowers is so subtle that I would reckon one-and-a-half times the weight of the meat.

A good traditional waterblommetjie recipe

Ingredients

• 3 tbsp vegetable oil (olive or canola)
• 1 kg cooked lamb (combination of neck and shank, but rib and shoulder are also good) 
• 3 medium onions, chopped into small cubes
• 4 garlic cloves, finely chopped
• 2 tbsp salt
• 1 ½ tbsp white pepper
• 1 t black pepper
• 4 bay leaves
• 1 cinnamon stick (optional)
• 3 sprigs rosemary (optional)
• 2 cups stock (chicken, vegetable, lamb)
• 1 cup dry white wine
• 5 large potatoes, cut into 3 cm cubes
• 1 handful of sorrel / juice of two lemons and peel of one
• 1.5 kg waterblommetjies, clean
  

Method:

1. Soak and wash: Soak the waterblommetjies overnight in water with a lot of salt. Rinse each flower thoroughly with fresh water in the morning and cut off the stems.

2. Make it tasty: Fry the lamb in a large hot iron pot in stages so that it browns nicely and leaves a brown layer on the bottom. When you are done with the meat, the entire bottom of the pan should be light brown. Remove the meat from the pot and set aside.

3. Build the base: Now add the chopped onion to the medium-hot pot and let it sweat lightly for two to three minutes to release some liquid. Use a wooden spatula to scrape the brown starter from the bottom of the pot to mix with the onions and other seasonings. Also put the garlic, rosemary and cinnamon in the pot and let them sweat for about 10 minutes, shaking the pot now and then.

4. The long road: Put the meat back in the pot and add all the other ingredients, except the potatoes and waterblommetjies. The liquid should three-quarters cover the meat. If you have too little liquid, you can add extra water, white wine or stock. Put the lid on the pot and let it simmer gently for an hour and a quarter.

5. Almost there: Put all the potato cubes on top of the meat (don't stir and don't add the waterblommetjies at this stage – it will become mushy), close the lid and let the stew do its thing for another 25 minutes. Then lift the lid, check that you still have enough liquid at the bottom of the pot, and place the waterblommetjies on top of everything. You can also throw some salt and white pepper on top. Put the lid on and steam the waterblommetjies until cooked – it can take 20-30 minutes for them to become al dente. They should not become mushy.

Adjust the salt and pepper if necessary. You can also use light soy sauce instead of salt; it does wonders for the flavour of the sauce.

Stir carefully only towards the end. Do so deeply and carefully so as not to break the waterblommetjies and potatoes.

What else with waterblommetjies?

• Waterblommetjies are perfect for a nice soup and delicious for a vegetarian soup. Experiment – you can't easily go wrong – or use La Motte's recipe for waterblommetjie and sorrel soup. 
• Waterblommetjies can also work in a pork dish like this. 
• In my opinion, waterblommetjies are too subtle for a lamb curry, but it wouldn't be unpalatable. Here is Sarie food editor Herman Lensing's recipe. At the same link, he has a recipe for waterblommetjie tempura (deep-fried waterblommetjies  with curd), which sounds fantastic. 

Want to attend a waterblommetjie festival? On Saturday September 7  you will get your chance, at Rhebokskloof Wine Farm and Windmeul.

♦ VWB ♦

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