Carol’s Column

Braais — or who burned the wors?

THE smoke was thick. My eyes watered and slowly, slowly I was beginning to have difficulty breathing. My chest tightened. I closed my eyes and thought to myself — this is the end.

Chokingly I pulled the wet cloth over my nose and made a desperate lunge. Too late, the boerewors rolled over and fell to the ground where it twitched aimlessly.

With a deft movement of the right hand, I retrieved it and placed it neatly back in position where the soil coating quickly turned a crisp, golden brown.

The do-it-yourself apricot and Worcester sauce marinated chops sizzled enticingly as they stewed in their own juices. The sound of fat sizzling was punctuated by the rather over-inebriated murmur of our happy guests. I adjusted Barry's swimming goggles and gazed at the bucolic scene behind me.

Mine host, immaculately dressed in his butcher white and blue-striped apron, chef's hat perched rakishly on his thinning unisex haircut, reclined charmingly in a long chair at the side of the pool.

Graciously he sipped a long, cold beer and laughed at a guest's Van der Merwe joke.

He caught my blood-stained eye. “Need any help, Hon?” he shouted and immediately resumed his conversation in case I replied affirmatively.

“A South African Prince,” I murmured. I muttered and poked the wors viciously.

Through the smoke a dim shape appeared. “You're doing a grand job,” said my husband. “Just see you keep turning the sosaties.” And he returned to his reclining position, exhausted by the effort.

This is madness, I thought as a blob of burning fat shot up and made contact with my chin. Why am I doing this?

Why? I'll tell you why, because there are some traditions in this country that refuse to lie down and die, and the braaivleis is one of them.

While the rest of the civilised world drools over steak and kidney pie on Sundays, South Africans throughout the nation gather round blazing three metre fires to burn their meat to a crisp.

Extraordinary things braais, I mean where else do people compete to see how efficiently meat can be burned? And what on earth is attractive about getting smoke in your eyes?

This particular braai started a week ago.

“There's a body hanging in the kitchen,” son-number-three announced. “It stinks, the three dogs got stuck on top of the fridge trying to get it, Margaret has walked out of the kitchen and says she'll never return and the sink has overflowed because she left the tap on when she walked out.”

There was chaos in the kitchen. The body turned out to be the carefully marinated corpse of an overweight lamb placed strategically in the breezy middle of the kitchen.

Towards the end of the week, we evacuated the house and moved in with neighbours.

My husband was unrepentant. “The greater the odour — the softer the meat,” he maintained from behind his gasmask.

On Sunday morning the lamb was so high, it walked unaided to the fire, where it now resided in burnt splendour.

Keeping an eagle eye on the sosaties, I watched our visitors: 14 children, three dogs, one cat, two rabbits and a hamster, frolic through my newly-planted seedlings.

The smoke billowed and I thought longingly of my sparkling microwave oven, the revolving rotisserie and the king-sized electric frying pan nestling in the pack-away cupboard with the vinyl roll-top.

Back at the pool, much merriment ensued. Asleep, Herbert slipped off the slasto into the freshly chlorinated water.

Fortunately, he'd fallen sunny-side up and was blissfully oblivious of any change of environment. He floated around, nose heavenwards, snoring away to the sun.

I heard shrieking in the distance and observed Liquorice-the-Labrador running through the bushes with what looked like the lamb.

The sosaties had shrivelled away and slipped through the grid while the wors was standing upright on the griddle.

By this stage, my guests were hiccupping into their soup bowls, except for mine host who sat crying and mourning the loss of the lamb.

Every good South African braai queen knows that when all is lost — one shouldn't despair.

Slipping off the goggles, I climbed into my green chariot and sped speedily to our bank of Cypress shop-around-the-corner and bought four chickens.

Our visitors were none the wiser when I dished them up.

“You really cook a fantastic braai,” said Herbert much later to my husband.

“This meat tastes superb.”

And mine host? He nodded graciously and smiled. “It's all in the cooking,” he sniggered.

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