back to article Post-pub nosh neckfiller: The gargantuan Gatsby

It's February, and the weather's crap this side of the equator, so travel with us if you will to South Africa's sunny Cape Town for a wobbly dining experience so substantial it's more of a team sport than a post-pub dining exercise. Yes indeed, prepare to get your laughing gear round the "Gatsby", recommended by reader Simon …

  1. Tom 38

    In SA you also get Bunny Chow, which is basically a loaf of bread with the top cut off, the insides scooped out and then filled up with Indian food and the top replaced. The Indian immigrants weren't allowed to sell food to blacks, so they would sell it out the back door, disguised in a loaf of bread. Ingenious, tasty and you can use the top as a sort of spoon.

    1. Lester Haines (Written by Reg staff) Gold badge

      I like the sound of that.

      1. Arthur the cat Silver badge

        I like the sound of that.

        Bunny chow is definitely worth eating. Maybe another possible PPG? Maybe an easy version using left over curry for the seriously inebriated.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Sounds delicious, but...

        Avoid the ones for sale on Wardour Street unless you're a fan of badly microwaved stodge, grey bacon, nasty, cheap sausages and very overcooked rice (it'd turned into mush)

        1. Fink-Nottle

          Re: Sounds delicious, but...

          Suggested a while ago.

          Must agree, Wardour Street is to be avoided. However, I'm dubious of the 'smuggled food' derivation of the dish.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Durban is the epicentre of Bunny Chow.

      And the filling should be South Indian curry, nice and hot (in the UK, Sri Lankan is a good substitute).

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      What *exactly* does the "bunny" in "bunny chow" refer to?

      1. x 7

        "What *exactly* does the "bunny" in "bunny chow" refer to?"

        euphemism for curried cat?

  2. Richard Wharram

    I feel full just looking at that.

    My powers are weak today :(

  3. Franco

    Steak and chips on a sandwich sounds just about perfect to me

  4. chivo243 Silver badge
    Thumb Up

    One for the file

    Looks really good. I will be putting this one in my cooking file.

  5. Sooty
    Headmaster

    food hygene people!

    You've got your raw meat not only on the same board, but touching your lettuce and practically touching the bread, neither of which will be cooked.

    While you'll probably be ok with steak, it's still a pretty poor showing and well deserving of a day being unable to go further than sprinting distance from a toilet.

    1. Lester Haines (Written by Reg staff) Gold badge

      Re: food hygene people!

      Actually, I made a point of telling Katarina to ditch that lettuce for exactly that reason, so it didn't make it into the finished sarnie.

      1. Fibbles

        Re: food hygene people!

        Putting raw meat on a wooden chopping board is also a big no-no. Ideally you'd want one plastic or glass board for raw meat and another for ready to eat ingredients.

        Source: Managing a restaurant in my yoof.

        1. Manolo
          Boffin

          Re: food hygene people!

          It might seem counter-intuitive, but wooden boards are actually more hygienic than plastic. Bacteria can form bio-films that cling to plastics very well. (Also a problem with urinary catheters en iv's for prolonged use)

          This is not the case with wood. Glass has other disadvantages in kitchen use: not friendly on your knives and prone to breaking.

          1. Leo-pinkus-pantherus

            Re: food hygene people!

            wooden catheters?!! lets launch a new biotech startup!! Sounds like a winner to me!!

            1. Manolo
              Pint

              Re: food hygene people!

              Catheters for General Melchett!

              "Sorry I can't be with you, but obviously there's no place at the front for an old general with a dicky heart and a wooden bladder"

            2. Scroticus Canis
              Trollface

              Re: food hygene people! (wooden catheters?)

              wooden catheters?!! lets launch a new biotech startup!! Sounds like a winner splinters in the urethra to me!!

              FTFY

            3. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: food hygene people!

              "wooden catheters?!! lets launch a new biotech startup!! Sounds like a winner to me!!"

              I'll admit this does sound less risky than glass catheters.

          2. Paul Renault

            Re: food hygene people!

            Hear, hear!

            Most wood also have built-in chemicals which kill bacteria. FFS, how to you think trees manage to stay upright in filthy, bacteria-rich environments for decades, sometimes centuries?

            In addition, on a wooden cutting board, bacteria sink in, making them unable to infect the food, and causing them to die. A Canadian scientist, decades ago, who was trying to show just how much safer plastic cutting boards were, had to develop/modify his sampling methods because he was having a very difficult time getting infected samples off of the wooden cutting boards. He had no problems collecting samples off of the plastic ones.

            He came to the conclusion, along with many other researchers, that wooden cutting boards are perfectly fine. You'd think that by now, the meme that a wooden cutting board is unsanitary while a plastic one is inherently safer would have been dead, dead, dead.

        2. TeeCee Gold badge

          Re: food hygene people!

          Actually, I'm 100% sure that I remember seeing it stated that, while them may be the roolz, it's bollocks.

          Apparently a natural wood board kills bacteria on its own, something the glass and plastic varieties do not. Thus, unless you have access to an industrial boiling dishwasher to clean the things, wood chopping boards are the way to go.

        3. Justicesays
          Boffin

          Re: food hygene people!

          Putting meat on wooden chopping boards is fine, and may be better than plastic ones.

          sources:

          UK food standards agency

          http://www.food.gov.uk/sites/default/files/multimedia/pdfs/fsw11myths.pdf (Q5)

          Scientific research

          http://faculty.vetmed.ucdavis.edu/faculty/docliver/Research/cuttingboard.htm

          1. Fibbles

            Re: food hygene people!

            From what I remember you need a special license to use wooden boards in a commercial kitchen. You used to be able to use hardened glass boards though any sort of glass in the kitchen seems to be discouraged these days in case they break.

        4. chivo243 Silver badge

          Re: food hygene people!

          I have multiple cutting boards, a plastic red one especially for raw meat. Gets washed as soon as the meat is prepped.

        5. MonkeyCee

          Re: food hygene people!

          When I did city and guilds cooking course (2002) wood boards where not only OK, they where recommended. You've got to care for them a bit differently to plastic, mainly leaving to dry in a fashion that doesn't have a business side soaking wet.

          I also never experienced a working eatery where all C+G standards and H+S where actually followed. The industrial kitchen came close (Wishbone) but it seems pretty impossible to follow every single thing.

          Knew a few chaps who worked in the meat works, wooden boards there too. They tried plastic ones, but they all ended up turning black and slightly slimey within a week or two. Apparently too hard to clean, and they aren't too gentle with the cuts, so you could get pretty serious gouges out of the plastic.

          I didn't even think glass chopping boards where "real", I thought they where for presenting stuff on, like cheese or desserts. I'd rather prep straight onto a steel work surface than glass *shudder*.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: food hygene people!

      So how do you get on with Steak Tartare then? do you serve it on a separate plate to everything else? What about when it is combined and in your stomach.

      Hinder & Stop ('elf N'safety) threw a wobbly at us serviing the above on the same place until we pointed out the fact that you had to eat it along with the uncooked salad/dressing.

      But rules is rules.

      1. Triggerfish

        Re: food hygene people!

        If the lettuce is going with the steak tartare fair enough. But if its going back into the fridge after, then getting used a few days later, stock up on bog roll.

        1. x 7

          Re: food hygene people!

          the shittiest day of my life was due to a chef at a kabab shop preparing the salad for my burger after cutting up a goat carcass without washing his hands

          he was a (probably illegal) immigrant from the muslim bloc, too stupid to know better, and I was too pissed to notice what he was doing

          the beer and bugs combined resulted in a 24-hour session on the loo with liquid being projected from both ends near-constantly. I lost close to a stone in weight in a day

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: food hygene people!

        > "So how do you get on with Steak Tartare then?"

        Badly, it's rather notorious for making people ill.

    3. Buiatra

      Re: food hygene people!

      Yes, very important thing, especially in restaurants but also at home. Last case in Spain: 114 affected

      http://www.elmundo.es/andalucia/2016/02/12/56bdc91dca4741bd7c8b466a.html

    4. Crafty volt 7

      Re: food hygene people!

      You need to note the ingredients..... That peri peri sauce is hot. Not only that, it contains an anzyme that sends a pretty strong "vacate the colon" message to the brain. You therefore are smart if sitting on a ceramic throne whilst consuming said Gatsby delicacy. If you stay in the Taj in Cape Town they can cater to this spectacle with a suitable tray and gas mask clad butler bearing copious amounts of suitable Namibian Breweries libations to put out the fire that will be raging from your lips to your nether orifice....it goes without saying that foregoing "hygene" comes with the territory and scout paradigms prevail (be prepared)....haggle over the finest soft quality asswipe when you check in and just mention your culinary ambitions while pressing a few benjy's into said hotel chappies paw....they will light up with a deep and knowing understanding....

      1. CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

        Re: food hygene people!

        > suitable Namibian Breweries libations to put out the fire

        Milk (or diluted yoghurt) is much, much better as chilli oil is soluble in fat (and not in water)..

    5. GrumpenKraut

      Re: food hygene people!

      Butchers here in Grumpenland did actually touch meat with their bare hands until a few years ago (a fact brought to my attention by a guy from the US, I was completely oblivious to that). You know what? Everybody died!

  6. Tom 7

    Par frying chips

    As a kid my local chippy used to par fry the chips for the next session in the cooling fryer at the end of the lunch session. And then they soaked them in milk till 5 o'Clock opening, That's milk by the way - milk not that shit you get in the shops now. Milk from a cow - pasteurised and into bottles. Fucknose what they do to it now.

    Then they fried em to near brown. Used to get people travelling 60 miles to get them chips.

    The only beef you need with chips like that is the rendered down stuff you cook em in but I dare say they would brighten up this and you've got a lot of the sharp knife work out of the way before you get to the pub.

    1. Robert Helpmann??
      Childcatcher

      Re: Par frying chips

      Frying potatoes twice with a complete cool down in between produces better texture in the finished product as the starches will set after the first heating but will not turn gluey when reheated. It also makes it quicker for restaurants to get food to table. I am not sure what might be going on with the milk there, but I will have to give it a try if only for the novelty.

      1. Triggerfish

        Re: Par frying chips

        Yeah the milks unusual but then again I thought mushrooms cooked in milk was odd until I tried some for breakfast. Might have to try that.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Par frying chips

          I thought mushrooms cooked in milk was odd until I tried some for breakfast.

          Milk is somewhat underrated. Poach some spring onions (scallions for the locals) in milk & butter, then stir the lot into mashed potato. Instant "champ", great Irish accompaniment to almost anything.

      2. CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

        Re: Par frying chips

        > Frying potatoes twice with a complete cool down in between produces better texture

        My wifes maternal grandfather used to run a grocery/food shop back in the late '40s/early '50s - apparently they did a mass chip cook early in the day then let them cool and put them in the fridge. That meant they could then cook to order (more or less) in small batches at lunchtime & evening-meal time and get much better chips.

        Apparently MatGf got very very good at hand-cutting the potatoes with very little wastage.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Par frying chips

      Every decent chippy, restaurant etc. should par fry chips.

      Every decent cook book recommends par frying and every deep fat fryer I have ever bought (OK, all three of them) recommends it too.

      I can only assume that those to whom the art of par frying is a surprise has never made chips properly.

      Sadly Beef Dripping for chips is a long lost practice in many places that claim to be 'traditional' chippies but there are still a few enlightened masters of the delicacy still out there.

      And anyone who doesn't put mint sauce in mushy peas is a heathen.

      1. Zog_but_not_the_first
        Thumb Up

        Re: Par frying chips

        Triple cooking is well worth the faff IMHO. Glassy hard outside and sweet, soft and hot inside. I've discovered that you can go a long way to the authentic "cooked in beef dripping" flavour of yore by adding a dollop of dripping to a good quality neutral tasting cooking oil too.

        1. Lester Haines (Written by Reg staff) Gold badge

          Re: Re: Par frying chips

          I agree. It is worth the extra effort. Haven't tried the beef dripping trick, though.

    3. Robert Sneddon

      Re: Par frying chips

      There's a reason chip pan fires was one of the top five causes of house fires in Scotland for a long time -- the second pass in the liquid cow has to be at a temperature that is damn close to flashover. My Dad didn't know the the old radio ham phrase "tune for maximum smoke" but he always kept a wet towel handy when making chips. Oh, and he grew his own tatties too, Maris Pipers, a great chipping potato but now, Ghod Preserve Us, an "heirloom" variety. I blame the English and their foofy King Edwards.

      1. CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

        Re: Par frying chips

        > I blame the English and their foofy King Edwards

        Given that Maris Piper is the best-selling tatty down here with us Saesnegs I somehow doubt that..

        (Roosters make pretty good chips too)

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The amount of steak looked surprisingly small. In SA 40 years ago any steak was enormous. At a "brai" (BBQ) you would get handed a large steak and a ring of wors to cook over the long trough of log embers. There would also be a pot of mealie pap.

    1. Leo-pinkus-pantherus
      Pirate

      Whenwe cow meat

      That's nothing, back in the day, on my four billion hectare cattle farm (in Rhodesia), with my 2.5 trillion cows, and my eight million servants, our cows would produce "petite" fillets that weighed 2Kg for every Gatsby we made, with a gallon of Peri-Peri and four rolls of Carlton asswipe standing by with several gallons of chilled Windhoek Export, it was sure to be a very "enlightening" day.....ahhhhh, those were the dayz!!

      We must have eaten all the cows and salad it was so good.... Went back the other week and all I saw was red sand everywhere....???

      1. Fink-Nottle

        Re: Whenwe cow meat

        Ja neef, what we Boere call padkos .

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Whenwe cow meat

          To the Boere here: remember the recipe for a Free State sandwich?

          Two slices of stywe pap with a slap pap filling.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Whenwe cow meat

            To all the Zimbos here : remember pap?

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              To all the Zimbos here

              Remember meat?

  8. Zog_but_not_the_first
    Pint

    Yum! Yum!

    I could go for one of those. With one (or two) of these, of course >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>.

    Are there any decent SA restaurants in the UK? I'm quite partial to a spot of bredie or bobotie. I can cook them of course, but it would be nice to experience someone else's take on them.

    1. Leo-pinkus-pantherus

      Re: Yum! Yum!

      Just Nando's.........

    2. EddieD

      Re: Yum! Yum!

      There's one in Edinburgh just a couple of hundred meters up from my house on Dalry Road.

      A friend who worked in SA says the food's pretty authentic.

  9. Neil Barnes Silver badge
    Thumb Up

    So when...

    are you entering Katerina on Man Vs Food?

    p.s. how many of these can you get for a quid a day?

    1. Lester Haines (Written by Reg staff) Gold badge

      Re: So when...

      I think the total cost was about 10 euros, so you do the maths. You don't need to eat for a day after filling your face, though.

  10. Efros

    Reminds me of

    A steak Po' Boy, although the Piri Piri is a marked improvement!

  11. x 7

    methinks you're going to have to put Kat on a diet if you do any more of these recipes.....

    as these are post-pub meals, does that mean you're dragging the poor girl out for late night drinking sessions before each of these meals? Sounds like child cruelty

    1. Fruit and Nutcase Silver badge

      Sounds like child cruelty

      not to mention clogged arteries!

      Nurse! I'll have whatever she's having and some statins please

  12. Jeff Lewis

    The double fry approach to making chips is in fact the 'correct' way to do it. The first fry cooks the spud just right so they're soft and tender - then the second hotter fry sears the outside and makes them crunchy.

    Single fry chips just can't compete...

  13. BattleBotBob

    The vinegar may also help with crispy fries. But my only reference is for boiling them first with vinegar. From seriouseats http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2010/05/perfect-french-fries-recipe.html

  14. earl grey
    Joke

    wood it is

    I notice my wood stays very clean... must not get much use.

  15. GrumpyOF
    Pint

    Gatsby or AK47??

    In Johannesburg these are known (in some areas) as AK47, Simple, Easy to Make, Reliable (you really have to try hard to cock it up) and DEADLY. So you definitely need a few of these to mark your passing on.

  16. GrumpyOF

    Gatsby or AK47??

    In Johannesburg these are known (in some areas) as AK47, Simple, Easy to Make, Reliable (you really have to try hard to cock it up) and DEADLY.

  17. Rob Daglish

    So length wise...

    ...30CM is about a foot in old money? Or the length of a Subway? It seems much bigger than that against Katarina, or is she unbeliveably tiny?

    In any case, this Gatsby looks much nicer than a Subway!

    1. KBeee
      Pint

      Re: So length wise...

      The wooden chopping board looks more appetising than a Subway

    2. CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

      Re: So length wise...

      > ...30CM is about a foot in old money? Or the length of a Subway?

      No - this is proper bread. Not a sub..

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