A R200 Braai for 4 people – Recipe

Legendary lover of The Braai, BraaiBoy, challenged a bunch of bloggers to prepare a meal for 4 people.
The catch being that the maximum budget for the meal was R200.

Now, R200 is a shitload 2-min Noodles. But this meal had to be awesome, so I went ahead and created Awesome.
I went to Spar, bought my ingredients and surprised myself not only with good food, but also an interesting life lesson.

This is my recipe. Let me know what you think (and don’t forget to go check out all the entries on BraaiBoy’s Facebook page):

Baas de Beer’s Chilli Mince & Sosatie madness:

The meal consists of the following:

• Chilli & Garlic Mince served in a hollowed out pepper (in this case green &red), as well as on a bed of lightly flavoured Couscous
• A bacon-wrapped chicken sosatie/skewer
• Braai-mielie (Corn on the cob)

Ingredients:

• Extra Lean Mince – 700-800g
• Chicken & Bacon Sosatie x 4
• Sweetcorn x4
• 150g Cheddar Cheese
• Mixed Chillies & Garlic pack
• Fresh Parsley
• 250g Couscous
• 4 Large Peppers (I like the green & red more than yellow)
• Spices: Salt, white pepper, black pepper, Aromat
• A swig of milk and a spoon of butter
• Water

Process:

1. Grab a beer with a mate, and light the fire
2. Chop stuff:
   1. Chillies (quite a fine chop, but not mush)
   2. Parsley (also quite a fine chop)
3. Hollow out big peppers by just cutting through the connecting bits and twisting out the centre (tip: use sharp, round tipped knife. Pointy ends make holes and that is bad)
4. Crush the garlic (I added salt as you do, but also some white pepper)
5. Wash your hands (Tip: Rub hands with salt and stroke with flat side of stainless steel knife. No more garlic smell)
6. Finely grate cheese (Yummy tip: Take the bits of cheese that fall outside the grater, ad a tiny pinch of garlic and eat)
7. Peal the corn
8. Make sure to check your fire, should be halfway ready now, and time for another beer.
9. Work your peppers, garlic and 95% of your parsley into the mince. Add salt (a decent sprinkle over all the mince)
   Chilli Tip: Not too much. I was in the mood for a sinus-clearing, earth shattering chilli, so I added quite about 4 times more than a normal human should serve. On average, I would say about 2 green/red, 4 yellow/orange will be good)
10. Boil water (about 1 litre should do)
11. Add lump of butter into pot, heat on full and add mince when warm.
12. Quickly stir mince to brown a bit, and add water to mince level.
13. Let this boil, stirring occasionally, for about 5 minutes. Turn down to a hectic simmer.
14. By now your fire should be ready. Grab a beer and put your corn & sosaties on the fire
    1. Corn – You can pre-prep them in the microwave for about 8 minutes on high, inside a clean plastic bag. This saves time on the fire, but does take some of the authentic fire-taste away. When on the fire, do turn regularly.
       You CAN salt the corn on the fire, but seeing as this is a quite a spicy meal, I like to have the corn as is.
    2. Sosaties – Remember, there’s chicken in there, so you don’t want to dry it out too much. You won’t get crispy bacon anyway, so don’t aim for that. When almost done, pour some of the sosatie marinade/sauce over the sosaties.
15. While braai is happening, go back to the mince and add a swig of milk. By now the mince water level in the mince should have substantially subsided.
16. Also add the remainder of the sosatie marinade/sauce to the mince. Taste test, and add salt if needed. Stir.
17. Make CousCous (this literally takes less than 5 minutes)
    1. Very important: Ignore what they tell you on the pack (they want you to make couscous yucky and gross)
    2. Lubricate saucepan/skillet with butter, add about 1 cm of warm water (ie water that boiled, but about 5 minutes ago) and add Couscous to water.
    3. Stir, and add water as needed to get almost a mash-texture. Remember, the heat is on, stir a LOT.
    4. Add ,some ground black pepper, salt and Aromat. Don’t over-flavour, as this will be a bit of a neutralising agent for the severity of the chillies.
    5. Stir some more, until it resembles course putu pap. Remove from heat.
18. Put a layer of Couscous inside the hollowed out peppers. Not too much.
19. Fill peppers with mince (strain as you do, don’t want sloppy peppers) and sprinkle cheese over top.
    1. Wrap peppers in foil, put in mostly dead fire for about 2 minutes. OR, if you (like me) forgot that you didn’t have foil at home, simply pop them into the microwave for a minute, just to melt the cheese.
    2. Sprinkle remainder of Parsley over the cheese.
20. Once your sosaties are solid, and your cobs brown, remove and place on plates, alongside peppers. Spoon some Couscous and the remainder of the mince onto the plates.
21. Voila! A Meal for Four for Less Than R200.

My suggestion would be to pair this meal with a red wine, but not an expensive one, seeing as your very chilli mouth will not appreciate it. I went fora Café Culture Coffee Mocha 2014 Pinotage. Coz that’s what my mate Charlie brought over.

The thing I realised in doing this, was that you can really prepare a decent meal on quite  small budget.
In real life, I would say that you can ditch the ornamental peppers, buys some more mince, corn and add an onion to the mince. This would easily feed 8 people for under R250. As things are, I have enough Couscous, chillies, garlic and parsley left to make another interesting dish.

What do you think of my first attempt at food blogging?
Also, my first written recipe. Ever.
Do drop a comment below and feel free to tell BraaiBoy I am awesome.

Lastly, for the doubters:
Here’s a pic of the till slip to prove that it was all under R200

BraaiBoy – Your VIP insight into his infamous Guinness World Record

By now, anyone who cares to know about it, surely knows: BraaiBoy has broken the official Guinness World Record for the longest continuous braai… in the world.

And yes, you were supposed to read that last bit in Jeremy Clarkson’s voice.

If however, you do not know, here’s the nutshell:

• BraaiBoy has been braaing for about 3,5 years, non stop, every day.
• These braais are documented on his FB page and mused over on his blog.
• He has made several celebrity braaipearances. Yes, that’s a word.
• Pre-attempt, the record was set on 32 hours.
• On 23-25 (technically 26) August 2012, BraaiBoy set the new record at a whopping 62 hours, 6 minutes and 16 seconds.
• BraaiBoy is ancient Icelandic for “Crazy man with underwear on the wrong side who likes toe play/work/talk to fire”. (Citation needed)

You can check out more and all of the details at his website: www.braaiboy.co.za

Now, here’s a bit of the behind the scenes stuff you didn’t read on other blogs.

I met BraaiBoy (aka, Gareth Daniel. But screw it, I call him BraaiBoy, so can you) about 2 years ago at a tweetup. Yes ladies and gents, awesome hook-ups happen at tweet ups, so get your ass on twitter if you have not yet done so. My first words to the dude walking into Livingstones in Hatfield, wearing a black shirt with green “Born To Braai”  on the front, was “Dude, are you BraaiBoy? I’m a huge fan”.
Now, I don’t generally get all groupie-like when I meet famous people. It is, after all, a big part of my job to tolerate celebrities. But this was The BraaiBoy. This, was different.
You can therefore imagine my shock, awe and smile inducing pride when he replied “Yes, I am.. Are you BaasDeBeer? I love your tweets!”
That night we talked and laughed and drank and… well, let’s just call it the birth of a friendship.

Life went on, as it generally does, and the more I kuiered and braaid with BraaiBoy, the more he started sharing ideas and dreams with me. From silly ones (seriously, braaing on the moon might be a bit of a stretch) to more awesome ones (being the official Braai Master of the Put Fut Rally was quite a biggie). The biggest one, hoewever, was when he told me he wanted to break the record for the longest continuous braai… in the world. (I can’t help it, Clarkson would be proud)

From there we planned and schemed, I lost admin and cheered him on. Yes, admin is not my strongest point. Finally, after moving the date around so much that I figured we were going to have to invent a new month to do it in, the date was fixed. End of September 2012.

Yeah, right. When has any braai ever happened exactly when you planned it?

The awesome main sponsors of the event, Spar & Deli Spices agreed that instead of having a separate big event for the braai, we should combine it coinciding with Jacaranda FM’s big day that was already Spar-sponsored and held at Supersport Park. So NOW, the final date was set: 23-25 August 2012.
This news broke just days before Oppikoppi. Of course, we jumped at the opportunity to… go have an awesome Oppikoppi experience. After Koppi, we squeezed in so much last-minute planning, we actually finished some of it only in the first day of the record attempt.

The Record Days

Day 1 was quite easy. I got up at 4am (not as much fun as you might think it would be, especially after only getting to bed at 2am (I blame Aandklas’ quiz night for that). the start of the record was delayed by 51 minutes, seeing as 2 out of every 3 cars in the vicinity of Pretoria/Centurion decided to get into an accident that morning. Everyone was late. For everything.
I still remember listening to the interview Alex Caige had on TuksFM at 8:30, the anxious wait for the witnesses and time-keepers to get there, and BraaiBoy to run and take his last pee before The Clock Started.
I spent quite some time setting up a 20hour long playlist (you can not have a braai without some rocking tunes), Deli Spices spiced things up, Spar kept the cold-drink and meat coming and people started pouring in to witness this crazy man in a red suit doing something extraordinary.
In the end, day 1 was a breeze. Unfortunately, by 3am the next morning, the actual breeze picked up a bit, and we froze to death.
Logically, we had a few crazies there to jam silly songs on the guitar. The legends from WatKykJy actually streamed some of it live on interwebsradio.

Day 2 was a Friday, and as such, more people joined us earlier in the afternoon. Wors, tjops, steak, ribs and rashers were popping onto and off the fire every 20 minutes, so everyone got at least a mouth full of meat. And no, that last sentence wasn’t lewd (at least not as much as the previous nights songs).
That night, I quickly had to pop over to another event to be the Mr MC man. My friends and colleagues from Activation Media as well as the guys from Deli Spices kept on doing what they were doing for close on 2 days now: Keep the flow of things going, and keep BraaiBoy awake. Not that the man seemed to need too much help with that. The fans, media and curious randoms kept pouring in, everyone trying to find 2 minutes to chat to the man of the moment. It was only later that night, as I got back that BraaiBoy suffered a bit of a setback. He managed to swallow an entire cheese-grater and a chainsaw. At least, that’s how he sounded. His throat was sore, and the fact that he entered into this record with a flu-guillotine hanging over his neck didn’t exactly help. Off we rushed to find pineapples. And honey. And random stuff for him to swallow. From bystanders to random people on twitter chipped in with advice and, well, throat stuff.

Day 3

After a slightly less freezing night (we didn’t need to be resurrected but the sun, only slightly thawed) we got an awesome reminder that other people were at other parties, when shortly after 5am a bunch of friends I made at the Attrition events popped in after a night partying (I think at Zeplins). Coffee made the rounds and a lady from twitter pitched with more pineapple for BraaiBoy.

By now, news had spread and from the early morning, more and more people poured in. Later on, there were literally thousands and thousands of people. Ok, so this might have had something to do with the huge Spar Ladies funrun challenge happening there that day, but I choose to believe it was all because of BraaiBoy.

So far everything was going good. I was pulling some amps there (as was BraaiBoy, but he’ll never admit it). To tell you the truth, sleep-deprivation has a weird drug-like effect on a person. Ask me if you would like to know more (like how weird it felt to not be able to read).

It was in this time, about 16:30, that the official Guinness World Records judge arrived, and upon inspection found that everything so far seems to be in order. That was good news. Now Braaiboy (and of course us, his crew) just had to keep doing what we were doing, not mess it up, and he would reach his target.

Saturday night, festivities of the day done and most of the people gone, I was blown away to see how many people parked there, in front of BraaiBoy’s taped-off area, supporting him every step through the last few hours.

Finally, just before 22:00, BraaiBoy reached 60 hours! That was his target, that was his mission, and that was… well, not the end.
You see, when have you ever been to a braai that finished on time?
BraaiBoy decided to push on to 00:00. The logic behind it was simple: Seeing as he braais every day, he might just as well put his last meat on the fire just after midnight and work in Sunday’s braai. That way he could sleep the entire Sunday, and not have to get up to braai.

In the end, shortly after 00:00, BraaiBoy, now a legend, removed his last meat from the fire.
The crowd went wild. Bottles and bottles of Lovoka And Cactus Jack (thanx for the sponsor guys) did the rounds, speeches were made, and BraaiBoy got a certificate.

After BraaiBoy and his wife Vanessa left, and we packed up most of the stuff, I took a moment (now freakishly awake) to just sit there and reflect. I realised then that to a lot of people this entire experience might have been foolish. Many people might not get it. Why would one man decide to do such a thing? Why would name- and face-less individuals back him in his venture. Why would camera crews and corporate sponsors slave away while a dude in a red suit is staying awake to, in essence, cook food?
Then I realised, in that moment of tranquil, sleep deprived, awesome inner peace and untainted thinking:
Because it’s F#ck!ng awesome, that’s why!

Congrats to Braaiboy for showing us all that it can be done. Thank you for allowing me to be part of your dream. Who knows, maybe we should do that moon-trip next?
Thanx from my side to all the sponsors, helpers, time-keepers, witnesses, crew and random people who pitched to party and stayed to help.
A big thank you to all the friends, fans and supporters who made the days more interesting.
And last, but not least, thanx to all the cows. You were delicious.

Some stats for your enjoyment:

Not drunk, just tired:

For more awesome videos, such as BraaiBoy and his dubious dental hygiene, as well as all the record breaking and such, go check out his YouTube Channel 

For the love of Boobs

What is it about boobs that fascinate mankind so much?
And by mankind, I mostly mean men.

Sure, ladies have their own thing for breasts, but (mostly) not in the way most humans sporting male genitalia does. It’s as if there’s a magical magnetic attraction to girls’ lady-humps. Yes, I said lady-humps, my English teacher would be so proud.

Just to clear the air, I am not speaking of males’ stereotypical attraction to BIG boobs. Just boobs in general. I am, in fact, pretty sure that no matter what your (you, being a girl in this case) boobs look like, there are definitely guys out there that prefer them above any other shape, size, slope or feel. So I am just touching on the concept of general Boob-Fascination.

I have a theory. It might not be good one, but it’s the best one I have.

Boys (read: men of all ages) want what they can’t have. They want what is difficult to get. They want what other boys have (or at least what other boys also want).
So, on the one side you have the natural hunter-instinct of the male kicking in. The thrill of the hunt already makes it a worthwhile endeavour. Combine that with the media bombarding us with what we are supposed to find attractive, and all sorts of manly-man urges kick in.

These urges to desire, crave, hunt and obtain are enough to drive any sane man nuts. (There’s a joke somewhere in that last sentence. Help me find it). The fact that the ladies use aforementioned boobs to their advantage doesn’t help either. The tease-game just makes the hunter more bent on winning.

Ah, winning.
For a schoolboy, winning might be glancing Deidre van den Heever’s bra strap in standerd 1, or accidently brushing against your hand over your 1st high-school date’s chest at the Valentine’s ball. As we grow older, winning is redefined. Still a little part (genuine, NO pun intended) of a man has that thrill of seeing what he’s not supposed to, touching what he shouldn’t and talking about what he did (but probably didn’t)…
I might be wrong though, or at least giving away my age. Nowadays 12year olds get more action than I did through my entire school career. But you get the point.

Either way you see it, and ladies – whether or not your man acknowledges it- all men love boobs to one extent or another. It’s a fact of nature, a part of our programming deeply encoded in the root of having the ability to pee whilst standing.

So from the bottom of our hearts (and probably a bit lower as well) ladies, we as men thank you for taking care of your breasts, for loving them, bragging with them. Some for modestly seeking compliments by pretending that you don’t like compliments, others for blatantly flaunting what us mere mortals will never lay a hand on.

Seeing as today is National Cleavage Day (a wonderful incentive started by Wonderbra) let us not forget, amidst the ogling, gawking, peeking and perving, what this day is all about. Ladies (and dudes) breastcancer is serious, check yourself. And let the love for boobs live forever!

Various events all over the country celebrate this specail day. My party of preference is at Aandklas in Pretoria with BraaiBoy tonight. It includes four of my favourite things on the planet: Boobs, Beer, Braaivleis and rock music. Hope to see many of you there 🙂

LINKS:

• The most Epic NCD Event!
• www.wonderbra.co.za
• www.braaiboy.co.za
• www.aandklas.com
• @ilovewonderbra
• @BraaiBoy
• @Aandklas_Pta