Southern African recipes: Bobotie

"Bobotie" is a Cape Malay dish, which is very popular all over South Africa. It is a light textured curry flavored meat loaf smothered in a golden savory egg topping. Baboties can be cooked in many different variations and therefore there can be a huge difference in its flavors, but they all have in common: they have fruity, spicy taste with a decent hint of curry!
This recipe serves 6 generous portions. We suggest you serve it with (yellow) rice and/or a large salad.

Ingredients:
2 slices stale white bread (remove the crusts)
30ml cooking oil
1 onion, thinly sliced
2,5ml ground cloves
5ml crushed garlic
3ml salt
10 ml curry powder
5 ml turmeric
500g beef mince
2 eggs
30ml hot water
20ml lemon juice
25ml sugar
Topping:
1 egg (lightly beaten)
150ml milk bay or lemon leaves for garnishing

Method:
Preheat oven to 180ºC. Soak bread in water for 10 minutes, squeeze out excess water and crumble. In a large frying pan, heat oil and braise onion until golden (roughly about 7 minutes). Add the ground cloves, garlic, salt, curry powder and turmeric and simmer for 5 minutes. Break the 2 eggs into a large bowl and beat lightly. Mix in the mince. Add the onion mixture from the frying pan to the mince as well as the hot water, lemon juice, crumbled bread and sugar, and mix to combine well. Spoon the mixture into a well greased oven proof dish and bake for 40 minutes or until golden brown. Remove from the oven.

Topping: Combine the egg with the milk and beat well. Pour over the bobotie. Arrange bay leaves or lemon leaves as garnish. Return to oven and bake at ca. 180ºC for 5-10 minutes, or until topping is set.

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