Globecooking recipe : Chakalaka (South Africa)

Chakalaka is a great vegetarian dish that can be served with rice or couscous as the main event, or, if you're a meat-eater, as a side dish. It's also a great way of using up leftovers from the Sunday roast and you can turn up the chilli heat as much (or as little) as you like. I went for a mild family-friendly version and stirred in the leftover cooked chicken from the Sunday roast at the end.

 Chakalaka

ingredients :

drizzle of olive oil

1 clove of garlic

3 onions

2tsp South African curry powder

1/2tsp paprika

1/2tsp Cayenne pepper

1tsp thyme

1/2tsp ground ginger

1/2 red pepper

1/2 green pepper

1/2 a Chinese cabbage (or normal cabbage)

3 carrots

2 tomatoes

a bottle of passata

Collect up your veggies - this is a great way of packing in your five-a-day in one fell swoop. Forget Skittles, taste the rainbow of flavours of veggies in this dish !

Feel free to have a clearout in your spice rack too - I had South African curry powder which was perfect but any curry powder would do. I didn't have any thyme but I did have an Irish Stew spice blend which had thyme as a main ingredient so I used that.

Heat the oil in a large pan and gently fry the onions and garlic until they go soft.

Toss in all the spices and cook for a couple more minutes but don't let them burn. If you're organised and have all your veggies pre-chopped, you can leave this on the heat, but if you need to get chopping, turn off the heat for a while.

Chop the red and green peppers and the tomatoes and toss them in the pot.

Shred the cabbage and add that, then dice the carrots and toss them in too. Cook for about five minutes until the veggies are tooth tender.

Pour in the passata and cook for a further five minutes.

Taste and adjust the seasoning. I added a little salt but you might want extra chilli too. You can stir through chopped cooked meat if you want too.

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Fancy trying some more South African dishes? How about Beef & Apricot Sosaties, Bobotie with Geelrys en Rosyntijes (Yellow Rice), Durban Curry, Malva, Mild Curried Butternut Squash Soup or Peri Peri Chicken & Pap?