Introduction:
• The sports minister says our rugby team must ‘moer hulle, bliksem hulle’
• But I’m worried looking at the Springbok Kitchen cookbook that the food that they are cooking and eating is not going to encourage the kind of über-aggression the minister is looking for.
• Let’s face it, Bakkies Botha’s mother-in-law’s bacon and cheese bread and Os du Randt’s Peppermint Crisp fridge tart is all very well but is it the food of champions?
• Without wishing to impugn the manhood of our chaps– a lot of their food seems quite girly.
• If we are what we eat then Peter de Villier’s sago pudding is really so much more domestic goddess than macho bliksem boy.
• But never fear. Anna to the rescue. I have done some scientific and historical research and I now know what our boys must eat in order to bliksem brilliantly…
Perhaps we should keep them hungry?
• Neurologists report that hunger and aggression are controlled by the same part of the brain.
• Kinky scientists really have stuck their fingers into the hypothalamus region of the brain and found that the study subject (ie the man with the fingers in his brain) is over-come with both an urge to attack and a strong sensation of hunger.
• It’s almost certainly an evolutionary link – kill it and eat it are actually part of the same process if you are a caveman.
• So perhaps our boys need to skip dinner all together and rather go hungry on to the field.
• But I suspect that the sports scientist chaps won’t let me starve the bokke into being aggressive and hungry.
• So what else can we do to encourage them to bliksem with the best of them?
Perhaps we should encourage them to become couch potatoes…
• Crunch snacks (which is basically a fancy phrase for corn and potato chips) – that is a real food category- sold $19 billion dollars worth of their deliciously fat, salt and carb combo in 2010 in the USA.
• Crunch snack food is the fastest growing sector of the snack food market.
• Science writer David Bodanis argues that food engineers actively manipulate our instinctive aggression in the way that they design such chips.
• The idea is that every crunch should enhance the auditory effects that the brain associates with anger – the crack of a Pringle is apparently read by your brain as the splintering of enemy skulls.
• The chip is deliberately made too big for you to close your mouth around it so that the high frequency crunch roar will curve around your face and reach your ears without loss of volume.
• They are also packed with air-filled cells that cause shrapnel of flying starch and fat to ricochet within the mouth.
• So sitting on the couch eating Simba chippies induces a nicely primitive sense of destruction and power.
• Again the sport science fundis are probably not going to let me put the bokke on the couch with a big bag of Niknaks.
Nothing says bliksem quite so well as piri piri
• They won’t let me starve them or let them eat potato crisps but maybe chillies will be allowed into the springbok culinary camp.
• Chillies have been associated with violence and aggression ever since Christopher Columbus was literally bombed with smoldering calabashes full of habaneros by native Americans in Dominica. The fumes asphyxiated several sailors.
• But ultimately the power of chilli is given to the one who it is thrown at not the one doing the throwing.
• Columbus’s lot ultimately won the battle because exposure to chilli makes you good at blikeming.
• Violence begins at home and in essence all humans use chillies to deliberately self-inflict mouth trauma. Capsaicin (8-methyl-N-vanillyl-6-nonenamide) and several other capsaicinoids found in chillies are irritant alkaloids which damage tongue cells. The brain responds to chilli-induced pain by releasing endorphins (natural opiates). And the opiates will make our boys much more able to bliksem hulle…
So which chefs should we be co-opting onto the team?
• Carlos and Siza da Silva at A Palota – 59 Troye Street, JHB, CBD are our ultimate secret weapon. They make the absolute best piri piri in town. This is where the Mozambican ambassador eats on his day off so you know its seriously sizzling. The inner city location can be intimidating but the piri piri-infused clams and chicken are hot stuff. They also make the hard to find Frango Zambeziana coconut, lemon and chilli chicken for those with gentler taste buds.
Can we send them a care parcel?
• Siza has a lot of very glamorous shoes. And it might take her a while to pack for NZ. The good news is that if you like Piri piri you will love Pili Pili – the central African version of the sauce. It is pili pili mbuzi, garlic, palm oil relish that would definitely have our boys blikkseming. A Rwandan friend recently introduced me to the truly remarkable Akabanga chilli sauce which is available at the Congolese Market in Yeoville. We need to buy several bottles and send them to our boys asap…
But it does worry me that the Akabanga might not get there in time for the opening match.
But I comfort myself that that the boys can make a chilli martini using the mini bars in their rooms.
John Shabalala has been a barman at the chukka bar Oyster Box Hotel for over twenty years and he recently invented a cocktail called the Shabalalatini.
This white chocolate and chilli martini offers is the ultimate sizzling sip.
Oyster Box; 2 Lighthouse Road, Umhlanga Rocks 4319, South Africa. 031 514 5000
50ml Stolichnaya Vodka
25ml Giffard White Chocolate Syrup
15ml Lemon Juice
¼ Red Chilli (adjust to taste)
Combine all ingredients with ice in a cocktail shaker and shake well.
Fine strain into a chilled Martini Glass and garnish with a slice of red Chilli
Pity Princess Charlene didn’t have one and blikksem that husband of hers…
Even with an Akabanga care package and a martini our boys may need historical inspiration for their blikseming campaign.
• And surely it’s a good idea to eat like Genghis Khan if you want to bliksem hulle.
• The good news is that Genghis ate jolly well.
• Genghis Khan’s Mongol hordes (who were labelled Tartars by the Europeans) spent so much time on horseback that they found that the best way to tenderise beef was to put it under their saddles as they rode.
• That’s where the name steak tartar comes from.
• Best steak tartar now and forever was Walter Ulz at Linger Longer who made it with truffle toast and I KNOW HE IS LISTENING IN HEAVEN BECAUSE HE NEVER EVER MISSED A SHOW.
• So I am sending the late, great spirit of Walter to watch over our boys.
It is our patriotic duty to eat all the salmon in the world so that the springboks cant get at any of it…
• Clinical trials investigating the effect of omega 3 fatty acid on the brain – basically the oil found in salmon - have shown that in young men fed essential fatty acids the number of violent offences fell by 37%.
• Fish oil has been shown to improve behaviour and reduce aggression among children with severe behavioural difficulties.
• Just as vitamin C deficiency causes scurvy the deficiency of essential fatty acids causes aggression.
• So we have to eat all the salmon so there isn’t any for the springboks.
• If you want to do your duty head for La Marina for the patriotic perfection of the Loch Duart free range Scottish salmon (as used by Gordon Ramsay and served in the players restaurant at the 2005 Wimbledon tournament) proves that that gourmet and environmentally friendly are not mutually exclusive.
• The Silver Orange Bistro (R513, 400 meters from Mfula Junction, Hartbeespoort) 012 253 2136 does a superb seared salmon on sweet potato mash that you will be dreaming of for weeks and years to come.
• DW11-13 (011 341 0663) in the dunkeld shopping centre does a marinated salmon with cucumber pickle that is heaven on a plate.
And if all else fails we can just disgust them into submission with the things that we are prepared to put in our mouths.
• They might have the hakka but we have ‘bokdrol spoeg’ competitions - spit mampoer-soaked kudu droppings.
• Why don’t we do that after the anthem to unnerve the opposition.
• Shaun van Resnburg is the current bokdrol spoeg champion with an unnervingly impressive record of 15.56 metres. That should reach the other team…
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