As the mercury continues to drop and the seasons shift, the seasonal basket of local produce offers up a bounty of winter ingredients. A pioneer of hyper-endemic, seasonally driven cooking, and a champion when it comes to showcasing Durban’s culinary diversity, Chef Johannes Richter delves into the indigenous and local ingredients featuring on The LivingRoom menu.
“It’s a really beautiful time of year here in KwaZulu-Natal, and the local Winter pantry is offering up a host of berries, fruits, and root vegetables. Some of which we grow in our own garden, and others we source from our trusted network of local, like-minded suppliers. The produce we’re getting in is of a very high quality and we’re excited to use these seasonal, indigenous ingredients on our menu,” says chef Johannes.
Msobo
Msobo are the berries of an herb-like plant that is native to South Africa also known as African nightshade, which grows in abundance within Summerhill’s gardens. When cooking with the sweet berry, the chef looks for an earthy and savoury sparring partner, and this season he’s found it in purple sweet potato.
Find it in The LivingRoom’s welcome snacks as a savoury macaron of msobo, pickled sweet potato chutney and a touch of chicken liver parfait to finish it off.
In line with The LivingRoom’s minimal waste philosophy, the remaining purple sweet potato is either salt baked, dehydrated and glazed with msobo and homemade shoyu; or made into a beautiful purple sweet potato soup which is served with pickled heirloom peppers – preserved from the summer season – adding a burst of freshness to the dish.
Photo credit: Jono Nienaber Photography
Guava
This season Johannes leans into the nostalgia of simple guava and its place in Durban’s dynamic culinary culture. First as a guava roll – a favoured snack for many of us who grew up in South Africa, he has given the typically sweet treat a savoury twist, filling it with bitter greens and preserved guava.
Next, a salad of green guava. In Durban it is commonly served lightly salted as a curry condiment, or enjoyed on its own as an appetiser. The chef elevates this classic dish with the addition of a guava jelly, an acacia honey gel and winter blossoms out the estate’s garden, it is then finished off with a sorbet of bitter greens and a vinaigrette of fermented acacia honey.
Photo credit: Jono Nienaber Photography
Local Bananas
Featured alongside a firm favourite on The LivingRoom’s menu – Vanessa’s ducks, which are reared in the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands – are local bananas. The dish sees the whole bird being used, which is then paired with bananas harvested from Summerhill’s garden – which have been picked at various stages of ripeness. Not only does this add layers of textures to the dish but also adds complexity with their savoury to sweet flavour profiles.
Onto the main course and the chef focuses on the coastline and the indigenous ingredients and local produce which flourish along it. Namely, madumbe, the famed starchy tuber also referred to as yam or taro.
Johannes has paired the root with another of his favourite, locally-sourced ingredients, Willowdale truffle. The prized fungi are grown and harvested in the nearby town of Kokstad, and are used to add their aromatic, earthy and umami rich flavours to the main course of locally reared Kudu.
The Kudu loin is coated with a truffle crust and accompanied by a jus aromatised with truffle and a fresh truffle cream. It is served along with a classic tartar of Kudu, pulled braised Kudu and the madumbe as an espuma, a savoury madumbe granola and a churro of madumbe.
The chef plays as much with flavours of sweet, sour, and savoury as he does with texture through this magnificent course.
Pumpkin
A favourite winter vegetable for dessert, namely pumpkin – partly sourced from the garden and partly from his trusted farmers, Deon and Chisomo.
The chef has shaken things up a bit and turned it into a dessert. The pumpkin is worked into a cake and a sauce made of fresh pumpkin juice reduced to 10% of its former self, is accompanied by elements of coconut and wild date – the coconut adds lightness, while the wild dates contribute a caramel like sweetness. The dessert is finished off with a granita of fresh pumpkin juice which brings freshness and a touch of fruitiness to the finished dish, almost bringing a melon character out of the fresh pumpkin juice.
Winter proves to be a richly rewarding season for the chef, with these unique local ingredients forming the basis of a warm and exceptionally local multi-course tasting menu. The end result is a beautiful showcase of all the cooler season has to offer, underscored by nostalgic touches, references to Durban’s dynamic culinary culture, and the Johannes’s hyper-sustainable ethos.
