Waldorf Bushveld Salad

A Bushveld Salad for All Seasons. With Hammered Biltong on Top

The Salad With Many Faces

Greetings from the Bushveld. If you’ve ever had a Waldorf salad? You’ll know this one… here converted in the Bushveld style. Between SLR photography practice, visits to the Kruger Park and exploring our new area, we’ve been keeping busy.  There have been some seriously hot days, hovering around 38° to 41°C (100 – 106° F) inside; definitely too hot to cook, but perfect bushveld salad weather.

This is an ever changing salad, to suite your taste buds or ingredients for the day, change accordingly. Digging deep into our collective memories has unearthed some old favorites, fondly remembered from childhood. I’ve been experimenting with updating some of these. Instead of relying on the usual “European” dishes like Salad Niçoise, Insalata Caprese and Greek salad, I thought I’d try to replicate some traditional flavors.

What’s notably missing is a real South African main-dish salad. I don’t think anywhere in Africa really has a salad culture. I haven’t come across traditional recipes for salads, haven’t found any in my books. The well-known South African salads like beetroot salad, carrot salad and curried beans aren’t main dish salads and are also fairly new, from the Dutch and Malay cuisines.

I must quantify here – when I say traditional, I’m talking about before the advent of European and Arabic influences. This bushveld salad is full of the flavors used in other classic South African dishes but these flavors are new to the continent – well, not older than 1652.

This recipe is for two, hungry people, just multiply the ingredients to suit the number of folks, you are feeding.

Wildmoz Bushveld Salad

Layer in a bowl: glass is nice ‘cause the layers are attractive

1. 2 C shredded lettuce – robust varieties (Cos, Iceberg) work best
2. 1 red or yellow onion, thinly sliced
3. 1 sweet pepper – green or yellow
4. 2 firm Roma tomatoes, thinly sliced
5. One or two cooked and cooled potatoes, diced
6. 1 large flavorful apple, peeled, cored, quartered and thinly sliced
7. 100 grams of sliced, smoked ham, rolled and cut into strips
8. 3 Tbs raisins, soaked in fresh orange juice for 15 minutes
9. 3 Tbs chopped pecan nuts
10. *Dressing – see below
11. 3 Tbs very dry biltong, finely grated – if you absolutely can’t score biltong, then you can substitute roasted, salted pecans and sprinkle them over on top of the dressing – but try your local South African shops for the biltong.

Conversion Table

Method:

Layer ingredients 1 through 9 in a salad bowl. Pour the dressing (10) evenly all over the top. Watch the yummy sauce slowly sinking through the layers. Getting hungry yet? OK, just sprinkle the top with the grated biltong (11) and serve with fresh bakery rolls and a glass of something nice, well chilled, preferably from the fairest Cape.

*Dressing

1/3 Cup good quality mayonnaise –you can substitute bottled Thousand Island dressing or Pepperdew Sandwich Spread (we use this). Did you know that Pepperdews come from South Africa?

1/3 Cup Honey Mustard salad dressing

The orange juice from the raisins plus half a fresh orange squeezed out

1 -2 Tbs Greek Yogurt or to taste

Put all the ingredients in a screw top bottle and shake like mad ‘til well mixed. The mixture should have the consistency of heavy cream. And, you can use low calorie versions of the ingredients and this turns out just as tasty.