John Young
If your idea of a braai is burnt chops and dodgy wors over stuttering flames, then a universe-expanding experience awaits you at this weekend’s Chateau Libertas World Barbecue Championships, to be held at Canal Walk, Century City, in Cape Town.
Barbecued musselcracker tandoori, rooibos-smoked tomatoes, waterblommetjie risotto and a prune, bacon and corn kebab are among the dishes that 25 South African teams will be presenting to 130 judges.
Stiff competition is expected from 15 teams from 10 countries, including the Reval-Rakvere BBQ Symphony from Estonia and Russia’s Ural BBQ Stars. Austria, Germany, Switzerland, Namibia and Belgium are also represented, while the legendary Phil Brust will lead the Texas Social Club.
This weekend will see the unveiling of the “rainbow cooker” developed by Michael Snyman, father of organiser Tamsin Snyman and logistics man for the competition. This contraption is about as far as you can get from the suburban conception of a braai: costing in the region of R12 000, it is a cross between an industrial geyser and Thomas the Tank Engine.
Saturday’s main event is the judging of the Barbecue Dish of the World. The World Champs begin at 11am on Sunday with the judging of the fish dish. At 45-minute intervals thereafter, teams have to present three kinds of meat dishes and a dessert.
The toughest part of Tamsin Snyman’s job has been to coordinate the meat orders of 40 teams, with more than 300 specific instructions being passed on to the meat sponsor, Woolworths. The international dimension allows some stereotypes to be confirmed: the Swiss are all “meat scientists” and the Texan order is “huge”. Some teams had to make other plans. Russia was told that sturgeon was not an option and Woolworths would not supply the endangered red steenbras.
Master classes on meat trimming, marinating and knife sharpening will be held and a Barbecue and Outdoor Living Expo will showcase any number of suppliers and inventors. Stocks of the U-braai, the brainchild of retired Saldanha Bay engineer Deon Hitchcock, are unlikely to last the weekend. This braai grid has a cunning simplicity of design that will banish forever those tiresome searches for half-bricks to surround a fire on the beach. At the other end of the scale, there is a grid big enough to take a sheep.
The South African Barbecue Association is a family affair. Michael Snyman is the president and last winner of the Kellerprinz South African Braai Championships of the 1980s. He teamed up with his daughter in a competition in Tennessee where their figs in bacon “caused a riot”, and their pumpkin and amarula cream dessert was placed 15th out of 500.
The reason the championships are in South Africa is food writer Lannice Snyman, whose book, Braaing Style, alerted the World Barbecue Association in Switzerland. She is in charge of the judging. “I expect this World Championship to be forerunner to a barbecue explosion in South Africa,” she says.
The Snymans want to work with Chateau Libertas to restart regional and national championships. Among other benefits, there are economic spin-offs: a Khayalitsha group selling hessian wood bags this weekend is an example of the kind of job creation that can result from a braai boom.
In the short term the focus is food. A tasting ticket for the Team Compaq booth will be a prize in itself because they’ll be presenting, and eating, Mermaid’s Thighs. Perhaps not an item at the average Sunday braai? The name is as good as the ingredients: perlemoen in champagne, garlic and fennel cream, baked in kelp on the coals.