Splendid Africa Day buffet at Shop Café

 In Zimbabwe, Africa Day is a public holiday, a day to attend a music concert, to re-read Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, or to make grand plans to assist in the creation of a United States of Africa.
Another option would be to cast aside all fears of food security and shortages forecast for the coming winter months, and to go out for a grand, celebratory meal.
Kerry Wallace of the Shop Café in Doon Estate, Msasa, commemorates Africa Day every year with a splendid buffet specialising in a selection of regional traditional dishes. As usual, tables and chairs were arranged outside in the mild winter sunshine, some beneath vine-covered pergolas and others shaded by a Gaddafi-style canopy.
The vervet monkeys that have made their home in the fever trees at Doon Estate were occupied at a gathering elsewhere, so we were undisturbed by their antics.
While we waited for Kerry and sous-chefs Leroy and Michelle to put their finishing touches to the repast, we snacked on biltong and cashew nuts. In other years, Kerry has served crisp fried kapenta and roasted groundnuts, which were also delicious.
We opened a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon from the Darling cellars in South Africa and proposed a toast to the “Dark Continent” and its economic dawn. Our companions were all members of the IWFS (International Wine and Food Society) and expectations for a spectacular banquet were high.
Star turns of the North of the Equator buffet were Tunisian aubergine salad served with yoghurt and cucumber, and rice and lentils cooked with caramelised onions. Kwame Nkrumah’s Casablanca bloc of African countries at the historic OAU meeting in Addis would have rejoiced also in the chickpea salad, the fried leek pastries and the delicious flatbreads sprinkled with poppy seeds. A green garden salad with its combination of light and dark leaves, sunflower seeds and pine nuts and the occasional flash of a scarlet nasturtium flower was not only photogenic, but also delicious.
Could it have been the current pre-occupation with the World Cup and all things South African that had patrons returning time and again to the sub-Saharan buffet and all dishes originating from south of the equator?
My favourite dish, by a desert furlong, was undoubtedly beef stew served with samp. Made from grass-fed Zimbabwean shin of beef, rich with marrowbones, flavoured with salt, pepper and home-grown paprika and transformed into a slow-cooked rich brown stew, this had foodies going back for second and third helpings.
Delicious accompaniments included braised yellow rice with plump sultanas and raisins, and oven roasted pumpkin and sweet potatoes with coriander and chilli. I tasted vetkoek, a South African favourite at every braaivleis, resembling a cross between a scone and a deep fried dumpling. This also went particularly well with the splendid beef stew.
A fusion between north and south, desserts included luscious melktert, a South African speciality, and orange, date and mint salad, fragrant with rose water and reminiscent of the Kasbah. Home-made ginger ice cream with chocolate sauce and tropical fruit salad were undoubtedly universal favourites, popular everywhere from Gauteng to Gabon. The Shop Café waiters served cappuccino, filter and macchiato coffees made from an eclectic blend of Embassy and Bvumba roasted coffee beans, with verve and skill.
We were among the last to leave, and as we drove past the fever trees, the monkeys had returned and were swinging from bough to bough. There would be time to dip into some short stories by local writer, Julius Chingono, when I got home, and to send off that e-mail to Colonel Gaddafi about the US of Africa cookbook I have in mind.
 
The Shop Café
Doon Estate
Msasa
Tel.: (04) 446684
-cmalakoff@gmail.com