Discover the Lesothan chef who preserves traditional recipes threatened with extinction
Considered food for the poor, traditional Basotho dishes are not as popular in Lesotho as their Italian or American counterparts. As a result, the country’s food culture is dying out. How does this affect the country?
A few years ago, the star chef of Lesotho, Ska Moteane, received a rather unusual request from a customer. He wanted her to incorporate certain Basotho dishes into the menu she prepared for him. “And I realized that I didn’t even know how they were cooked!”
Cheffe Ska laughingly recalls this conversation in 2009, when she returned to her home country after giving up a hugely successful career in South Africa.
“I searched everywhere, I went to Google, I looked in bookstores…I couldn’t find any Basotho cooking recipes.”
Cheffe Ska realized that if she didn’t document Basotho cuisine it was in danger of disappearing, so it became her main project.
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Preserving Basotho food culture
This is how Ska traveled to the most remote regions of this mountainous kingdom, to the villages that are not served by roads. Places cut off from electricity and far from the conveniences of modern life.
“Everywhere I went, I looked for old people to sit with, to tell me the stories behind their food and their dishes,” she recalls.
The cuisine Chef Ska discovered was “simple” and full of “pure flavors”.
“We don’t use a lot of spices. Our dishes only have two or three ingredients,” she explains.
Sorghum and beans, amaranth, wild green vegetables and African spinach… Chef Ska rediscovers the food of her ancestors and takes notes.
She finds out how “nutritious” Basotho food is.
“Actually, we don’t need more than we have, because we’ve always eaten full meals.”
At first, the villagers greeted Chief Ska with a mixture of intrigue and amazement. After all, traditional Basotho dishes are more often seen as food for the poor, and traditional Basotho dishes aren’t very popular in towns, so the villagers greeted Chief Ska with a mixture of intrigue and bewilderment. .
Everyone was like, ‘Why? We want Western dishes and you come to us with these boring dishes,’ Ska laughs as he recalls his trip.
I was like, “Look, I just want to do this. I just want this documented. I want this to be there for my children, for my great, great, great-grandchildren. For future generations.”
“I never knew how to cook them”
Upon her return, Chef Ska standardized the recipes and compiled them into a cookbook titled Cuisine of the Mountain Kingdom: Cooking in Lesotho (Cuisine of the Mountain Kingdom: Cooking in Lesotho), which she subsequently self-published.
Written in English, this book has aroused the curiosity of readers beyond the borders of Lesotho: the interviews of the chief Ska have been published in African, Asian and European journals.
“When I self-edited, it was just to keep the information,” she recalls.
“I didn’t know the book would be so successful, I was amazed that no one had thought of writing such a book before.”
In 2012, Ska won the prestigious Gourmet Cookbook Award for best African cookbook. But the most remarkable return came from the Basotho people themselves.
The basothos said: “I never knew how to prepare this dish. My grandmother used to prepare it, she died before she could teach me the recipe”.
Helping farmers in the highlands
Completely surrounded by South Africa, Lesotho is heavily dependent on its wealthy neighbor for resources, including remittances.
Trying to cook traditional recipes, Ska realized the magnitude of the challenge of sourcing locally grown ingredients.
Smallholder farmers struggle to get their products to cities, which fall back on imported products.
“The Covid-19 pandemic has shown us the dangers of depending on imports, since the borders have been closed”, she underlines.
“We are now working very, very hard to reclaim food sovereignty, to make sure we are feeding ourselves.”
Once Ska finished writing her book, she began to educate farmers about the importance of producing and distributing local ingredients. Fortunately, she did not embark on this adventure alone.
If you want to learn more about Lesotho food culture and the full story of Chef Ska Moteane, listen to this episode of The Chef’s Surprise.
Ska will also share with us his recipe for a traditional Basotho dish, Nyokoe.
Ingredients for Nyokoe
Sorghum
Beans
Salt
Preparation
Cook sorghum and beans separately until tender. Sorghum may require 40 minutes of cooking. Beans can take up to 2 hours depending on the variety.
Ingredients for free-range chicken with spinach
Chicken farmer
Onion
African spinach
Colza oil
Salt
Preparation
Clean and boil free-range chicken until cooked. Separate the meat from the bones.
Chop the onions and sauté them in a pan until golden. Add a mixture of chopped spinach and rapeseed oil.
Cook for about 8 minutes. Be careful not to overcook the spinach, they should be a bit crunchy.
Serve all the elements on a plate and salt.
Enjoy your food !
This project was funded by the European Journalism Center through Solutions Journalism Accelerator. This program is supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
