How to avoid being poisoned in prison

The news last week that South African Paralympic athlete Oscar Pistorius is being released from jail in Pretoria on parole - just 10 months after shooting his girlfriend dead - comes as little surprise given the way the entire saga has been treated by both the courts and the media, with the concept of justice being somewhat severely strained or skewed in the process.

It also has nothing to do with the subject matter of this blog - except, however, that when reading the news online, my attention was drawn to an earlier story in the Related Articles section, with the headline: "Oscar Pistorius living on tinned food after prison poisoning threats".

I hadn't heard about this when it was reported back in March, but allegedly Pistorius had become so worried about threats from inmates that he had taken to eating only tins of 'chakalaka' from the prison tuck shop to avoid the risk of anyone poisoning his food, a diet causing such considerable weight-loss that his prosthetic legs no longer fitted him properly.

For those unfamiliar with the stuff, the article mentions that chakalaka is "a spicy South African vegetable stew", but offers little more information than that. I however had not only heard of but actually already tried it, having found a tin in the reduced section during a relatively recent visit to a South African food shop near Charing Cross Station. The tin was being sold off alongside a number of other items that had already passed their Best Before dates; I'm not entirely sure if shops are allowed to do that, but never mind. Let's just hope they don't kill anyone. Oops, bad choice of phrase...

The tin I purchased was made by a company called Koo, whose motto or slogan is "It's the best you can do". To my ears this is a rather odd phrase; I suspect they mean something along the lines of the tagline for Gilette razors ("the best a man can get"), but I can't help think of someone complaining "Is that the best you can do?", which doesn't fill me with much confidence in the product. Still, it probably is the best that Pistorius can do food-wise, given his current circumstances.



A quick look on the shelves beyond the reduced section showed that Koo makes a range of different chakalakas, including "Hot and Spicy" and "Mild and Spicy" - the latter a bit of an oxymoron, surely?  Mine was Chakalaka with Butternut (with REAL PIECES, the label says - none of that fake butternut rubbish here) - no mention of spiciness this time though, so quite where the contents of the tin would come on the "...and Spicy" scale was anyone's guess.




The label also gives a number of serving suggestions - most interestingly "with pap or wors" or "at a braai" - pap being a kind of dense porridgey-polenta made from course maize meal, and wors one of various types of South African sausage, of which the long, coiled Boerwors is the best known. And you might well sample the latter at a braai, alongside other grilled meats, it being another name for a barbecue.

Oscar was presumably having his chakalaka cold though, straight from the tin, so I thought it only right that I do the same for half of it and forgo any pap, wors and braai. Opening the tin up, I was surprised at how much oil there was on the surface of the vegetables, which was a little off-putting. I poured off the majority of it but this inevitably caused some to drip down the side of the tin, leaving a vibrant orange ring on the work surface.

Orange was the predominant colour of the vegetables beneath as well, suggesting that a good proportion of them were the REAL PIECES of butternut boasted by the label. The ingredients list also mentions cabbage, onions, carrots, and green and red peppers, which aren't as easily discernible as they appear in the picture on the label, but you can just about make out each of them in the mix itself.



The initial taste is quite sweet (in addition to the naturally sweet squash, there is added sugar too), but following on from this you get quite a hefty kick of spiciness at the back of the throat. The ingredients list doesn't go into any more detail than just "Spice", but there must be a fair whack of chilli in there, as it is by no means subtle. Makes you wonder just how intense the Hot and Spicy version must be.

So, as tinned vegetables go, it's a lot more interesting than some things I have tried, though I think having it day in, day out would get boring quite quickly. Particularly if you were in prison. Pistorius would have been on quite a controlled diet as an athlete, probably with a lot of protein, so it is unsurprising that such a change to what he has been eating has had such an effect on his body. Especially if he's only been able to get his hands on the Hot and Spicy tins - I suspect that stuff would go straight through any but the most hardy of stomachs.

Moving swiftly onwards...with the remainder of the tin, I decided against any of the label's serving suggestions, but kept with the South African theme, to a certain extent. A popular dish originating from Durban is the wonderfully-named bunny chow, consisting of a small, hollowed-out loaf of bread filled with a curry of some kind. Whether this is ever done with chakalaka, I don't know, but I thought I would go with the idea anyway, and made a hole in the middle of a large bread roll big enough to accommodate the rest of the tin's contents.

On a complete whim, I then made a divot in the stew, into which I cracked an egg (as you might do when making the Middle Eastern vegetable dish shakshouka, which is not all that dissimilar in either recipe or name) and put the whole thing in a hot oven until the egg was set, the chakalaka warmed through and the bread crisped up.

No doubt any South Africans readers would balk trying this due to the complete inauthenticity of the creation - a Frankenstein's monster of disparate elements of their national cuisine. I make no apologies for doing so though, for while it might not have looked all that attractive, and I left it in the oven for too long meaning that the yolk ended up far more solid than I would have liked, it was damn tasty, with both egg and bread seeming to mellow the sweet spiciness of the chakalaka. It was certainly a far sight more enjoyable than eating the stew cold from the tin.

Now he's out on parole, serving out the rest of his sentence at the house of his uncle, Oscar could give it a go himself - though I suspect he's thoroughly sick of the stuff by now, and no doubt will be looking to returning to normal food. But whether he will ever return to a normal life beyond just his diet remains to be seen.