PRESERVING OUR EDIBLE HERITAGE

STRUGGLE VELD FOOD: KANNIKA – FROM GORINGHAIQUAS TO BETSIE’S PUDDING
By Melvyn Minnaar

It is obvious from Jan van Riebeeck’s meticulous journals that life was no walk in the park from the moment he, his wife, three ships and not so merry men arrived in Table Bay. Food, both in sufficient amounts and of proper nutrition, would be an enduring five-year struggle for the young Dutch officer, as HW Claassens wrote in a splendid thesis published by the University of Pretoria in 2003.

According to Claassens, Van Riebeeck quickly turned to the locals, the Cape’s Koikoin tribes – such as the Goringhaiquas and the Cochoquas – to identify edible indigenous plants. One such became known in the vernacular as ‘kannika’ or ‘jakkalskos’; a most curious plant that, mostly because of its rarity, is shrouded in folkloric mystery and survival romance.

The Hydnora africana (so unusual that it has a unique family species, hydnoraceae) was found near Calvinia and classified by the famous Swedish botanist Carl Thunberg in 1774 . A root parasite which produces a single underground fruit, it is sought after by humans and animals alike (hence the name ‘jackal food’). Because it was slow to ripen (two years, according to botanists) and not found everywhere up the barren west coast, it was always a delicacy: true struggle veldkos.

In the past century, kannika had virtually disappeared from anthropological and other cultural radar screens. Old timers, who remembered such things, told the stories and walked the veld.

In February last year, Paul Buckle from Velddrif wrote to Die Burger’s botany columnist Ernst van Jaarsveld, explaining how he found a plant after 45 years of vigilance. He recalled how he and childhood friends used to break open the cricket-ball-shaped ripe fruit and enjoy the coconut-like flesh. He also relates how the fishermen of Velddrif used to tan their nets by soaking them in a solution of kannika.

In her magnificent compendium of such foodstuffs, Kos uit die Veldkombuis (1994), Betsie Rood gives a recipe for kannika.

While it could be eaten raw – tasting, she says, like a sweetish, floury potato – she advocates baking it under glowing coals and then scraping out the flesh. After draining the tiny seeds, she suggests it be combined with whipped cream, some sugar, cinnamon, a dash of sherry and served like runny ice cream.

One can only wonder whether Commander and Mrs Van Riebeeck dished up something similar when they had Oedasoa, captain of the Cochoquas, for dinner…

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