Braai Life

Recipes / Potjie

Cape-style seafood potjie

A lightly curried tomato and wine sauce built slowly in the potjie, with fish, calamari, prawns and mussels steamed on top in the last quarter hour.

Coals
Medium coals
Prep
30 min
On the fire
50 min
Serves
6

Ingredients

Sauce

  • 4 tablespoons olive oil
  • 1 onion, sliced
  • 1 fennel bulb, sliced (optional)
  • 1 red bell pepper, diced
  • 3 cloves garlic, chopped
  • 1 red chilli, chopped (optional)
  • 1 tablespoon mild curry powder
  • 1 teaspoon ground cumin
  • 1 teaspoon ground coriander
  • 1 teaspoon paprika
  • 1/2 teaspoon mustard seeds
  • 2 teaspoons tomato paste
  • 250 ml (1 cup) dry white wine
  • 4 ripe tomatoes, chopped, or 1 x 400 g (14 oz) tin chopped tomatoes
  • 250 ml (1 cup) fish or chicken stock
  • 2 bay leaves
  • 125 ml (1/2 cup) cream (optional)
  • Salt and black pepper

Seafood

  • 500 g (1.1 lb) firm white fish fillets (hake, kingklip, cod or haddock), cut into large chunks
  • 400 g (14 oz) calamari tubes and tentacles, tubes cut into rings
  • 350 g (12 oz) raw prawns, shell on or peeled and deveined
  • 500 g (1.1 lb) live mussels, scrubbed and debearded, or frozen half-shell mussels, fully thawed

To finish

  • Juice of 1 lemon, plus wedges to serve
  • 30 g (1 cup) chopped parsley
  • Rice, pap, crusty bread or roosterkoek, to serve

Method

  1. Set a No. 2 or No. 3 potjie over medium coals. Heat the oil and cook the onion, fennel and pepper for 8 to 10 minutes until soft.
  2. Add the garlic, chilli, curry powder, cumin, coriander, paprika, mustard seeds and tomato paste. Stir for 1 to 2 minutes so the spices do not catch on the bottom.
  3. Pour in the wine and let it bubble until reduced by half, about 5 minutes.
  4. Add the tomatoes, stock and bay leaves. Simmer with the lid off for 20 minutes until the sauce has thickened a little. Stir in the cream if you are using it, and season with salt and pepper.
  5. Rake coals away until only a few remain under the pot, so the sauce barely simmers.
  6. Layer the seafood without stirring: fish chunks pushed down into the sauce, then calamari, then prawns, then mussels on top. Put the lid on.
  7. Cook for 10 to 15 minutes. Do not stir and do not lift the lid before 10 minutes.
  8. Squeeze over the lemon juice, scatter the parsley, and fold everything together once, gently. Serve straight from the pot with lemon wedges.

Done when: the mussels have opened (throw away any that stay shut), the prawns are pink and curled, the fish flakes, and the calamari is opaque and just tender, 63°C (145°F) in the fish.

Tips

  • The sauce is the slow part. The seafood is the last 15 minutes, and a few minutes too long turns prawns rubbery and calamari tough.
  • Mussels go on top so their liquor drips down into the sauce while they steam.
  • Add the lemon at the end only. Acid early on toughens the seafood.
  • Frozen seafood must be fully thawed and drained first, or the water thins the sauce.
  • Kingklip and hake are the usual fish at home. Any firm white fish that holds together in chunks will do.

Seafood potjies are cooked on beaches and stoeps from the West Coast round to KwaZulu-Natal. This version leans on the Cape Malay kitchen, with a mild curry spice and tomato base, and finishes with a little cream the way many Cape cooks do. The method breaks the usual potjie rule about long cooking: the sauce takes its time, the seafood does not.

If this is your first pot, read potjie basics and reading your coals. Serve it with roosterkoek to mop up the sauce.