Kalahari Pulled Beef

For this week's special, the Thai beef challenge takes us to southern Africa and the Kalahari Desert. I have previously blogged on beef from the region but this week's focus is on the Desert culture itself.

The Kalahari is a vast arid area located in the southwest part of Botswana, the northwest of South Africa and the eastern part of Namibia. Although rainfall is scarce, the region is surprisingly green owing to subterranean water which seeps in from rivers emptying into the desert from the north. The green, mostly scrub brush, supports an amazing variety of wild life with herds of giraffe, springbok, wildebeest, and zebra together with birds like ostrich as well as smaller game like wild boar.

The Kalahari is the traditional home of the Basarwa (or San) people, more familiarly (and pejoratively) known as the Bushmen. The San were the indigenous people of the region and survived for thousands of years hunting and gathering in the bountiful desert. Unfortunately, today the culture of the San, like so many other aboriginal people in America, Australia  and elsewhere, has been almost completely destroyed from a combination of government confiscation of their land and resettlement in villages. Here, cut off from their traditions, their spirit atrophies and they descend into the familiar pattern of alcoholism and abuse so pervasive in indigenous communities elsewhere.

But despite all this, two of their culinary influences have been adopted throughout the region: biltong and seswaa, the latter being what I call Kalahari Pulled Beef. Biltong is dried meat; the San would hang meat from a successful hunt to dry, both to preserve it and to make it easier to carry back to the group campsite. Upon arrival at the campsite, assuming water was available, the dried meat would be boiled, sometimes for hours, until it literally fell apart. The result was seswaa.

When I first encountered seswaa, I scoffed at the idea of boiling meat until it fell apart; the concept was somehow offensive to my notions of flavor retention. I was sure the meat would be overcooked and tasteless. I was wrong; it was delicious and to this day I cannot explain why the flavor is so well retained.

In any event, this week's Friday special is Kalahari Pulled Beef. Our version is made with fresh (not dried) beef to which I have added an onion, a little garlic and seasonings and then boiled until it falls apart -- in the true style of the Basarwa.