Latest news with #DeRusticaOliveEstate
Daily Maverick
23-07-2025
- General
- Daily Maverick
Chicken and red fig tagine with almonds and raisins
Choose a main ingredient. Choose a pot. Decide what else would go with it. Check the cupboards. This is how recipes are formed. It's been a while since I used my tagine, the Moroccan cooking vessel with a conical lid that collects the fragrant vapours and drips them down again. In this sense, it has something in common with our humble potjie (three-legged cast-iron pot). But this recipe was conceived when I opened a packet in a cupboard and wondered what was in it. It was the dried red figs I'd bought in Calitzdorp, Klein Karoo, a few months ago. My mind went to the tagine on a dresser in the front dining room, then to chicken. A recipe was born. But this needed more. More fruit. And nuts. In the end, I bought a 100g packet of pitted raisins, and some whole almonds. These would be toasted and scattered on top when serving. But I was feeling adventurous, so I made my own harissa paste too. This is not necessarily Moroccan – more Tunisian, although it can generally be thought of as a north African condiment. It is made chiefly of red chillies and garlic, with seed spices such as cumin, coriander, fennel and sometimes caraway. A whole red pepper is the centrifuge of it, if you like, the background force that holds it all together, along with olive oil. Citrus, usually lemon, is sometimes added. I left out the citrus, because I knew that I was not going to be using all of it – I only needed two tablespoons, in fact. The rest is now in the fridge. It consists of: a red pepper, 20 red chillies, 20 garlic cloves, one red onion, ground cumin, fennel and coriander seeds, and olive oil. The reason I honed it down to these is because it means I can add it to all sorts of curries. Or to stews for a bit of a kick. Citrus would get in the way of that, altering a curry's flavour profile. It remains a traditional harissa paste however, because citrus and caraway aren't requisite ingredients in one. But that's not the whole story. I also made a simple mix of ground spices – cumin, fennel, ginger, cayenne pepper, paprika, turmeric, coriander, black pepper – to rub onto the chicken portions before frying them at the start of the cooking process. And a cinnamon stick went in too. To start with, I fried the chicken thighs in De Rustica Olive Estate's hand-harvested cold extracted medium extra virgin olive oil, which I keep near the stove and grab it at will when cooking. It comes in a one-litre cylindrical box with a tap, like a tall, round wine box. I see online that it retails for R310. Any 'evoo' today is an indulgence with a scary price, so I just use it sparingly. Sort of. Finally, I toasted raw almonds in a dry pan to enliven them, and scattered them on top before serving, with some chopped coriander leaves. Tony's chicken and dried red fig tagine with almonds and raisins (Serves 4) Ingredients For the harissa: 1 heaped Tbsp each of these seeds: coriander, fennel and cumin 1 medium red onion, chopped 1 large red pepper, diced 20 garlic cloves, crushed, husks removed 20 red chillies, whole 100 ml olive oil For the spice mix: ½ tsp each of ground cumin, fennel, ginger, cayenne pepper, paprika, turmeric, coriander, black pepper For the tagine: 8 chicken thighs, skin on All of the above spice mix 3 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil 1 red onion, chopped 1 cinnamon stick 5 garlic cloves, peeled and chopped 2 cups chicken stock 2 Tbsp harissa paste 16 dried red figs, whole 100 g seeded raisins (not counting the 5 you munch before putting them in the pot) Salt to taste 2 cups couscous 50 g roasted whole almonds, toasted A small handful coriander leaves, finely chopped, for garnish Method Make your harissa paste: Trim the red pepper and red onion and chop up roughly. Trim the stems off the chillies. Crush the garlic with the flat end of a heavy knife and discard the husks. Leave the cloves whole. Add the seeds to a dry pan and toast over a moderate heat until they begin to smoke, then turn off the heat. Process them to a powder in a grinder or with mortar and pestle. Put everything in a food processor, pour in the olive oil and blend until as fine as it will ever be. There will be a little texture at the end. Mix your spices for the chicken: the ground cumin, fennel, ginger, cayenne pepper, paprika, turmeric, coriander and black pepper. For the tagine: Pat the chicken pieces dry. Rub the spice mix onto all sides of the chicken portions. Heat olive oil in the tagine base on a moderate heat and, when hot, add the chicken thighs. Brown well on all sides. Add the chopped red onion, cinnamon stick and garlic cloves. Stir 2 Tbsp harissa paste into the chicken stock and pour it in. Add (to the tagine) the dried red figs and raisins, salt to taste, bring to a boil, and reduce to a gentle simmer. Put the lid on, as always when cooking in a tagine. Leave it to cook gently for about half an hour, for the chicken portions to be cooked all the way through. Before serving, toast the almonds and set aside, then make the couscous. Measure 2 cups of couscous and add to a bowl. Pour in the same quantity of hot (not boiling) water. Stir and leave it for 5 minutes. Fluff with a fork. Spoon the couscous onto plates, add the chicken, fruit and sauce from the tagine, scatter almonds over and sprinkle with coriander. DM Tony Jackman is twice winner of the Galliova Food Writer of the Year award, in 2021 and 2023.
Daily Maverick
30-04-2025
- Business
- Daily Maverick
Klein Karoo olive estate wins big globally — again
The modest ambitions of De Rustica Olive Estate in the Klein Karoo have been massively outweighed by the success of their ultra premium quality olive oil. And it's a big deal for the SA olive industry. De Rustica Olive Estate near De Rust, Western Cape, is extracting every drop out of its success on the world stage. Now De Rustica has won a top-tier global olive oil award only two years after taking first place in the premier industry international competition, Evooleum. Now the De Rustica Collection Coratina extra virgin olive oil, assessed in a blind tasting, has been awarded second place overall at Evooleum 2025 with a score of 96 points, and it was again the only olive oil outside of Spain and Italy to be placed in the Top 10. The scale of this success should be seen in context of the Rustica entry having been one of about 1,000 entries from 26 countries. Only four estates worldwide — De Rustica, two from Spain and one from Italy — have achieved multiple top 10 rankings in the last three years. De Rustica was chosen as the 'Evooleum Absolute Best' olive oil in the 2023 Evooleum international competition. (Their Coratina was not entered in 2024.) This latest success is further evidence that SAOlive, which represents the common interests of its members in the industry, punches well above its weight globally in terms of premium quality olive oil, and assists in lobbying for support to further develop the industry in South Africa. South Africa produces 1.6 million kilogrammes of olive oil a year. The scale of global production is 3,000-million tons per annum, 'So South Africa is about half of 1,000th of a percent of global,' Rob Still says. 'Yet here we are winning TOP global awards.' Still worked in the mining industry until he bought De Rustica in 2006, first selling olive oil in 2012. He explains the concept succinctly. 'We wanted to make good olive oil but were pioneers in the area and really had dreams not much more than making the farm work. What has happened is beyond our wildest dreams, but… as we gain self-confidence we are perhaps expanding our dreams.' Some 'WTF!' in Spanish and Italian olive oil circles Asked whether industry people elsewhere in the world now regard South Africa as an olive oil producer of note, Still replied: 'Not really, as we are simply too small. However, these past two awards to De Rustica have generated considerable curiosity and some 'WTF!' in Spanish and Italian circles. 'I suspect that this second award will increase this interest. In my recent travels around Italy I was amazed to be told by several Italians (on realising that I was South African) that a South African farm had just won top honours.' And they were talking to the man himself. 'So there is some awareness of South Africa and De Rustica among industry participants and olive oil lovers but… we remain VERY small.' What this second award does do is confirm De Rustica's place at the 'global top table', Still adds. 'Winning once was surreal but may have been an outlier or fluke. Winning twice in three years — second out of 1,000 entries scored and rated blind by top experts — shows that is no longer chance. It also, I think, really underscores the immense value of De Rustica's sustainable and regenerative practices to nurturing quality.' Success, as is almost always the case, did not come overnight. 'The journey of developing De Rustica has taken 19 years and has been hard,' he says. 'This recognition that De Rustica now really is the real thing in global extra virgin oils is enormously validating and energising and it fills me with the determination and vigour to take the estate to new highs.' And Rob Still's once modest sights have now been set much higher: 'We can now realistically aim to remain consistently in the top five globally,' says the man who once only wanted to 'make the farm work'. DM
