Chakalaka

Onion, garlic, ginger and curry powder are fried together before grated carrot, peppers, sometimes cabbage or spinach, and a tin of baked beans in tomato sauce go in. The result is a spicy vegetable relish that can be eaten warm or cold.

No one knows exactly where chakalaka began. A common account places it in the mining hostels around Johannesburg, where workers with little to spare pooled tinned vegetables and spices to make a relish for their pap. The food writer Mogau Seshoene calls it South Africa's mother sauce.

It is often served at braais and family meals alongside pap, samp, bread and grilled meat, and it also turns up in newer dishes, from shakshuka-style eggs to savoury muffins.