Wash leaves thoroughly, and rinse. Chop the onion and the ‘Umfino’ finely and place in a pot. Add water, bring to boil and cook over low heat for 5 minutes. Mix the umfino with ‘Umphokoqo’ (mealie, or maize, meal porridge). Add butter, salt and pepper to taste.

It is very important to clean the stomach and intestines thoroughly; you must rinse it well under cold, running water. Place the meat in a pot and cover it with salty water. Bring to a boil and allow to simmer for 3 hours, or until very soft. Add vegetables during the last hour of cooking. You can thicken the sauce using a little flour to make delicious gravy.

Serve with sticky ‘pap’ (a local word used to describe mealie, or maize meal porridge) or samp.

My name is Daniswa and I attend Luhlaza High School in Khayelitsha (meaning "new home"), near Cape Town. I live with my mother and my sister. I am in Grade 11. I am proud of our culture and I like to tell people about the food that we Xhosas enjoy - it is good food but many people think it is funny when they see that we cook the head of a sheep or the intestines of a cow.

These foods are delicacies that we enjoy. The Xhosa people traditionally cook very tasty food, using a three-legged black iron pot placed over a fire. Cooking is done by the women and we often share our food - eating is a very social event. We cook green plants we pick in the field and combine it with a ‘pap’ (made from mealie meal) or with potatoes. It is called Umfino, which is a term used to describe wild leaves.

You can use leaves from the bean plant, beetroot leaves or sweet potato leaves. Salt and pepper are added to this dish. We cooked traditional food, such as Umphokoqo, (mealie meal) and Umnqusho (samp). I cook traditional meat, like Intloko yegusha, amanqina wayo kunye nehagu, which is Xhosa meaning "…a head of sheep and their feet…" We also cook Ulusu lwegusha, or stewed sheep tripe. This is best served with pap or umngqhusho. (samp and beans)

The first traditional food in my recipe is called Ujeqe (steamed bread). Put 4 cups of baking flour into a dish, add a spoon of salt, 5 spoons of sugar and yeast. Then mix it. Add 2 cups of water, 2 eggs and melted butter. Mix it again, using your fist to knead it until you are satisfied that it is mixed well. Put your dish in a warm area so that your mixture can expand and rise. After about 2 hours, boil water in a pot and then pour your mixture into a stainless steel bowl. Put the bowl into the pot. Cook it for an hour.

Take spinach and chop it into very small pieces, adding onions. Pour some oil into a pot and put your onions in the pot. After a while, add your spinach and a spoon of salt. Mix it all together. After 30 minutes it will be ready. Eat it together. Use your hands. It's very delicious; you will ask for more!

My name is Nokulunga but I am known as Lunga. I am a 17 year old girl who is currently in grade 12. I attend Mpophomeni High School. I am a member of the Zulu nation and I live in Natal, a province of South Africa. I am doing this project with my friend Sandi B, who I met at the Thinkquest Prize-giving ceremony in Johannesburg.

I want to tell you a little about our culture and the way we prepare our food. The way we serve the food is that the father gets food first, then the mother and lastly the children. People who don't have electricity use paraffin stoves and light their homes using candles. Many homes do not have electricity, so the women have to collect wood for fire to cook food on. Some houses have a kitchen in a separate room. You can use a spoon to eat, or your hands. You are not allowed to eat standing because there is a belief that if you eat standing up, the ancestors will turn their backs on you and you will have bad luck.

‘Bobotie’ came to South Africa via Malaysia. It is traditionally eaten with rice and a fruit chutney all South Africans love, called Mrs Ball’s Chutney. This recipe came from my grandmother, ‘Mother Rose’, who lives in Queenstown in South Africa.

Drain milk from the bread, then mash bread with a fork and add it to the meat.

Add this to the curried onion mixture and cook. Stir well. Add a well0beaten egg to the meat mixture and mix. Put this mixture into a greased pie plate. Beat 1 egg with balance of milk made up to 250 ml of milk. Season with pepper and salt and pour this custard mixture over the meat mixture.

Dot a few pieces of butter on top of the mixture, adding bay leaves or lemon leaves, and place in another dish or pan of hot water. Place in an oven, pre-heated to 180 degrees Celsius. Bake for 30 to 40 minutes until the custard is set and lightly browned Serve with yellow rice, sliced tomatoes and chutney. Yellow rice, with raisins, is often served with Bobotie.

In a large pot, boil 6 cups of water. Add first 7 ingredients and stir until the sugar has dissolved. Add the rice and cover. Let it all simmer for 20 minutes. Remove cinnamon stick before serving.

When the Malay slave women were sent from Indonesia to a strange land - now called South Africa - they brought with them spices to remind them of home. These multi-flavored ‘masalas’ added an exotic flavor to the food of the Cape. Bobotie was such a wonderful addition to Cape cuisine!

Bobotie is a dish to share, because it brings people together. At the moment we are living in Canada and whenever we have South African friends around, we make Bobotie.

I love its curry flavor and I am glad that the slaves that came to Cape Town brought this recipe to our country. My grandmother has passed on her recipe to her children.

Turmeric, a ginger looking, bright orange on the inside rhizome (root plant), was used as a dyeing agent in Assyria during 600 BC. It is has the properties of saffron in smell and color and was referred to during the medieval times in Europe as the "Indian saffron."

Mix it well so that it is not lumpy. Leave mixture and let it stand for an hour. Then heat a frying pan and put a little oil in the base. Pour in a thin layer of batter and cook the pancake. Flip the pancake, to cook the other side. Sprinkle it with sugar and cinnamon and lemon juice. Roll it up and serve to your hungry friends! Variation: We like to spread caramel on the pancake and serve it with ice-cream!

I chose pancakes as my favorite recipe because my earliest childhood memories are of my mom making piles of pancakes for my sister and I and all of our friends to eat to celebrate Pancake Day or, as it is known in English church circles, Shrove Tuesday.

Shrove Tuesdays were especially good because then we would get pancakes in the middle of the week. I remember one year when we celebrated Shrove Tuesday at our school on the wrong day. My mom, a teacher, made pancakes for her class but we had got our dates mixed up and discovered the mistake the next day, when Anglican ministers told us that Shrove Tuesday was still a week away!

However, that mistake got us to start a new Barrett tradition: call up your friends and invite them over on any day of the year to celebrate Pancake Day! There is nothing better than sitting around a table with a group of friends, consuming vast quantities of delicious pancakes. My mom even has a recipe for pancakes to feed 100 people, so she is a pretty serious pancake-maker! We always have lots of friends willing to share in the stack of pancakes.

Boil the raisins, sultanas and currents together with water, sugar, butter and bi-carbonate of soda for about 10 minutes. Switch off the oven and allow mixture to cool overnight. The next morning, pour brandy over the fruit and then add eggs. Mix in flour and the rest of ingredients.

Roll cherries in flour, before adding mixture (this helps to prevent cherries sinking to the bottom of the cake). Bake for 2_ hours at 300 degrees Celsius, and then 2_ hours at 200 degrees Celsius. When the cake comes out of the oven prick it, to make little holes, and then pour more brandy over it, according to taste. Use a 23cm cake tin and line the sides and bottom with grease-proof paper.

If the cake is not going to be iced, decorate the top of the cake with cherries and almonds before baking.

I’m not sure about you, but in my family all food plays a big role, especially when my mother is involved. Some people think she’s Jewish. Mind you, she did marry a Jewish man, but that has nothing to do with my story. She piles food on our plates so high that some have died trying to finish a meal. (Just a joke!)

She loves to eat. In her day, she was an exquisite gourmet cook. She used to throw dinner parties every week-end. As I was not around I cannot report on the food, but I can imagine that it was fantastic. Now she has become some what lazy. Not deliberately, of course, but having a family leaves little time for food preparation. So now Woolworths (a store in South Africa) prepares a lot of meals in our house and I must say it is very well done.

Despite all of this, every year, with out fail, there is one thing my mom makes - her time-old Christmas cake. This cake has made quite a name for itself. Our whole family’s not the only ones who yearn for this cake. Year after year friends’ and neighbors’ mouths start to drool when the cake is mentioned. The recipe was passed down from my gran to my mom; from mother to daughter.

My mom has, however, altered the recipe and calculated the exact amount and worked out every flaw in order to produce the ultimate Christmas Cake. She has sworn secrecy to this recipe and says she will tell no one her secret. She says it’s not the ingredients that count, but the technique. She says she is proud to announce that she has improved this cake to such a state -- that it is now THE Christmas of all cakes.

She has learnt how to double it in size, giving new meaning and definition to Christmas cake, also known as fruit cake in South Africa. My mom has gotten it down to such a fine art that it no longer tastes like fruit cake, but more like a creamy, delectable marvel! Every person that consumes this cake is taken aback and is often speechless for a few minutes. Every year there is a build-up to the making of HE Christmas of all cakes.

One of the key ingredients is brandy; half a bottle, to be precise. My dad always says, "Half in the cake, half in the cook!" Because such a large amount of brandy is used it must have time to mature, so the cake is normally made more or less at the same time every year — October. This way it has two months to settle. So, the process begins around October. First, we hit the shops and buy all the ingredients needed. Don’t get me wrong: this is no cheap cake!

Late on an October night my mom embarks on boiling the fruit. This is usually left overnight. The next day, early in the morning (early for us is usually around 9 or 10am). Then she bakes the cake, which no one knows how to do except her. The only little tip that I have learnt over the years is that when you put the cherries in (they go in whole, by the way) you must coat them in flour. This ensures that they don’t sink to the bottom.

That’s about all I know. I’m usually still sleeping when this process takes place. Another tradition I never miss out on is licking the bowl. In my opinion, this is the best part of the whole cake. I think the cake tastes better raw than cooked. It is divine, despite there being raw egg in the mixture. I’m very stingy when it comes to this mixture. The cake is now left to cook. It must cook for about 5 hours. It can’t just be put in the oven and left, oh no! It must be checked on every hour, and turned.

On cake-making days I am usually restricted to the house as my mother is sentenced to a day of cake-watching – turning and cake– poking! Once the cake is made it is wrapped and then put in the lounge to mature. We do not hear, see or speak of this prized cake until Christmas day, when this immaculate, incredible, mouth-drooling cake is brought to the table. With great pride my mom cuts it and serves it to our family, huddled around the table as if in a rugby scrum.

When they eat it, it’s "Ooohhh" and "Aahh’s" that accompany spoons wafting into the mouths of hungry people. One of my mom’s biggest cake fans is my cousin, Chris. My mom recently made another cousin’s Wedding cake. (I forgot to mention that in one month she made five of these cakes, three was the original number, but she wasn’t happy with two of them.) At the wedding, Chris prowled around the cake table. After many phrases like, "Shouldn’t we cut the cake?" and "When’s the cake being cut?" he made the groom cut the cake and then he made sure he got a good helping!

So, that’s more or less the history of our family’s Christmas cake; a tradition that will never die, otherwise there will to be a lot of very unhappy people! One day my mom will have to share her secret with the world but, until that day comes, I will personally take very good care of her to ensure that in October, in particular, her hands are in excellent working condition!

Ever heard of the expression, "You can't have your cake and eat it too" ? It was first seen in print in 1562 in a book by John Heywood calle, ‘Proverbs and Epigrams."

Also, the word 'cake' comes from the Old Norse (medieval Scandinavia) 'kaka'. An unexpected contribution to the English language from the Vikings.