Creamy Veal Tail & Mushroom Potjie
How we won the 2024 Annual PotjieKos Competition in the south of France - a veal tail potjie that sits between a French blanquette de veau and a South African fireside classic.
Serves
16
Prep
30 min
Cook
2h 30 min
Difficulty
Advanced
Every year, somewhere in Roquebrune-sur-Argens, a small and improbable thing happens. South Africans, French people with some connection to South Africa, and a handful of curious locals gather around cast iron pots, light fires, and proceed to argue - politely, mostly - about who makes the best potjie. The competition has been going since 2005. By now it has the weight of tradition behind it.
We competed for the first time the year before. We came back in 2024 with something we had been working on - a Creamy Veal Tail and Mushroom Potjie - and this time we won it.
What we were after was something that sat between two traditions. On one side, the blanquette de veau - that quietly magnificent French braise of veal in a cream sauce, white and delicate and deeply comforting. On the other, a potjie: layered, unhurried, built over a fire in a cast iron pot that rewards patience and punishes impatience in equal measure. The result is not quite either one. It is something that could only have come from a South African cooking over a fire in Provence.
My wife, who is South African with German roots and therefore constitutionally opposed to approximation, documented every step the first time we made it. Quantities, timings, sequence - all of it written down with the same seriousness a surveyor brings to a boundary dispute. I cooked. She recorded. This is what makes us work.
We set up in Roquebrune-sur-Argens on the morning of the competition with a Number 4 potjie on a drum braai I had cut and welded myself, and enough charcoal and vine stumps sourced from Chateauneuf-du-Pape to heat a small house. Alongside the potjie, a second fire for the samp - because a potjie like this needs something underneath it that can hold the weight of the sauce.
The judges came around mid-afternoon. Ours won.
To serve: cook samp (dried stamped maize, soaked overnight) low and slow for 1.5-2 hours until tender. Make a gremolata from lemon zest, flat-leaf parsley, garlic, and a generous pour of good Provencal olive oil. Spoon the samp into bowls, add the gremolata, ladle the potjie over the top, and finish with freshly shaved dry biltong at the table.
Ingredients
- •4 kg veal tail, rinsed and patted dry
- •Salt and white pepper
- •Olive oil for browning
- •600g smoked lardons
- •250g celery, chopped
- •200g carrots, chopped
- •12 onions
- •Nutmeg (noix de muscade), freshly grated
- •600ml white wine
- •1.5 litres chicken stock
- •8 anchovy fillets
- •14 cloves garlic, crushed (divided - half now, half later)
- •4 kaffir lime leaves
- •300ml demi-glace (homemade with dried porcini)
- •1.5 kg grenaille potatoes, skin on
- •24 shallots
- •2 corn cobs, cut in rounds
- •2 lemons, zest removed in long strips (about 9 strips)
- •750ml creme fraiche
- •800g mushrooms
- •Herb butter, to taste
- •Nuoc Mam (Vietnamese fish sauce), to taste
- •White pepper, to taste
🐸 Marcel says:
The problem with most potjie cooks is that they stop trusting themselves halfway through and start second-guessing the pot. The pot knows. You just have to listen to it.
Instructions
- 1
Rinse the veal tail and pat dry with paper towels. Season with salt and white pepper. Brown lightly in olive oil in the potjie over hot coals, working in batches - do not crowd the pot. Remove and set aside.
- 2
Add the smoked lardons to the pot. Add the celery, carrots, and onions. Grate nutmeg generously over everything. Cook in olive oil until softened, about 30 minutes.
- 3
Return the veal tail to the pot. Add the white wine, chicken stock, anchovy fillets, half the crushed garlic, and the kaffir lime leaves. Stir, cover, and simmer for 45 minutes.
- 4
Add the demi-glace. Stir well and simmer for 15 minutes.
- 5
Add the grenaille potatoes, skin on. Simmer for 15 minutes.
- 6
Add the shallots and the corn rounds. Simmer for 10 minutes.
- 7
Add the lemon zest strips. Simmer for 5 minutes, then remove and discard the strips.
- 8
Add the creme fraiche, remaining garlic, and mushrooms. Remove and discard the kaffir lime leaves. Stir in herb butter and Nuoc Mam to taste. Season with white pepper. Simmer for a final 15 minutes.
- 9
Serve over samp with gremolata. Finish with freshly shaved dry biltong at the table.
Notes
- Use veal tail, not beef oxtail. The flavour is more delicate and it carries the cream better. Veal tail from l'Aveyron is ideal.
- The porcini - cepes in France - go into the demi-glace, not the potjie directly. This puts their flavour into the structural base of the sauce. Dried cepes are available in any good French supermarket.
- The anchovies and Nuoc Mam are not fish flavours - they are depth. They dissolve into the braise and do their work quietly. Do not leave them out.
- Kaffir lime leaves must come out before the cream goes in. The lemon zest strips also go in late and come out again - just a quiet citrus lift. Do not skip this step and do not leave them too long.
- Grenaille potatoes go in skin on - small, waxy, and they hold their shape. Add them at the specified time and they will be ready when everything else is.
- The herb butter is not optional - stir it in at the end and let it melt through the sauce. Fat carries flavour, and good butter at the finish makes everything taste more of itself.
- Manage your fire. Low and slow. The 2h30 is a ceiling, not a target.
- The biltong finish is a flavour moment, not a garnish. Use very dry biltong and a fine zester, grated at the table. It melts into the sauce and leaves people wondering what they just tasted.
Equipment
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