Tomato Bredie

Cape Malay South Africa, 17th–18th century. «Bredie» — a slow stew of meat braised with one dominant vegetable — arrived with enslaved cooks brought to the Cape from the Indonesian archipelago, Madagascar and beyond from the late 1650s, taking root in the Dutch colonial kitchen. The word's roots are contested: it is usually traced to Indo-Portuguese Creole bredos / Portuguese bredo (edible greens, an amaranth), drifting in Cape Dutch and Afrikaans to mean the stew itself. Tomato bredie is a later, 19th-century adaptation — tomatoes only spread at the Cape once American crops reached southern Africa — and is one of the younger members of a family whose older Cape original used the local waterblommetjie (Cape pondweed flower, not water hyacinth).

Cape Malay, 17th–18th century. Bredie is from Indian-Ocean trade pidgin (Portuguese-Malay bredo). Tomato bredie is the 19th-century adaptation once American crops reached the Cape, replacing earlier waterblommetjie versions.

A long-simmered lamb stew in which the tomato cooks down so far it disappears into a thick brick-red gravy. Onion, potato, sometimes a chili, cinnamon stick, and cloves. The meat comes off the bone with a fork; the sauce is reduced enough to coat rice rather than pool. Served with white rice or yellow rice and sambals.

The tomato has to cook down completely, not just soften. Two to three hours minimum: the fruit acid first tightens the lamb, then breaks down into the fat, glazing the meat in tomato instead of stewing it in tomato water. Adding the tomato early (with the onion) and giving it time to dry into the pot before adding stock is what separates a proper bredie from a thin lamb-and-tomato stew.