For most of her life, 39-year-old Fikile Zungu worked as a maid. This reality however changed when she moved to Belgium to live with her partner in 2010. Although she continued to work as a cleaner at the South African Embassy in Belgium to support her family, her life took a complete turn when she offered to cook after the embassy’s chef resigned. Today Zungu is their resident cook. Sticking to her new healthy lifestyle, Zungu’s prepared a banting oxtail recipe.
Ingredients:

- 1 kg oxtail
- 4 celery sticks, chopped
- 2 leek sticks, chopped
- 1 large onion roughly chopped
- 1 large green pepper chopped in cubes
- 4 garlic cloves crushed
- 70 g garlic butter
- 2 tbsp coriander spice
- 2 tbsp turmeric powder
- 2 tbsp paprika spice
- 1 tsp garlic spice
- 1 tsp white pepper
- 1 handful coriander chopped
- 2 large tomatoes roughly chopped
- 400g canned kidney beans
- 20g canned mushrooms
- Salt to taste
Method
- Melt the garlic butter in a pot.
- In a big bowl, put the oxtail together with the veggies (except tomatoes) then spice and mix well.
- On high heat, fry the oxtail and veggies in a big pot in the melted garlic butter for 10 minutes, then lower the heat and let it cook for 3 hours.
- After the first 30 minutes, add the chopped tomatoes.
- While the ingredients are cooking, make sure that you stir and taste for the flavour to make sure that the taste is balanced.
- When the ingredients are almost cooked, turn up the heat of the stove to lessen the thickness. Do not add water.
- After the oxtail stew is ready, add the kidney beans and mushrooms (drain the water from the cans).
- Mix together and garnish with parsley.