No camping this weekend … we’ve actually enjoyed a quiet weekend at home. Welcome to the 5th post on our Braai series!

Just a reminder: “What is a braai”?

The word ‘braai’ is an Afrikaans word, meaning barbecue. This means you grill or roast (mostly) meat over the open coals – something South Africans love to do (especially over weekends).

The fire is ready to start our Weekend Braai

This weekend, it was time for some vegetables on the fire! And what better way to celebrate healthy veggies, than to put all the beautiful colours together and make vegetable kebabs (in Afrikaans it is called ‘groente sosaties’).

We’ve used pickle onions, green pepper, red pepper, mushrooms, cherry tomatoes and baby marrows. Once the veggies were on the bamboo stick, we’ve drizzled olive oil over and added some mixed herbs and salt & pepper.

Remember to soak the bamboo sticks in cold water for a couple of minutes – this prevent the sticks from catching fire while on the hot coals
The vegetable kebabs are ready to go to the fire

As a pre-snack (yes, there’s always something to nibble on while sitting next to the fire), we’ve put chicken wings on the coals. We’ve bought the wings already placed on bamboo sticks and spiced … and it’s got the wonderful name of ‘Sundowner Chicken Wings’ 😉.

Sundowner Chicken Wings

Our vegetable kebabs got a lovely colour on the fire and Berto drizzled the olive oil/mixed herbs sauce over the kebabs while turning them over a couple of times.

The colourful vegetable kebabs on the fire

It was highly unlikely that we would get full with only the chicken wings and veggie kebabs on our plate, we therefor added more chicken to the braai … there’s always a next day to eat the left overs!

More spiced chicken pieces on the fire

In the end, the vegetables were great together with the chicken and it turned out to be quite a healthy meal!

Veggies & chicken – prepared on the open fire

Fortunately, there are more than just one day in the weekend 😄. We therefore had another opportunity for a braai evening … and you would be surprised to hear there were no meat involved!

A well-known fish South Africans love to put on the fire, is ‘snoek’ (very similar to barracuda). Snoek is a popular fish along the west coast of South Africa (where we live) and to invite friends to a ‘snoek braai’ is not uncommon.

Snoek fillets on the grid

There is probably only one sauce that compliments this fish the best – apricot jam, butter, lemon juice, paprika & thyme.

We melt this on the stove (or even on the fire if you have enough coals and space) and then use a brush to put the sauce on the fish while turning it over a couple of times.

Smoke escapes from the fire after adding the sauce onto the fish
Delicious snoek

As a side dish, we would normally add sweet potato to snoek – traditionally this is the way it’s served. But tonight, we’ve decided to have pumpkin with our fish (cooked and mashed with a little bit of butter and sugar).

Snoek and sweet pumpkin

We hope you’ve enjoyed our (healthy) braai weekend. While the Northern Hemisphere is awaiting summer, we here at the southern tip of the world, are experiencing lovely autumn days.

We’ve taken a walk along our lagoon this weekend and enjoyed the start of autumn.

Autumn days at the lagoon
And a beautiful sunset

We are travelling a bit this coming week – celebrating our 25th anniversary. So, be on the lookout for our next braai edition – it will be done in amazing places with spectacular views … until then 🔥.