One Nguni cow turned into 400 plates of food to teach responsible eating

She died for a good cause - a single indigenous Nguni cow brings diverse groups together and provides a lesson in thoughtful consumption

Take one Nguni cow, one spring day in Soweto and 20 recipes, and you have a plateful of delicious reasons to think differently about food.

This was the Slow Meat Soweto Eat-In, organised by Slow Meat South Africa in collaboration with Izindaba Zokudla (conversations about food) which is convened by the University of Johannesburg's department of development studies and anthropology.

Held at the beginning of the month at the Soweto Theatre, it was about shifting perceptions by winning over taste buds.

Local farmers and producers sold live chickens, organic produce and seedlings on the day, but at the heart of the Eat-In was a single Nguni cow reimagined as 400 plates of food by the culinary wizardry of trainee chefs.

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The idea was to use as much of the carcass as possible - the nose to tail eating philosophy. The animal was divided into prime cuts and offal, then divvied out randomly to 10 competing chef schools (one of which was a group of Soweto home chefs, who had only a six-week crash course in a professional kitchen).

Each team had to create unique recipes for an offal dish and a prime-cut dish. They were restricted to using seasonal veg grown by Soweto's small-scale farmers - part of the focus on eating seasonally, on preserving heritage species and buying locally.

Working with Nguni beef was a first for many of the chefs. The indigenous breed is known as the iconic patterned bovine with distinctive curved horns, but it's not known for showing up on menus. That the Nguni was a novelty didn't surprise.

Brian Dick, chairman of the Johannesburg convivium of the Slow Food movement, said: "Most people just know they're eating beef when they buy it in a supermarket, not what species of cow.

It's because we've stopped asking questions about how our food gets to our plates, and the distance between food producers and consumers has got wider."

This knowledge matters though, because the story of food and food production in a time of pressure on the planet is a chilling one.

It's about a loss of species, intensified factory farming, a rising culture of wasting scarce resources and a yawning gap between those who can afford dwindling resources and those who can't - the rich who can feed themselves to gluttony and those who will literally starve.

We had to think out of the box; that's when we came up with the bone-marrow custard mixed into our bread for our mini-kotas

At Soweto Eat-In it was up to the Nguni cow to teach some lessons. Caroline McCann of Slow Meat, who owns Braeside Butchery in Parkhurst, said introducing the concept of using this one single animal to feed hundreds of people was about getting carnivores to think of meat not as the pre-packaged slabs of flesh in their supermarkets, but as a once-living animal.

Confronting this inconvenient truth was meant to get people thinking about ethics and practices of meat production and how this impacts nutritional value and the taste of the meat.

McCann's business is meat; she's not advocating vegetarianism. But she does challenge the way we eat only certain cuts of meat and the way our embrace of junk food has imposed a form of tyranny over animals.

She also takes aim at the wasteful practices of our throwaway culture and at the narrow mindset that ignores indigenous breeds as a source of our protein needs.

"We eat only about 15% of the animal that's slaughtered - this is not sustainable or healthy," she said. "You really need to know your butcher so you can ask them the right questions, you should know the origins of what you're eating."

It's an issue firstly of economics, because meat dumping from other countries does happen, which affects local farmers and communities. It was a need to understand these knock-on effects that convinced organisers to hold this third edition of Slow Meat in Soweto.

It was breaking bread with neighbours - getting people from other parts of Joburg to Soweto.

"Some people think Soweto is a food desert but there are thousands of farmers and producers here. We should be buying from our neighbours, not transporting foods for long distances or importing," McCann said.

She noted that different cuts of meat have come to be associated with different income levels. It's misplaced snobbishness and it's missing out on cuts of meat that deliver depth of flavour and deliciousness.

"In the northern suburbs people buy hindquarter cuts like silverside and rump, and in townships people buy forequarter cuts like brisket and chuck. Hindquarter may cook faster but forequarter can be tastier," she said.

Still, the proof was in the eating. In the end around 500 people attended the Soweto Eat-In. Their entry fee included six randomly selected tickets to try five prime-cut dishes and one offal dish from the 10 competing chef schools. Festivalgoers got to vote for their favourite dish of the day.

By noon patrons were digging in and clearly it was thumbs-up all round. There were dishes like liver parfait with beetroot dust, spicy corn kernels and edible nasturtiums from Chefs Training and Innovation Academy.

The Soweto Chefs Team served up marrow-infused bread for their kotas with homemade atchar, finished off with bone-marrow popcorn.

The HTA School of Culinary Art team made spicy sweet and sticky short ribs, and the Prue Leith Chefs Academy used rendered Nguni fat to make pastry cones filled with amasi and homemade ricotta.

Students from Chefs Training and Innovation Academy turned their prime-cut topside into a pulled beef offering topped with crisped spinach and kaiings - crackling from the internal fat of the cow.

The Culinary Passions team served up a cow's head spicy stew, accompanied by rooibos-infused pap and locally grown vegetables.

Festivalgoers were well fed after six dishes, but some jokingly tried to trade tickets to get in more tastings. Others insisted on tearing their voting tickets in half in order to vote for more than one favourite dish.

For Kea Sito, a Cyrildene local, the cooking was all flair and passion. "I love the Slow Food movement because it's about families sitting down together again, to eat together. The Nguni was full of taste and I loved that we ate 'the full package' of the animal."

Sito found herself seated across from Mo Moshoeshoe at the long communal tables. Moshoeshoe, a Soweto local, said: "I think this is so great for Soweto.

When I heard about the event I knew I would just have to be here. I have eaten Nguni before but what I tasted was amazing - this is food and culture at its best."

Sipping chilled wine and soaking up the laidback vibes were Joburgers Emmanguluko Mufamadi and Patrick Yaluma.

"The short ribs kicked ass," said Mufamadi, while Yaluma said he was impressed by all the dishes he tried, not just because of the taste but because of the inspired cooking.

We had to think about things like how this would have been an animal that walked long distances to feed and would have had stronger muscles and tendons

"I really came out to support all these young chefs. I'm a fan, they deserve our support," he said.

The future of changing how we eat lies in the hands of the likes of Moureen Baloyi, a first-year student at the HTA School of Culinary Art. She tried Nguni for the first time at the Eat-In and was "amazed".

"I grew up in Randburg and never tried Nguni before so it was quite exciting. I was like googling everything about Ngunis and now I want to work with game more," she said.

Aengus Moloney, a student with the Prue Leith Chefs Academy, was also a Nguni newbie, as was his teacher Clive Rodger, who is head chef at the Prue Leith restaurant in Pretoria.

"I think the Nguni had a lot more flavour than regular beef; I really enjoyed cooking with it," said Moloney.

Rodger added: "We had to think about things like how this would have been an animal that walked long distances to feed and would have had stronger muscles and tendons. It would also have been grass-fed. All these elements the students had to think about in coming up with their dishes."

For farmer and home cook Thuthu Tshabalala, seeing produce from her family's farm in Zuurbekom on the West Rand turned into accompaniments at the festival was pure joy.

So was working with Nguni, which she said was like taking food from her childhood, full of memories of her farmer grandfather, and giving it a modern twist for urbanites.

"The vegetables I grow have a different taste from what you buy at a supermarket. I'm proud that there are thousands of small farmers in Soweto, it's what we should all be doing and we should be buying from the kasi," she said.

The kasi is full of farming gems. Just last month the Soweto chilli, grown by local farmer Phila Cele, was added to the global Ark of Taste catalogue of heritage foods compiled by the Slow Food movement.

Tshabalala was part of the Soweto team that was given a six-week crash course by the South African Chefs Association to compete on the day.

"I bake wedding cakes, I make atchar and I make the best chakalaka, if I have to say so myself - it's the ginger and garlic that makes mine a signature chakalaka," she said, beaming.

Cooking with the pros was pushing boundaries in the best way for Tshabalala. "We tried so many things. We had to think out of the box; that's when we came up with the bone-marrow custard mixed into our bread for our mini-kotas."

Her team ended up in second place, while the top spot went to the HTA School of Culinary Art.

In the end, one indigenous cow showed everyone how a little innovation and imagination can win the day. It helped us find a recipe for more ethical and enjoyable eating.

NOSE TO TAIL TIPS

• Infuse your pap with rooibos tea. It delivers a distinctly local flavour to the starch that makes a yummy accompaniment for a hearty oxtail stew.

• Add bone marrow to your favourite bread recipe for a creamy, meaty-flavoured finish. Perfect for homemade kotas and bunnychows.

• Thinly slice beef heart, season and flash-fry. It tastes quite as good as a prime cut steak – it is muscle after all.

• Rendered animal fat can be used in the preparation of crispy savoury pastries. It can also be diced, floured and crisped up in a pan to make crunchy toppings.

MEET THE MOO

The Nguni cow served up on the day (not the one pictured) was an eight-year-old animal raised on a farm in Heidelberg. She was part of a private herd and was kept as a natural free-ranging, grass-fed animal. She weighed in at 300kg.

Most cattle that end up in supermarkets are raised intensively in feedlots and culled at around 14-16 months.