My introduction to heerboontjies (literally “the lord’s beans”) was at the dinner table of my Ouma and Oupa Nieuwoudt, who farmed near Trawal. I didn’t know then that I was eating a rare and special regional cuisine. The sousboontjies that were on my gran’s lunch table almost every day was always made with heerboontjies, my mother said. Why? “Because there are no other dried beans so velvety smooth and creamy as heerboontjies that go as well with the tangy sauce.” Ouma never used the precious beans for soup or stew, only for her sousboontjies.
After Ouma moved to the old-age home in the neighbouring town in the 1980s, I only had heerboontjies again in the early 2000s in a fancy restaurant in Franschhoek. With my first bite, the unmistakable taste of the beans brought back the memories of all those lunches with Ouma Trawal.
There is very in old recipe books but one writer who often wrote about his love and appreciation for these beans, is Louis Leipoldt. Perhaps because he loved the region where these beans flourished. He wrote a column about the beans in (an updated edition was published by Cederberg Publishers in 2005) that was published in on 10 April 1942.
