Editor's note: The recipe and introductory text below are excerpted from Lannice Snyman's book Rainbow Cuisine: A Culinary Journey Through South Africa. Snyman also shared some helpful cooking tips exclusively with Epicurious, which we've added at the bottom of the page. For your convenience, we've converted the measures ” with as much accuracy as possible ” from South African to American. For those who have metric equipment and wish to follow Snyman's recipe to the milliliter, we've included the original measures too. To read more about Snyman and South African cooking, click here. This recipe originally accompanied bobotie. Before we learned to make our own chutney from ingredients as diverse as apricots, dates, quinces and raisins, blatjang was imported from Java, made from sun-dried prawns and shrimps, which were pounded with a wooden pestle and mortar; and shaped into masses resembling large cheeses. Blatjang is the pride of Cape Malay-cuisine, and the recipe is one of the oldest around. The name comes from one of the constituents of the Javanese sambal blachang. Early food writer; C Louis Leipoldt, described it as 'bitingly spicy, pungently aromatic, moderately smooth and a very intimately mixed association of ingredients.' There is nothing quite like blatjang to add zest to curries or braaied meat. Adjust the amount of chilli to suit your preference. Blatjang may be stored for up to a year; but refrigerate once the bottle has been opened.