OVERLANDING WITH A GERMAN PATRIARCH LESSONS FROM MY CHILDHOOD

My dad loved steak tartare. For him, it was the brunch of champions. I still remember how Mom prepared it in the car while we overlanded South Africa, Rhodesia and South West Africa in the 1970s.

Dad liked to decamp early and drive before the midday heat. Our Ford Cortina had a fragile radiator and no air conditioning. Most of the time we were on rough gravel roads that kicked up clouds of dust, so the windows stayed rolled up. Being a sedan built by

Ford for the genteel British Isles, on whose roof we balanced canisters of spare petrol and a giant A-frame canvas tent for our family of four, the Cortina fared poorly. It heaved and slid out of corners, and rattled down washboard roads, protesting Africa. On more than one occasion it lost its exhaust, its front and rear bumpers, the oil filter, a headlamp… its will to live.

In the passenger seat, Mom would start with an onion. She chopped it finely on a bread board