Two of the Cape’s most highly-rated chefs are to open a new country restaurant in Somerset West within the next few weeks.
Cook
Ducking the French paradox
Raymond Blanc being very French and very precise, in that stubbornly Gallic way, he insists they be cooked at 85C, which means bringing the dish to that temperature in a 95C oven, which sounds more Irish than French. Whatever – being South African of Yorkshire stock with Irish habits, I cooked it at 100C and kept an eye on it.
Cook
Pigging out with tamarind and lacquer
Pigs, or hogs, as Americans prefer to call them, are said to be the animal to which we are most closely related. This is a strange assertion. Surely we’re more like baboons? I know some people who are.
Cook
Franglikaans and a touch of Italy in Franschhoek
In that quiet that follows, there is the sound of a poor kid from the wrong side of the tracks badmouthing his girlfriend. On a pavement corner there is a trio of coloured boys singing in perfect harmony, with a hat at their feet, while bands of tourists march by unseeing, with their eyes on the next gourmet thrill.
Tony Jackman at thoughtleader.co.za
A vegetarian’s nightmare, oozing blood and attitude
Nothing is good enough for the more recalcitrant vegetarian. We must drop what we’re doing and make the most special vegetarian dish in the world, full of magical organic ingredients at which the rest of humanity can only marvel. There must be nothing obvious in it. No boring old tomatoes or sighingly familiar butternut, and puhlease do not bore us with mere pasta.
Cook
Serendipity and edible fynbos at Solms-Delta
This land is quite different from the usual serried vineyards of these parts. It is sparse and seems dry, and the plants neatly spaced in the garden are still small, with only the promise of the harvest to come a year or more from now. Fyndraai restaurant celebrates the region’s three culinary traditions – the veldkos of the Khoe who lived on this land 2000 years ago with their Sanga cattle and fat-tailed sheep, the Cape Malay tradition of the slaves of the white farmers, and the boerekos and Dutch food of the farmers themselves.
Restaurants
Ouma’s food with winelands boere-gay style
It is all very boere-gay, with ribbon-bound old books adorning tables, tannie’s crockery on the walls, saucepans, koppies en pierings flung into the (white-painted) mish-mash madness of things happening in the ceiling installations above your head, not to mention knives and forks, ribbons and who knows what else lurks up there like so many miniature Swords of Damocles ready to descend if you frown at what’s on your plate. Best not to diss the food until you’re safely out the door. It is also perhaps best not to look too closely lest you spot something you left at the restaurant last time you were there.
Cook
Guacamole + chakalaka = chakalakamole
Like most things truly South African, you won’t often find chakalaka in the pages of our effortlessly garnished food magazines, although I don’t doubt that one of these days this South African workman’s dish will be ‘discovered’ by the diamante-swirled damsels of Posh Galore, with sundry instructions on how to change it into something else.
Christmas
Potatoes, queen of the garden, king of the plate
How to cook your potatoes for Christmas dinner? Here are some ways… The German Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche argued that a diet consisting predominantly of them “leads to the use of liquor”, which would be enough for some of us to stockpile them, just in case.
Cook
Two good reasons why the chicken crossed the road
We like chicken. We love chicken. When we see a chicken preening its feathers, our mind quickly pops up an image of it defeathered and roasted to gleaming, succulent perfection. We see its breast removed, slit asunder, filled with something yummy, closed, wrapped up and baked.
