A visit to Cape Town isn’t complete without a visit to the Bo-Kaap*. The bright, colourful homes that line the cobbled streets are about 260 years old and the suburb is a melting pot of cultures – mostly descending from slaves that were imported to the Cape from Malaysia, Sri Lanka and India. The majority [...]

This time of the year everybody seems to have a project – whether it’s building cupboards, re-doing the garden, going on diet or creating something – we all have a one!  I’m on a sausage making/green fig bottling kick and even though the figs on the farm aren’t cooperating because they simply don’t want to [...]

The Taino and Carib peoples of the Caribbean and South America were the first people to slow cook meat over a fire. It was the Spanish conquistadores who first found them roasting, drying and smoking meats on a wooden framework over a bed of coals called a barbricot and the Spaniards pronounced it barbacoa.  The [...]

The hectic Christmas season is over but the guests still keep coming and coming because the Cape, at this time of the year, is the most magically beautiful place on earth. As February approaches, the weather just keeps getting better and long, perfect days melt into long perfect evenings – which means that entertainment simply [...]

Today, in Egypt, lamb is one of the most popular meats and since Egypt is in Africa, we decided to include this really superb recipe. Because this dish cannot be appreciated without a glass of wine, let’s briefly look at the Egyptian wine production. They do make wine and produce about 42,000 hl per annum [...]

Many of us believe that because Morocco was in French and Spanish possession for periods in the 19th and 20th centuries, the cuisine has been heavily influenced by the French and the Spanish. Of course, some ideas must have been shared but the culinary tradition is firmly rooted in the culture of the indigenous Berbers [...]

The season for marinating is upon us and soon we will be marinating everything we can lay our hands on – even cheese!  Our stoves are temporarily replaced by the braai or the Weber and it becomes our turn to sit down and watch the men prepare our meals – for this reason we include [...]

If you haven’t baked your Christmas cake yet, it would be a good idea to start doing it round about now because, like it or not, there’s only three and half weeks left and since it really needs maturing and a couple of dashes of good brandy, today’s as good a day as any. The [...]

It’s Thanksgiving in America today and even though it’s not celebrated in South Africa, it should because we simply have so much for which we should be grateful.  In 1621, the early American colonists and Wampanoag Indians shared a feast after the harvest that is, today, acknowledged as their first Thanksgiving.  They may not have [...]

The sun returned to the Cape at last and with it, long lunches, even longer dinners, cocktail parties and the inevitable braai* – in fact, most South Africans braai at least once a week and after the disastrous rendition of our national anthem last Friday, the figure probably tripled because the nation was in a [...]