Build it and they will come. That is the birth story of Ferdinando’s and their quest to sell 10,000 pizzas. Our friends, Kimon and Diego have been opening their doors to family and friends for countless fun, vibrant foodie celebrations. Whether it was a birthday or post-4am Long Street search for food, we always were…
Tag: south africa
How to make South African beer – uMqombhothi from Maize Meal
uMqombhoti is a beer recipe to inspire you to learn various food traditions from all over the world while bringing your own kitchen alchemy and culinary linguistics to the table.
How to identify and pick wild edible mushrooms in Cape Town, South Africa
“Is there rain and gale force winds on your side?” “No.” “Okay, then we’ll meet you at the forest gate at 7:15” In Cape Town, winter brings sloshy puddles and leaf layers on the forest floor. Mushrooms, like stars fallen from the galaxy, pop out of the ground in diverse shapes, forms, colours and size. This…
How to Harvest Seaweed: Superfood Nutrition from our Ocean
Edible Sea Vegetable: SeaWeed I confess, my kitchen turns into edible science experiments almost every day. Seaweed is my new ingredient in the kitchen lab. Once you get to know the nutritional facts and the familiar taste of popcorn it has when nori (a type of seaweed) is roasted on the fire, then you’ll definitely give…
CONNECT BACK TO NATURE: Urban Food Foraging
The more time we spend using whole food ingredients, the more curious we become of their source and qualities. We may begin to ask questions such as – “How do eggplants grow?” “Can I eat the green tops of carrots?” “What can grape leaves be used for?” “Are those mulberries?” Our curiosity for nature and…
How to Cure your Own Olives in Brine: Greek Yiayia Style
Follow my blog with Bloglovin How to make your own olives edible. Mom would say, “Only eat 8 olives a day, honey.” But it was too easy to devour the salty Grecian delights by the dozen. With crusty brown sourdough bread and green virgin olive oil on a flat side plate, nothing satisfied me more…
Top Ten South African Foods to Try While Visiting South Africa
What do people eat in South Africa? I came to study in South Africa, Education, Sociolinguistics and Ethnographic Research. After I got accepted into the program, my google searches involved, surfing South Africa, capoeira South Africa and food South Africa. I didn’t know much about the food in South Africa when I arrived but I…
South Africa’s West Coast Pomegranate and Peppercorn Salad
Soul smiles and surf-sore shoulders leave me mindful and replete. A montage of new faces smiling in the heat. Moon memories and salted dreams sail me through the Monday office beat. Yes, let’s strike out into the open, where wild places await. Let’s turn off the cell phones, leave our city behind. Let’s forget the…
Urban foraging and making Mulberry Tart
Growing up, we used to pick wild mulberries. The dark mulberries ripened to their juicy capacity and fell on the pavement, painting the sidewalks purple. This was nature’s graffiti and we were young urban foragers. Just below Chicago’s purple EL line, we thought the forest preserve was our Jungle Book fantasy and we ate from…
Share. Cook. Love: The Cook Book
Our story began 2005, Feb 14th. Durban, South Africa. A Surfer met a Gypsy at Capoeira class. It was a Monday, after the first day of our third year at University. 7 years later, in the province where it all began, we told everyone we loved to join us for a festival of families, a…
Semi-Sweet Film Food Documentary: Life in Chocolate
It’s 37 degrees in Paris while Patrick Roger’s chocolatier workshop is busy transporting his sculpture of a Orangutan made of chocolate. Chocolate melts at 37 degrees, the same as our body’s temperature. Roger explains: “Chocolate acts the way we do . . . It’s a love story.” Roger’s story amongst others features in the food…
A Durban Curry Bunny Chow Heat Feast in Cape Town
Climate change and Durban curry? What do they have in common? It’s the only meal that will cool you down when a sub-tropical heatwave rolls through Cape Town. A humid blanket covered the the whole city. To survive the heat, we consumed the heat. We invited our friends and a self-proclaimed Durban curry chef to…
Pink Pancake Recipe with Strawberry and Beetroot
Mickey Mouse pancakes were cool growing up. I got to eat dessert for breakfast; sugar-gooey syrupy pancakes with chocolate chip eyes, a cherry nose and whip cream smiles. These days, I discovered eating pink pancakes are just as fun for breakfast and have a natural sweetness thanks to the sugarbeet and strawberries added in the…
Keep it Fresh with Juice and Beets
When my amiga, talented singer/songwriter, Ernestine Deane, was preparing to migrate to Germany, she generously gave her juicer a new home, which is now my new favourite kitchen instrument. Up until Ernestine’s last week in Cape Town, the Le Dou MagiMix spun out delicious alchemy for her family, most importantly fresh orange juice to keep the…
It’s not Rabbit Food, It’s Rainbow Raw Salsa Salad.
Call it rabbit food, but it is damn delicious and surprisingly filling too. Inspired by Raw-vember, I made a spicy salad that is bright and tangy in flavour and festive on the eye. This is a super quick, easy and yummy crunch salad that has major nutrients because it is a whole bunch of raw…
To Cook or Dehydrate: Raw Food Recipes and Creativity
I just learned how to harvest Aloe Ferox from the ‘cook’ book Rawlicious-Recipes for Radiant Health. It’s a recipe book that encourages you to make colourful and vibrant food by encouraging you to put aloe in your smoothies, have sprouts as a kitchen staple, and make edible flower salads that look like birthday confetti. Who…
Love and Local Produce on the Umtamvuna River Bank
We found it, one part wild, one part green, two parts water and three parts love. The place we plan to get married and celebrate the love adventure and journey up ahead. And it has been ever evolving into a beautiful recipe with such variations and discoveries, the metaphor for love found in the chemistry…
Celebrating Vetkoek, Beats and Madiba at the the Ubuntu Festival in Cape Town
Tata Mandela celebrates his 93rd birthday today. His life and dedication to the public’s well being has been a symbol for us to trust that we have the capacity to make changes in our life that leads to freedom and positive transformation. Giving life to metaphors. On Sunday, July 17th, the city of Cape Town…
Communal Meals and Charcuterie at Glen Oakes Guest Farm
Have you ever stayed in a stone cottage with pigs and sheep as your next acre neighbour? In Hemel an Aarde Valley, there is a pig farm. Eight of us spent an electricity-free weekend on a farm greeting free-ranging piglets and making communal breakfast from the farm’s fresh eggs (and guess where the bacon came…
Raise your Glass to Gugulethu Wine Festival
Just like food and wine pairing flavours highlight salt, sweet, sour, bitter or umami (lekker or ‘scrumptious’), the Gugulethu Wine Festival proved to be a super umami event experience pairing all the right festival flavours. On the same weekend of the Good Food and Wine Festival, Gugulethu hosted a vibrant well-attended wine tasting event founded…
Mopani or mopane worms (caterpillars) taste like dried leaves
“They taste like a bit like biltong or chicken, I love them!” she explained. “Actually, they taste more like leaves.” A bag of Mopani worms are sitting dried in my cupboard waiting for my “how to cook this” experimentation session. My seastar, Nokulinda, bought them from a Sangoma down the road from her work in…
The Search for Cape Town’s Best Gatsby Sandwich
Once upon a time there was the Gatsby Sandwich. Related to its American cousin, Hoagie. Gatsby is South African, from the Cape Flats, and is the ultimate meal you can carry like a newborn baby, it’s as heavy as one too, crammed with a variety of ingredients and most commonly accompanied with chips stuffed inside. The Gatsby…
Prickly Cactus Pear Smoothie
The best thing about when friends house sit is the magic of new groceries that end up in your kitchen. One Sunday afternoon, I discovered prickly pear syrup (turksvy stroop) in my fridge and it sat there, waiting for me to make crepes or pour it on yoghurt. Instead, it ended up in my fruit…
Gatesville Saturday Market
My friend, Michelle and I drove past Athlone into Gatesville to dive into the goods at the Saturday market. Along Klipfontein Rd, tents and vendors hugged three blocks of the sidewalk selling fresh aloe, socks, produce, breyani and jewelry. We weaved through the daily market shoppers and poked our way through aesthetically fun and random…
Homemade Chocolate in a Jar
Breakfast on Valentine’s day involved me, a spoon and my Love Source jar. This chocolate is goddessa concoction of coconut oil, cacao, agave syrup and vanilla pod with niblets of an orange essence. It’s from the ladies of I Heart Life Outside The Box where poetry and chocolate unite just in time for Valentine’s…
The Rotating Lamb Spit at Up the Creek
We floated on the Brede River for 8 hours, jammed to great South African music collaborations and ate delicious festival food at Up the Creek. There was one food tent where Ma and Pa came up the creek and cooked for their whole festival family. From a military tent, the food army family catering…
Fool-proof Crepes
For my birthday this year, my ‘sweet as sugarcane’ man made us a crepe breakfast. His speciality in the kitchen ranges from delicious pasta dishes, creative braai ‘BBQ’ fish marinades, and his exceptional skill to flipping crepes with ‘kitchen ninja zen’ style. There is no need for a spatula when he is around so I…
Rooibos Rice with Smoked Paprika Mussels (Quick Paella-wanna-be)
I thought to myself, ‘How can I make a rice dish a little more interesting?’ So I started with the idea of color and decided to use all ‘red’ coloured ingredients in my kitchen. So first off, I made rooibos (redbush) tea-flavoured water to steam my brown rice. I also took flavours commonly found in…
How to Make a Fresh Fruit Smoothie (Batida)
An apple a day plus some other amazing ingredients will definitely keep el doctor away. I am self-medicating with an abundance of fruits in season. In my own kitchen I took the fruits in season in South Africa with some inspiration from the beloved country, Brazil, and I blended the fruit together to make…
Vegetarian Bobotie
This layered oven-baked dish is a reflection of the histories, cultures, and cuisines that flavour the peninsula of Cape Town. The roots of the spices used in traditional recipes come from Cape Malay cuisine but is easy to make your own Bobotie-inspired dish with the flavours and ingredients in your own kitchen, celebrating…
The Culinary Linguist 