Lifestyle

Dear Jonno I have been reading your column in Farmer’s Weekly for a long time and have attached a rough floor plan for a structure...

This classic one-pot family meal owes much of its ongoing popularity to an amiable relationship with mushrooms. These fabulous fungi contribute to the feast with their delicious flavour as well as their appearance.

Dear Jonno I am a Farmer’s Weekly magazine subscriber and I normally see your beautiful plans in it. I do not know if you could...

Cajun cooking is a mixture of smokin’ and grillin’. Like Cajun music, it’s both familiar and unfamiliar. While this recipe works well with alligator or any local giant water-living reptile species, some frozen hake fillet is really all you need to hunt for.

Dear Jonno I have a 9m x 25m steel shed on my property, which I would like to turn into a home. I would like...

Chicken pieces are ideal in the hurried kitchens of working people. Here’s a quickish dinner for three or four people complete with potatoes and a revved-up sauce. All in one roasting pan…

Dear Jonno Membership of our clay pigeon shooting range has grown over the years, and we now need to cater for more than 200 participants...

It’s easy to forget that chilli is so much more than a local curry, with or without rice. Here’s a New World homage to the chilli, that glorious, scarlet, life-enhancing veldfire in the mouth.

Dear Jonno We would appreciate it if you would consider posting a suggested design for us in your next article. We would like to build a...

It’s a pity that ‘Lemon Cream’ is a brand name, as this is a better description than ‘lemon curd’ for this magnificent sweet-and-sour dessert. With sparse ingredients and minimal preparation time, it is the perfect complement to ice cream or yogurt.

Dear Jonno, My husband and I are planning our retirement home on our newly acquired farm in the north-eastern Free State. We enjoy your innovative...

You’ve grilled the perfect steak. How could you make it even better? Nothing, if you are a purist. Quite a lot, if you’re ready to venture into the unknown. To do this, you’ll need butter. Anchovies. Maybe even a can of smoked oysters...

I received an email from Peter and Dalene asking me to revise their sketch. They preferred two separate wings for the bedroom sections, and to keep within the private development allowable area of 250m².

For the mid-20th century connoisseur, the ideal of fine dining consisted of a prawn cocktail, followed by Tournedos Chasseur, finished off by an Irish coffee. Here’s that very same culinary delight, but without the Irish coffee. Or the prawn cocktail.

It is possible to design an eco-friendly cottage. Jonno shows us how.

For years, vegetables were simply annoying competitors for real estate on my plate. I needed the room – all of it – for meat. Then I learned how to cook the green things. No boiling to a flavourless pulp: just a moment at high heat in a wok.

This superb homage to the pig is a luxurious meal, easy to cook and quick too, assuming that you have some quality chicken stock in the freezer. If not, I’ve shown you how to make your own.

Approximately seven years ago, I designed a home for Pete and his family on a golf estate.

Baking, as I’ve mentioned before, is a dark zone of potential failure and damaged emotions. But sometimes, there is light at the end of the oven. Here is a totally unexpected cake, invented by sheep farmer and slow food specialist, Richard Haig of Enaleni Farm. As the ads used to promise, it’s truly flop-proof.

Nowhere does it say that you have to have spaghetti with bolognaise sauce. And to prove it, here’s a combination of great flavours, textures and aromas all designed to transform pasta into the meal of your dreams…