Recipes

My elder daughter gave me a new wok for my birthday. And what a wok it is. It has a wooden handle, a flattish bottom and is coated in Teflon. To launch it, I made this dish.

Here’s an easy-to-cook take on an old classic in which best beef, mushrooms, sour cream and the brandy of your choice come together on rice or pasta, with or without the reddish presence of paprika …

Curries are an old Indian delicacy filled with a mix of herbs and spices and tantalising aroma. Find out how you can cook up a mouthwatering lamb curry.

Steak, in my singular view, should be redefined as a staple. While bread and even mealie meal have their place, a well-aged piece of prime beef is very difficult to top. Grilling a steak is one of the most straightforward cooking “techniques” known to man. Yet despite this self-evident truth, it is still possible for the neophyte to mess it up.

The standard Anglo-Saxon has great trouble with garlic. He fears social isolation as the inevitable consequence of even one tiny scrap of this marvellous bulb. If you or your friends fall into this category of flat-earth diners, stop reading right now and skip to the golf page or maybe the Hitching Post.

There comes a time in the affairs of seasoned braaivleis mechanics when the palate cries out for something more adventurous than stywe pap or baked potatoes to accompany the steak, chops and wors. What we have here is a great side dish to any braai, which has the additional virtue of being a good standalone meal, especially with a chunk of fresh bread. Making this dish requires a minor addition to your culinary skills, all of which adds real value to your cooking repertoire.

Most roast potatoes play small-time supporting roles to the real stars of roasting: beef, poultry, lamb and pork. Like the extras in crowd scenes, they have little or no individual identities, yet their absence would be sorely felt. Here’s a chance to give roast potatoes the big close-up they have long been denied. Are you ready Miss Potato? Lights! Camera! Action!

There are men who regard the concept of cooking with Scotch as sacrilegious. Anything that takes so long to mature and costs so much money can’t and shouldn’t be used as a flavouring agent by braai mechanics.

Most unusually for this kitchen, which believes in skin-on, bone-in chicken portions, a pack of deboned, skinned chicken breasts lay on the counter, en route to becoming a stir-fry. Close examination reveals that such a cut included not one, but two distinct sections: the breast proper, and a little fillet, appropriately named the tenderloin. Something as perfectly formed as this deserves special attention, served as a hot starter or chilled on a roll stuffed with salad.

This Florentine-styled T-bone steak dish uses beef sourced from the region’s Chianina breed of cattle. In the world of steaks few can equal a T-bone cut from a Chianina side of beef as this large cattle breed’s meat is revered, and rightly so! Here’s how to make the most of your T-bone...

Ever since the first man stuck a lump of meat on a stick and held it over a fire, roasting has been a mainline tradition. With a history this long, various bits of ornamentation and finesse have crept into the basic recipe. Make a Prince Igor beef fillet and turn your guests into awestruck, knee-bending fans of your cooking skills.

This – like most baking recipes – is a multi-process event.

Here are two fabulous tastes in one meal: prawns and a glorious breyani. Feel free to drop the prawns and let the plain breyani become a side dish.

A Biblical meal (Ruth 2:14) and the standard nosh of Israel and other Middle Eastern countries, hummus can be made with ease in your own kitchen. It can also be enlivened by the additions that you choose. Make hummus for lunch – the flavours and texture are seductive.

Mastering the stir-fry is what you should be doing in your post-braaivlei phase of development.

This is a classic, an absolute must for your personal cooking repertoire. Widely known as a delicious and heart-warming meal, there are many recipes available. Here’s one that never fails.

The annual sardine run is a major feature of the KZN coastline. Millions of migrating sardines, or pilchards as the West Coast calls them, migrate close inshore where people of all ages scoop them out of the sea, crazed by the idea of free food. It’s one hell of sight. Your writer was one of these crazies and the results of his catch feature here today.

This began as ‘nursery food’ designed to motivate picky eaters. Today, it is a non-age-specific staple in our family, giving new life to potatoes and their poor relations, sweet potatoes.

Croutons are a life-after-death experience for stale bread. Revved up by basil they give texture and the joyous illusion of substance to any soup. And with winter already here a good bowl of steaming cream of tomato soup is the perfect counterbalance to the weather.

Deep-fried chicken – how the taste buds rejoice! Is there a better way to swiftly prepare poultry? Hotter? Tastier? Even more juicy?