Recipes

Industrially generated “home-made” soup is filled with promises, seldom kept. Distance yourself from this never-ending disappointment with real and genuine home-made beefy vegetable soup with herbs. This recipe – a classic, family favourite – lends itself to enhancement, modification and customising, requiring only your creative talents. Just as good out of a thermos as it is in a mug or a bowl, this soup is a powerful addition to your personal repertoire of good food.

Say “today’s meal is a salad” to any red-blooded, hungry individual and a nasty tone of defiance is sure to consume the conversation. But, just before things get out of hand, add the mystic words “Thai chicken” and all sorts of transformations in mood and food desire start to kick in. Salad alone is a punitive and unnatural thing, but the high octane enhancements of the Thai sauce, coupled with the protein slam-dunk that comes with the chicken, makes this meal as real as food can get.

I guess there are 10 million versions of this national dish. This one gives you the basis to experiment while simultaneously amazing your friends with your Thai-flavoured expertise.

So this family holds a major braai with food of limitless quality and abundance. Somewhere around midnight, the well-fed masses went home, leaving this writer with the singular task of cleaning up.

This quick and easy recipe produces a meal that works almost as well cold as it does hot, providing content for a dinner party or picnic. The breakthrough that makes these fishcakes out of the ordinary is the use of sweet potato. The effect is dazzling, especially when you add the sauce...

Do tiger prawns taste different from non-tiger prawns? Not in my opinion. But they certainly look better on the plate with their stripes only marginally dimmed by cooking. So here is a great way to dress up pasta, giving it that five-star restaurant finish.

This is a magnificent dessert. Never in the history of human pear eating has such a marvellous recipe come into being. Splendid to look at, blissful to eat, this out of the ordinary dessert is a real winner for the beginner cook.

Part of the seriously marvellous joy of cooking is the combination of the familiar with the new. While sometimes this produces a meal fit for Frankenstein, mostly the outcome is thrilling, satisfying and in this singular case – very easy to prepare.

Good to look at, better to eat and best to cook, this Italian-influenced masterpiece might just have been invented by Michelangelo, and offers yet another inspiring way to cook chicken.

Surprise your loved one with a homemade chocolate heart-shaped gift filled with dipped chocolate strawberries.

Sheep have been on the menu for over 10 000 years. It follows that there’s one hell of a lot of ways to cook one, either whole or in part. While roasting lamb is a technique as well-known as any, it remains a challenge for the new cook determined to put their stamp on a classic.

A scone is one of the best things that can happen to flour, eggs and butter. This coffee-time staple is filled with mystery, especially in the hands of home bakers reluctant to share their secrets. So here’s a classic recipe, made by millions of successful home bakers whose number you are about to join.