Anchovy butter
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...
Tournedos Chasseur
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...
Crisp greens in a wok
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...
Pork fillet in beer
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...
Farm special: Beetroot cake
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...
Pasta, pesto & roasted tomatoes
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...
Revving up vanilla ice cream
While there are some folk, this backwoods cook amongst them, who regard plain vanilla ice cream as an eternal miracle of fine dining, other more sophisticated diners have requested a...
Hake & pan-wilted greens
Here’s a way to rev up frozen hake. Playing anything but second fiddle to the fish is a crunchy assortment of slightly unusual green vegetables.
Roast pork with white wine
Pork, red meat’s poor relation, makes a roast of multidimensional complexity if treated right. Thanks to crisp crackling with a moist interior, this roast adds its own special blessing to...
Lamb curry with dates, cream cheese and sweet potato
This magnificent invention can also be called curry without rice. A splendid combination of traditional Cape and KZN cooking, it provides both cook and diners with a powerful set of...
Steak pie
Never judge a book by its cover, or a pie by its pastry. You never know what delicacies lie hidden beneath the dish’s crispy exterior. If it’s succulent texture and...
Crusted chicken breasts with lemon butter sauce
This requires only a few simple ingredients and can be prepared quickly. But it tastes absolutely marvellous. What’s more, it goes with nearly any vegetable or salad you desire.
The ultimate steak sandwich
There’s nothing mysterious about a piece of cold meat between two slices of bread. But here we take the basic sandwich invention and thrust it right into the middle of...
Bucatini Amatriciana: your next pasta classic
There’s a whole lot of gustatory novelty in this splendid collection of ingredients. From pancetta to chilli, to the pasta itself, this menu item for your personal collection is excitingly...
Mussels in beer
Raw mussels, straight off the rocks, were a staple of the strandlopers, indigenous South Africans from long ago. For those of us far from the strand, the nation’s supermarkets provide...
A Mediterranean pasta classic
Here’s a meal from the great folk who gave us the Roman Empire, Luciano Pavarotti, Ferrari sports cars, and some of the strangest Test rugby known to modern man.
Calamari pasta in tomato sauce
Pan-fried calamari is an impressive addition to the new cook’s repertoire, and the tomato sauce is a tasty reinvention of a classic. Enjoy this dish with a cold beer, or...
Stir-fried beef & broccoli
Stir-frying, as I never cease to tell my readers, is a liberation for the new cook. It’s a quick path to astonishing dinner parties or even a quick and fragrant...
Roast chicken with lime salsa verde
While a broiler fowl straight from the chiller at the supermarket may be a marvel of contemporary agriculture, the bird can sometimes be a little low on flavour. And that’s...
KZN coastal aubergine curry
This is a fine stand-alone dish, or if you’re a relentless carnivore like this writer, a great side-dish to a mutton or chicken curry. A couple of roti per diner...
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