Buy cook or by book …

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Sitting around admiring the glossy photographs of food in the generous helping of new cookery books might not seem the most constructive thing to be doing in the dark times we are living in. 

Unless, of course, among the books is one titled Recipes for Disaster, full of practical meal plans for those times when there has been a fire at your local substation and the power is out for days. Or, even worse, when there is a problem with the cable to your house and a huge trench has to be excavated in your driveway to replace it.

Or when, somehow, your local reservoir is completely empty and you don’t have water for a week. Or when you discover that the deflation of your salary and the inflation of prices at the supermarket have combined to make it impossible to afford most of the items on your grocery list.

There is a gap in the market for a book that caters to these problems but, in the meantime, there is the internet. On YouTube the Spain on a Fork guy has a recipe for poor man’s potatoes, while the ominously named TheWolfePit offers Hoover stew of the Great Depression. 

Most intriguing is the Food Wishes offering of drunken baked beans, although you will need to find the money for the Mexican-style lager that is a big part of the recipe.

A strong digital presence seems to be a prerequisite for a book deal these days. Fatima Sydow is a great example of this. 

It was not so long ago that her Fatima Sydow Cooks videos didn’t even show her face. All you could see was her hands going through the steps of making traditional Cape Malay recipes. Her homely touch and infectious giggle made her a popular stop for everybody looking for a taste of their youth.

Soon there was a sponsorship from a rice company, then her own line of spices in shops — followed by, of course, the book deal. Her latest offering, Cape Malay Cooking — My Story, My Heritage (Human & Rousseau), gives insight into her life in the Cape Flats community. 

The Malay cooking theme, such a major part of South African food history, has been explored in many books over the years. But Sydow’s clear love for her extended family and the surrounding community shines through in the stories she weaves between the recipes. 

It is a reminder of how food binds generations together. The labour-intensive job of making samoosas gets the whole family involved and turns what could be a finicky, frustrating task into a joyous occasion. 

Religion is a big part of life on the Cape Flats and food for breaking the Ramadan fast features strongly. 

However, it is the most basic morning meal of “Marie biscuits and cheese and dates left over from breaking our fast the night before” that strikes a chord and brings back long-buried youthful memories of dunking Marie biscuits into sweet tea and how often the timing was wrong and a soggy mess sank to the bottom of the cup.

But it is Labarang, “the joyous end to the month of Ramadan”, that really gets the kitchen crowded with busy cooks. There are plenty of savouries but the colourful sweet treats catch the eye: tweegevrietjies (also known as two-tones); pastry horns with chocolate, cream and pistachios; ginger snap cookies and custard biscuits.

Sydow’s book makes us believe a loving family and simple, delicious food can help us overcome all of life’s travails.

Cariema Isaacs’s Modern Cape Malay Cooking (Penguin Books) is another addition to the crowded Cape Malay bookshelf. Isaacs spent her childhood in the Bo-Kaap and her parents and grandparents were skilled cooks who passed on their heritage and skills.

But it is the “modern” in the title that is the main influence for the recipes in this book. 

Apparently, the Cape Malay millennial generation “yearned for more of the popular dishes from the East and West”. So, in the breakfast section you will find blueberry and banana acai bowl and eggs Benedict on mashed avocado toast. No doubt Sydow’s Auntie Girl and Boeta Taypie would be aghast.

But, for me, it is still the traditional Cape Malay favourites that have the most appeal. Spaghetti bluegrass? A quick scroll and my phone will be showing me Gennaro Contaldo giving me his real Italian version. Rather, masala steak sandwich satisfies that craving for Cape flavour  — and then there is a recipe for the “iconic” Gatsby.

It is tempting to recreate this at home but perhaps it is better left to the experts, so that blame for the clogging of my arteries can be apportioned elsewhere.

Mmule Setati apparently has a big social media following and there has been much hype about the launch of her book Feed My Tribe (Penguin Books). “My tribe” refers to “my family, my friends and all my social media followers”. 

This is an eclectic collection of recipes for people who want to take their everyday family menu to the next level. So, for breakfast there is poached eggs with basil pesto and asparagus. The “Sexy Salads” section includes a prawn pasta salad (with a sparkling-wine dressing)  and “Date Night” features honeymoon lobster. 

Bombarded as we are these days with recipes and information about food from all over the world, publishing a book that will sit on a shelf for years to come needs something to  make it stand out. 

A colleague was enthusiastic about the recipe for moto wa ting (soft porridge). The amount of work and the two days it takes to make is a revelation. Perhaps Setati might have leaned more on her Tswana culture to add an extra pinch of local flavour to the book. 

‘Life’s too short,” muttered a friend when confronted by a cookery book with the word “healthy” in its title. The words “oats” and “quinoa” are not in his culinary vocabulary. 

Jamie Oliver lost me when the lists of ingredients and their healthy attributes took up more space on the page than the actual recipe. 

In our wild enthusiasm for cooking and consuming delicious food it is easy to forget that, for some people, healthy eating is essential to ensuring that their lives are not considerably shortened.

This is where Nicci Robertson and her book Thrive — Healthy Recipes that Break the Rules (Penguin) come in. She is the founder of Re-Invent Health and, for those who have dietary limitations or weight problems, there is plenty of useful information and lots of constructive suggestions. 

The recipes show that using healthy ingredients is not as limiting as we might think. The picture of grain-free pancakes looks totally decadent and there is even a passion fruit pavlova.

Like a child with a plate of food, I have kept the best for last. Karen Dudley’s book Onwards (Penguin) is a jewel. 

Beautiful production, stunning photos and recipes that are original, innovative and packed with unusual ingredients and surprising taste combinations.

Dudley, of course, made her name with her much-loved restaurant The Kitchen, in Woodstock. The closure of The Kitchen is yet another reason to curse Covid-19. But it was in the trauma of the closure, the stress of having to find ways to help her staff and the struggle to find the way forward that this book had its roots.

It started with making sauces with leftover supplies from The Kitchen: caper sultana relish, gochujang dressing, deeply roasted sesame sauce … From this grew this captivating collection of recipes. 

The names are often long and alluring: Indian fried rice with lime, peanuts, coriander and chutney podi; fried radishes on whipped feta with dates, apples, red onion and radish tops; roast pumpkin with hot honey and thandai citrus crumbs and melting caramelised cabbage with ginger-fennel smoor. 

The lists of ingredients are sometimes also lengthy (shades of the notoriously complicated ingredients for Yotam Ottolenghi’s recipes). But at no point do you feel intimidated. Instead, there is a feeling of happiness, anticipation and a strong desire to rush into the kitchen and start working on these bold recipes. “I can make that,” you will be thinking. 

Definitely a book that will bear the smudges and spills from many hours spent open on the kitchen table.