For chef Marlene van der Westhuizen, cooking is very much a calling, a labour of love. Her passion for food and entertainment is tangible when paging through her delightful new book, Sumptuous.
You too can become a super chef by learning from the master herself: van der Westhuizen gives private cooking classes. She and her marble slab (which up to fifteen aspiring chefs can crowd around) recently appeared in a Property Magazine feature on South Africa’s top kitchenistas:
Marlene took a long detour through her life to become a chef. ‘I was in Brussels with Deon [her husband]. There was a little chef shop on a tiny little street. It was an amazing place: the deeper you went in, the bigger the pots became. I walked through this shop and I suddenly realised that yes, you are a good cook but you know fuck all. It was bit of a moment. I was 34 years old. I’d wasted fabulous opportunities and now - what was I going to do? I talked to Deon on the plane back and said either I do it now or I shall regret my life forever.
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November 17th, 2009 @10:11 #
Straw poll: is there anyone who buys delectable chefs' books who actually cooks from them? I am convinced it is all just delicious food-porn. The amount of cooking I have done is definitely inverse to the number of cook books I have. Whenever I read a cook book I never think. Oh how delicious, let's start cooking. I think Oh how delicious, lets go out...
November 17th, 2009 @10:36 #
I cook from a cookbook... my own...
November 17th, 2009 @10:41 #
We regularly use Nigella Lawson's recipes, and some Nigel Slater, particularly his potato recipes. Most of our recipe-cooking, though, comes from basic references like Sannie Smit's South African Cooking (I don't know the exact title). My mother always used Jess Davitz's big red cookbook for cakes and sweets... I have that copy, battered and stained as it is.
November 17th, 2009 @11:27 #
I cook mainly from a tome called The Royal Hostess - first edition came out in the 50s and has helpful instructions on boiling eggs and making tea. It was aimed at the new bride...I do get Jamie/Nigella moments...but usually I have to say they reinforce something that came from somewhere else. But recently hunger leads me to restaurants. And hungry looking children make me cross...
November 17th, 2009 @12:52 #
LOL, Margie... you're a cool mom.
November 17th, 2009 @12:59 #
I was very keen on recipe books in my teens (my mother was not a great cook, so her daughters all took to the kitchen and recipes in self-defence). Then a friend who'd lived in Thailand taught me to cook Thai food, and I realised cooking was a process with its own logic. Next, was being taught to cook Indian and "Cape Malay" dishes by housemates. None of them relied on recipes, other than for occasional inspiration. So now while I love recipe books, they're definitely in the food porn category for me.
November 17th, 2009 @20:10 #
I also use The Royal Hostess, inherited from my grandmother. Astonishing how many of the recipes seem to involve Royal baking powder :) I just love that book. It's a real historical curiosity and astonishingly comprehensive. Any recipe collection that includes instructions on how to make "Marmite Butter Sandwiches" is a winner in my book. But for some recipes it really is the best - like white bread, plain scones, Christmas fruit cake, and many others.
Like Louis, I use Nigella a lot, especially Nigella Express. I adore the way she writes, although I can't stand her on-screen persona.
November 17th, 2009 @21:02 #
Nigella is good. Jamie is goood. Nigel is good. But I suspect that all of them had some kind of version of the Royal Hostess:) The three egg cake has been our family staple for generations now. never flops. Even new brides can't mess it up
November 17th, 2009 @21:54 #
Fi, if we'd been at school together we'd've been pulling one another's pigtails, you know??? But now that we're all grown, I can love you big-time :)
I'm a Nigella persona fan. Not so much Jamie. Which is weird because I like Jamie's recipes more than I like Nigella's. But I've never cooked them, because, like Margie, I can't cook and read at the same time. Freaks me out. I just invent stuff and sometimes it works. My kids cook better than I do, and most kids know NEVER to give me the hungry look.
Hey how about Mrs Beeton, for serious kitchen voodoo? I predict that in a food-challenged future, we'll need a Beeton revival.
November 17th, 2009 @23:39 #
Once upon a time, like Emma Kriel, I worked for very wealthy elderly English aristocrats as a cook. I was expected to produce things I'd never heard of or made in my life: trout almondine, artichokes with hollandaise sauce (with fresh artichokes, great knobbly fists of mud, from the garden -- I had NO idea what to do with them), blackberry fool (which I came to love and still yearn for, but it doesn't taste the same if you don't pick your own berries), summer pudding... oh, and I had to serve fresh homemade custard with every pud. We are talking about making it the old-fashioned way: NO POWDER. I got blisters on my hands from stirring.
But the point is that I would have been lost without Mrs Beeton, the only recipe book in the entire house. It was she who unlocked the mysteries of artichokes to me (starting with how to tackle the muddy lumps). It was also from her that I discobered the secret of truly good British cooking is simple: masses of fresh cream, butter and eggs, in everything. The cuisine never really recovered from WWII rationing.
November 18th, 2009 @07:22 #
Mrs Beeton has the most fabulous chapter on how to treat your husband for gunshot wounds. I remember a line that went something like this: 'Husbands, when shot, are inclined to become hysterical.' There is also a helpful chapter on how to handle inappropriate relations between the tweenie and the footman. And a pudding recipe that calls for 144 egg yolks!
November 18th, 2009 @09:21 #
Oh Margie, that is indeed hysterical. I remember reading all the bits about staff and their duties -- butler, parlourmaid, underparlourmaid, etc -- round-eyed, esp as my employer had clearly taken her directive from them: she wanted me to curtsey upon seeing her for the first time each day -- and instruct the rest of the staff (I was in charge of a household staff of five!!) to do so as well. I used to laugh like a drain every time she brought it up.
November 18th, 2009 @09:45 #
Helen, when was this and how did you qualify for the position? This sounds way more hectic than the usual au-pairing-in-London story. In fact it sounds like a highly entertaining blog in its own right.
November 18th, 2009 @10:01 #
For two years in the late eighties, I sponsored my PhD habit (I was doing the research in the British Museum and Bodleian Library) by working for an agency that sent housekeepers, companions and nurses to the homes of wealthy elders or invalids. I had NO qualifications, but the Quakers recommended me as hard-working and honest, with kitchen experience, and off I went, learning on the job. I always wanted to write a book about it: I had some incredible experiences, including looking after a wonderful woman who was paraplegic -- my first job, and I had to learn ALL the nursing stuff on the spot -- and living in a magnificent Shropshire National Trust property, surrounded by treasures, with one book so valuable we were all told that in case of fire, we had to rush to the library to rescue it before fleeing the building... but then Emma Kriel wrote her wonderful "Close the Door Softly Behind You" about exactly the same sort of experience! But I might still write about that chapter of my life -- blogging it, there's an idea.