Will the current fixation on Mediterranean cuisine be replaced by something from deeper south? Probably not. The myth that Africans love their red meat swimming in an ocean of oil has not done much to promote local flavours in a world that is obsessed with cholesterol cutting. And the myth that Africans like their vegetables overcooked and mashed conflicts with the new-look style of Asian cooking – also big these days – stir fried, crunchy and brightly coloured.
Dora Sitole’s Cooking from Cape to Cairo: A taste of Africa is enlightening because it unpicks the preconceptions. On a continent as vast as Africa, food tastes vary so widely that one wonders whether a single publication can do justice to a million wonders. But that’s the thing about the supposed African renaissance, it tends to give anyone consciously Afro-centric the right to hop across the continent and paint everything one colour: rosy.
In Sitole’s rosy account of African eating, it’s amazing to discover that traditional African stews, in southern Africa at any rate, contain hardly any oil at all. Everything is cooked in water. And the variety of vegetable dishes is so vast, even in this 150-page offering, that the vegetarian mind boggles.
This bodes well. The book’s content is also well-balanced between meat and fish. Since fish species vary across the continent, and we in South Africa don’t tend to find such things as changu, chambo, thiof and kapenta, in places local varieties are suggested that apparently will do just as well.
On the exotic stakes, the book rates high, and for those who like to believe that African eating habits are full of interesting, outlandish ingredients, there are enough recipes that include such odious things as worms, testicles and chicken’s heads. One thing is for certain: even though Sitole promotes African cuisine as a new and exciting way of eating, on a continent like this where the poor have to be fed, no potential food source is overlooked.
Sitole’s book follows a two-year culinary journey she and a number of photographers took to discover the secrets of the African pot. Sponsored by True Love magazine and a host of hotels and tourist services, it’s more than just a cookery manual – it’s the realisation of its author’s dream.
Perhaps, with a bit of practice, the book could transform average, ageing white blokes – like this one – into skilled, traditional African housewives.
Cooking from Cape to Cairo: A Taste of Africa by Dora Sitole is published by Tafelberg Publishers and is available at all good bookshops for R143