Winter in the cookery book industry was announced with the release of Topsi Venter’s Fooding about with Topsi (Eie Ruimte Publishing). Something of a coffee-table art book, it includes works by such artists as Brett Murray, Beezy Bailey and Xolile Mtakatya.
This pricey collector’s item is presented in Venter’s own handwriting, lending something personal to the journey one takes with the author in the kitchen. An endorsement from none other than the master, Robert Carrier, places Venter’s inventions in the higher order of creation: ”Topsi cooks with a painter’s eye. Imaginatively … Her whimsical way of jotting down a recipe. Her style. Her daring … and her innate good taste.”
Artistic contributions come from the fine-art set who make up so much of the new coffee society of the Cape. Highveld eaters will get that niggling bitterness we feel when we consider that our compatriots down south are eating better than us. Some respite is found in Philippa Cheifitz’s Cape Town Food (Struik), which begins with a role of honour: a tribute to the seafaring cultures of old that brought their flavours to the Cape. She mentions the Portuguese, the Dutch and the ”educated political prisoners” from Indonesia — imported as slaves.
Sadly, Cheifitz makes no mention of what the indigenous people of the Cape ate. Generally, Cape foodies tend to ignore their African roots. Here, a recipe for chicken with waterblommetjies and egg and lemon sauce on baked ristotto stands as a lone postmodern tribute. But there is a lot that is Cape Town in Cheifitz’s book — a chapter on cooking with the fruits of the vine, a chapter on spices and some over-the-top ideas for eating outdoors.
On a more sedate note, we move north to the Franschoek valley to meet up with the proprietors and author of La Petite Ferme (Struik). This family restaurant was opened by John and Carol Dendy Young in 1984 as a place for light lunches. Today it serves ”country cuisine” and is run by a new generation with ”a passion for uncomplicated entertainment”.
Whether one is good or bad in the kitchen, when winter arrives one thinks of soup. Well, Le Petit Ferme kicks off with a chapter on soups that combine the unpredictable with the highly manageable: curried apple soup, carrot and ginger soup, pear and blue cheese soup, among others.
Indigenous stuff abounds, including a smoked kudu salad, kudu casserole, yet another recipe for bobotie and a standard Malay pickled fish. Le Petit Ferme , with its wise wine suggestions and Huguenot approach, is not only about the Cape — it’s about a fusion of Cape and Mediterranean culuture; it’s about the busy locals who make up the kitchen staff, photographed beaming by Paddy Howes, proud at their posts.