/ 30 November 2018

Lifestyle

What’s not to like? A book dedicated to the liberal use of chocolate in a dizzying array of recipes – with mouthwatering photographs. Cook
Clamp down:Fikile Mbalula says the ANC must be able to account for the questionable wealth of individuals. (Oupa Nkosi)

BOEREKOS WITH A TWIST 
by Annelien Pienaar 
(Human & Rousseau)

In the past few years the list of books written about traditional South African food has grown to almost the same length as a list of ingredients for one of legendary chef and author Yotam Ottolenghi’s more complicated recipes. From Cape Malay treats cooked in the Bokaap and boerekos prepared by tannies on Karoo farms to African traditional food cooked in Soweto kitchens, all have been lovingly listed and the stories that go with them recalled in detail.

So, in order for another book of these recipes to make an impression, there has to be something different to go with the sticky toffee pudding and pickled fish recipes.

Boerekos with a Twist started life as a blog by Annelien Pienaar, whose “recipes with lessons” proved to be extremely popular. And for enthusiastic amateur cooks these lessons are really useful. The conversions section has an exhaustive list of ingredients on the grams per one cup measurement list: for example, coconut is 80g and apricot jam 330g. Useful information in the vegetables section reveals that they should always be placed in boiling water. Dunking them into cold water first makes those good vitamins and minerals dissolve in the water.

Timid first-time bakers might run screaming when they see the list of things that can go wrong: “cake has shrunk dramatically”, “cake has fallen flat” “rusks are rock hard” and “biscuits are stuck in the cookie press”.

And there certainly are recipes with a suitable “twist”. Sweet potatoes are transformed by being made into puffs with caramel. Similarly the often-bland baby marrows get the caramel treatment with a condensed milk and ginger biscuits combination.

Among the long list of ingredients for that old favourite bobotie is the unusual addition of sweet white wine. The butternut and gorgonzola tart is a good combination and the guava foam tart’s glorious pink colour alone is enough to make it a winner. But perhaps this collection of South African recipes needed a more generous measure of “twist” to make it really stand out in the traditional cooking crowd.

GARDEN STYLE: CREATING BEAUTIFUL GARDENS IN SOUTH AFRICA
by Melanie Walker
(Sunbird Publishers)

This is a book overgrown with detail. Everything you need to know about planning your garden — from patterns to plant selection — is here. To help you understand your garden habitat there is information on the various South African biomes. And then there are 20 chapters of different types of gardens you can create. From meadow gardens to moon gardens, vertical gardens to slope gardens, and from wildlife gardens to Jurassic gardens. And how to create each type of garden is described in detail with lists of plants and helpful hints. Every page is packed with envy-inducing photographs of these garden styles.

All this should be inspiring to homeowners eager to turn their gardens into green havens packed with tall trees, flowering shrubs and verdant lawns. But in reality the overwhelming feeling is to prune this lush jungle of detail. Cottage gardens? Snip. Rose gardens? Cut. Water gardens? Chop. Even the grassveld, bushveld and fynbos gardens will probably have to go.

And all we will be left with is the chapter on waterwise gardening. What a killjoy, you might say, but just think of the blazing heatwave we have experienced in the past few weeks and believe that this is just a taste of what is to come.

It might just be the relentless barrage of depressing climate change reports by this newspaper’s doomsday reporter, but if just a fraction of the figures are correct, gardening is going to need a radical rethink.

Yes, we can install tanks to harvest rainwater, mulch all the flower beds and do our best to prevent runoff of rainwater. But we cannot escape the more heat, less water scenario. So if we have these lush, densely planted gardens then we will have to use more municipal water (restrictions permitting) — and deal with the increasingly massive bill at the end of the month.

What we really need to master is how to use waterwise plants to create all the different garden styles. As the book says, the tough but attractive spekboom (Portulacaria afra) works well as a hedge — so it is an ideal substitute for the much-loved box (Buxus sempervirens). Now all that’s needed is a waterwise indigenous alternative to the ubiquitous white iceberg rose.