Magdaleen van Wyk

This is refreshing change from the lavish and expensively-illustrated artworks containing unlikely collations, comprising inaccessible ingredients, these recipes are as comfortable and familiar as a pair of fleece slippers.

Expect traditional South African cooking the way your grandmother’s housekeeper used to do it, when the old “Blue Book” was the kitchen Bible.

You won’t find exotic dishes like giraffe carpaccio or snoek sashimi; forget about fat-free this or carb-free that, about steaming and grilling — our national cuisine is rich, tasty and calorific, saturated in carbohydrates, fats, spices and sugar.

Ideal for both the amateur cook and the professional, the book takes nothing for granted: it includes all the basic recipes for sauces, stocks and pastry, then explains how to combine these into — for example — a cream of waterblommetjie soup. Bredies, biryanis and boboties are covered, together with brief notes about their history, and usual accompaniments.

For the most part, South African dishes are an enticing and unusual collaboration of Eastern fusion with German carnal innovations, married to Victorian excellence. In a word: Yum.… (meer)

Bought this cookbook when I lived in Durban in 1987. Magdaleen Van Wyk is supposed to be the Fanny Farmer of S African cooking - the Cape Malay curries are shockingly good, along with the chutneys and the sambals. Mind you, some of the stuff you can't make unless you know where to find springbok (gazelle-like jumpy animal with long pointy horns), ostrich and some oddly named veg, but wonderful all the same. I visited Caeptown only last week after 20 years (can't believe it) and they had re-issued the book with NO PICTURES. How can you you do that? Don't you WANT to see what the dish is supposed to look like? And what about all of of us nutty folk who READ cookbooks just for the sheer enjoyment?… (meer)