Tony Jackman

1 week ago | dailymaverick.co.za | Tony Jackman

After a tour of a fine foods business that grew out of a car boot, fire rained down on a sunny, lazy day on a Stellenbosch farm. If fire could make waves, this was it. She ate an oyster for the first time in all the 26 years of her life so far, right in front of me. She had her android device on video, trained at her face, while she focused, smiled, and let the sweet Saldanha Bay oyster slide into her mouth. Three or four chews and down it went. “That was nice. Quite nice.

1 week ago | dailymaverick.co.za | Tony Jackman

Once upon a time, there was only Cottage Pie, no matter what meat was used in it. The term ‘Shepherd’s Pie’ would only surface six decades later. So, when next an uppity food snob corrects you for calling a lamb version ‘Cottage Pie’, correct them right back. Cottage Pie dates to early 1790s England and had been around for six decades before Shepherd’s Pie came along, the latter only appearing in the 1850s.

1 week ago | dailymaverick.co.za | Tony Jackman

GASTROTURF Photo by Nick Karvounis on Unsplash It’s the badge above the grille of a fine old Studebaker. The funnel atop Cunard’s Queen Mary as she glides regally into New York City. The final flourish of paint on a Van Gogh self-portrait before he signs it. It’s the thing that makes a dish complete. It’s the sauce. Years spent at culinary college, taking everything in. Hundreds of thousands of rand spent on setting up your restaurant. Hours and hours boiling down the chicken stock, and the...

1 week ago | dailymaverick.co.za | Tony Jackman

The traditional British bread and butter pudding is switched up by using croissants and candied ginger in this air fryer recipe. Foil containers turn out to be a very handy item for an air fryer. Expect a rush on them, and foil loaf tins and the like becoming ubiquitous while also potentially selling out once everyone who owns an air fryer gets wind of this. A regular foil loaf tin, 13 cm x 25 cm, was perfect for the quantities of this pudding. Don't want to see this?

1 week ago | dailymaverick.co.za | Tony Jackman

Brinjals make a great curry, and it’s a light meal too. This curry is sweetly spiced, with a coconut cream base, and is matched with dhania yoghurt. My friend Devi Moodliar used to make a delicious and fragrant brinjal curry when we press types hung out at her and her husband Chan’s Talk of the Town restaurant in Cape Town in the Nineties. I don’t have her recipe but this is my take on it. I first roasted chunks of eggplant at a very high temperature to avoid them disintegrating.