Tony Jackman

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

AIRFRYDAY If yesterday's spicy fish cakes recipe whetted your appetite, here's another, this time for your air fryer. Leftover braaied snoek and some canned tuna in brine, drained, were put to use in a mixture for fish cakes cooked in the air fryer. With food prices being so outrageously high, nobody likes to waste leftover food. I found myself with some leftover snoek the other day, so I thought about my options for using it. Snoek makes a lovely pâté, so that was one possibility.

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

SHIPBOARD DIARY   At berth in Duncan Dock on a clear Cape Town night, Cunard’s Queen Anne displays her majesty.

2 weeks ago | dailymaverick.co.za | Tony Jackman

Direct lines can be drawn between events, through time, so that suddenly the past event seems closer to the present one. Sitting in the Carinthia lounge on deck 3 of Cunard’s Queen Anne, en route from Durban to Cape Town, on Wednesday, I find myself contemplating this. Maybe the space-time continuum is in play, or perhaps my imagination just goes wild at times.

2 weeks ago | dailymaverick.co.za | Tony Jackman

WHAT’S COOKING There's something of a chillibite (bhaji/pakora) about these spicy fish cakes. Coriander, fennel and cumin spice them up, along with garlic (of course) and chilli. This recipe uses gram flour (chickpea flour) as a binding agent, rather than potatoes, lending it a firm texture that holds together very well. It’s a fish cake with the pleasing texture of a chillibite (bhaji/pakora), the Indian (and Punjabi) delicacy that gram flour is best known for.

2 weeks ago | dailymaverick.co.za | Tony Jackman

WHAT’S COOKING A fish curry cooked in a clay pot is wonderfully satisfying. First, if you don’t own one, you need to make a really lucky score at your local second hand store. Like I did. I spotted it from the other side of the room. I say “room”, but More4Less in Cradock is more like an aircraft hangar packed with the whole world. Long and low, terracotta, and somewhat fishy. A fish-shaped terracotta clay cooking pot. I had to have it.