Zola Nene. Picture: SUPPLIED.
Zola Nene. Picture: SUPPLIED.

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IT’S not going to blow the lights out, but South African television chef Zola Nene’s Simply Delicious is certainly a great reminder that simple is often best.

For Nene, chef and food stylist on SABC 3’s Expresso, food became a career when she dropped out of law school and went off to the UK. There she worked in a brasserie in Cheshire for two years, discovering in that time that she was "destined for a culinary career".

She enrolled at the Institute of Culinary Arts in Stellenbosch. During her studies she worked with chefs such as Margot Janse of Franschoek’s Le Quartier Francais and Chris Erasmus, owner of Foliage, also in Franschhoek.

"My stint working abroad definitely gave me an edge when I attended culinary school," she writes. "I may have been older than most of the people in my class, but I was more focused and driven to learn than anyone else."

Details

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  • TITLE: Simply Delicious
  • AUTHOR: Zola Nene
  • PUBLISHER: Struik Lifestyle

Nene specialised in food media and worked at Top Billing magazine as a food assistant for six months before going into catering and, then, television.

Simply Delicious starts with a chapter devoted to food most South Africans know well — amagwinya (vetkoek or fat cakes), chicken briyani, potato salad and coleslaw. Some have happy twists — oven-roasted sweet potatoes with blue-cheese dip, pap lasagne.

There are recipes that hark back to her time in the UK — pub food such as cheese sausages, beer-battered fish and lamb kebabs — and there are recipes that are more sophisticated too. Chef Chris Erasmus’ recipe for almond-roasted cauliflower, baby swedes and watermelon BBQ sauce is probably the most complex and inventive of the book.

Nene’s cookbook is enthusiastic and bubbly, just, so it appears, as is she. One of the nicest things about it is that no recipe leaves you thinking "sounds delicious, but I’m not sure I can, or want to, pull that off".