Yemisi Aribisala

Food writer

I have to admit to buying this book impulsively because it is the first food book with black authorship that I have seen since I came to the Western Cape. “…chickens from the shop don’t taste good…their muscles are soft even if it says “free range” on the packet. I go to Diepsloot to buy a real ‘Hard Body’ township chicken.” There is a sense of rightness with the world when a book confesses that. There’s millet uphoko, sorghum, anise and yogurt millet breakfast porridge, classic Dikgobe-black eyed beans cooked with sorghum. Overjoyed to find mucilaginous root vegetables – amadumbes cookedwith bacon, cream and rosemary; 5-hour oven cooked oxtail and tripe and trotters curry. Mabele (sorghum meal) with coconut cream and peanut butter. Amasi curd cheese.