Food blogging has taken the Internet by storm.  We should know, the Wickedfood blog gets over 2 600 views per week.

One of south Africa’s more active food bloggers,  Sarah Graham, has just released her first cookbook  – Bitten: Unpretentious Recipes From A Food Blogger. The book includes a selection of the more popular recipes from her blog, as well as several new ones.  Many of the recipes draw inspiration from food moments with her family. For the large part, they are unpretentious recipes aimed largely at the novice cook.  Most recipes in the book are supported by full page photographs of the dish.

To add extra spice she has also included a selection of recipes from fellow bloggers.  Most probably not the most inspirational book out there, but rather a good selection of everyday recipes for the home cook.  And there are some great baking recipes.

Interested in buying this book? Visit - Red Pepper Books – The South African online bookshop, is able to offer you great prices on any book you are looking for, and they deliver to your door. Pay only R197 for this book (Recommended Retail Price = R230)!  Red Pepper Books is offering Wickedfood Cooking School subscribers an EXTRA 10% off this book. Simply type in the promotional code WICKEDFOOD on the shipping page of the checkout process and your purchase will be reduced by a further 10%, a total saving of R33.

Wickedfood Cooking School runs cooking classes throughout the year at its purpose-built Johannesburg cooking studio. Cookery classes are run in the mornings and evenings 7 days a week (subject to a minimum of 12 people). The venue is also popular for corporate events and private functions – teambuilding cooking classes, birthdays, kitchen teas, and dinner parties with a difference. Our cooking lessons are hands-on, where every person gets to participate in the preparation of the dishes. They are also a lot of fun where you not only learn new skills, but get to meet people with similar interests. For corporate groups and team building cooking classes these events are a novel way of creating staff interaction or entertaining clients.

In France, home bakers have relied on a folksy little baking book – the country’s answer to Kook en Geniet, sort of – called Je Sais Faire la Pâtisserie, for the past 70-odd years. First published in 1938, this bestseller, has now been translated into English as The Art of French Baking.

The author, Ginette Mathiot (1907–1998), taught three generations of the French how to cook and is the ultimate authority on French home cooking. She wrote more than 30 best-selling cookbooks, covering all subjects in French cuisine. Je sais cuisiner (I Know How To Cook) was her definitive, most comprehensive work, which brings together recipes for every classic French dish.

In The Art of French Baking, Ginette covers the fundamentals of the French pastry kitchen, from éclairs and fruit tartlets to macaroons and madeleines, when it comes to sweet things, no-one does it better than the French. Beautiful, elegant and delicious, French desserts are easy to create at home as only a few basic recipes are needed to make some of the world’s most renowned cakes and tarts – try the section on soufflés or Tarte Tatin. The book  contains more than 350 simple recipes that anyone can follow at home.

The book also includes details of basic equipment, techniques and information on how to troubleshoot common baking problems. Along with beautiful photographs and illustrations throughout, The Art of French Baking is an inspiring collection to celebrate the sweet tastes of France. A book that will definitely become a feature in the Wickedfood Cooking School library as a reference for our baking classes.

Interested in buying this book? Visit - Red Pepper Books – The South African online bookshop, is able to offer you great prices on any book you are looking for, and they deliver to your door. Pay only R316 for this book (Recommended Retail Price = R395)!  Red Pepper Books is offering Wickedfood Cooking School subscribers an EXTRA 10% off this book. Simply type in the promotional code WICKEDFOOD on the shipping page of the checkout process and your purchase will be reduced by a further 10%, a total saving of R79.

Wickedfood Cooking School runs cooking classes throughout the year at its purpose-built Johannesburg cooking studio. Cookery classes are run in the mornings and evenings 7 days a week (subject to a minimum of 12 people). The venue is also popular for corporate events and private functions – teambuilding cooking classes, birthdays, kitchen teas, and dinner parties with a difference. Our cooking lessons are hands-on, where every person gets to participate in the preparation of the dishes. They are also a lot of fun where you not only learn new skills, but get to meet people with similar interests. For corporate groups and team building cooking classes these events are a novel way of creating staff interaction or entertaining clients.

Wickedfood Cooking School, SUNNINGHILL

Information & bookings (076) 236-2345  sunninghill@wickedfood.co.za

Hi all,

April means Easter and a slew of long weekends.  To all those going away, drive carefully and relax with some good food.

This year for the first time Wickedfood Cooking School is staying open over the Easter weekend and it’s pleasing to note that both the pasta cooking class and Thai cooking classes are fully subscribed. We still have limited space for the Mexican cooking class and the outdoor (poultry) cooking class, so book early to avoid disappointment.

Also note that the May programme is now open for bookings.  Once again we take you on culinary tour of the world – Spain, Cajun, Turkey, Italy and India.  And we teach you some great skills, including 30 minute (veg) meals and how to make sushi.

Find us on Facebook and Twitter – just search for Wickedfood and you will find us. We update the blog on a daily basis and publish it through Facebook and Twitter.

Looking for info on food?

If you have any food-related questions, or a dish that you just can’t get right or even a certain recipe that you are looking for, but just can’t seem to find, then contact us and we will do our best to answer it as soon as possible. Click Here for more information. Hope to hear from you soon.

Wickedfood Cooking School news

The Cooking class programmes for April and May are up on the internet. Wickedfood Cooking School runs cooking classes with a minimum of 8 participants and a maximum of 12 giving everyone hands-on experience and keeping the cooking class small enough for maximum learning. These cooking classes are conducted by our senior instructors who have extensive experience in the food industry and share a variety of additional cooking tips throughout the cooking class.

• Sunday 08 April at 4pm  – Making flavoured pasta, shapes and sauces (R370pp). Making pasta is really easy, and fresh pasta tastes better too. Learn the secrets to making pasta from scratch in this pasta cooking class. We also include fillings and sauces for these unique pasta shapes and flavours. Dishes include pepper fettuccini with an Alfredo sauce, chilli tagliatelle with a seafood cream, beef filled spinach ravioli and fried sweet pasta with grappa.
• Monday 09 April at 6pm –Thai Class (R380pp). Thai food is often referred to as having an explosion of flavours in your mouth all at once. This Thai cooking class teaches you how to balance these five important flavours. Dishes in this class include Luang Prabang salad, fried eggplant with pork, fried rice noodles, sticky rice and steamed banana pudding.
• Monday 16 April at 6pm – Classic Mexican dishes for entertaining (R370pp). An exotic blend of new world flavours, perfect for entertaining with a difference in this Mexican cooking class – guacamole, salsa Mexicana, burritas, tortilla soup, chicken chocolate, chilli sauce and white flan.
• Sunday 22 April at 4pm – Outdoor Cooking – poultry (R390 per class). Learn the secrets of outdoor cooking on Cadac kettlebraais and gas barbecues. Dishes covered in this cooking class include whole roast juicy chicken, how to smoke a chicken in a kettlebraai, tangy tomato marinade, chicken kebabs, quick and easy bread pockets, grilled vegetables and bananas with a chocolate sauce.
• Tuesday 24 April at 6pm – Cooked in Africa (R380pp). Justin Bonello has become a cult hero in the South African culinary world. Through his quirky television series, and accompanying book, Cooked In Africa, he has taken a bunch of friends on a culinary road trip through southern Africa.  We’ve taken a few of the recipes from the series and reinterpreted them to create a delicious South African inspired menu – .

Cookbook of the week

The Art of French Baking

In France, home bakers have relied on a little baking book called Je Sais Faire la Pâtisserie, for the past 70-odd years. First published in 1938, this bestseller, has now been translated into English, and covers topics as diverse as éclairs and fruit tartlets to macaroons and madeleines. … Click here to read more.

Click Here for reviews of all our cookbook reviews.

Food quote of the week

“Shipping is a terrible thing to do to vegetables.  They probably get jet-lagged, just like people.” – Elizabeth Berry

Recipes of the week:

Hot cross buns

They have certainly been in the news this year, what with the various religious April fools’ jokes. And to make them even more interesting, some supermarkets are now even making them in loaf forms. Here is our recipe for these traditional spiced, sticky glazed fruit buns with pastry crosses. ….Click Here for all our recipes.

Wickedfood Cooking School runs cooking classes throughout the year at its purpose-built Johannesburg cooking studio. Cookery classes are run in the mornings and evenings 7 days a week (subject to a minimum of 12 people). The venue is also popular for corporate events and private functions – teambuilding cooking classes, birthdays, kitchen teas, and dinner parties with a difference. Our cooking lessons are hands-on, where every person gets to participate in the preparation of the dishes. They are also a lot of fun where you not only learn new skills, but get to meet people with similar interests. For corporate groups and team building cooking classes these events are a novel way of creating staff interaction or entertaining clients.

Large purple (back) and small Thai (front right) eggplant or aubergine

Brinjal, Aubergine, Eggplant, all names interchangeable for members of the plant  family Solanaceae (also known as the nightshades), genus Solanum, and native to Africa and Asia. The fruits grow up to half a meter in length and can weigh over 1kg. These fruits (actually berries), may be black, purple, green, white, striped, and sometimes even red. Eggplants come in many shapes, sizes and colours. But how did it get its name Eggplant?

Late in the 1500s British traders introduced London’s greengrocers to a strange new vegetable they’d picked up along the coast of West Africa. By 1587 this so-called “Guinea squash” was on English dinner tables. Although eaten as a vegetable, it was actually a small fruit about the size of a hen’s egg. It was also the same colour as a hen’s egg. This pure white ellipsoid made an eye-catching edible, which for obvious reasons the public soon dubbed “eggplant.”

The African eggplant

At roughly the same time another vegetable also appeared in Britain. This one had fruits nothing like eggs. They were much larger, deep purple in colour, and irregularly mis-shapen. For all their differences, though, the two plants were botanically related (members of the plant  family Solanaceae) and shared common culinary characteristics.

For a while both were used. Eventually, however, the Guinea squash lost its toehold, and fell out of Western cuisine. The newcomer, on the other hand, not only survived but also took over its predecessor’s felicitous name. This is how a purplish blob, looking like no egg, came to be misnamed “eggplant.” The interloper that stole an African plant’s good name hailed from Asia, where it has been cultivated more than 4,000 years. … Click here to read more.

The bitter apple, very similar visually to the Thai eggplant.

In South Africa , we also have a variety of the Solanaceae family.  The most common  is the bitter apple or solanum incanum, very simmilar visually to the Thai eggplant.  At Wickedfood Earth we even have the two species growing within 50m of each other, the Thai eggplant cultivated, while  the bitter apple grows naturally.

Cooking eggplant

Eggplant very often has the bitterness to it. At Wickedfood Cooking school we have found that soaking it in salted water, once it has been peeled and sliced, extracts most of the bitter juices.  Before cooking, gently squeeze out as much water as possible.  This also stops the eggplant from a absorbing excessive oil when frying.

Wickedfood Cooking School runs cooking classes throughout the year at its purpose-built Johannesburg cooking studio. Cookery classes are run in the mornings and evenings 7 days a week (subject to a minimum of 12 people). The venue is also popular for corporate events and private functions – teambuilding cooking classes, birthdays, kitchen teas, and dinner parties with a difference. Our cooking lessons are hands-on, where every person gets to participate in the preparation of the dishes. They are also a lot of fun where you not only learn new skills, but get to meet people with similar interests. For corporate groups and team building cooking classes these events are a novel way of creating staff interaction or entertaining clients.

Reuben Riffel is one of South Africa’s top chefs. He is a shining light of a local boy made good, from humble beginnings to the pinnacle of the South African food industry.  Today he is  owner of Reuben’s Restuarant in Franschhoek, and concept chef at Reuben’s One & Only Cape Town as well as the Robertson Small Hotel.

And to crown of all, he has also produced two books.  In his latest, Reuben Cooks Local he has taken South African ingredients from snoek to skilpadjies and given them his own unique twist – skilpadjies, usually a snack cooked over the coals, is here elegantly presented on a green pea mash with a muscadel jus, or seared miso scallops on creamy mielie puree, elevating the ingredients to a totally new level.

The book is divided into chapters from the sea, field, earth, orchard, wild and vine. Although I’m not totally in favour of the way the book has been divided up, the recipes are nonetheless inspirational.  This is not another traditional South African cookbook, but rather a book taking traditional South African ingredients and cooking styles, and reinterpreting them for the modern kitchen.

And apart from the recipes, the book has also been beautifully designed by Quivertree, and photographed by their in-house photographer, Craig Fraser, who is also a true master of his craft. The book will inspire you in the kitchen, and also make a superb corporate gift for international clients.

Interested in buying this book? Visit - Red Pepper Books – The South African online bookshop, is able to offer you great prices on any book you are looking for, and they deliver to your door. Pay only R312 for this book (Recommended Retail Price = R390)!  Red Pepper Books is offering Wickedfood Cooking School subscribers an EXTRA 10% off this book. Simply type in the promotional code WICKEDFOOD on the shipping page of the checkout process and your purchase will be reduced by a further 10%, a total saving of R78.

Wickedfood Cooking School runs cooking classes throughout the year at its purpose-built Johannesburg cooking studio. Cookery classes are run in the mornings and evenings 7 days a week (subject to a minimum of 12 people). The venue is also popular for corporate events and private functions – teambuilding cooking classes, birthdays, kitchen teas, and dinner parties with a difference. Our cooking lessons are hands-on, where every person gets to participate in the preparation of the dishes. They are also a lot of fun where you not only learn new skills, but get to meet people with similar interests. For corporate groups and team building cooking classes these events are a novel way of creating staff interaction or entertaining clients.