A book from and honest cook
|Published
Sweet treats include quince jam, plum compote and pears baked in fynbos honey and lemon juice, teamed with mascarpone or vanilla ice cream. Sweet treats include quince jam, plum compote and pears baked in fynbos honey and lemon juice, teamed with mascarpone or vanilla ice cream.
Mariana’s Country Kitchen
Mariana Esterhuizen
(Human& Rousseau)
It’s seasonal, down-to-earth and quite delicious. Everything you would expect from a country cook like Mariana.
Fame has had zero effect on one of South Africa’s most independent and honest cooks.
It’s this honesty and unwavering culinary integrity that has been transferred from cook to book – it permeates the attractive pages.
Mariana and Peter opened their restaurant in Stanford nearly 16 years ago, and I hear you still have to wait up to three months for a table.
Her heartfelt and amusing reminiscences about their first few months should be essential reading for any budding restaurateur.
Many ingredients are sourced from her extensive vegetable, fruit and herb garden, an aspect, now trendy, that is widely copied by cooks in country and town. Local farms supply most of what she doesn’t grow herself. She sources her trout from the Kleinrivier valley, her free-range eggs from a nearby farm, fresh fish from Gansbaai harbour and free-range chickens and ducks from another farm.
As vegetables and fruit ripen, so do her menus take shape. Many of Mariana’s creations are meat and poultry-free, without being listed as vegetarian. Most recipes are accompanied by a story, and – as autumn creeps in after a long and hot summer – let’s take a quick peek at this section of her collection.
Pot-roasted quinces gleam from the page. A Persian combination of baked brinjals and pomegranate seeds, dressed with tahini-spiked yoghurt intrigues. Chicken braised in apple cider is touched with tarragon, served on carrot mash.
Bakes consist of corn bread baked in a frying pan, bread sticks and biscotti.
Sweet treats include quince jam, plum compote and pears baked in fynbos honey and lemon juice, teamed with mascarpone or vanilla ice cream.
Mariana sums up the essence of this compilation: “The garden prescribes and I have to keep in step to make it an enjoyable waltz on a plate. So here I share with you the way I experience life on a plate – by the season.”
Cape Argus