Book Review – Simply Delicious

This cookbook by Zola Nene, the resident chef of SABC3’s Expresso Morning Show is a real treat. The food is easy to prepare, with influences of traditional and contemporary African cuisine. It is soul food. Each recipe comes with a beautiful, appetizing picture. Nene shows how to blend different ethnic ingredients to create her tasty dishes.

Her food journey starts with nostalgic nibbles, comfort foods, as Nene calls them, like a pap lasagne. In one of the other chapters there is a delectable recipe for a coffee-cream puff cake with several pictures demonstrating how to prepare each step. I learned to bake mouth-watering bacon-wrapped Camembert and how to smoke salmon with black tea. Chocolate fondants and truffles were also a success. And I made Limoncello for the first time.

It’s a book for cooks with minimum effort, because Nene has no qualms about using ready-made puff pastry and shop-bought mayonnaise in her recipes.

What you feel most like doing, after reading this book, is going to the kitchen to start cooking! I’m looking forward to a next book, with a bit more of a challenge.