When I came back to my flat, they’d eaten all the chocolate.
They’d scaled the side of the building, packed my mother’s jewellery, my work archives on hard drives, my Converse trainers, my whisky, into my backpack, urinated on my bathroom floor, and then absconded.
There was no chocolate left, so I ate teaspoons of peanut butter instead.
In the highveld cold, next to an ineffective halogen heater, I wore Mexican wool socks and considered recent events.
Read MoreOn a narrow street in Rivonia, in a room of plastic tablecloths, you can order a plate of hearts.
At the Little Sheep, they’re of the chicken variety and served raw - dark, shrivelled things, thawing on a saucer - for you to cook yourself, in a tub of bubbling Szechuan stock.
Other hot pot ingredients are easily executed: fish balls can be left boiling for an hour; paper-thin slices of beef only need seconds. Hearts are particular.
Slowly simmered at the right temperature, they are tender, a delicately-fibred cut; yet, any great shocks - too hot, too quick - and they become gumboot tough, unyielding.
Hearts need care.
Read MoreI found myself knee-deep in old Tupperware and Moulinex food processors circa 1983: melamine and plastic, scratched and desolate.
In the depths of the pantry, shadows lurked: an unopened Black & Decker SnowMate, for Malaysian ice kacang and mojitos. Chinese claypots for slow-cooking in a nest of charcoal. A smiling Kitchen Helper set of every slicing blade imaginable. A Fujimaru teppanyaki griddle, three juicers and a waffle iron.
I don’t recall having eaten anything produced with the aid of any of these items.
It is a collection curated with deft domesticity, with visions of sumptuous big-haired dinner parties: lavish with melon balls, and hope. My mother hated cooking, yet planned for greatness.
Read MoreMy Greek boyfriend’s mother was in the country, and I needed to impress.
It would be a romp across wine country, thought I, lubricated by copious amounts of chenin blanc, interspersed with sun-speckled lunches under 100-year-old trees, accompanied by light laughter and birdsong.
There was the charming sandwich lunch at Babylonstoren with greens from their garden, watercress vichyssoise and mildly-underseasoned-but-still-delicious antipasti under the plane leaves at Bread & Wine, riverside breakfasts by our little Franschhoek cottage of fresh croissants and sweet locally-smoked trout. All was going to plan.
Then, we went to Zevenwacht.
Read MoreThere’s that old conversation starter, for awkward dinner parties: What would take to a desert island? Who would you want to be with?
I’ve always been concerned with a much more primal enquiry: What would you eat?
Icelanders have answered it.
Read MoreI’ve been living in a small Icelandic fishing town.
It’s home to 800 people, snowy mountains on three sides, the sea on the other. No one’s seen the sun for 54 days. Troll FM is the local radio station. Festivity is brewing vodka in your garage, taking it to parties in 1.5L Coke bottles.
It’s been a frustrating mating season for Jón, because his latest ram acquisition turned out to be gay. Still, at the Bóndadagur BYO banquet, there are platters of sheep everything, sliced, on foil.
Read MoreWhat makes your chicken special? I asked Eckhart, a broad man in a broad Dros-red golf shirt.
He paused to consider with furrowed brow.
Is it free range? Organic? South African? I pursued.
“It’s, um, frozen,” Eckhart looked pensive.
Read MoreWhat can I do to stop my teeth falling out, I asked.
“Meditate,” he answered.
It turns out I grind my teeth. From stress, Dr K believes, compounded with self-inflicted structural weakness. So the bits of my incisors falling off at will can all be traced back to the first critical crunch.
It was a crab claw in Maputo, eaten cold, with a dollop of tangy mayo on a 16th floor balcony: one of those scarlet shells, thicker than a bread plate and equally solid.
I remember thinking, at the time, it was all worth it.
Read MoreLast week, I cooked for my boyfriend’s mother for the first time.
She is Greek. He is an only child. I was suitably terrified.
The fish looked perfect: clear glassed eyes, bright red gills, unbroken mottled skin, fat and happy. I bought two.
That night, gulping a calming Aperol spritz, I rolled out some old favourites: grilled strips of zucchini and halloumi, with lashings of lemon zest olive oil and triple-washed basil from the dusty inner-city balcony (home-grown, more charming). An vaguely Middle Eastern roast sweet potato salad with fresh figs and crumbled chevre, chilli and a stovetop balsamic reduction.
Just wait for the main, Yiannis told his mother, it’s a surprise.
Read MoreThe sweet woman selling breakfast rolls out of an upcycled horse cart refused to give me a second slice of limp bacon, “Madam doesn’t allow it,” she told me. Then a small dog peed on my coat.
So we drove to an office park in Ferndale, sat down at the corner Italian under a green umbrella, and ordered Sangria and calamari fritti and stracciatella soup. It came, delicate fronds of egg swimming in a warm parmesan broth: a Roman grandmother’s hug in a bowl. It was one of those moments when everything makes sense again.
We passed around the spoon.
“Shame, you really can’t take a photo of that,” my friend Karin said.
We stared at the bowl, pale and beige and lumpy.
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