Something sensuous. A bit exotic to keep her quick wit guessing. And hugely comforting like a hug, because this friend and I don’t see each other often.

Plus, have I ever told you, I love making risotto.

The recipe revolved around the vividly coloured berbere spice a foodie friend slipped me. She just returned from Turkey’s spice markets and gave me a few precious tablespoons from her little brown paper bag.

It gave me a thrill, but it’s by no means essential to include it. The smoked paprika gives the dish enough of a satisfying depth of smokiness. And in lieu of berbere, a dash of dried chilli flakes will impart a pleasant tickle, if that’s how you roll. Sumac can easily be replaced with a squeeze of lemon juice.

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Photography: Lee Malan.Styling & recipe: Aletta Lintvelt

Greenbean and macademia nut salad

Verliefhê

onthou jy sterbesaaide
nagte asemophou
voor ons kon weet
drome kom op
en verskiet

voete en harte
raak raak,
ongemerk aan die slaap
om die vuur
voor ons kon weet
dat verliefhê ook so voel

en van die vreemdste seer
as die lewe terugkeer

dit wat jy besit
soet in die gras
met skoenlappers
en liewensheersbesies
op ‘n middag in die gras
terwyl ‘n vliegtuig bo-oor vlieg
en ons lywe lieflê beloftes af
en die ek en die jy klein raak.

is ‘n flitsende lig
hemelliggame
wat die skaduwee bring
die kole maak as
asb en as ons nog en wat as as

die nag bring die dag
ons wriemel in slaapsakke
papies enkel een
raak broos wakker
en vry

(Woodstock, 28 Julie 2011)

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Photography: Lee Malan.Styling & recipe: Aletta Lintvelt

I put on Takk by Sigur Ros and ideas, dreams and plans collided and sloshed around in my heart and head while I bathed at a time usually reserved for sleeping. Today everything seems: Possible.

There is something about newness that ignites all sorts of desires, possibilities and general good vibes. I wonder if everyone feels like this? For the longest time I used to stave off the pangs for real renewal with things like new clothes, new food, new places, new jobs… I remember myself in new food deli’s – you would swear the pink peppercorns and imported overpriced pasta would actually contribute to my life here on earth and eternal happiness.

All this year it has taken me to come to a place where I could get real about what I want and what it would take for me to get it. A place that is very quiet and very scary at first. I’ve let it go. All of my dreams. They used to fill me with anxiety. I had to sit in the frighting stillness of Not Doing for a really long time. A place that is beyond trust, because in trust there is still assumption and hope … of something changing, getting better, attainment. Beyond that there is just – being. Being connected.

And now a new idea, a new possibility has come down. I used to keep my visions so high, at such great heights, that I was assured of always having them! In their immaculate unrealised state. Hovering up there with angels, and all things unmarred by reality. But this dream is coming down and meeting me halfway. And I’m willing to let it.

“It’s the possibility of having a dream come true that makes life interesting,” says Poelho Coelho. Someone else added to that, that with each small creative act, you set in motion all of the possibilities of your desires coming to you.

PS: You should really recycle by the way – visit this site for recycling in Cape Town, they pick it up.

PS If you would like to get an email notification every time I post (which is about once a week), please subscribe in the top right corner. Your email address will NEVER be shared or published, this is a safe space.

Photography: Lee Malan.Styling & recipe: Aletta Lintvelt

There is an old adage “It’s not what you do, but how you do it” that applies to both life and cooking. It is not about the most exotic or trendy or expensive produce or ingredients. These days I seldom indulge in them. I pay attention to small things. I take time with the how of things. Like this very simple dish that I made last night again. 

I find I often crave it.

What always surprises me when I serve it is that someone will always say with wonder: “This beetroot!” And they will mean – this beetroot – not  this beetroot dish. They will marvel at the sweetness and earthiness innate in this glorious earth jewel. Don’t you feel sorry for the ones that end up drenched in sour bottles, robbed of their flavour? Here the fragrant creaminess of herb butter and the savoury moreish-ness of melting charred onion acts as a delicious smokescreen for discovering the real star of the show. I often wish restaurants were self-assured enough to serve this kind of dish without apologising for the fact that it is cheap and uncomplicated. Just a vegetable the way nature intended.

It is interesting for me to notice how my cooking has changed as my outlook and expectations of life shifted over the last 9 months. I’m much more content to just let a dish be without too much interference. Without trying to hard with it. To let the person eating it think “wow beetroot is amazing” instead of “wow I had this very interesting/expensive/creative dish”.

It has not always been this way. Despite “it’s not what you do Aletta, but how you do it” being the ultimate often-said-with-exasperation advice given to me by my spiritual teacher of five years… And  after that being reiterated by no less than two very expensive life coaches, at least three dozen books read on the subject of finding meaning in life and enlightenment, and in the contented eyes of ordinary people everywhere who exude a joy for living…

I never got it.

Well I surely thought I got it. I, in fact, completely agreed and as an advice-giver-supremo have myself dispensed the sage knowledge to all who looked like they needed to know. Looking at other people I could clearly see how this applied to their life. How they would become happy and fulfilled if they could bring their full attention and joy into each moment of whatever they are doing and how if they could just accept and see themselves as as part of the fabric of life, their search would be over.

The thing is this. I never thought that the advice could apply to me. Not yet anyway. It would apply to me, I reasoned, once I’ve gotten THAT job, once earn that much, once I’m that successful, once I have the recognition from those important people. Then, yes, it will be about “how”. I would be happy then and I would be one with the ebb and flow of the universe. Content to just be. One day, when I arrive where I really should be.

The reason I found it so incomprehensible is that I’ve always attached a great importance to what I did. It never crossed my mind that my contribution to the world in terms of what I accomplish might not be significant.That the “what” would be anything less than spectacular. Ever since I can remember I’ve always believed that I was special. That I have some kind of gift and some kind of destiny to fullfill. My parents can not be blamed for this. They’ve always been “how you do it” people. I judged them instead for their small expectation of themselves and the world.

I’ve been blessed with a great many gifts. And becoming an adult I reveled in discovering them all. Searching first for myself and later for happiness and then meaning in them all. Am I destined to be a famous writer? Or a a magazine editor? Perhaps being in charge of a successful business would suit me more? Or my own restaurant where I would have praise heaped on my head from all corners of the world. And off course the many other “whats” in between: what countries I have visited, what partners I’ve had, what spiritual workshops I’ve attended.  I was eager to find out what it will be that will end my search, what it will be that will affirm to me that yes, I have made it. THIS is what I am meant to do. Enduring bliss eluded me, despite the temporary alleviation of my search by the affirmation of many bosses, partners, friends and innocent bystanders.

For a long time in my twenties, traveling was the only sanity I knew. I was single and I was fearless and I would just buy a plane ticket and go. Anywhere. And figure it out as I got there. There was an unbelievable freedom in that. There was no expectation, just the moment to moment of unforeseen situations that needed to be dealt with. The joy of no one asking you for your name or job description. No one cared about the “what” in your life. All they were interested in was the “how” of your experience. How did you get here, how was that place you came from, how are you engaging with me in this moment.

The other day I randomly reread parts of a book that I bought many years ago, impressed me for a while, and was then discarded in search of the next new thing. It is called the Invitation. While reading a passage something crystalised for me about my journey in the ten years that followed. The passage was about the values, views and opinions you hold most dear about yourself. The things that define you on the deepest level, that you are proud of, the way in which you see yourself and how others see you. And then you say: I’m willing to give that up. I’m willing to give up that I see myself as hardworking, talented, creative, spiritual, a good mother, a loyal friend, someone who is happy, someone who is productive, someone who will still accomplish great things, someone special.

You take it out with the trash and you never look at it again. And as I let go of all of those things, I was left with something I have never thought of as enough before. Myself.

Suddenly the “what” in my life has become of a great less importance. Off course there is the practicality of making a living, feeding your child, washing the dishes and paying the bills that one is sometimes only able to endure with an attitude of acceptance if not bliss. But as I have taken the power of the “what” away, it can no longer make me happy. Or unhappy. Certainly I still plan things, dream of things and get passionately involved in things. But they are no longer a life-support for “ME”. What I do is no longer as important. I’m now learning about the “how I do it” part. And I find that more and more there are moments, completely unrelated to what I’m doing, when joy finds me. In an unexpected blood orange in a packed of ordinary navels. Traffic on my way to a shoot that gives me time to listen to a song I love. A friend coming for tea. A bag of crisp small beetroots from the Northern Cape in the fridge.

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Photography: Lee Malan.Styling & recipe: Aletta Lintvelt

Cooking, eating, memories, discoveries. It is all so instinctive and personal. I know that when I cook I’m in my happy zone and ideas just flow.

I love that feeling so much that I wish it was possible to bring it to everything I do. And to be sure, there have been a great many moments in my life when I have been aware of and part of the creative pulse of life. Blissfully aware. Just letting it flow and go.

Then there are the other times, of which I’m painfully aware, when I’ve not felt myself plugged into the great reservoir of never-ending possibilities. When my ideas, actions, plans became very small. When I hesitated on the shore of life, too scared of some imagined outcome to dive in. Held back by the paralysing poison of procrastination. Daunted by my own expectation so that I just kept wriggling my toes in the sand; always waiting for that right moment.

I’ve stopped punishing myself about this.

Isn’t is wonderful that a receipt is what you get after spending? That a recipe is what you write after a pleasurable spending experience? I love that idea.

Funny that our life-coach-shrink-guru society has been looking for a recipe for successful living for some time now. We try to find it, formulate it, read books about it and meditate on it. Seeking a method of some guaranteed outcome.

I reckon life, like cooking, is better attempted free-wheeling, on instinct, a combination of adventure and memory. Tempting as it is sometimes is to forgo your own power to create and destroy to tread a well worn path, there is, as Nigel says, unbridled joy in celebrating your own wons.

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Photography: Lee Malan.Styling & recipe: Aletta Lintvelt

You can find out more on Superette’s website.

Open Monday to Friday from 9 till 4
and Saturday from 9 till 2
Closed Public Holidays
218 Albert Road, Woodstock, Cape Town
021 802 5525 | info@superette.co.za

This little place serves unbelievably delicious organic coffee. They really care about where their food comes from. And since there is small menu that is served all day long, you can also be sure to find the perfect hangover cure anytime of the day. Or a piece of cake. I’ll take some pictures next day and do a proper post ; )

They loved it (the vegan, the 30-year-old with the unadventurous eating habits and the pregnant fairy.) It has become my delicious and simple go-to recipe. It is also particularly good in winter when tomatoes are dreary and slow-roasting them with a smattering of sugar and thyme concentrates the flavour beautifully.

So my mental state.

In my relationship of 6 years, that is now also a marriage of 10 months, we have this thing we say when we are crossing a particularly treacherous stream together and tempers are about to get to that point where it will be hard to backtrack. One of us will say “lets be kind to each other” (Kom ons wees mooi met mekaar). It is an olive branch extended in the middle of conflicts that seem larger than us.

We (my love and I) seem to have been in such a place often lately. Which leads me to need gossip, drinking and not thinking.

You could say I’ve been longing for simplicity and passion.

Simplicity as in: no thinking. Sometimes I find that the less I think, the better my life seems to flow. (There is a joke in there, I know.) Which is the reason, truth be told, that I haven’t been here to share my life recently.

And passion…

My marriage vows were not conventional by the standards of many. For one thing, we wrote them ourselves over a bottle of champagne on a magnificent sun-drenched balcony. They induced a promise of fidelity but they did not include the words “for as long as we both shall live”. That is a promise both of us feel that no one person can promise another without possibly compromising their own integrity along the way. Instead we’ve pledged to always be an honest mirror for the other person, and to be true to our selves and to actively seek our own personal growth and support this process also for the other person.

You might wonder where I’m going with this. I’m not sure. Somewhere in the past year our relationship changed, as all things must.

Raising a pre-teen together shifts things into another gear altogether. Sometimes to a level of too much reality. Definitely to a level where “actively pursuing your own growth” is reduced to biting your tongue. A lot. Some days we are so damned tired of admin and negotiating that each of us wants nothing more than to crawl into a hole. Alone. Away from the other one who is also best friend, lover, soul mate, inspiration, because we don’t have time for being all those things to each other anymore. Some days we are brave and bold and magic. Some days I marvel at what a good team we make make. Some days we just hold each other and cry about all that has been lost.

We’ve lost going to bed spontaneously at 10 in the morning with a bottle of vodka, spending the rest of the day laughing and playing between the covers. We’ve lost making selfish plans. We’ve lost long uninterrupted conversations in the evenings, time now dedicated to cooking dinner, doing homework and reading bed time stories. We’ve lost impromptu nights on the town with friends without the need to find a babysitter. We’ve lost just the two of us.

But most of all, we’ve lost the ability to feel that being together is one long adventure, unfettered by promises, obligations or the inability to wake up tomorrow morning and choose a different life. Somehow that knowledge for both of us made things rather special. Whatever obstacles we had, we still had a sense that we can leave at any time. Although I could well imagine the two of us in old age, still madly in love, it is not something that was ever a given, expected. We’ve left a lot of room in our togetherness.

What we have lost may sound profoundly childish, but they were also ridiculously happy years.

Look, don’t get me wrong. I will do it all over again. When my heart met that of my child’s, it became the only way. My way. No question. But parenthood is not something I’ve ever wanted, dreamed of or planned for. So in many ways I’ve been given a very unexpected opportunity to learn and grow that can only be described as “expansive”. It has changed my life in ways that I will always be grateful for.

But is has become hard to ignore, although I desperately tried to, that it has also changed my relationship. And sometimes I really ache for this unforeseen change. Is it acceptable to mourn this loss? Is acceptance of the changes parenting brought us even possible or desirable? And I wonder, often, if this makes me a selfish, unfit, unnatural mother?

At least some things in life are really straightforward. Like sticking tomatoes in an oven. And slurping them up with pasta. And getting tipsy with old friends on some good red wine.

PS If you would like to get an email notification every time I post (which is about once a week), please subscribe in the top right corner. Your email address will NEVER be shared or published, this is a safe space.

Photography: Lee Malan.Styling & recipe: Aletta Lintvelt

Laurent will be cooking on 22 July from 6:30 to 9:30. It’s not cheap – R575 per person. But it does include tasting portions paired with wine of all the food presented.

I have not yet been to Liam Tomlin’s Chefs Warehouse and Cooking School, but it sounds amazing with chefs of this caliber and interesting topics that will be covered such as artisan bread baking, wine tasting and of course some cooking by the esteemed Liam himself. Certainly a dream gift for the foodie who has it all!

Information and schedule of classes on their website www.chefswarehouse.co.za

Chefs Warehouse & Cookery School
50 New Church Street
Cape Town 8001
T: 021 422 0128
info@chefswarehouse.co.za

For now here is a quick recipe that is perfect for a quick middle of week dinner party. I really enjoy using the fresh fish from Woodstock’s Fish for Africa. They have their own boats so it is fresh, the fish has been responsibly caught and they will always sell plenty of SASSI green-listed fish.

Fish on the braai is my favourite, but if you bake it in the oven, giving it a crust quickly elevates it to a dinner party dish. Plus it keeps the fish moist and succulent.

The crunch of the nuts goes beautifully with the sweet of the parsnip mash. For vegetarians – oven baked mushrooms are great with parsnip mash.

PS Strangely enough I, who never enter competitions, gave this recipe idea to stylist Lisa Clark. And for that I won a year’s subscription to TASTE magazine. Look how pretty she made it look by using Norwegian salmon instead.

PS If you would like to get an email notification every time I post (which is about once a week), please subscribe in the top right corner. Your email address will NEVER be shared or published, this is a safe space.

Photography: Lee Malan.Styling & recipe: Aletta Lintvelt

Get Zesty Workshop

Peter says: “We will kick-start the morning at 10h00 with coffee/tea and a tidbit. After refreshments we will demonstrate 3 preserves using the abundance of citrus fruit available now.

You will then be able to kick back and enjoy a 3-course lunch which will showcase the recipes that were demonstrated.

Don’t fuss, you will get copies of all the recipes that we demonstrated and you will have plenty of time to ask questions as there will be no more than 12 persons at each workshop.

Onthou maar net, my ouma was in kaneel en in ‘n nartjie, so ons doen dit ook in Afrikaans.
Greetings from Stanford”

Marianas is at 12 Dutoit Street, Stanford
Email marianas@stanfordvillage.co.za or call 028 341 0272

Please note: The events I publish on this blog are interesting food related things-to-do that I hear about and think worthwhile sharing. I have not necessarily been to the events and I’m not paid or appointed to promote them.