You’ll Need
2 tubs mascarpone cheese (250g each)
250 ml cream
18 egg yolks
1 cup sugar
1 tot Amaretto
2 tots brandy
at least 6 double espressos
2-3 packets of Savoiardi (Italian finger biscuits)
cocoa powder

Mix together the mascarpone cheese and the cream. In a separate container cream the egg yolks, the sugar, the amaretto and the brandy. Now add the mascarpone cream to the egg mixture and blend using an electric beater until all the sweet creamy ingredients have combined thoroughly.

Decant the espresso into a saucepan and allow to cool. Take enough Savoiardi to line a large disposable foil container (roughly 30cm x 25cm) and dip one biscuit at a time in the coffee; they must be slightly moist – not soggy. Place the finger biscuits in the bottom of the foil container.

Once you’ve covered the base with biscuits, use half of the creamy filling and add a layer on top of the biscuits. Repeat the process, starting with another layer of dipped biscuits and topping it with the rest of the creamy mixture.

Sprinkle with a decent covering of cocoa powder (not chocolate powder). The bitter cocoa and the coffee balance out the rich, sweet spongy mixture. Refrigerate for at least an hour before serving.

This recipe will feed about 12 of your friends.

You’ll Need:

¼ cup olive / canola oil mix
a small handful of fennel seed
a small handful of mustard seed
a small handful of cumin seed
¼ cup curry leaves
big pinch turmeric
4 medium onions – peeled and diced
2 cloves fresh garlic – chopped
a small hand of fresh ginger – peeled and grated
½ cup of sugar
½ cup white wine vinegar
10 green tomatoes – diced
sea salt and black pepper to taste

In a hot pan pour a splash of olive and canola oil, add to this the fennel and mustard seeds, the cumin, curry leaves and turmeric and stir. They will almost automatically become fragrant as they release their oils.

Next, add the onions, a little at a time, allow them to lose a bit of their opaque white colour while stirring constantly. It shouldn’t take more than 5 minutes. You want them to be crunchy – not soft and caramelised.

Then add the garlic and the ginger. This is a sweet sour relish and Geoffrey now adds a bit of sugar, to give it a syrupy texture. Then he adds vinegar and tastes. Add a bit more sugar if you like. Stir. Toss in the finely chopped tomatoes and coarse sea salt and cracked black pepper to taste. You want to let this simmer until all the ingredients are cooked but not obliterated. The idea here is that your relish has a nice crunchy texture, so if you think it’s getting too pap, stop cooking immediately. It may take up to 20 minutes, but then again it may not, so watch it carefully.

Lastly, mix in a healthy splash of good extra virgin olive oil and leave to cool. Bottle and store in the fridge (it should last about a week).

Geoffrey recommends that you serve this relish with a firm piece of fresh white fish. The real trick is to try and keep the onions and the tomatoes crunchy so that you don’t end up with syrupy chutney.

450ml Thai dressing
3 large potatoes – spiralled
500g clean queen prawn tails
cooking oil
2 heaped handfuls of mixed salad greens
½ cucumber – cut in slices
10 cherry tomatoes – halved
100ml prawn oil

For the Thai Dressing:

1 cup fish sauce
1 glass Swartland Chenin Blanc
a knob of ginger – cut coarsely
3 cloves of garlic – halved
2 teaspoons palm sugar
3 chillies

Toss all the ingredients together into a pan and simmer for five minutes, then cool. Pop in the prawns and leave to marinate for about four hours.

For the Prawn Oil:

Prawn shells (from Tails)
1 onion – finely chopped
3 cloves garlic – finely chopped
1 cup dry white wine
1 litre water
1 cup olive oil

Put all the ingredients (except the olive oil) into a pot. Boil for half an hour and then strain through a fine sieve. Reduce the clear liquid a little more, until it’s thickened, and allow it to cool before adding the olive oil and emulsifying.

How to make the Prawn Jumpers:

Start by peeling and topping and tailing the potatoes. Then pass each one through a potato spiraller so that they’re turned into long spaghetti-like strings. Remove the prawns from the marinade and roll them in the raw potatoes strings. Start at the tail and twirl the potato around the prawn – think of the way in which you tie bait on to a hook with cotton when fishing. If you haven’t done this before, start at the thinnest part of the prawn, and work downwards towards the thickest. Deep fry in hot oil until the potato is golden brown and the prawn is just cooked. Place on paper towel to drain.

To serve the salad:

Combine the salad greens, cherry tomatoes and cucumber, add prawn jumpers and drizzle with prawn oil. Eat while the prawns are still hot.

For the Glaze:
1 cup cream
125g butter
½ cup brandy
½ cup sugar

Beat the sugar and eggs in a bowl until the mixture is fluffy and the sugar granules have disintegrated (you can use an electric beater to make this easier), then add the apricot jam and mix it all up. In another bowl, sift the flour, bicarb and salt together at least twice. Next, melt the butter and add the vinegar and the milk. (If the butter is too hot, the mixture will curdle and you’ll have to chuck it). Now add the dry mix and the butter/milk/vinegar mix alternately to the egg mix, folding in well.

Pour the mixture evenly into a butter-greased muffin tray (one with 12 muffin cups). Each muffin cup should be about half filled. Bake in a preheated oven at 180ºC for between 45 minutes to an hour. Because of all the sugar, you can cook the pud until it’s nice and brown.

The magic is really in the glaze. Melt all the ingredients together and keep warm. When the pud comes out of the oven, pour the glaze over the hot baked malva muffins immediately so that it penetrates right through them. Serve individually with double thick whipped cream and/or a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

Try this and you’ll be an addict forever!

4 cups of flour
½ a cup of sugar
a drizzle of sunflower oil
4 – 5 free-range or organic eggs
about a litre of milk

First up, make a batch of pancake batter. Put the flour, sugar and sunflower oil into a mixing bowl, make a well in the middle then crack the eggs into the well. Next, using a wooden spoon, mix it together until you’ve got a sticky dough.

Next, start adding the milk a splash at a time. Every time you add milk, mix it into the dough, then once fully absorbed add more milk again. Keep doing this until you’ve used all the milk and have batter just a little thinner than syrup.

Put a butter-greased pan onto a medium heat and pour in about half a ladle of batter, spreading it evenly all over the pan. When it’s cooked through, flip it over and brown the other side. Repeat until you’ve used up all the batter, but keep greasing and wiping the pan between pancakes.

Once your pancakes are all done, grate some chocolate (any you like) into a bowl, sprinkle onto your pancakes and roll them up. Stack them into a baking tray, pour in a couple of splashes of Amarula (but don’t drown the pancakes!) and sprinkle some more chocolate over the whole lot. 

Whack it into a pre-heated oven for 10 minutes then get ready to dig in. Seriously delicious!

You’ll Need:

4kg oxtail
4 onions, chopped
8 carrots, chopped
cake flour
salt and pepper
olive oil
good quality organic beef stock
A fine red wine
Maizena – about ¼ cup diluted
about 6 cloves of garlic, crushed
tomato paste

First up, season the oxtail by rolling it around in cake flour, salt and pepper. Then heat up a non-stick pan, add a splash of olive oil and sear the oxtail on both sides. You’ll probably have to do this in batches. Take a roasting pan (the biggest one you have) and stack in the seared oxtail pieces. Once done, take the same frying pan, add more olive oil, and then toss in the chopped onions, carrots and garlic. Once the onions become translucent, whack it all on top of the oxtail. The last thing you need to do is make the stock (probably about 2 cups) add to it one tin of tomato paste and the Maizena, mix it all up and pour it onto the oxtail. Finish off with a generous lashing of red wine. Keep the rest for yourself – you deserve it! You want the oxtail to be just submerged in the stock and wine but not drowning. 

Cover the whole lot with tin foil and whack it into the oven at 150ºC and slow cook in the oven for about 4 and a half hours.

Oxtail is great with good old samp and beans, but if you can’t be bothered, just make some rice.

You’ll Need:

1 onion, roughly chopped
a couple of cloves of garlic, peeled and sliced
a good dollop of olive oil
½ teaspoon cayenne pepper
½ teaspoon Hungarian paprika
2 tins good quality whole peeled tomatoes
8 ripe tomatoes, quartered (skin and all)
1 tin chickpeas
1 tin sugar beans
1 tin butter beans
a bunch of spinach, stems removed and finely chopped
500ml Bulgarian yoghurt
freshly ground black pepper
Maldon sea salt
a small handful of chopped fresh basil

In a deep pot, fry the onions and garlic in the olive oil until they’re translucent. Add the cayenne pepper and paprika, give it a good stir and then add the tins of whole peeled tomatoes, the roughly chopped fresh tomatoes and the juice from the three tins of beans. Simmer on a low heat until the fresh tomatoes disintegrate, then add the beans and simmer for a further 5 minutes.

To Serve:

Put a small layer of spinach in the bottom of the soup bowl, ladle over the soup, and crown with two tablespoons of yoghurt. Flavour with freshly ground pepper, Maldon sea salt and fresh basil. Eat immediately with slices of toasty ciabatta.

Preheat oven to 180. Separate the skin from the body of the chicken and push the herb butter underneath. Stuff the body cavity with the lemon. Roll out your dough into a circle 1cm thick and 45 cm across. Place the chicken on top, then wrap the dough around it and seal the edges. Transfer to an oven dish and bake for 1 .5 to 2 hours, or until the bread is crisp and the chicken cooked. To check insert a knife into the chicken – it should come out piping hot. Serve the chicken with the crisp bread and roast veg topped with feta.

- 2-3 kilograms Lamb Knuckles

- 1 onion finely chopped

- 3-4 garlic cloves chopped

- 2-3 leeks, cut into thin slices

- One tin of whole baby peeled tomatoes

- Punnet fresh whole baby tomatoes

- Dried sweet basil

- Dried Oregano 

- Salt and pepper to taste

- 300-500ml organic beef stock

- Grated Pecorino or Parmesan cheese

Method:

Dust the lamb knuckles in seasoned flour (this will help to thicken the sauce later). Seal and brown in round bottomed three-legged potjie. Remove from the potjie and put aside. Now add onion, garlic and leeks and fry until soft. Add your meat and all the tomatoes and then add beef stock until liquid covers two thirds of the meat. Add basil, oregano, salt and pepper to taste. Put on lid and simmer (not boil) until the meat falls off the bones. Taste every now and then and season accordingly.

Ingredients for the Gnocchi:

- 1 kg potato (Mediterranean are great)

- 300g flour (same as you would use for homemade pasta)

- 2 egg yolks

- 1 teaspoon salt

Method:

Bake the potatoes in their jackets on a bed of coarse sea salt. Then scoop out the soft fluffy centres. You need the potato to be as hot as possible when you do this otherwise the gnocchi may get stringy, so use a lappie to prevent Kentucky fried fingers.  

Next, put the hot potato through a mouli (French rotary grater or a sieve) bearing in mind that the mash must stay hot. Then add the flour, a little at a time with the salt and the egg yolks. Use your hand like a stiff, motionless claw (think the opposite of bread dough making) and mix the flour in by jabbing; the trick here is to do this with as little movement as possible. Once mixed, roll into sausage-like shapes about 3 cm in diameter and double wrap with cling film. Make sure it’s watertight by tying the ends with string. Poach in simmering water for 15 minutes (just below boiling point). Shock in a bowl of iced water and then put away until needed.

Adding the gnocchi to the potjie.

Unwrap the gnocchi, slice into medallions, slip into the potjie pot  and simmer for about 15 minutes before you’d like to eat to allow the gnocchi to suck up all that lovely fatty lamb tomato flavour. Serve with freshly cracked black pepper, torn leaves of fresh basil and grated parmesan or pecorino cheese.