"There has been a paradigm shift in South African cuisine [in the last few years]," says Lannice Snyman. "After a lifetime of trying to cook anything — as long as it isn't local — we have 'come home' to our beloved Africa and its flavors."
"There has been a paradigm shift in South African cuisine [in the last few years]," says Lannice Snyman. "After a lifetime of trying to cook anything — as long as it isn't local — we have 'come home' to our beloved Africa and its flavors."
Snyman, one of South Africa's leading food authorities, has had a front-row seat for the immense changes since Mandela's inauguration. Based in Cape Town, where her husband and daughters share in her culinary enterprises, she was the cookery editor of South Africa's Sunday Times for ten years and has been editor of the South African restaurant guide Eat Out since 1987. She's also the author of 13 cookbooks, including Free from the Sea ("we're a nation of fishermen") and Braai in Style. (Braai, South African open-air barbecue, is a national obsession that Snyman chalks up to great weather and friendly people.)
The driving force behind Snyman's work is her passion for all the aspects of South Africa's multiethnic cooking. "I believe it's rather like a tapestry," she says, "with all the threads creating a wonderful pattern." Snyman's latest book, Rainbow Cuisine, is a colorful culinary adventure that found her poking into every corner of South Africa, from the teeming waters of Cape Town's Table Bay to the northern regions where smoked trout and roasted mopane worms (dried, fat caterpillars) are equally coveted. Click below for five of her recipes: