Business Day

A great cookbook for all first-timers

MUNCH

- Hein Scholtz Struik Lifestyle

EXCEPT for one gifted 18year-old whose instinct for combining ingredient­s and cooking borders on otherworld­ly, the teenagers and young adults I know are largely interested only in one aspect of food — eating it. And, when they’re boys, the more the better.

But several of them (primarily nieces and nephews) have recently left university residences and moved into digs. For the first time in their lives, they have to cook for themselves — and their housemates. It is a challenge: not only to learn to cook but also to select and buy ingredient­s on tight budgets.

Hein Scholtz — who is, these days, the content producer for SABC3 health and wellness programme, The Dr Mol Show — was once a student too. While studying at Stellenbos­ch University, he taught himself to select ingredient­s and prepare tasty and healthy meals on a tiny budget.

Thus began Scholtz’s experiment­ation and love of cooking. Eventually, he graduated from university and moved into a place of his own. Although, as a young profession­al, his culinary repertoire evolved, he continued to focus on creating innovative and healthy meals on a limited budget with minimal fuss.

The recipes for many of these dishes are now in Scholtz’s cookbook, Munch, which he wrote for “students, young people who have just left home and started working, and anyone else who’s interested”. It is a cleverly positioned publicatio­n that’s infinitely more user-friendly than Approved Recipes by the Federation of Women’s Institutes, which is what my mother gave me when I first came face to face with a stove.

In addition to recipes, Munch contains lists of things such as essential “kitchen power tools” and indispensa­ble ingredient­s, and a conversion table. Recipe chapters cover breakfast, light meals, the author’s version of the takeaway (homemade wraps, pizzas, burgers and pies), chicken, fish, red meat and sweet things.

The recipes are concise and some are very simple, particular­ly for things such as boiled eggs (remember, we’re talking beginners), toasted BLT (bacon, lettuce and tomato), burger patties and microwave cake-in-a-mug.

It is easy to understand and is not intimidati­ng.

On the other hand, the diversity of recipes is impressive. Munch contains recipes for really healthy options, such as breakfast shakes, muesli, chicken salad and Asian-style chicken stir-fry, which are the kind of foods my nieces would be likely to prepare. But it also features recipes for things such as beer chicken, braai prawns, pork chops with ginger beer, T-bone steak with strawberry jam and sticky pork ribs, which my 18-year-old son and his friends would go for. It is a versatile first cookbook and a great gift for beginner cooks.

Scholtz’s recipes were styled by Brita du Plessis and photograph­ed by Warren Heath, who have done a great job to make the simple dishes look tasty but not overly fussy.

Penny Haw

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