Vivacious star lifts black delicacies to five-star level Somgaga launches adventurous cookbook
Somizi wants black people to five-star their cuisine. Your rice, pap and kota can be fancy cuisine and he wants you to have fun while making it.
The vivacious media personality launched his latest project, a cookbook titled Dinner At Somizi’s: I amNot A Chef, in the elegant suburb of
Houghton last week.
Guests were treated to food from his cookbook, which is so versatile it has a lengthy chapter on what one can do with their leftovers.
The interesting food items were a kota canapé, a small serving of bruschetta topped with salmon and atchar, a unique combination that is adventurous and can be slightly too rich. Other delicacies were a rice burger, which was a crispy rice patty with lettuce, tomatoes and avocado. Somizi’s cuisine is adventurous, something thatwe haven’t seen in the local food industry.
Mhlongo, whose fans have always known he was a cook, says the inspiration for the book came from his late father,
Ndaba Mhlongo. His dad was a cook and introduced him to flavours like Indian curry.
He is enamoured with curry.
“It just happened that when I did myTVshowit was just a natural transition for me to do the cookbook. This cookbook has been designed and made with so much love. I took it for granted thinking that it’s the same way you do your Instagram pictures of food and you just put a book together, kanti it’s a lot of work,” he explains.
Mhlongo worked with a young black team on the book.
“One thing I’m proud of in the making of the book is that … in this book I was unapologetically black and I said I want a black stylist, I want a black chef to assist me. A black photographer, black this, a black everything and we did it and made it successful.” Mhlongo and Legend Manqele, the producer of his cooking show, is currently embroiled in a copyright dispute over the show.
When Sowetan asked about the status of the fight, Mhlongo said the complainant, Hastings Moeng, was dealing with the channel and the channel had responded to him.