SUE-ANN ALLEN

My best food memory is Saturday mornings, five years old, making bacon and eggs for mom and dad. The most outrageous thing I’ve eaten was sea urchins in

the south of France, straight out of the sea and onto the plate. I didn’t enjoy them at all. I ate pigeons’ heads in China. We were in a private dining room and it would have been impolite not to. I focused on the barbecue sauce. I have a photo of myself with a little beak sticking out of my mouth.

My favourite food is Asian, without a doubt, from dim sum to red duck curry. I love the aromatics and the depth of flavour.

I can’t eat bananas. I get lumps in my throat and find it difficult to breathe. I will try most things once except

spiders and cockroaches, so no Fear Factor for me.

My best food moment was cooking for friends and one of the guests — a well-regarded connoisseur of food and wine — said that if he was on death row this would be his last meal. I’d served a lamb shank terrine, pork belly with crackling on, celeriac purée with bone marrow red wine jus, and baby beets. My worst moment was on ‘MasterChef’ when I

overcooked the rack of pork loin. I went in overconfident and messed up. I wanted to curl up and die. ‘Gourmet Sisters’ [Human & Rousseau, R245] was cowritten with fellow ‘MasterChef’ contestant Ilse Fourie. We are good friends and have very different cooking styles, so we never stepped on each other’s toes. We were able to remain uniquely individual but bring something together.

This is an ingredient-based cookbook. It’s not sorted into the typical starters, mains and desserts. We took 44 of our favourite ingredients, so you get two very different recipes for each one. Since November 1 I’ve had my own kitchen at Kurt Schoonraad’s Joe Ma Se Comedy Club at the Pumphouse at Cape Town’s V&A Waterfront. I serve meals with the shows five nights a week [book at Computicket]. In the daytime the space doubles as a corporate venue where I create menus for special events.