Evita Bezuidenhout recently took time out of her busy schedule to chat to Hillary Biller about her new cook book Evita’s Kossie Sikelela and her cooking secrets. It’s to die for doll!

I did not know that a tannie with such long, perfectly manicured nails could cook – or would even get her hands dirty.

I love getting my hands covered in flour and shiny with olive oil, cluttered with bits of parsley and even something delicious under my nails. Someone once said: “A clean cook is a boring chef.” I make a hell of a mess and the staff clean up after me. So it involves job-creation as well.

• Read the complete article in the Sunday Times

Book details

• Evita se Kossie Sikelela deur Evita Bezuidenhout, Linda Vicquery
  EAN: 9781415200919
  Find this book with BOOK Finder!

• Evita’s Kossie Sikelela by Evita Bezuidenhout, Pieter-Dirk Uys, illustrated by Linda Vicquery
  EAN: 9781415200902
  Find this book with BOOK Finder!

Die trofees, wat spesiaal vir die geleentheid geskep is deur die beeldhouer, Sanna Swart, is op Sondag 7 Maart by ‘n bekroningsgeleentheid oorhandig deur Prof Dorothea van Zyl en Japie Gouws, voorsitter van die ATKV.

In die kategorie Debuutteks het Karin Brynard en Bettina Wyngaard die louere gedeel – Brynard vir die onderhoud oor haar roman Plaasmoord en Wyngaard wat gepraat het oor haar roman Troos vir die gebrokenes.

Bettina sê die toekenning en prysgeld van R1500.00 was ‘n groot verrassing, “Uiteraard, dat ek ‘n prys ontvang het, is vir my ‘n besondere eer, en ek wil ook net my gelukwensinge aan Karin uitspreek.”

Die beoordelaars was beïndruk met die diepgang van die gesprekke waaraan die skrywers oor hul romans op die Woordfees deelgeneem het. Deur die bekroning van uitnemendheid, poog die ATKV om deur middel van die WOORDtroFEES, skeppende werk en kreatiwiteit in die kunste te ondersteun en te bevorder.

Hierdie toekennings sal verteenwoordigend wees van die verskillende fasette van die US Woordfees se feesprogram.

Boekbesonderhede

• Troos vir die gebrokenes deur Bettina Wyngaard
  Boektuisblad
  EAN: 9781415200834
  Find this book with BOOK Finder!

The launch of Evita’s Kossie Sikelela by Evita Bezuidenhout and Linda Vicquery at the city’s newest independent book shop, the Bay Bookshop in the Cape Quarter, was a sumptuous affair. Proprietor Pierre Engel said the book was a credit to South African cookery. He welcomed the country’s most famous white woman, helping her up to the podium. There she celebrated the virtual cutting of the shop’s virtual ribbon – the real one having inconveniently been forgotten in the excitement of the new event.

She said, “I am very happy to cut the ribbon. It doesn’t have to be a real ribbon. After all, when we say, ‘Viva democracy!’ it doesn’t have to be a real democracy.”

Tannie Evita looked stunning in navy and white polka dots and pearls. She said she was amazed to be there at all, considering that she’d just dropped in to the kitchen at Parliament where she was overseeing the preparations for tomorrow’s lunch. “Lots of people are fighting each other in Parliament; the ANC Youth League is fighting the ANC who’s fighting COSATU who’s fighting the Communists and whatnot! They wanted the country, I say let them sort it out! Alle wêreld, we are so relieved not to be involved any more.”

As soon as she was done in the kitchen somebody asked her to look in on the new Zuma children, “Two little babies, they’re called Z-43 and Z-49, and of course ek is nou vol sjokolade. I am full of little fingerprints of little Zumettes. Any mothers or grandmothers here in the audience will know that we do like to suffer under the fingerprints of our beloved grandchildren, and then one of them grabbed my hair and started to pull and I said, ‘My kind, my kind, oppas, dis nie Zoeloe hare nie.’”

Then there was the traffic to overcome. “As you know we’re getting ready for the World Cup and if 16 cars can’t pass in an hour, how are 60 000 people going to pass in a minute?”

Breathless but glamorous she kept the audience enraptured with her behind-the-scenes gossip. The book came from a box full of recipes torn out of Huisgenoot and De Kat, “even though one can never understand what’s written there”. It was prompted and compiled by the expert chef and illustrator from Provence, France, Linda Vicquery as Mrs Bezuidenhout felt she was too busy running the country.

“Buy the cookery book but don’t think I’m standing behind you,” she advised. “When you go into that recipe you’re going to be cooking for your own mouth! Not mine. You must say, ‘Nee wat, Tannie Evita, there’s too much butter.’ This is a good thing to say. It won’t taste as good, but your heart will keep beating without the butter.”

Evita pointed out the joys of Halaal and Kosher cooking were included in the book – although not on the same page. “When your Halaal guests come You must never panic. You must just find out. You have to wash your hands. You mustn’t touch certain things. The dog and the cat can’t be in the room. You must find out.”

She urged the chefs in the audience to experiment. “There’s no such thing as a flop. A flop becomes a new recipe. Take malva pudding for example. That’s not a flop. Who’d ever have thought of something so effective to shut up Winnie Mandela? Every time she talks we give it to her and her teeth stick fast.”

What a wild time! Congratulations to the Bay Bookshop on the official opening of their Cape Quarter doors.

Facebook gallery

Book details

• Evita’s Kossie Sikelela by Evita Bezuidenhout, Pieter-Dirk Uys, Linda Vicquery
  EAN: 9781415200902
  Find this book with BOOK Finder!

• Evita se Kossie Sikelela deur Evita Bezuidenhout, Linda Vicquery
  EAN: 9781415200919
  Find this book with BOOK Finder!