If you are headed to next weekend’s Taste of Dubai food festival, you are probably a fan of the Food Network cooking channel. And if you are a fan of the channel, you have probably heard Siba Mtongana’s voice over the last few months, beaming out of her Cape Town kitchen and into our living rooms, telling us “we are a Rainbow Nation, so a little colour won’t hurt anyone” as she pours chopped peppers into a salad of corn.
The South African TV cook will be brightening up the annual food festival in Dubai’s Media City Amphitheatre on her first visit to the event, now in its seventh year, in four cooking sessions.
“My food is a fusion, with a lot of African dishes that I grew up eating, and some that my friends grew up eating,” said the 29-year-old breakout food star over the phone from her Cape Town home-office. “It’s my taste, an African taste, meeting the world. It’s really a part of who I am, I dream food, I think food.”
The former Drum magazine food editor was selected as one of the two faces of South Africa by the global cooking channel (the other is Jenny Morris, who will return for her second year at Taste of Dubai) two years ago after hosting her own local series, an offshoot of her publishing job. In Siba’s Table, Mtongana cooks bright, fresh recipes that tweak classics and are aimed at busy families. “My aim is to make food very simple and fun and not intimidating at all,” says the mother of one, who knows all too well the juggle of a working mother’s life.
“Just before signing the contract for the show [here she gives the naughtiest of giggles] I found out I was two and a half months pregnant. I was so scared. I thought I was going to lose this opportunity. I told them, ‘I know I don’t have to tell you, it’s not a sin to be pregnant — but I am expecting a baby’. I remember Nick Thorogood, who is the vice-president of talent, he said, ‘congratulations Siba’. They said it does affect [the filming] in terms of time, but you know what, good things are worth waiting for. They waited for about a year, because I wanted to breastfeed for six months, and shortly after that we filmed.” It’s worked out for the best — the show is a family-centric concept that often features her husband, Brian, and son Lonwabo.
At Taste, “it’s showcasing some of my recipes that I have done on the shows,” says Mtongana. “It will be the famous trifle — my easy Sunday trifle, a hit in South Africa — then the corn salad, and the stuffed salmon, with spinach and mushrooms and peppers. Those are my quick fixes if I am in a very tight spot and don’t have much time, to cook an elaborate meal. That would be a comfort zone to fall into.”
Her flavours, which are influenced from around the world — from Moroccan harissa paste to pesto (“where I add chillies and other ingredients that don’t really belong in a pesto”, she adds) — add spice to healthy basics such as vegetables, lean meat and fish, part of her upbringing with a family that cared about health.
She also plays up South African ingredients, such as the popular corn, as in the salad she’ll prepare in Dubai. “I have a very popular corn salad that was the hit of the season, in which I used Asian elements such as soya sauce, garlic and ginger.”
Her role as an international voice for South African food is one that she takes very seriously, and I don’t mean spreading the word about biltong. Born in East London, in the same region as the late leader Nelson Mandela, Mtongana’s success is a reminder to her of the good she can do for others. “Having been in the era of Mandela, you cannot be a South African and be quiet and not want to bring change and be a positive influence on the world. I am the patron for Food Bank South Africa, where they strive for a hunger and malnutrition-free South Africa. There are other small projects that I do in Cape Town communities, for teenagers who have not finished school, to be somebody who gives them a slight push. I believe the opportunity itself cannot be just for Siba. It has to be for South Africa and for Africa.”
