Soup, a West African staple and kebabs on a Yankee porch

Ali | French onion soup à la Julia Child

AMERICANS have an intimate, precious relationship with one of the culinary giants of the 20th century, Julia Child, author, television chef and actor. She was a giant of almost 1.9 m with a cheerful alto church choir voice. After taking full advantage of her long stay in Paris, France (her husband was a military diplomat there) by doing the famous Cordon Bleu cooking course and learning to cook from various chefs, she and two French women, Louisette Remion and Simone Back, published a book in America to introduce French cooking to the Yanks, the 726-page Mastering the Art of French Cooking. It was a hit and is still in print as one of the world's seminal cookery books.

But television immortalised Child. She did not meet the stereotype of a chic yet spicy woman to become a TV star. She was clumsy and big and had an angular face, and that peculiar, irritating voice. And she made mistakes, live on television, because it was before the era of such programmes being edited first. Here is a nervous Julia Child's first television broadcast:

The TV bosses looked on in horror, then the viewership figures rolled in. American housewives of the 1960s strongly identified with this cheerful and affectionate auntie. Something about her honesty resonated.

And perhaps there was some truth in her making the Americans feel a little more confident about the suave Europeans with their fancy food.

I woke up on Sunday morning with a desire to make a dish by dear Julia. An easy and delicious winter choice is the old French favourite of onion soup. It's so typical of this lot to be able to do magic with nine simple ingredients.

Onions, beef stock, butter, flour, sugar, wine, brandy and cheese. The caramelised onions are the wonderful secret of the taste, as is the inappropriate amount of cheese draped over it all, sometimes in a separate soup cup with a fat crouton on top.

Cheers, Madame Child!            

Anneliese | Chicken kebabs on the grill 

It's high summer on Martha's Vineyard. I am visiting friends. The heat wraps around us like a wet washcloth. We are staying in a wooden house in a forest. There is a pizza oven and gas grill on the “porch". The teenagers hang out in the pool. The adults drink cold beer (I'm a convert to Heineken's 0.0%).

It's my turn to make dinner. I have a plan for the gas braai, or “grill",  inspired by a kebab recipe, Grilled Bang Bang Chicken, that I came across in The Washington Post. I get organic chicken thighs at a farm store in Edgartown, and for the sauce I work with what I can find in the cupboards at home.

The recipe calls for tahini or peanut butter, soy sauce, vinegar, sesame oil, sugar, chilli oil and ground Sichuan peppercorns. After being cooked on the grill (or barbecue), the kebabs are generously painted with the sauce then served with finely chopped spring onions.

I found fresh dill and parsley at the farm store and a crunchy head of red cabbage. Everything is sliced ​​very finely and a cooling yoghurt sauce is added to balance the sizzling hotness of the kebabs. Perfect food for a summer evening. In a forest. On a river.

Here are the directions for the salad.

Deborah | Jollof rice

I often read in novels from Africa about colourful dishes such as jollof rice. I ate it for the first time in a West African restaurant in Pretoria with my friend Louis Gaigher, with tilapia, a freshwater fish that one devours in one go from head to tail, its many bones and all, to enjoy a great taste.

This weekend I decided: How difficult can it be to make jollof? I googled a recipe and will quickly tell you.

Finely chop up four to five red tomatoes. I zap them in the microwave with a dash of the Boeremark's barbecue salt (with a nice bite in it) until it is more or less liquid. Crush 4 to 5 cloves of garlic, mix with an inch of finely grated ginger and fry in a reasonable amount of grape seed oil (they talk of a quarter cup) and smoked paprika. To this I add, because I always have to improvise, my own pickled chilli and garlic purée, just about a tablespoon.

Add the chopped tomatoes and let it simmer for a quarter of an hour. Now you add a cup of vegetable stock and a cup of rice. Let it steam over low heat (you cover the rice dish with foil, then the lid, so that it retains a good steam). About 15 to 20 minutes. In between, you have to loosen the foil now and then and stir the dish. Taste if it needs salt. For the last five minutes you take off the foil and let it cook like that.

It's a delicious dish that you can eat as is, without fish or meat. Jolly good.

♦ VWB  ♦

BE PART OF THE CONVERSATION: Go to the bottom of this page to share your opinion. We look forward to hearing from you.