Food & Drink: Colourful Cooking with Siba Mtongana

Siba’s Table/Siba’s Festive Table [South Africa]

[Image credits: Siba’s Sunday Trifle, 
Siba’s Table – Food Network UK]

Viewers of the Africa Channel will be familiar with the cooking show, ‘Cooking with Siba’, presented by food editor and writer, Siba Mtongana. Siba’s vivacious personality won her many fans, not just in her home country South Africa, but also across the Continent. In October Siba brought her fusion of contemporary South African and international cooking styles to a global audience with the premiere of her new show, ‘Siba’s Table’ on the Food Network UK cable channel. Siba becomes the second South African TV Chef to get a Food Network show after her mentor Jenny Morris. I did not manage to catch all the episodes, but those I did offer an insight into Siba’s home life and the food she cooks for friends and family. 

[Image credits: Beetroot and Feta Cheese Salad, 
Siba’s Festive Table – Food Network UK]

Siba now has a Christmas show entitled ‘Siba’s Festive Table‘ bursting with flavourful and colourful ideas to help inspire your Christmas feast. If you do not have access to the Food Network channel, you can catch up with Siba’s shows on the channel’s website, where you will find recipes and snippets from both shows, including Ginger and Rooibos, Infused Berry Sorbet; Savoury Cape Town Tarts, a Braaied corn Salad with an Italian twist, Potjiekos; a traditional Afrikaner stew prepared outdoors in a Potjie; a lidded three-legged cast-iron pot; Cranberry Nut Cookies with Ice Cream and Passion Fruit Sauce; and a classic dessert that I can never get enough off, trifle. 

[Image credits: Ginger and Rooibos Infused Sorbet, 
Siba’s Festive Table – Food Network UK]

The last of eight children Siba speaks of her mother despair when she announced she wanted to become a professional cook, but I am sure those feelings have changed especially as Siba often refers to and ‘borrows’ her Mum recipes, giving them the Siba twist for her shows. Raised in Mdantsane township in the Eastern Cape, and now living in Cape Town Siba is flying the flag for South Africa travelling to London, Brussels, and Lisbon to promote her shows, and through her passion for food and cooking has said she wants to change perceptions about South Africa.

[Image credits: Ginger and Rooibos Infused Sorbet, 
Siba’s Festive Table – Food Network UK]

Additional information sourced from:
www.sundayworld.co.za

Additional details:
For further information about Siba and the shows visit: www.foodnetwork.co.uk, and www.foodnetwork.co.uk
For further information about Cooking with Siba on the Africa Channel visit: www.theafricachannel.co.uk

[Image credits: All images shown belong to Food Network UK, and if downloaded and used elsewhere must be credited accordingly]