It’s been a busy few months for The Giggling Gourmet Jenny Morris; she’s opened her second restaurant, Yumcious, in Durbanville and launched a cookbook of the same name.
This is the TV chef’s sixth cookbook, but appears to be her most personal recollections of recipes and food memories. Yumcious was born in the Cape Quarter when Morris’s husband David, twisted her arm into expanding from her cooking school and think bigger.
She said: “I dream about food all the time, and then I wake up at night and grab my phone to record the recipes that whirl around in my head.”
It’s this relationship with food and ingredients that lies at the heart of who Morris is and all of her dishes, savoury, sweet and everything in between.
The book is the marriage of her journey in front of the cameras, in the kitchen at Yumcious and cooking at home.
Each recipe entices you to nibble at the idea of creating it and Morris adds a sprinkle of love to each recipe by explaining its origins or its significance to her, her family or friends.
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For her Sprite Scones, she explains she picked up the recipe during a chance meeting with a stranger at her local hairdresser. Morris writes: “A lady sitting opposite started chatting to me and, as always, the subject of food came up. She urged me to try her very unusual recipe for scones. “I was sceptical about the ingredients until I tried it. My goodness, what a lovely scone it makes! Why don’t you give it a try? The scones are light, not overly sweet, and are as easy as anything to make,” says Morris.
Her cheese mound comes with a simple one-liner: “This cheese mound is one of my signature dishes, and I served it on the buffet when I cooked for Prince Charles.” There are few other cheese mounds that can have just a powerful, one line introduction.
The bonus with this cookbook is that if you’ve ever eaten at Yumcious, many of the recipes will be familiar to you and now you can cook or bake it at home.