Contrary to what you may have seen on Instagram, lockdown cooking is not only a series of banana bread and sourdough personal bests. What many have found the more pressing challenge – feeding oneself when restaurants and takeaways are not available, possibly under a tighter than usual budget, without knowing how to cook – is what motivated Khanya Mzongwana to self-publish an e-book with nourishing, fun, attainable and good-looking-enough-to-Instagram recipes like Hong Kong Chicken, Baked Caprese and Green Pasta with Avo and Pumpkin Seeds.

That and the need to pay for her meds. “It wasn’t just a peaceful moment of brainstorming,” she explains about the project that took two weeks to complete and will hopefully serve as a revenue stream for the coming weeks and months, a time when food and creative businesses find themselves in unfamiliar territory.

Mzongwana has long battled with mental health issues, the most debilitating being chronic depression – something she is open about. In 2019, before coronavirus was even in anyone’s vocabulary, she was stuck in a downward spiral while living in Johannesburg and running a series of pop-up events called No Rules. She ended up spending 10 days in a mental health institution and moving back in with her mom in Port Elizabeth, just before the national lockdown was announced. 

“I wanted to learn how to be normal again,” she said, after months of feeling out of control. One of the most painful aspects of this, especially for a chef, had been her relationship with food. “I was very disconnected from it, which has always been a marker for me.”

While a patient in the same PE psychiatric hospital she’d heard stigmatised as a child, she was given a toolkit to help put her life back on track. “For me, what I was most giddy about was the concept and practice of routine…like eating breakfast in the morning. It had become so alien to me.” Routine is now something she is incorporating into her life, in her own style and stride.

Chef, food stylist and cookbook author Khanya Mzongwana, left, taking time out with her mom, Loyiso Haya, right. (Photo: Supplied)

“For me, cooking has always been so important. I understand that not everybody shares that passion for actually making food, and that it’s a chore for some people. For them, it’s hard, even impossible to view cooking as therapeutic.” In writing the book, she thought about her mom, who has been her biggest food influencer, as well as the fussy eaters in her life and friends with families who want to include their kids in the cooking process. She also thought of her peers – “those in their early twenties, who are staying in their first apartments, getting into this having a house and paying rent thing; learning how to adult and perhaps buying their first cookbook” – and those with limited resources: just an oven, a braai and maybe a cheap stick blender.

Mzongwana wants to encourage others to think beyond the process of chopping stuff, which can be a turn-off, to why cooking can be so good for you. “Just the act of deciding what you’re going to eat can be a soothing meditative process. What does your body feel like having? I see it more as self-nourishment and self-care than just a chore that has to be done.” That said, she’s no advocate for viewing food as a reward. “I know how harmful that is and how many eating disorders that has launched,” she says.

Green Pasta with Fried Pumpkin Seeds from Khanya Mzongwana’s Sh*t’s Real, Let’s Heal e-cookbook. (Photo: Supplied)

Today, Mzongwana approaches the routine of food from a more economical stance, both for herself and in thinking about those who will be cooking her recipes. “I generally make one main meal for the day, which carries through the day,” she says. “People are so wrapped up around the idea of what breakfast, lunch or dinner should look like, but it’s easy to make creative variations.” For example, if you braai some wors, make some relish or chilli, make some guacamole and bake some bread…you’ve got food for the whole day, she says. It can be your breakfast if you add a couple of eggs, a sandwich at lunch or a salad if you add some leaves.

Diversifying what you eat is one of Mzongwana’s suggestions. “Try to challenge yourself and be creative with one ingredient…like see how many things you can do with beans.” Her book has many pulse and grain-rich dishes, like the killer-looking Chickpea and Cauliflower Fritters, and most of the meat dishes can be adapted to the tastes of non-meat eaters with the addition of beans and other vegetables.

She also suggests taking advantage of combo specials. “Butternut, onions, carrots and potatoes…that stuff goes a long way. People think they’re not going to use all of it but you can use a bag of butternut up quickly if you, for example, make soup, fritters and roast some for a salad.”

Mzongwana is a master at taking familiar dishes and mashing them up with energy, colour and crunch so that they practically explode on the page, whether it’s Instagram or print media. I mean, who wouldn’t want to make Dorito’s Fried Chicken or Sweetcorn Scramble. In Sh*t’s Real, there are recipes for salads and turmeric eggs as well as comfort foods like her mom’s mac and cheese and umngqusho, the samp and bean stew she says she makes at least once every two weeks. In the book, she explains that while her mom taught her how to make it, it was her late aunt Phila who opened her eyes and showed her that she could diversify it with the addition of different grains.

Hong Kong Chicken from Khanya Mzongwana’s Sh*t’s Real, Let’s Heal e-cookbook. (Photo: Supplied)

One of the things I like most about Mzongwana is her total lack of judgement. She likes to eat healthy and fills her recipes with greens and crunchy fruits and vegetables but also incorporates a lot of comfort in her food; she’s coming from a place of wanting to stay alive and happy which has extra meaning in these times. “I don’t have food morals; I don’t like attaching to a style or way of eating. In terms of how often you eat, depriving yourself of food…those are ways to frustrate yourself during this lockdown period.”

What foods make Mzongwana feel comforted during lockdown? They are the basics, like cabbage. “I don’t know why, but fried cabbage is one of the most comforting flavours I have ever experienced. There’s an absolute smoker of a recipe for a caramelised cabbage and fennel broth in my book that is one of my proudest food moments to date.”

And potatoes: “Okay so now things are starting to look and sound kinda Irish lol. Not gonna lie, they do a really great job with comfort food. Mashed, baked, fried, grilled. There’s just an easiness to them that doesn’t ask questions or require a lot of know-how from your tastebuds. It just does the work of providing comfort.” If you doubt this, check out her recipe for Break-Up Potatoes.

Momma’s Mac ‘n’ Cheese from Khanya Mzongwana’s Sh*t’s Real, Let’s Heal e-cookbook. (Photo: Supplied)

And green peppers: “Growing up, green pepper was an aromatic we couldn’t live without. The smell of green pepper frying with onions and garlic needs to be bottled and sold, real talk. Always a smoke signal to the neighbours that delicious food is about to be eaten in *that* particular household lol. Also, raw green pepper pressed into a juice and used as a key ingredient in a vinaigrette is the most underrated thing out here.”

Her all-time favourite though is rice: her go-to dish is takeaway style egg fried rice. “I could (and would) live on a variety of beans and rice for the rest of my days.”

Her creative juices flowing again, this reboot seems to be working for Mzongwana, who is spending most of her time cooking and gardening. “I’ve had a surge of energy to do something again. I’m feeling really different; I haven’t felt like this in years. I’m happy.”

So am I to hear her say this.

In closing, I probably won’t make another banana bread for a while, but you can bet I’ll be making Mzongwana’s Dorito’s Fried Chicken. DM/TGIFood

To order a copy of Sh*t’s Real, Let’s Heal, email [email protected]. Follow Khanya Mzongwana on Instagram @undignifiedza and Facebook: Khanya Mzongwana.90.