Who can imagine a world without Ina Paarman? Certainly not me. Although there are those who, she told me, don’t realise she is a real live person and not just a brand name on all those products. We had a little chuckle about it and then I went to fetch a friend to have lunch.

“Sorry I’m late,” I said. “I’ve just come from interviewing Ina Paarman and she’s so lovely I could have stayed all day.”

“What?” he said. “Ina Paarman is real?”

So there you go. Yes, she most certainly is. Tiny to be sure, but proper flesh and blood. When I arrive at her kitchen in Constantia, she is ready for me: stylishly dressed, perfectly applied makeup on porcelain skin, hair just so. She offers me something to drink and we sit down to chat.

Paarman is old school charming and gracious, speaking slowly and carefully, clearly used to telling her story. She often gets asked for it, so she decided to record it in her latest cookbook, My Favourite Recipes, due out any day now depending on the Transnet strike, fingers crossed. She claims it is her “swan song”. Really, I asked? 

“It’s actually my son Graham who is in business with me, who is my boss, and he said ‘you’d better do a decent cookbook, that is your swan song’. This is the dilemma of a family business – you can’t suddenly say ‘no, okay cheerio’; you’ve got to do your bit till the bitter end,” she said, with a twinkle in her eye and the greatest of love and affection. 

“But a proper cookbook well done is a hell of a job. We worked for a year on this thing,” she said. Photography is by Micky Hoyle, a long way from the first book published in 1987 with line drawings done by the late artist Stanley Pinker when there was no money for colour photographs. A loan was taken out to fund that book. Ina Paarman’s Real Food for Real People (1994, which I have) is also illustrated with drawings. Hoyle has included some of Pinker’s work in My Favourite Recipes as homage.

Ina Paarman’s new book, which she says is her ‘swan song’. (Photo: Micky Hoyle)

“Then he took pictures of the dogs, which everybody’s mad about. I thought this was quite clever. I dedicated the book to the men in the family and my husband was a bacon and egg fanatic but the kind of person who got up from breakfast and said ‘what’s for supper?’,” said Paarman. 

“We incorporated the garden into the book. I’m passionate about people using things that are in season. They want to use apricots in the middle of winter. It doesn’t work that way.”

The book offers a guide to what to use when. 

“People often say to me, Ina you’ve had such… they perceive it as an interesting life, they don’t know how hard I’ve worked… but tell us a bit more about how everything started. So this is a good opportunity to get that out there.” 

Paarman’s favourite recipes are both old and new. “A lot of this food is perhaps old fashioned South African food, nothing to do with air fryers or microwaves or whatever,” she said. “For instance, the chicken liver pâté – my mother gave me a trip to a cookery school in France many years ago and this recipe I got there. I think recipes are all about memories… you remember a good meal or nice people or a successful dish.” 

Roast leg of lamb with anchovy rub. (Photo: Micky Hoyle)

As I get older I find myself increasingly nostalgic for the food of my childhood, and wondered what Paarman thought about that. “I call it real food, food that often takes time,” said Paarman. “It’s quite difficult – my son, he’s a good cook but he wants it done quickly. I like to fiddle and take my time. Most of us who cook improvise as we go. I don’t really follow recipes – except in baking.”

For every one of us who does cook, sometimes we forget there are 10 who don’t know how. Paarman has included some step by step instructions with photographs in this book too. “I started my career as a teacher, you never stop teaching,” she said.

Her recipes are among the simplest, easiest and most straightforward I know. In case it’s not obvious, I’m a long time fan – I’ve used her products for years (this is not a punt, it’s a fact), and I subscribe to her email newsletter. Plus there are more recipes on Facebook. I’m also not ashamed to say I make the junior recipes too. The cauliflower soup is amazing, and everyone needs a good crunchie recipe.

With close to 200 products, in all the supermarkets in South Africa as well as exported to more than 30 countries, I appreciate what the Paarmans do for me to make my life easier. Yes, I can make my own real chicken stock, but sometimes I just couldn’t be bothered. Here’s the sachet, made the same way, with real bones and vegetables, and reduced to a concentrate. Fun fact which I did not know: the stock powders are vegetarian, with beef and chicken flavouring. They’re also gluten-free, as are many of the products.

“We’ve been very blessed in the sense that we were on the forefront of no MSG, no preservatives and so on. Kevin was very allergic as a child and I was mindful that there must be others with the same problem,” said Paarman.

Red velvet bundt cake with berries and cream. (Photo: Micky Hoyle)

My cupboard is filled with spices and seasoning, and there are always Cook-In sauces on hand. For this story, I decided to make the chocolate cake which was Paarman’s first bake mix.

“Most South African people want to bake a nice chocolate cake and what I also found over the years, when I was teaching, is how self-image is tied up with a cake that comes out the oven,” she said. “If it’s a flop they feel bad and take it personally. The first bake mix I developed was the chocolate cake and I set out to do the perfect chocolate cake. I wanted a cake that was moist three days later, that had a strong chocolate flavour, and flop proof.”

And so it began. “When we set out to do a recipe we write it down and then take one – bake, taste, make changes. Take two, take three, and so on. Eventually we did 110 takes but we got there,” she laughed. “Now that recipe is cast in stone. Nobody changes it.”

Well, when mine came out of the oven, cooled, and was iced, it was exactly right. I didn’t use the nozzle that comes with the icing bag because I know my limitations. Piping is not a skill I possess. “The beauty of having a reliable base is that they can be adapted and used in different recipes. The orange cake is lovely with poached oranges,” said Paarman.

When it comes to recipe and product testing, it will be done until Ina and Graham declare them to be perfect. “I’ve often been asked if we have taste panels, but you know? You’ve got to trust your own judgement. My son has a very good palate, and if I like it and he likes it, that’s good enough,” she said, recalling taste panels where the person with the strongest or loudest personality was the only one that counted. The Paarman method hasn’t let us down yet. “Too many cooks can spoil the broth,” noted Paarman.

Old fashioned chicken pie with lattice crust. (Photo: Micky Hoyle)

A senior lecturer at the Cape Technikon for seven years, Paarman loved her job and loved her students, but didn’t love the head of the department, becoming so unhappy she developed stomach problems. 

“My husband said to me, every day you come from work and you are miserable, and then my mother gave me R4,000 and said why don’t you start your own little business? And that was a hell of a thing. Graham was in high school, Kevin was at university, we were paying off a house. 

“That money I used to kit out the garage as a classroom and it was the best thing I ever did.” Paarman’s health problems soon disappeared. “They say that unless your personal values are in sync with your work values, that continuous stress is not good,” she said.

This was in 1982, and teaching cooking to adults was very difficult in the beginning. “I didn’t have money to advertise. Then Phillippa Cheifitz – she was writing a regular column for The Cape Times at the time – came to one of my lessons, gave it a glowing write up and that was the break.” 

Then the classes became really popular. The Jewish ladies from Sea Point came, and initially they didn’t want to tell too many people it was their little secret, said Paarman, but eventually the Afrikaans elite picked up on the grapevine and Marike de Klerk was one of those. “She still had the frown in those days. I helped her with a couple of functions and gave her some advice and so on. And that was fun. I met some lovely people. 

“My husband used to keep the books and send out the notices and keep records, but for the first time in my life I didn’t get a salary. But if you know the rent is to be paid you get off your arse.”

Then came Die Burger, for which Paarman wrote a regular column for several years. When Jane Raphaely launched Femina, she asked Paarman to be the food editor. “I said, ‘Jane, I’ve worked like a dog to get this little school up and running but if you’re happy for me to work remotely then I’ll do it’,” said Paarman, a woman way before her time. 

“But you know how much one learns from more experienced people? Jane was a fantastic editor and had a nose for news. At one stage I had about four jobs – Die Burger, Femina, the school, the TV show Good Morning South Africa, and then the money from the first cookbook we had religiously saved at that stage. Graham was at university doing his CA. One night he comes home – he had one more exam to write – and says he doesn’t want to be an auditor. I said, ‘Are you mad? You can go anywhere in the world with that piece of paper.’ He said, ‘I don’t want to go anywhere in the world, I want to stay here. Why don’t we start a business?’.”

Ina Paarman advocates using fruit and vegetables in season. (Photo: Micky Hoyle)

Graham correctly pointed out with all the above, his mother already had an established name, so let’s start a factory. As one does. They began in Diep River with four employees. “He’s got an incredible work ethic, worked like a dog,” said Paarman. “Me too, in between everything else, and it’s not like you switch off at 5pm. I still work at night. That is how the business grew.” 

The factory and staff complement has expanded of course and Paarman is training who she calls “some very capable people” to continue with product development. “I always put in my tuppence worth,” she said, and final sign-off will always be by her and Graham.

Paarman’s other son Kevin, a lawyer, has just joined the business. “He’s very much under Graham’s thumb, the boss,” teased Paarman. “They work well together. We all remember how hard it was in the beginning and how careful we were. I still can’t stand waste.” 

On October 16, 2022, the new season of JAN RSVP began airing on Via on DStv, also available on Showmax and DStv Catch Up. Paarman is a guest in the first episode along with another living legend, Riaan Cruywagen. Do we need to explain who Jan is?

“I got this phone call from a lovely lady, Carien Loubser – do you know her? – she phoned up and said Jan used to watch my little Good Morning South Africa show when he was a kid and he’d like me to be part of this show, with Riaan Cruywagen. What an interesting day! He is exactly how one imagines him to be, old fashioned Afrikaans gentleman, impeccable manners, and Jan of course is very, very clever the way he orchestrates the show. I used to kill myself with work, he’s got people doing it for him. 

“It’s a unique concept in that it’s a bit of cooking and a dinner party at the end with conversation between the personalities. Riaan is an interesting character and that mix of people around the dinner table with a glass of wine… suddenly it has a lighter aspect to it than a serious cooking programme. I hate these programmes where they make fun of food and it’s a competition. It’s so demeaning. Food is the thing that keeps us healthy and keeps us alive,” she said. 

The episode is an utter delight, in Afrikaans, and if you still doubt that Ina Paarman is real, please watch it. Jan even makes her chocolate cake mix but I don’t think he followed the box instructions correctly. Then again, he’s a Michelin-star chef, he can do whatever he likes.

And for the record, Paarman butters both sides of the bread when making braai broodjies (traditional with cheese, tomato and onion, no chutney), which is the way it should be. DM/TGIFood

The writer supports The Gift of the Givers Foundation, the largest disaster response, non-governmental organisation of African origin on the African continent.

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