The flowering of Bella-Isabella Niehaus

Last week I found myself in Philadelphia for the launch of her new book, and it is called Bella’s Kitchen, not Isabella’s. Philadelphia is a tiny hamlet in the Western Cape, 40km from the Cape Town CBD and a quick hop from my end of Durbanville. Visiting there was a revelation. Canola fields swathed in buttery yellow basked in cool winter light with the higher reaches of Table Mountain peeking above sunkissed hills. I was enchanted.

Then I turned right into a village I’d never seen before. How could I have missed it for all these decades? Now I will be taking weekend drives there on the kind of summer’s day when you just want to hop into the car and go somewhere pretty and placid.

On a corner of this unexpected idyll is a fascinating house called De Dapperhuys, whose interior rooms have been locations for famous old Afrikaans movies. There’s a deliciously eclectic shop and its stoep in the main road, but we were in the garden and rooms behind.

Bella told me later that the house had been Helena se Hoekwindel, a general store, and her father-in-law Dana Niehaus, the famous radio presenter, knew Philadelphia and the premises well. Bella remembers visiting there soon after marrying Danie Niehaus, Dana’s son and a famous Afrikaans singer at the time.

These men in Bella’s past become relevant a few days later, on Tuesday evening of this week, when I found myself again, this time 40km away in central Cape Town, at a Penguin Random House trade event. Bella and I share this publisher, though I was there as my daughter Rebecca Jackman-Derman’s plus one. Having a bookstagrammer daughter gets me access to things.

Interviewed on stage at that event by Nadine Petrick, PRH marketing manager for local children’s, young adult and educational books, Niehaus explained her preference for being called Bella – now – succinctly.

“So I learned to cook. I did three previous books of which two were vegan books. ​​And I did it with a friend. And I think it was this time in my life where I wanted to do something for me.”

The friend was artist and latter-day author Louis Jansen van Vuuren (no relation even though it is also Bella’s maiden surname), and their There’s a Vegan on my Verandah flew high at the annual Gourmand world cookbook awards a few years ago. She has several other books too. But this one, her latest and the first with Penguin, is special.

“And it sounds a bit egocentrical,” she told the gathered book people, “but I wanted to celebrate Bella. 

“Because, when I was married, my father-in-law was a very well-known old Afrikaans radio announcer. So, I was always his daughter-in-law.

“Then, I married an Afrikaans singer, and I became his wife.

“Then, I joined Sarie magazine and I became Sarie’s fashion editor.

“My son became a world champion kitesurfer. I became Taro’s mother.

“And all I wanted to be all my life was Bella. So now, at last, I am Bella.”

The room burst into applause. It was a moment to cherish and cheer.

At the age of nearly 71, Bella Niehaus wears only black, with a river of silver bangles shaking on her left arm. This is familiar to me, as the Foodie’s Wife also wears many silver bangles on her arm, and we always know when she is coming, by the shake, shake, shake preceding her entry into a room. (This has been useful at times if you and the kids have been gossiping about mom when she is out of the room. Shhh, here she comes.)

I wonder if Taro has a similar story? Taro is her son. He is 40 and it was clear at both of the abovementioned events that mom adores her boy, who is an international kitesurfing champion and “beautiful”, says mom. Now that he is a bit older, he cooks rather well, and pleases his mom by also cleaning up after cooking.

“He’s in the Bahamas at the moment, skippering a luxury yacht. But when he comes to visit me, he cooks. And I teach him little things. He’ll say, okay, mom, teach me how to make your favourite tomato sauce. And I always love it.

“I’ll say, okay, go outside and get some thyme. And he’ll come back with a darn sprig. And I’ll say, nee, you don’t cook with a sprig. You cook with a handful. So he normally cooks, but every now and then I have to stand next to him and say, a little bit more chilli, a little bit more salt.”

Despite her preference for being Bella at this stage of her life, her book is titled Bella’s Kitchen, a South African Food Odyssey (no surprise there) but is credited on the gorgeous front cover as Isabella Niehaus. Well, it’s not as if she is eschewing her full name, and it is the one she is known by as an author.

It’s my favourite front cover of all the South African cookbooks I’ve seen this year, it’s just magnificent. She told the story of the shoot for the cover image when interviewed by the very funny Zola Nene in Philadelphia last Friday.

There’d been another cover, before this one was chosen, she said, “but it was a bit too moody and sultry. So when we did the reshoot, Lindy and me, we decided, okay, we have to have something bright on the cover.

“Well, everyone who knows me knows that I have a very bright personality in the house, but as for the rest…” (Nodding to her black dress.)

“Anyway, so we started off shooting the cover first with, I think, a green bowl with tomatoes.

“Then it went to a white bowl. 

“Then it went to a silver bowl.

“And by the end of the day, Lindy said, ‘Just put the bloody tomatoes in your arm.’

A perfect cookbook cover was born.

But the innards of any good cookbook have to please the palate (and the eye) as much as the cover does, and the first recipe that leapt off the page and into my heart was the pork terrine, straight out of an old French kitchen, and I thought, now we’re talking.

It contains brandy and bacon and garlic, lots of herbs and is dotted with pistachios and dried apricots, and those last two ingredients are surely pure Bella. (If you want to cook like Bella, add some fruit and a cinnamon stick.)

Many other lovely things followed, but I was looking to be arrested first by an image of food and second, by what it is. And the next one to stop me in my tracks was the smoked snoek cheesecake, which has a cheesy pastry containing a touch of cayenne pepper, and a filling of cream cheese, sour cream and of course smoked snoek, touched by paprika.

Now I’m skipping through her chapters on Duinhuis, her former seaside West Coast home where her long tables on Sundays were famous and which feature in her book Duinhuis, to find her chapter title Fearless.

Fearless is what she now is as a human being and a cook, losing her insecurities after turning 70 last year, and embracing anything she bloody well wants to. And being (only slightly older) than her, I feel exactly the same right now.

And there, as the first recipe in this chapter, is her beef stew with gingerbread. Oh my, this I need to eat. It’s made with chuck (so cheap-cheap), and has beer and cider vinegar in it as well as masses of fresh herbs and a topping of gingerbread, for which she also gives her recipe.

Finally, a dessert from her chapter dedicated to her boy Taro, and the recipe is Dutch baby with blueberries, a sort of sweet Yorkshire pudding-like sugar-laden batter that I am planning to hunt down and drag back to my tent. Now.

But I have to throw in one more recipe before I reluctantly give up and get back to my own kitchen. And it is the slow-roasted brisket near the end of this lovely book.

This dish was cooked for us last Friday at the book launch in Philadelphia, where Bella told us this:

“I just love the people at Darling Butchery. And I’d always wanted to make a brisket.”

She bought some, and cooked it.

“Not even my dog would eat it. It was horrible.”

She went back on another occasion and asked for a nice stukkie brisket, “en kan jy sny ’n bietjie van die vet af?” And she cooked it, and it didn’t go well.

Eventually she decided she’d have one more go at this recalcitrant meat, and went back.

“And they looked at me and they said, ‘How many times have you tried it? Why are you going to do it again?’

“Anyway, I went home, and I had all these recipe books with different people’s briskets, and then I lost interest, and there were ingredients I didn’t have. So I started cooking it with whatever was around.

“So I’d just come back from friends in Muscat, and I had a whole lot of dates. So I put a handful of dates in.

“And I always put a cinnamon stick in everything. In tomato sauce. Everything has a cinnamon stick.

“And then there was a Granny Smith apple that was lying around. There was a lime. Everything went into this darn brisket, and I left it in the oven for 8 hours.”

It was delicious, utterly Bella, and it is in the book. I’m glad it is, because I had a taste of it last Friday and it’s sublime. 

In Scotland, a man described her as “that strange woman who puts apples and prunes in her meat”. I’d call that “How to cook, the Bella way.” DM