There is a predominantly Cape Malay influence in the history of the traditional cookery of Cape Town. Malay is the ‘name’ given to immigrants that came to South Africa from North Africa, Malaysia and anywhere in between. These immigrants made Cape Town their home and over the years, they gradually merged their different cooking styles, resulting in the classic Cape Malay cooking style and traditions as we know them today. Sosaties is one of those adapted Cape Malay-influenced dishes that has been passed on from generation to generation.

I always make a good-sized batch of the marinade, then put some in a sealed jar and keep it in the fridge. It forms the perfect base for my homemade curries, and a tablespoon stirred in with cooked chicken and crème fraîche, makes a lovely coronation chicken sandwich too!

You will need to start this recipe at least 2 days before you want to serve it.

These barbecued skewers are delicious and fun. I serve mine with homemade flatbreads and a Cucumber Yogurt Salad. The flatbreads are very easy and surprisingly quick to make. This recipe makes about 12 small flatbreads, but they are small and thin so I serve 3 per serving. Alternatively, you can simply buy ready-made flatbreads from the supermarket, if you prefer.

Mr P and I both love vegetables and cooking them whole on the barbecue is a fantastic way to enjoy them. This barbecued curried whole cauliflower is simply delicious, and once it’s cooked, the cauliflower has a soft and creamy texture but is still just holding its shape. We slice it into wedges like a cake and serve it alongside Slow-barbecued Lamb Shoulder or barbecued spatchcocked chicken.

It’s an easy recipe too and doesn’t require much preparation, allowing you more time to chat and mingle with your guests.

We have a ceramic barbecue with a lid (a Big Green Egg barbecue – it’s fantastic!) and this enables us to control the heat and get it nice and low when we need to. Closing the barbecue lid also helps the barbecue to, in effect, become an oven. The result is fantastic flavourful, smoky barbecued meat. You might think that the meat will become dry during cooking, but trust me, if you manage to control the temperature and keep the lamb covered for the majority of the cooking time, it will be lovely, succulent and flaky when you come to serve it. Please note that this recipe is best cooked on a barbecue (with a lid and vents) that has a temperature gauge attached.

This recipe is what I call an ultimate party dish, because you can start the barbecue early in the morning and then leave your joint of meat to cook slowly throughout the day (checking it occasionally), while you get on with your daily chores, then when your guests arrive in the evening, the meat is ready. Simple but so effective!

My grandparents had two very large avocado trees in their garden and these fellas were very tall. Each year my grandfather would harvest the avocados, and each family (six families) used to get their ‘share’. The avocados were treated with utmost respect and in our household my father used to be in charge of looking after them. To ripen the avocados, dad used to wrap them each in newspaper and then place each one into a clean sock. They were then carefully placed amongst his pants and socks at the back of his wardrobe (where it was cool and dark) and left to ripen slowly. Dad would check them regularly and they would finally make their appearance once they were ripe and ready to eat.

Harvesting the avocados was a serious event for us. There were only three of us in our family, but we made sure that we each got our own fair share! It makes me chuckle now, but believe me, it was a serious event back then. The respect that mum and dad showed to avocados has made me treat them with the same respect to this very day. Dad was a fussy eater so his food had to be plain, and the only way he enjoyed avocado was by seasoning it with plenty of salt and pepper. Mum and I liked a bit of lemon juice, but that was the extent of the extravagance back then. A real sense of occasion! I loved the importance of fresh avocados to my family and I still love their specialness today.

For me, bacon and avocado is a natural match. When you have two ingredients that each have a strong flavour, it really doesn’t need much else to make a great dish. I have added the barbecued Little Gem lettuces to this recipe because I love the taste of them. The dressing is fantastic because you can taste both the avocado and the bacon. It’s simply wow and delicious and I hope you’ll love it too!

This recipe is a great way to use up trimmings of cod, or you could use other white fish instead, such as hake, lemon sole or sea bass. Remember to remove the skin and all the bones.

I cook these skewers over the barbecue, but if you prefer to use the oven instead, please see the Cook’s Note at the end of the recipe.

This pitta bread dough recipe is fantastic. I like the feel of the dough and it works perfectly every time (I use it a lot). For this particular recipe, I thought it would be great to stuff the raw dough pockets with a filling before cooking them.

As I usually cook my pitta breads using a griddle pan, the barbecue idea is not alien at all. The trick with this is to make sure that the barbecue is not too hot. Our barbecue has a lid, meaning I can close all the vents and the lid, which, in effect, turns the barbecue into an outdoor oven. The pitta breads take about 8–10 minutes to cook and if the temperature is controlled and you turn the pitta breads a couple of times during the cooking process, they cook perfectly all the way through with just the right amount of caramelisation on the outside.

This recipe makes a delicious starter or something tasty to nibble on while you are slow cooking a joint of meat on the barbecue.

For the filling, I have kept it simple today by using caramelised onions, feta cheese and oregano, but if you have some lovely curried/seasoned cooked minced lamb (drained of fat and as dry as possible), this would also be fantastic to add as a filling, along with the caramelised onions.

I used feta cheese for the salad as that is what I had in the fridge, but you could use fresh homemade curd cheese or crumbly goat’s cheese instead, if you prefer.

Any leftover dressing keeps well in a covered jar or squeezy bottle in the fridge for up to a week and can be drizzled over other salads.

This hummus can be served as a dip with pitta breads or breadsticks, or it can form the basis for a salad. Served as a dip, it makes a great recipe to serve at a barbecue or drinks party.

We love corn on the cob and when it’s in season, Mr P and I enjoy it prepared in many different ways. We are having a great summer so far this year and our barbecue is ready and on standby at all times, so we have been enjoying all sorts of different things cooked on the barbecue, especially vegetables, including carrots, beetroot, potatoes and corn on the cob. It’s an ongoing experiment and we’re loving every minute of it!

For this recipe, the corn cobs are seasoned with oil and aromatics, then wrapped in foil to almost create a mini oven for the corn to cook in. The foil parcel creates steam, which prevents the kernels from drying out and helps to cook the corn evenly, while still allowing enough heat through to create that authentic barbecued flavour.

It was a memorable family occasion, because my parents boiled the corn in this enormous saucepan filled with salted water until soft, then we would sit around the table with napkins and lashings of margarine, salt and pepper. My mother only served white sliced bread with it and it was heaven. I loved it.

I also remember us all sitting around afterwards (like baboons!) with the toothpicks, removing the bits stuck between our teeth. When my mother reads this she will probably want to kick me on the shins, as she’ll probably want to die of embarrassment! I hope you have a good giggle reading this, as it’s the absolute truth!

Following on from the gigantic saucepan, mum eventually upgraded to a microwave. It’s quite a fancy model and she uses it for cooking or baking most things, and consequently, she has taught me the best, quickest and least messy way to cook corn on the cob. I am chuffed, after all these years, that I still cook my corn in the microwave as mum taught me.

So, to cook corn on the cob my mum’s way, simply wrap each prepared corn on the cob in a double layer of kitchen paper, soak the whole wrapped cobs in water, then place in a microwave and cook on High (100% power) for 9–12 minutes, then leave to rest in the microwave with the door closed for a further 9 minutes. Hey presto, job done!