Zanele van Zyl will broaden her culinary portfolio with a new adventure in French cuisine, while maintaining her flair for local flavours.
After the success of her third cookbook, Senidlile Kodwa? , the celebrated chef plans to relocate to France next year.
“I’m going to work in France for a few months and learn French cuisine and I’ll approach it as a student or apprentice. However, right now I’m still ironing out the details,” she says.
The 45-year-old began her culinary career nine years ago when she was on maternity leave. She was an IT technician at the time.
“I stopped working when I was pregnant with my little one, and we [ husband and I] agreed that I was going to raise her until she was five, then I could go back to work. That’s when I made the decision not to go back to corporate. I desired to do something that I always wanted to do, which was cooking,” she says.
Before long she was studying to obtain her culinary degree at Capsicum Culinary Studios.
“It wasn’t easy. I had to leave my little one, go to school from eight to five, followed by my industry training from six to ten in the evening. Having people who supported me, especially my husband, encouraged me to go for it, it was a blessing.”
Today, one of Van Zyl’s passions is creating new tasty dishes using her pantry staples and elevating their flavour profile with delicious tweaks.
“In my cooking, I use pantry items that are often overlooked. The other day, I made boerewors soup. Boerewors is an SA staple, and people always think that with boerewors you can just fry it,” she says.
“I boiled the wors and I crumbled it. Then, sautéed onions and added vegetable stock with cayenne pepper. It is my crumbled wors and cream soup and it was amazing.”