Chef Nokx Majozi’s homecoming continued at the Cape Grace this week with the city launch of her debut new book – The South African Cook Book. The celebrated ‘Pie Queen’ has created an exclusive pie for Heirloom Restaurant, pairing a distinctly South African filling with classic British pastry to tell the story of her journey from rural Zululand to London’s leading kitchens -with the Heirloom menu item available for a short time only from 23 August to September 23.
It was a delight to listen to the inspiration of Chef Nokx’s rather illustrious career, in a book launch conversation with leading Master Chef SA judge Justine Drake.
READ: From Disney to Durban: Chef Nokx Majozi brings her new cookbook home
Yet, the most striking feature about Chef Nokx is not her strong profile or the softness in her eyes when she laughs. It is her hands.
Her long, elegant fingers resemble the articulated wooden mannequin hands used to teach aspiring artists how to draw. Her thumb and forefinger seem to fall instinctively into the precise pinching pose she must have repeated thousands of times while crafting the elaborate pastry designs that made Michelin-starred chefs queue for a taste.
Majozi could easily have ridden the wave that carried her into the upper echelons of the culinary world by writing a cookbook devoted entirely to pies. But her debut book was never going to be about the creation that made her famous.
“Everybody asked, ‘Will there be pies?’” she told guests at the Cape Town launch. “I would smile because I knew my first book was never going to be about pies. I wanted to take people to where I came from. I wanted to tell them my story.”
Selene BrophyChef Nokx Majozi in conversation with culinary expert and Master Chef SA judge Justine Drake.
That story begins in her home province of KwaZulu-Natal, where food came from the family garden, and cooking was inseparable from community.
“You ate whatever was available at that particular time,” she recalled. “If my vegetables were ready, I shared them with the community. We ate seasonally and affordably.”
Her earliest kitchen lessons came from her mother, who taught her to gather pumpkin leaves from the garden and prepare uphuthu. Her father was a more spontaneous cook: if the meal made by her mother or aunt was not what he felt like eating, he would begin again from scratch.
“My mom and dad could use exactly the same ingredients, but the results would be completely different,” she said. “I think that’s where my curiosity about cooking began.”
Turning that curiosity into a profession was not an obvious choice. When she told her father that she wanted to study cooking, his response was blunt: “I’m not wasting my money on that. If you don’t know how to cook, I can teach you.”
Cape GraceThe dedication and skill have earned Chef Nokx her “Pie Queen” reputation.
Friends and neighbours also struggled to understand why anyone would pay to learn a skill practised daily at home. “They would say, ‘I can teach you how to make pap,’ or, ‘Give me the money and I’ll teach you.’ In those days, nobody realised that cooking could become a career.”
Majozi persisted, studying hospitality management at Durban University of Technology before joining Durban’s Riverside Hotel. Her career soon took the improbable leap from rural KwaZulu-Natal to Walt Disney World in Florida, when she became one of three young women selected to represent South African cuisine at an African-inspired resort.
“I had never imagined that something like the pap I grew up eating could one day be something I would cook overseas,” she said.
Her journey later took her into some of London’s most distinguished kitchens. At Rosewood London, she became the celebrated force behind the Holborn Dining Room’s Pie Room, earning the unofficial title of London’s “Pie Queen”. Today, she is Chef-in-Residence at Fallow, a role that allows her to share her experience while continuing to develop her own culinary voice.
But wherever that career has taken her, the Sunday food of home has followed.
Her family’s British Sunday roast has become a South African seven-colours meal, laden with rice, squash, beans, curries, fried chicken and vegetables.
“It belongs to us, but we often take it for granted,” she said. “When you look at the plate, there are so many beautiful colours. My seven colours has become our Sunday roast in London because I want my family to celebrate South African food.”
Saturday evening’s menu brings that same sense of home to Heirloom. Created with Chef Wesli Jacobs, it includes ujeqe, Saldanha Bay oysters with smoked snoek mayonnaise and chakalaka purée, rooibos-cured trout, Wagyu beef Wellington with morogo and chargrilled squash, and a milk-tart mille-feuille.
It is an elegant homecoming for a chef who has cooked South African food around the world, yet remains most interested in the ingredients, memories and people who first placed it in her hands.
Cape GraceChef Wesley Jacobs and Chef Nokx Majozi will cook together to create a limited edition by at Heirloom.
DON’T MISS: The Four Hands dinner with Chef Nokx Majozi and Cape Grace Executive Chef Wesli Jacobs
Dining and Cooking