Learn about the importance of growing edible indigenous plants and eating local. Discover garden plants you already know have parts you didn’t know you can eat.  You’ll find out about others you will want to add to your garden, and of course we will cook together with several of them over the course of the weekend.

Experienced local indigenous landscape designer and indigenous foods innovator Loubie Rusch, aka @makingkos and founder of Local WILD, started her wild foods journey as a forager. It was the only way to get hold of ingredients. More recently, she has drawn on her landscape background in embarking on innovating cultivation on an urban farm. Though hunting and gathering had been how our forgotten foods were accessed for millennia, re-integrating them into our modern lives needs us to explore more sustainable ways of access as interest in them begins to soar.

Loubie will guide us to what plants are easy to incorporate into our gardens. She will also share useful approaches she has adopted for incorporating them into our existing culinary repertoires.

Contact us so that we can assist with your accommodation booking. We have 4 self-catering cottages available.

Check-in before 12:00 on Friday the 21st of April.

Welcome lunch will be served at 13:00.  Your meals for the weekend are included in the price.

WEEKEND ITINERARY

FRIDAY
12:00 Arrive at African Relish and settle into accommodation.
13:00 Light lunch prepared by our resident chefs. Meet the team and discuss the schedule.
14:00 Cooking Session 1. Contextualising our local edibles within their region and history with Loubie. 

15:00 Visit to Gay’s Dairy for cheese tasting and collection of our weekend dairy order. Time to shop.

Menu: GnT or buchu lemon cordial with wild bitters spritzers, local cheeses and wild preserves, waterblommetjie pickle / atchar, wild herb oil served with vetkoek.

16:00 Preparation for dinner. Prep sourdough bread. Menu: Ribs on the braai with wild rosemary rub, tzatziki with soutlaai, simple herbed millet salad with spekboom, toasted seeds, herbs and onion sprinkle. Fig and forest grape mahlmoul served with cream.

18:00 Ghost walk and village ramble – Ailsa Tudhope, historian and story teller, takes you on a journey back in time with tales of ghosts and village rogues from the past.
19:30 Welcome dinner at African Relish.

SATURDAY
08:30 Visit to Saturday market for some local flavour.
09:00 Breakfast at African Relish and then journey to Tortoise Back Haven.

10:30 Cooking Session 2. Tour and forage vegetables. Talk about organic planting and permaculture with Brett Bard and light lunch picnic on farm. Menu: Pates, garden salad with wild infused berries dressing, sourdough bread and Brett’s crackers, forest grape lemon cordial. Prepared by Brett and Loubie.

14:30 Cooking session 3.  Return to cooking school. Preparation of dinner dishes. Prep veggies foraged from farm. Menu: Deboned leg of lamb on the fire, fermented kei apple marinade, wild sage roast on bed of soft greens topped with pickled sandkool and kei apple mustard dressing. Salted sage baked potatoes with herbed cream and yoghurt, quick pickle salad with spekboom and sea pumpkin. Learn to make a hot pickle with foraged vegetables from the farm. Loubie shares info on ferments. Dessert surprise with summer fruit.
17:00 At leisure
19:30 Saturday dinner, enjoy the fruits of the day’s culinary endeavors.

SUNDAY
07:30 Gather at African Relish for coffee and rusks. Botanical excursion to Wolwekraal nature reserve and visit to Renu Karoo Nursery with Dr Sue Milton, renowned botanist and specialist in Karoo biome biology.
10:00 Cooking session 4. Breakfast, hands-on cooking session with Loubie and our resident chef. Menu: Summer fruit with African Relish granola and local yoghurt, dune spinach, spring onion and mushroom braise, scrambled eggs and aromatic tea.

The price of R3800 per person includes 4 cooking sessions, all meals, listed excursions and recipes.

Excludes accommodation, gratuity and drinks.

Photo credit: Dimitri Otis

For more information phone Hess at 023 541 1381 or email foodies@africanrelish.com.

 

Book Now

For more information about this course, send us a message.