Served Perfect
- Shaking Things Up With Kesego Moeng
- RiaKathEats and Friends
- Good Food Good Business
- The Perfect Guest: Michaela Jacobsz
The founder of Exuberant Sips, Kesego Moeng, famously known as Robust Hun, is a trailblazer in the mixology space. With only 4 years in the industry, and about a year of that consumed by the inactivity many entrepreneurs and businesses had to yield to in the face of the Covid pandemic, her come up has been one to behold! It all started when a Facebook friend, Tshepiso Moremi suggested she look into the bartending and mixology space. According to Tshepiso, Kesego had a knack for it, and he believed she could do really well if she just gave it a shot, and he was right!
Picture this, bright summer weather, a beautiful and serene backyard lounge setup, the ambient sound of Afrobeats not too intrusive, almost distant but clear enough to savour as you rouse your palate with a chilled crisp and fruity sparkling wine, all this with your favourite people. Well, welcome to Maria Kathurima Selemogwe’s gorgeous home. The milieu of her being is undoubtedly reminiscent of the perfect summer afternoon. Irreproachably warm and radiant.
You may receive frequent requests to become a vendor at events as a food truck owner. And while it may be tempting to say yes to everything, it is crucial to choose your festivals carefully. Find festivals where many people in your target group will be going, and make sure the food you sell suits the tastes of the individuals attending. You'll first want to know how many people are likely to show up.
Hot on the Eswatini food scene is home cook and food blogger Michaela Jacobsz! She is the founder of The Hungry Hun, a food blog that started as a stress release hobby and quickly earned her the coveted number 1 spot at the 2021 Pick n Pay Luju Flame Master Cook-off. We catch up with Michaela to talk all about The Hungry Hun and her love and passion for food.
The food combo debate! What’s your flavour?
Some of the world’s best food combos have food lovers divided on what is genius or just downright criminal. Pineapples on pizza, whiskey chased with pickling liquid (yes, that’s a thing), popcorn and chocolate, the combinations are endless. But, as it turns out, our love for the unusual and weird can all be explained by elementary biology.
To put it plainly; do pineapples belong on pizza? Yes, they do and should you add the feta cheese to the watermelon? Affirmative. According to science, if you disagree with the above then you’ve been doing it all wrong.
Here’s the breakdown; Taste receptors in the mouth pick up on five basic taste modalities. These are sweet, salty, bitter, sour and savoury, also called Umami. Our taste buds can pick up on all these flavours in one single mouthful when layered expertly. Think of a delicious savoury spatchcock basted with a well-balanced sweet and sour marinade and grilled to golden perfection, or sushi; California rolls with the saltiness of the soy sauce, sharpness of the wasabi and aromatics of the pickled ginger. The flavours just work!
Barb Stuckey, food developer, tastemaker and author of Taste: Surprising stories and science about why food tastes so good says,
“We like sweet because it signals calories, or energy, to us. And we like salt because we need it for normal bodily function. We have no sodium storage system, as we do with other minerals (i.e. we store calcium in our bones), so Mother Nature’s solution is a built-in craving for it. The combination of these two positive biological responses is VERY pleasurable.”
The manifestation of the science as explained above doesn’t always present with the extremes of pieces of chunky pineapple on pizza. It’s in the dipping of your chips or fries in tomato sauce, the addition of bbq sauce to your favourite burger, the necessity of the salty rim with a margarita, or the addition of blue cheese to a sweet pear galette. It’s all innately within us, but as with all things, to varying degrees. This would also explain why some people have a sweet tooth and others are fond of the savoury. One could lean more towards the intense sweetness of fruit on a thin cheesy crust, while another could appreciate just a touch of sweetness in a sauce brushed over a commanding piece of steak. The pursuits of the complexity of layered flavour that appeals to our different taste receptors are all the same, but with a touch of difference. It’s science.