Cooking with culture — a conversation about dishing up SA’s diversity with author Kim Bagley

‘The food system is not broken, but is engineered to do something very harmful,” said Kurt Ackermann, CEO of the South Africa Urban Farming Trust and a founder of the Food Indaba. He mentioned foodie culture in Cape Town which celebrates the elite, in a highly unequal country. 

Kim Bagley, author of the cookbook, Cooking With Kim Bagley, does the opposite, elevating affordable home-style cooking into gourmet meals that reflect South Africa’s diversity.

She grew up using the Snowflake baking book, and hopes that her hearty meals will similarly become a staple in South African households, and her new book as dog-eared as the baking book she grew up with. 

Zukiswa Pikoli, managing editor of Maverick Citizen, and Bagley sat down at the Book Lounge in Cape Town on 13 July to talk about her bestseller, family and fusing influences into her food. 

From koeksisters to TikTok 

Growing up in Cape Town, her family was food oriented; koeksisters before church on a Sunday, and coming home after Sunday school she’d walk into a house with the Carpenters playing in the background, her parents laughing and cooking together. 

Bagley started cooking when she was 12. She started doing the food preparation, and later on she had the responsibility of braising meat and frying onions. One day she decided to cook the entire meal by herself.

“My mom was so proud of me – a day that I will never forget, both my mom and dad enjoyed it,” she said. That was also her first mistake, she laughed, because from there on she was in charge of a lot of the cooking. 

During adulthood Bagley worked in the corporate sphere, raising three daughters with her husband. She felt like she was missing parts of her children’s upbringing, so with the support of her husband, she decided to become a stay-at-home mom. 

Still, despite being more present at home, she felt like something was missing. Bagley tried a range of things, but “nothing stuck until I was in the kitchen”.

Growing up, the koeksisters Bagley ate on the way to church were from a neighbour who lived on the next street, Aunty Fatima. When Bagley started sharing her cooking on her WhatsApp statuses, Aunty Fatima was the one who told her that people need to see what she’s doing, and advised her to start a YouTube channel. 

“She was my first follower, and then I started TikTok,” said Bagley. At first she put music over the cooking recipes, then Aunty Fatima instructed her to do a voice-over about what she was doing. Suddenly, people were engaging with it. 

Integrating influences 

Bagley told the audience that when she moved to Johannesburg she had not been exposed to things like pap and chicken feet, or porridge and stew. But when she tried different foods, she found them amazing. 

The Gatsby, a traditional Capetonian meal, the kota, a generally Joburg meal, and the bunny chow, a distinctly Durban dish, are “all made with bread, all different, all unique, but so good”, Bagley said. “If you have the experience to go around and eat all of that food, that’s South Africa right there. 

“It saddens me that people don’t know other cultures and you think your culture is the [only] right way,” Bagley mused on the Cape Town way of making tripe and trotters in one pot. 

Pikoli asked Bagley how important the combinations of affordable and gourmet food were in her recipe book, which is like a repository of cultural knowledge of South Africa.

“It is important because the cost of food is so expensive, we cannot eat lavishly [with] everything. Things like tinned fish – how do we make this delicious in a biryani?… A beans and potato curry – so affordable but so nutritious and delicious. Simple things. That is what I strive for.”  

Slow cook to success

Asked about how she has learnt from her failures along the way, Bagley said: “I think timing is very important.” 

She said she approached a few publishing companies two years ago and was turned down by all of them. However, after getting some advice on how to edit the book and some time sitting with the feeling of failure, she got back on the horse and gave it another shot. 

“When you get criticised don’t take it as ‘I failed’, rather learn from that and work towards that goal. I moved forward and I moved on and now my book is at number one,” Bagley said. 

If she had to choose a favourite meal, it would be anything in one pot, or a slow cooker. 

“... you don’t have to spend hours in the kitchen. I love a slow cooker... There’s something so comforting and heart-warming about anything slow-cooked,” she said. DM