Confessions of a Hungry Woman

Confessions of a Hungry Woman began as a monthly column for Woolworths’ Taste magazine, and gradually grew into what Sam Woulidge describes as a ‘love letter’, to food and foreign places, but ultimately to South Africa. After four years of travelling the world, sampling every delicacy the globe could offer, the tastes of home drew Sam and her husband back to Cape Town. But returning home meant domesticity and culinary challenges, and, by her own admission, Sam had always been wary of both: ‘I don’t want to work too hard in the kitchen and I would really rather share a glass of wine with my guests than worry over fussy, higher-grade-science-required recipes.’ And so she asked some friends to share their fail-proof recipes with her, recipes with the guarantee that if she could make them, anybody could.

Confessions of a Hungry Woman is a cookbook of two parts. Firstly, it is a compilation of 45 columns previously published in Taste, in which Sam takes the reader on a personal journey as she discovers the exotic flavours of foreign places, reminisces about the carefree tastes of childhood and recreates the nostalgic aromas of home. Secondly, it is a celebration of 14 of Sam’s foodie friends. Each was charged with producing a menu for 6 people featuring relatively effortless, but nonetheless impressive, dishes. Contributors include Adi Badenhorst, Cara Brink, Mariana Esterhuizen, Ruben Riffel, Giorgio Nava, Callie Maritz and Mari-Louis Guy, and Karen Dudley.