If you love cooking, or even just enjoy food for food's sake, you should visit Henrie's Hotch Potch, the Highlife regular recipe column for a truly amazing website: www.iafrica.com.

A food guru if ever there was, Henrie Geyser does not supply just any old kind of recipe, randomly pinched from the yellowing pages of Your Average Cookbook. Rather, the wondrous menus that grace the pages of Henrie's Hotch Potch each week have come to exist through endless experimenting and tasting, night after night of gleeful peeling, chopping, stirring, stuffing, straining, baking, grilling, frying and braaiing - wooden spoon in one hand, glass of wine in the other.

We are fortunate enough to have been given permission to reproduce a few of Henrie's recipes, just so that we can get a taste! To visit Henrie at the iAfrica web site where he updates his column every Friday with a full menu of Starter, Main Course and Dessert - click here

"A traditional Cape smoorvis is "smothered fish" in literal translation. But before we start I must tell you about a lovely book of traditional recipes. It is called Leipoldt's Cape Cookery by C Louis Leipoldt and it is wonderful. It is also available in Afrikaans. There are various different recipes for smoorvis, but I like his one best, although I do adapt it slightly.

Originally, smoorvis was made (and is still supposed to be made) with salted, wind dried fish, but this is not always easy to find, particularly if you don't live anywhere near the sea. So instead we will use smoked snoek".

Ingredients

500 g of smoked snoek, skinned, boned and flaked
2 large onions, thinly sliced
2 peeled and chopped tomatoes ( optional, but I like it)
2 chopped fresh chillies, seeds removed
Powdered ginger ( just a sprinkling)
Tablespoon of lemon juice
1/2 cup of dry white wine ( optional, but I like it)
black pepper
teaspoon of brown sugar
2 large potatoes, peeled and diced

• In a frying pan fry the onions and potato in a blob of butter until soft, but not crispy or brown.

• Add the tomatoes, wine and lemon juice and simmer for about five minutes.

• Now add the fish and let it simmer softly.

As Leipoldt says: "The dish should be pungent, spicy and satisfying and neither too dry or too moist . . . "

Serve with plain white rice, crispy fresh bread and a green salad. And if there is fish left over use it for sandwiches. It tastes delightful!

Henrie

To visit Henrie at the iAfrica web site where he updates his column every Friday with a full menu of Starter, Main Course and Dessert - click here