Former Miss South Africa 2018, Tamaryn Green, took guests on a culinary adventure, presenting her delectable food delicacies at the Nestlé headquarters in Bryanston.
Green describes learning to cook as an exciting process, especially with the help of her family, who have a knack for cooking.
“I was doing medicine; I was working. I didn’t have a lot of time to cook, but my family loves cooking. I think they are very good cooks, and their food is delicious. I always felt like I really wanted to learn how to cook. So this year, after taking some time off medicine, I decided what I could do with my time and have fun with it. And I started sharing on social media, and people really started to enjoy it, and they also helped me.
They would comment and send me DMs with recipes, which I really liked. But I don’t want to portray myself as a chef, because I am not a chef,” said Green.
She said she wanted to appeal to an everyday person who can cook quick but hearty recipes.
“So today there were two of those, one of which was the mussel recipe, which is my family’s favourite. And they created a wedding book for me, and everyone added their special recipe to it, so this is my aunt’s. I just adjusted it a little bit. And for the chicken, I just decided to do it myself.”
The beauty queen was working alongside Chef Sizwe Cebekhulu from The Culinarian Chefs Academy in Fourways.
Cebekhulu spoke about the cooking experience and introduced Nestlé Whipping Cream, which he hailed as making the food preparation experience thrilling.
“It’s always a fun experience and a learning curve as well. So it’s not only about me teaching them how to cook. It’s about me learning from them because they are different individuals with different personalities. So you learn a lot from the people that you get to interact with. Today was a bit challenging because I had not done it for quite some time. We have never had a three-course cooking experience. We usually do team-building sessions. And we would do small numbers.”
Having been a chef for 18 years, Cebekhulu said getting the opportunity to cater, train people, and interact with other chefs in other markets were his biggest highlights.
He told “The Star” that he was recently selected as a board member of the SA Chefs Association.
“Being on the SA Chefs Association as an active member and as a board member as well. I think that would be the highlight of the year because I was recently selected. Those are the highlights. Opening the academy because we have always done consulting. So we started as a consulting firm,” he said.