Amara Petersen

I grew up in the Bo-Kaap — the Malay Quarter of Cape Town, the pastel-coloured neighbourhood on the slopes of Signal Hill where the Cape Malay community has lived since the 17th century. Cape Malay food is one of South Africa's most distinctive cuisines: a blend of Indonesian, Malaysian, South African and Dutch cooking that arrived with the enslaved people brought to the Cape by the Dutch East India Company. Bobotie, bredie, koesisters — these are the dishes my grandmother made and they are almost entirely unknown internationally. I take people into a food history that most visitors to Cape Town never encounter.