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Food Editor Tony Jackman’s Top Recipes of 2022

Food Editor Tony Jackman’s Top Recipes of 2022
Tony Jackman’s brandy-orange malva pudding. (Photo: Tony Jackman)
Tony Jackman
By Tony Jackman
16 Dec 2022
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Your own personal Kitchen Boy, Tony Jackman (c’est moi), has revisited all of the 260 recipes he's cooked and written this year and chosen the five that he is proudest of having done. We’ve published one every day this week, and today we announce his Recipe of the Year.

Choices are subjective. I eat what I like, I cook what I like, and I write what I like. I’m blessed in that way, and it would be foolish and rather sad to apologise for it. So I don’t. But your opinion counts for no less, which is why I have also compiled a People’s Choice list of the 10 most read recipes of the year, and they are all your (collective) choice. You can read about those here.

I won’t do a slow build up with this, as you may already have seen four of my top five picks, which we have been publishing daily since Monday. So I’ll dive straight in:

Recipe of the Year: Fynvleis & wildspastei

Tony Jackman’s wildspastei (game pie) made from venison fynvleis, photographed on the old stove that belonged to Cradock hotelier Sandra Antrobus as a young bride. There’s a bit of the fynvleis in the small bowl. (Photo: Tony Jackman)



This dish typifies, for me, the Karoo cooking journey I have been on for the past eight years since moving from Cape Town to the complex town we call Cradock. It is all about fynvleis, one of the most prized dishes in Karoo cuisine. It is the meat of game stewed slowly for a very long time, until it is so fine (fynvleis = fine meat) that it makes the most succulent, delightful pie filling of them all. A Karoo game pie, which is what resulted once the fynvleis had been cooked, is one of the joys of the region and must be eaten whenever you come and visit our towns or pop into our farm stalls. Just ask for wildspastei (pr. vilds-pass-tay).

The rest, in order, are:

  1. Rich dark chocolate cake


Rich dark chocolate cake. (Photo: Tony Jackman)



I had set myself a challenge: to develop a chocolate cake recipe that not only looked marvellous, but tasted even better than you’d expect. So I threw chocolate at it like a wild chocoholic hoarding chocolate in a chocolate dearth. And then a bit more for luck. So, this is not a cheap recipe. This is chocolate-coated luxury. 

  1. Air fryer hasselback potatoes with thyme butter


Air fryer hasselback potatoes. (Photo: Tony Jackman)



I had to wrestle with myself for a bit while choosing this because it was hard not to choose my mom’s chips recipe which I adapted for an air fryer. But this recipe is just better, and I think it’s the thyme butter that makes the biggest difference. Anyway, a chip is a chip and a hasselback is a hasselback; like apples and pears, they do not compare. 

The hasselbacks were everything I’ve ever wanted in a crispy potato that’s perfectly soft in the middle but so crunchy on the outside. But do also try Granny Betty’s air fryer chips if you haven’t yet.

  1. Ginger chicken potjie roast


Tony Jackman’s ginger roast chicken in a potjie. (Photo: Tony Jackman)



I cooked this last January and I can still remember how delicious and succulent it was. I don’t think I’ve ever cooked a more delicious roast chicken, and if you haven’t yet tried roasting a chicken in a potjie, please do.

The trick is to melt butter in the potjie first, then put the bird in, breast side down, and cook it hard for about 15 minutes, while moving the chicken around now and then so that it doesn’t catch. Then you turn it over with two wooden spoons and let it complete its cooking until it’s done to the bone. It turns out crisp, golden but deeply satisfying in its succulence.

  1. Brandy-orange Malva pudding with blueberries


Tony Jackman’s brandy-orange malva pudding. (Photo: Tony Jackman)



The People’s Choice of the top pudding recipe of the year was my Dark Malva Pudding, and I was very happy with that recipe, but this one is my personal top pick. For one thing, there’s the brandy kick that it has, then the citrus, and I love citrus in anything. To finish it with a sauce in which blueberries had been steeped was what pleased my palate the most. 

But a new year lies ahead, and all the cooking that will come with it. I look forward to continuing our journey with food and the Karoo in 2023, but for now, have a special, loving festive season, be kind, and remember to come back here when the festive dust has settled. Till then. DM/TGIFood

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