The food artistry of the extraordinary Lientjie Wessels

Lientjie’s slow cooked chickpeas with garlic and bay leaf. (Image: Supplied)

By Tony Jackman

14 Jun 2024

Having known of Lientjie Wessels for years, but never having been close enough to eat her famously divine food, I hatched a cunning plan to get her to take part in this series. Now I can make and taste her food. And so can you.

The Foodie’s Wife whooped with joy when I told her that I had invited a chef to take part in this series who had chosen a slow cooker recipe. It is known far and wide that this is an appliance I never touch for fear of contamination.

Could I have been so wrong for all these years? It would seem so. What’s more, Lientjie’s description of the dish had my mouth watering.

I had messaged her asking her to take part. Up popped a WhatsApp: “Good morning, can I choose a slow cooker chickpea dish (so good), will combine with crusty bread and maybe a roast chicken…”

The roast chicken caught my attention, the slow cooker not so much.

So I replied: “Sure. Can you say that it can also be used in another pot on a low heat if they don’t have a slow cooker?”

(Surely?)

With rising joy, I read her reply that indeed it could be cooked in a low oven. Order was restored. Sort of.

I replied: “My wife will be relieved. We have one which she likes to use but I have never touched.”

To which Lientjie replied: “It is the best recipe, you will make it every week.”

Challenge. Now that’s fighting talk. So I yelled from the kitchen to the lounge: “I’m getting a slow cooker chickpea recipe for you to make”.

Then, when I asked her if it was made with canned chickpeas, Lientjie described the recipe: “No, actually dried chickpeas with a cup of olive oil and a few other ingredients, it tastes like it has been cooked in bone marrow.”

Oooooooooh. Now she had my full attention. And maybe I could sneak some actual bone marrow into the slow cooker when the Foodie’s Wife was watching Gone With the Wind again.

Of her recipe, she says, “I was told about this recipe a few weeks ago by my friend and colleague Annelise Burgess, after which I made up my own version. This is such a satisfying, indulging and comforting dish because of all the olive oil, this makes these chickpeas taste as if it has been cooked in bone marrow.”

She added that it “can be made completely vegan” by substituting the chicken stock for vegetable stock. “If you want to keep it vegetarian or vegan, then have it with fluffy mashed potatoes and a green salad with lemon.

“You can serve it as is with toasted ciabatta or throw in a roast chicken as we did last night and a simple salad with loads of freshly squeezed lemon juice. (Or some marrow bones. – Food Ed)

“With this batch, I kept it fairly simple but there is no reason why you can’t chuck in a few sprigs of rosemary and thyme which will just add to the flavour and umami already in the dish.

“I have also previously substituted the olive oil with macadamia oil which is much more affordable and the taste was amazing. The best of this dish is that it is very healthy and although it tastes indulgent it is really good for you, fairly affordable and scrumptious, you can also use cannellini beans which come out creamier.”

Subsequent to the above, I have got to know Lientjie a bit better, in the way that you can get to know somebody on social media these days, in a certain way. (One of my best friends lives in Chicago and we haven’t seen each other in nearly 30 years, but we chat all the time.) And Lientjie is all over social media: “On Facebook I have 5,000 friends and on my Facebook page Lientjiefoodart I have 1,157 followers. On Instagram @Lientjiefoodart, I have 2794 followers and recently I created a Threads account.”

You also get to know somebody when you see their art. In Lientjie’s case, both her art and her food art. Because one glance at a photo of a plate of her food and you are very tempted to climb into the car and drive to the far northern swathes of the country you don’t know at all. Somewhere past Mordor on the way to terrains of ancient mystery.

Lientjie sent us some random examples of her gorgeous art, produced during her current challenge of ‘creating an artwork using iPad for the next consecutive 365 days’. (Images: Supplied)

Lientjie had a restaurant/coffee shop many years ago in Sunnyside with the name Li-bel for six years, and then for three years a restaurant in Cullinan called Albizia. “My love of food comes from my fabulous mother who introduced us to fantastic food from all over the world and she was a brilliant chef. Her name was Louie Wessels.

“She was an incredible cook with an insatiable hunger for knowledge and information on food,” Lientjie says. “She was an avid reader and traveller and with my father they travelled to many European countries with her favourites in terms of culture and food being Italy and Spain.

Some examples of her way with delicious food. Tripe, left, and heirloom delights. (Images: Supplied)

“The food I grew up with was not the typical Afrikaans fare but more influenced by her love of the Mediterranean, so our typical dinners would be a chicken cacciatore the one night followed by a Spanish tortilla served with a green salad the next night.

“She (Louie) also had a love for spicy and Indian food; this was food that she was exposed to by my grandfather in Johannesburg growing up in the 50s. They would regularly visit people that my grandfather was friendly with in what is now known as Fordsburg in Johannesburg; my grandfather was also an avid cook. The food I like cooking is a combination of all these foods I was exposed to as a child with quite a bit of influence from the Middle East but staying quintessentially South African.”

Lientjie also has a cookbook out, and it is still available, but it escaped my notice, possibly because it is in Afrikaans. It’s called Geure and I see that we even share a publisher, the wonderful Annake Muller, who published my foodSTUFF a few years ago (when still with NB Publishers) with such a careful hand and eye. Lientjie’s book can be ordered from Annake directly by sending an email to annakem@mweb.co.za or contacting her on 082 780 4899. The book is also available at Graffiti books in Pretoria and a few selected high-end shops and farm stalls like #Karoopadstal on the N1 and #Johan_van_heerdens_art where it still sells regularly, Lientjie says.

Lientjie Wessels loves breakfasts. Two examples of her way with the morning meal. (Images: Supplied)

She writes food articles for Vrye Weekblad and Plus 50 magazine and in an earlier incarnation worked in and for publications like Sarie (decor editor for three years), Elle Decoration, Garden & Home and Visi magazines.

“Currently I do restaurant pop-ups in the Karoo and Gauteng. I do consultancy on development of restaurant menus and recipes, with the latest menu I worked on being The Banker’s pub & grill in Dullstroom with seating for 150 people.”

In 2018 she took part in the Kokkedoor cooking competition on KykNet in which she came fifth. In 2020 she and Wilhelmina Thirion Garção had a cooking show on VIA TV, Koskuns met Lientjie & Wilhelmina.

More of the art works that Lientjie sent us from her current challenge of ‘creating an artwork using iPad for the next consecutive 365 days’. (Images: Supplied)

But her background is in art.

“I completed a degree (BAFA) in 1990 at the University of Pretoria after which I started my MAFA completing my Honours in Art History but not the masters yet. I also have most of the credits to complete my BA with philosophy as subject. I currently still practise as an artist and sometimes designer and curator. My work forms part of private and public art collections like the University of Pretoria, Constitutional court, American embassy, and the French institute.”

She shared her “AI Statement” which explains her art:

“Most of my current work is created on the Procreate program using the Apple pencil on iPad pro. Just after Christmas last year I set myself the challenge to create an artwork using iPad for the next consecutive 365 days no matter what challenges any day might bring or where in the world I am.

“The process and journey so far has been extremely interesting and rewarding at times. Like any artist’s oeuvre there are a few really good works so far and many bad ones. I see this method as just another tool for creating, and the quintessence of my work has not changed much.

“The work consists of many still lifes (an ongoing theme in my work exploring mortality and change as represented by objects in our daily lives). The works are created either from scratch or by using a method of collage over which is painted, drawn, sketched and other methods of mark making on screen. In some of the works the AI program created by Marius Conradie is applied to further the process on screen. I am looking forward to completing the rest of the task I set myself and to see where this art journey takes me.”

Lientjie’s slow-cooked chickpeas with garlic and bay leaf

Lientjie’s slow cooked chickpeas with garlic and bay leaf. (Image: Supplied)

Ingredients

500 g dried chickpeas

6 cloves of garlic roughly chopped

1 onion chopped

2 bay leaves

1 teaspoon pink Himalayan salt

2 good quality vegetable or chicken stock cubes

650 ml water

180 ml olive oil

2 sprigs of rosemary and thyme (optional)

Method

Combine all ingredients in a slow cooker and let it do its work for 10 to 12 hours (same for the oven at 100℃ for 8 to 10 hours in a Dutch oven with added insulation of thick foil (do check for the water level every few hours).

I served my chickpeas with some chopped nasturtium, rocket and spekboom and a simple salsa verde of parsley and chives and lots of lemon juice. DM

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