---You can travel with Sarah Graham on her Food Safari weekdays at 4pm and then via SBS On Demand ---
"If I stop and think about how I grew up with lion cubs being part of our everyday life, and riding elephants and riding horses and just living in the middle of the bush, it sounds exotic,” says . “But for us, it was just normal. It was just our everyday life.”
The food-loving writer, cookbook author and TV host grew up on a small wildlife sanctuary run by her parents in Zimbabwe.
And there are wild animals aplenty in Sarah Graham’s Food Safari, as she travels through South Africa, Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Zambia, meeting local cooks and setting up her mobile kitchen in the wilds (and occasionally, in the bustle of a few of southern Africa’s busy cities).
From the glory of Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe to the dramatic terrain of the Karoo, Graham visits places she loves, often with her husband and small daughters with her.
The food is a mix of dishes inspired by local traditions and the cooks she meets, and Graham’s own liking for sharing down-to-earth, delicious food.
Sarah Graham visits a lion conservation centre at Livingstone, Zambia Source: Sarah Graham's Food Safari
Sarah Graham cooking with daughers Sophie and Isla during a visit to a game reserve in Kruger National Park. Source: Sarah Graham's Food Safari
“The fact that food brings people together for precious moments like these is never lost on me,” she says in the show, after cooking up a feast in for family and friends, “and it’s one of the reasons that I love what I do.”
Here’s a taste of what you can enjoy:
Heading home to Antelope Park
In the first episodes of the show, Graham heads to Antelope Park, the wildlife conservatory in Zimbabwe where she grew up. Along with a visit to the Lion Rehabilitation centre, there’s a lake-side brunch with her Mum and Dad (look out for the chocolatey cinnamon rolls!) and dinner under the stars, where she serves up these venison skewers with red onion, roasted butternut and whipped feta (you can use beef or lamb instead of venison).
Episode 3 sees Graham taking a sunrise walking safari. "Looking out over the savannah and these big skied wide open places, especially when they’re dotted with elephants, is a scene that steals my heart every single time," she says, before cooking up a bush breakfast including quinoa porridge cups, grapefruit and star anise lemonade, and these .
There's also some time heading out with her father, and for us watching her learn more about the lion conservation program that runs at Antelope Park. "And I love it when my dad has time to come with me and we can chat about the conservation program and the progress and just get to spend time together in the bush with the lions. ...Walking with the lions and getting out into the bush and into their natural environment with them is something that is almost intoxicatingly special. It's something that leaves you breathless and completely in awe of how majestic they are. They’re such an icon of Africa and I’m always completely aware that it’s a very special privilege to get this window into their lives."
Venison skewers with red onion, roasted butternut and whipped feta Source: Sarah Graham's Food Safari
Pumpkin fritters with sweet ginger yoghurt Source: Sarah Graham's Food Safari
Graham also cooks up a dinner for a group of volunteers, and dessert is this indulgent . It's a wonderfully rich combination, but the ice-cream is also very quick to make. "When we were growing up we used to have a very simple pudding of mashed bananas and cream and a sprinkling of brown sugar. Today I am making a little more grown-up version ...This almost-instant banana ice-cream is actually one of my Dad's favourites and it's super speedy to make."
Banana and peanut butter ice cream with cashew brittle Source: Sarah Graham's Food Safari
Local flavours
Rooibos is a caffeine-free red tea, made from the leaves of a plant native to South Africa. Graham uses it to make a , a refreshing, crunchy red tea, honey and orange iced dessert.
Burgers get a South African twist in the show too, when Graham makes her ostrich burgers with gorgonzola and sticky red onions. "I love ostrich because it’s really lean and it’s proudly South African," she says. (You can also make these with lean beef.)
She also meets with local cooks, from chefs at award-winning restaurants to those cooking at some of the wildlife parks and farms that she visits. There's even a trip to sea - in the opening episode of season two, she heads to Tofo, a seaside town just north of Maputo on the Mozambican coastline. She takes a trip on an Arab-style sailing dhow with local chef Sonia Induna, and meets a local dhow builder, before visiting Sonia's restaurant Tofo Tofo to learn how to make a dish that's a popular menu favourite, crab matapa.
Rooibos and ginger granita Source: Sarah Graham's Food Safari
Ostrich burger with sticky red onion and gorgonzola Source: Sarah Graham's Food Safari
Sonia Induna, centre, takes Sarah on a sailing adventure. Source: Sarah Graham's Food Safari
Adventures in Zambia
At Chundu Island Safari Camp, Graham Sarah cooks a meal for her family with the breath-taking Zambezi River as the backdrop, crocodiles and hippos included. " Chundu Island is a tiny little slither of land that’s nestled in the Zambezi River between Zambia and Zimbabwe... The Zambezi River is an African icon... Being this far into the bush and upriver from the Victoria Falls, you can literally feel the pulse and the heartbeat of the bush. And the whole area is just wild and beautiful and breathtaking. And while it’s exotic and magical to be on the river, you really have to be aware because real dangers are lurking around almost every corner. Particularly crocodiles and hippos." On the menu for her campfire feast are . "Frikkadels ... is an Afrikaans South African word for meat cakes." Most commonly, they are baked or fried meat but in a nod to her river location, Graham makes her version of these spiced patties with fish.
Fish frikkadels with pineapple salsa Source: Sarah Graham's Food Safari
The colour and vibe of Johannesburg
It's time to explore the city side of life in southern Africa. Graham visits Johannesburg Culinary and Pastry School in Maboneng where own and chef Kelvin Jowl shows her how he makes his signature crème brulée, before Graham gets busy making her own dish, . The little potato nuggets are pan-fried after boiling to give them gloriously crisp edges, and then they are tossed with a vibrant watercress pesto.
Still, in Joburg, Graham visits Soweta, the area that was once home to Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, as well as the iconic Soweto Cooling Towers. Lunch is at a local shisa nyama restaurant with a variety of meat cooked over the coals. Graham's own menu includes making . Amarula is a creamy South African liqueur. And malva pudding? "Whenever I’m in the mood for really sincere South African comfort food then the pudding path of least resistance always leads me right here to malva pudding. it’s a really sweet, sticky, spongy pudding. Kind of like the cousin of British sticky toffee pudding. it’s of Cape Dutch origin and it is very well-loved in South Africa."
Fried gnocchi with watercress pesto Source: Sarah Graham's Food Safari
Amarula malva pudding mugs Source: Sarah Graham's Food Safari
Flavours of Cape Town
Graham spent part of her life in Cape Town, so she knows it's food well. She visits the vibrant South African City several times in her food safari. Among the dishes she cooks are sweet, golden vetkoek. South Africa's vetkoekies ('fat cakes' in Afrikaans) are a fried bread usually filled with savoury mince. But here they're converted to a sweet doughnut ready for dipping into the rich chocolate sauce. Graham explains that while a lot of recipes for vetkoek use yeast, this version is a simpler take, risen with baking powder.
Vetkoek with chocolate orange dipping sauce Source: Sarah Graham's Food Safari
Making memories in Maputo
"It’s a really cosmopolitan African city with a contagious energy," Graham says as she starts her visit to this beautiful city, before she prepares a Mozambican-inspired feast on a rooftop overlooking the city. On the menu are . It's a different kind of rissole to what most of us would think of. Rather than a patty, these are golden deep-fried pastries.
Prawn rissole and sweet chilli sauce Source: Sarah Graham's Food Safari
Friends and family
Throughout her travels, Graham is either enthusiastically cooking with, or for, her friends and family, from feeding volunteers at a wildlife sanctuary to touring local markets or whipping up meals in the wild, with amazing views. There are plenty of new friends too, with people all along her journey making her welcome and sharing local flavours. It's a food safari that's full of friends and flavour.
And of course there were others interested in what she was doing, too...
In Mozambique, local cook Mila shows Graham how to get the most out of a coconut. Source: Sarah Graham's Food Safari
Source: Sarah Graham's Food Safari
