Book reviews: Dijo & 63 Days to Optimum Health

Dijo: My Food, My Journey

Cookery

Hayden Horner

Rating: ★★★★☆
Author: Lesego “Les Da Chef” Semenya
Publisher: Jacana Media
Price: R345
Pages: 212
ISBN: 978 1 4314 2687 4

Africanising traditional European dishes

He serves up awesome dishes on his hugely popular food blog and his Twitter cooking tips have made culinary whizzes of us all. And now Lesego “Les Da Chef” Semenya’s debut bestselling cookbook takes us on a mouth-watering journey of South African cuisine, its heritage and unique flavours.

Every dish featured in Dijo tells a story of passion and nostalgia. Lesego journeyed through the food landscape of growing up in Soweto and the fine-dining techniques he learned at chef school, with a few hot chef secrets thrown in, too.

Beautifully styled and containing recipes such as Cape Malay pickled fish, spicy trotters, Asian-style oxtail, and mint chimichurri crusted lamb rack, you’ll be looking forward to spending more time in the kitchen.

63 Days to Optimum Health

Adriaan Roets

Rating: ★★★★☆
Author: Sally-Ann Creed
Released by: Human and Rousseau
Price: R300
Pages: 336
ISBN: 9780798177122

Constructing and keeping those good habits going

Did you make new year’s resolutions, but fell off the wagon? Maybe you actually succeeded in going to the gym every day this January and now you’re starting to feel fatigued.

Sally-Ann Creed’s 63 Days to Optimum Health explores how we use our brains to form habits, which can be positive ones. She explains in detail how we form new neural pathways in 21 days and how another 42 is needed to entrench them. But it doesn’t stop there.

The book explores food alternatives, features recipes and becomes a handy bible to live your new healthy life by. It’s not in the self-help genre, but it will be a great help to anyone in the kitchen and in bettering their lives.

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