Girls on Fire

Award-winning country chef Camilla Comins learned much of her craft producing gourmet meals on a bed of coals as a young cook in Botswana. She cooked three square meals a day for foreign safari guests, offering everything from frittatas to Chelsea buns without so much as a stove to cook on, let alone an oven. In these pages you will find her tips on how to light and maintain a braai fire in the most common types of braai. She also looks beyond the chop and the wors to more delicate, well-crafted, and healthy options from the fire. Understanding that girls like to get all the work done in time so they can clean up and put on some lipstick before the guests arrive, these recipes are designed so that most of the work is done ahead of time; all you have to do is put the last bits on the fire when guests come. Comins is keenly aware of the need to feed kids and keep them happy at the braai, so there's a whole section on ideas for feeding them and even letting them help. She also tackles the typically bland braai setting where guys hang around in shorts gripping a pair of tongs, and dresses things up with a bit of bunting and some feminine touches.

Camilla Comins formerly owned the restaurant The Table at de Meye, which won best country-style restaurant in the 2011 Eat Out Awards. She is a graduate of the Christina Martin Cookery School and was a food product developer with the Woolworths Group. She now runs a confectionery business based at her new restaurant Overgaauw on a wine estate near Stellenbosch.