Such is Love | In the Kitchen with Karen Dudley
“Such is my love, that I made him a syrup.”
We’d been on a hike in Newlands Forest. There was a coffee truck parked at the bottom of the hill. “The young kids ask for flavoured syrup,” the barrister had said. We come home. I’m standing in an emerald green kitchen. Doors open to a courtyard where a wall of basil is growing abundantly. Karen is preparing possibly the most luxurious thing I’ve ever eaten. A cardamom bun. Now being toasted to heavenly scented perfection. With a knife she works the cold butter (salted only). And then her son enters the kitchen. She tells him about the coffee stand in the forest. The barrister’s remark. “Oh really? He asks. “I made him one, you know? A syrup.” Her voice sounds like a wink.
It is 11:30 and I am laughing now. Laughing because it is not even noon and somehow I have had the profuse luck of being served three breakfasts by Karen Dudley. This has all happened spontaneously. I lucked in when I found out she needed a ride from the car service station while we were drinking our forest coffees the day before. She had a gap. I took it. Sliding through her front door, sneaking through a winding edible garden, and into her home. Speaking of.
“This is Willy Wonka’s paradise of the eclectic,” I tell her, placing my things on her kitchen countertop, eyes on stalks. There is a large mural of geese in front of me. A taxidermied peacock next to the fridge. And shelves laden with all manner of crockery – gravy boats, egg cups, milk jugs, and a mug for whatever mood you might find yourself in (the Mad Hatter would keel over). And a pink wall. “Everybody looks good against that wall,” she says.
“In another life would you be incarnated as an interior designer?” The words are instantly redundant. “Oh yes. “I’d like to think I’d be an interior designer just like I am as a chef. In the same way I help people to find their food identity, I’d want them to find their own sense of expression – through the pictures that they choose and the things that make them happy.”
“You know what I think it is?” Now she’s getting the coffee machine going. It’s very noisy but in a good way; this isn’t your run of the mill brew. And the conversation between sips will be good. “I think that life is too short to not be with the things that make you happy, and that are beautiful. I find it’s one of those things that people think they need permission for. They’re like, ‘Can I really try that? What if it doesn’t look like this person’s house?’ No. When you acknowledge what makes you happy, it all works together. Style is about knowing what you love.”
The coffee grinder continues to shout at us.
“You know what I do have? A bun.”
Now she is rustling in her freezer. I’m watching. So is the peacock. And I have this kind of tingly feeling. Something is happening here. The Karen Dudley thing is happening.
“Let me put these cardamom buns in the airfryer.” Soon the kitchen fills with a sweet, spicy scent.
“Did you get those from The Local Baker at the OZCF market?”
“Yes, on Saturday. You must go in the morning. Here. Have some of this while you wait.”
She presents me with a plate of green melon. It’s cold and sweet. It needs no dressing up. And it reminds me of a conversation we’d had the day before.
“One thing must sing.”
We were walking uphill and I was a little out of breath. The forest cracked open into a gravelly path. I thought about my notebook in the car. Instead, I mentally banked this perfectly formed pearl. She was wearing a silky red neck scarf and I thought, ‘I could never.’
I’m beginning to see it in action. Looking at this cold melon on a china blue plate. Karen’s food language does just this. In the way she heroes the simple ingredient. The everyday vegetable. She’s the champion of the humble broccoli stem. Transforming dishes not by overdoing them – by giving them voice. “You must go deep into what the thing was always meant to be, and wanted to be.” I know this melon wants to be eaten by me.
So I need to know. Where does this come from? Who is Karen Dudley?
“It began when I realised that if you make a warm loaf of bread and you serve it with cold slabs of butter that you would always have friends. I realised that I had some kind of skill in taking people somewhere with food – on a journey. And although I haven’t been to cooking school, that actually gave me a kind of freedom. I wasn’t tethered to anybody’s expectations. I also always had a huge genuine curiosity and interest in anything that was different, anything unusual – a new texture, a new flavour.”
The smell of cardamom is now dizzying.
“I’m going open the Langbaken cheese.”
“I’d been working in Washington DC with a chef who’d trained at the Culinary Institute of America.”
“So the lesser known CIA?”
“Yes, that’s the one.”
She pierces a knife into the corner of the cheese wrapper.
“He’d taken me under his wing and kind of baptised me. He’d say, “The President of Uganda is coming for lunch. We’re going to poach this salmon now.” And then he’d say, “Goodbye!” and I’d have to figure out how that was going to go. So I reached into my memory of all the things my mother was trying to teach me years back.
I combined what I was learning there, and came back to South Africa. I ran a little stream here for a while, persuading the YMCA, who had a large property in Constantia, that they needed a retreat. At that time we were a brand new country – it was ‘94, ‘95 – and there was this need for people to come together around a table. So I began to cook, with the idea to create a space where people could meet and connect.
Then one day a friend called me and asked me to come and help for the season in London – for all the schmancy people who collect their food on the King’s Road and go to the country. I stayed for two and half years, free as a bird. Beholden to no one. Cooking with everything that was presented to me. People were just coming out of Tikka Chicken and Coronation Chicken and a little bit of salad. And there I kind of registered, ‘Oh I can do the catering thing,’ realising that we didn’t have much of this going on in South Africa.
I came back and was doing people’s rugby boxes and 80th birthdays and their 21sts… My business was growing, and people were starting to understand that such freshness and deliciousness was possible. We were working from my kitchen, but soon realised we needed to find our place. We found a burnt out old fish shop on Woodstock Main Road. It was completely grody but perfect. And then we started up a stall at the Neighbourgoods Market, realising that we could do retail.”
This is my first memory of Karen. Iconic curls. The best dangly earrings on the block. Signature silver bangles and an energy, and a laugh, that was magnetic. Making ‘Love Sandwiches’. A name that needs no explaining. 17 years later and my mouth still waters, thinking about the sight of large bowls of pesto and honey mustard sausages and slabs of creamy white Danish feta. I’d take the pocket money from working at my mother’s cheese stand and ask for a panini with all the best bits.
“We had the shop in Woodstock. We thought no one would walk past the window and want to buy salad and beef fillet and sliced chicken. But before we’d even opened people were going, ‘What is this place?’ And suddenly I needed five staff to serve in the day and there were queues outside. People embraced our food. They embraced our vibe, and the fun. It was really quite magical. And it stayed like that for 11 years.”
The coffee is ready. The buns come out of the airfryer. They’re toasted and crispy on top. Karen works some cold butter on the plate. It’s the simplest thing really. Bread. Butter. But somehow it alchemizes into something more.
Somewhere in this genesis story, there’s mention of her mother. So I want to know: is the cult of deliciousness hereditary?
“My mom was a very good cook. Of just kind of ordinary things. But my parents travelled quite a bit in the 70s, which is quite unusual for coloured folks. But everytime they came back, they came with new ideas, which totally inspired and kind of enlightened us. And so we learnt that there could be white garbage collectors, and that people of different colours could be together. And about paella. With my folks there was very much an acknowledgement of deliciousness. Whether that meant hot rolls out of the bakery on a Sunday or slap chips from the right place. It was more about pursuing what was delicious and simple, as opposed to very pretentious, or what you think is supposed to be good.”
Which makes me think about this weird transition that happens – somewhere in your late 20s or 30s – where you’re suddenly supposed to prefer dark chocolate. Milk chocolate becomes unsophisticated. Pedestrian.
What she’s learnt – this concept of deliciousness – runs deep. Unadulterated. And so does the sense of family. I notice the large dining room table. Laid with a homely sort of cloth. I wonder what meals are being had around that table. I fantasise about being invited in (or locking myself in her pantry until dinnertime). “What are you eating here?” I ask, biting into the bun at last. Cracking off a piece of salty cheese.
“Supper is usually a layered one. My family likes a starch, so often it starts with a roast potato. One that’s either boiled or microwaved, and then smooshed and put in the airfryer so that it’s all crispy. And then we layer vegetables on top. You have some dressing at the bottom, some potatoes, some fine beans, some fried up brussel sprouts. We don’t eat a lot of meat. And when we do, we eat just a little. The night before we roasted eggplant with tahini ranch and tomato smoor and crispy onions. That’s kind of typical.”
I love how this is her’ typical’. I think of the years of unseasoned spag bol served up in my own home.
“Sadly nothing traditional like lasagna.”
“Oh why? That’s so boring.”
“It’s not that it’s boring; it’s sooo delicious. But there are too many stages. It’s too much love. I love lasagna but somebody else must make it.”
Karen’s dinner table scene seems to conjure up something emotional in her. Her eyes are shining.
“I speak about this in my new book, Onwards. A lot of the story is about me coming home. I would spend my days, and all my creativity energy, making food for strangers and a few friends. I poured all of this energy on people I didn’t know. And then I began transferring all of this loving attention, this creative energy, to my family. It was a most humble and beautiful thing to me.”
“Hang on. I have something else.”
She digs around in a drawer behind the counter. Now the toaster is going on.
“I only have white bread. How embarrassing.”
“Oh no, Karen, why not a sourdough?” I tease.
“Come with me.”
We go to yet another fridge. She takes out a large jar. You need to try this.”
It’s an orange-red-white concoction. I know exactly what this is.
The toast is popped. She butters it. Delicately layers some of the pickled cabbage on top. Slices it in four and hands it over.
“Here.”
The crunch of the toast. The tangy topping.
I’ve lived in South Korea. I’ve eaten more kimchi than most Saffers. I’m a snob, I admit. But this… This is eye-rolling-ly good.
“I put a Table Mountain stone in the jar.”
“Noted. The recipe calls for one Table Mountain stone.”
Ottolenghi might have his za’atar or rose harissa, but Karen Dudley has her Table Mountain stone.
“You know what? The humble government bread is actually perfect. It doesn’t overpower. It heroes the kimchi.”
I tell her about the years I spent living in South Korea. And how food – like this piece of toast – transforms and transports you. “It’s the ultimate nostalgia. A smell, a flavour – it instantly takes you back to a time or a place.”
“It’s so interesting that you say that, because food has this way of becoming an articulate of culture. How people clutch things to their bosoms – those memories and those evocations that become part of the fabric of culture; of the way we live and choose to live. Similarly, you have a Mungo towel that you may be lucky enough to have for 20 or more years. And that fabric, that feel, becomes part of the culture of your life. Becomes part of the culture of your family.”
“One more.”
Another toast goes in. Another jar is plucked from the pantry.
“Try this.” She turns my palm over, pouring out an hourglass trickle of sesame seeds. Gomashio. Sesame seeds and salt.
She comes back to the counter. Swipes the toast with butter. Deftly places a few small boat-shaped lettuce leaves on top.
“The other thing that people always underestimate is how generous plants are with us. In that they create opportunities to catch flavour. Look at these leaves. Pockets of opportunity, I call it.”
She plucks a few sprigs of dill. A crack of salt
“Here my friend. Have a try of that.”
Lush. Of course it is.
“I think my thing is to kind of reach for what is truly delicious. And then bring it into the world to share. And to present it in a way that feels free and accessible, but also beautiful. It’s not a fusion. It’s about how flavours sit beside each other and make each other happy.”
Yip. Yip. The fact that I’ve been called her friend makes me feel part of a secret club.
“Some chefs are very caught up in their recipes and in their techniques. I’m more interested in the ones caught up in flavour – which is a very sensuous thing. The ones going for the jugular.”
I can’t waste any of it. Now I’m mopping up the fallen sesame seeds with my fingers.
“You see? I’m leaving my DNA here. So that I can be buried with your basil.”
Life would be immeasurably more pleasurable if I could eat like this all the time.
“How can the home cook up their everyday dinner game?” I ask for myself. For anyone reading whose mouth is watering.
“Don’t underestimate the importance of a dressing. A dressing or a sauce can really pull things together at the last minute, and save you from boredom and monotony. You have a plate of broccoli? Sauce. Piece of fish? Nước chấm. And then the other thing that is so worth exploring is a crunchy topping. Like seasoned bread crumbs sprinkled on a pasta – pangrattato, they call it. Or coconut flakes and mint to make a gremolata. It totally elevates the game.
Watching her put this together, I’m reminded of how creativity can’t be constrained to the canvas. Or to the kitchen. Looking around, listening to her speak, I’m reminded that all of it is a creative act. Your life is your work of art.
“Every minute the energy is flowing. From every minute new is created, and new is created, and new is created. We’re in perpetual creation, you know?”
I nod. Take another bite.
“Do you want some pomegranate with that?” She sprinkles a few of the ruby gems on my toast.
“You know what? I’m going to crush this pomegranate aril into my notebook. A memory of love.”
Cooking is just that for Karen. An act of love. Whether it’s around the dinner table, or for the lucky guests who are welcomed into the warmth of her kitchen. Who join her for a cup of coffee or a walk in the forest. She can’t even seem to help it. It flows out of her, much the same way as everything else. A natural extension of the inside out.
If you’d like to feel it too, listen to her podcast – Toast.
