The front cover of "Safari Living Recipes" - it makes a great coffee table book, too !
A page containing recipes from Serengeti Migration Camp (above), one of the camps my husband & I helped to rebuild & used to run here. The camp was situated close to the Mara river which separates Tanzania from Kenya. If you've ever seen documentaries of the annual wildebeest & zebra migration crossing the river, that is the river they used to cross ..... thousands of thundering hooves could be heard as they sometimes passed through the actual camp & between the tents at night. An experience that just cannot be described ! (None of the camps in our national parks are fenced, neither are the parks themselves - this allows for free movement of all the game).
The book also contains gorgeous double page spreads of some of the camps - here (above) the veranda of the honeymoon tent at Migration Camp is shown - my husband & I designed this (complete with outside bath sunk into the kopjies/rocks) & I did the interiors with fabrics & furnishings sourced in both Nairobi, Kenya and Arusha, Tanzania
Swala Camp (above) - the first camp we ever ran in Tanzania. This is the view from the main "mess tent" veranda where we used to serve meals to all our guests. We saw lion, leopard, elephant & wild dog from this veranda during the time we ran the camp. It was a truly magical spot .... a truly magical camp that holds a special place in our hearts to this day
The pages above show some of the recipes from Tarangire Tree Tops - a camp which we found the site for, designed, built and ran ourselves, along with our loyal staff who had moved with us over the years, from camp to camp ! Now owned by a large hotel group (& many of the rough edges which added to it's charm have been smoothed off !), my husband & I are proud to have left our mark in Tanzania & contributed to the country's tourism sector in some small wayThere are not many books around which are 100% Tanzanian. By this I mean written & photographed here, and mainly about Tanzania. You’ll find lots of Kenyan books, though. So whenever a new Tanzanian book is published, I always buy it and usually a few extra copies too, to give to family as gifts.
Several years ago, a uniquely Tanzanian book was published called “Safari Living Recipes” by Javed Jafferji (who took all the gorgeous colour photo’s throughout the book) and Gemma Pitcher (who wrote and edited it). Javed Jafferji had already published a few Zanzibari/Tanzanian books at this time (and has since gone on to publish many more, and I am the pleased owner of many of them !) but this one interested me especially, because it was a recipe book compiled of recipes taken from top lodges, camps and hotels in Tanzania.
Three of the camps featured in this book were camps that my husband and I used to run and/or built and many other camps and lodges featured are ones that were either run/owned by friends of ours or places where we have stayed or eaten at over the years. So this book is very special to me – and as a result I have several copies of it, as everyone thought it would make a great gift and in Christmas 2003 there were a few of these under the tree for me ! (This book was compiled the same year that we started farming, so we were not actually running any of these camps at that time, although many of our old managers, staff, chefs etc were still there).
The book is broken down into sections which cover the different areas of Tanzania, and then into a selection of accommodation establishments in each area, with photographs of the properties & food served there, aswell as a selection of 4 – 5 recipes from each lodge, camp or hotel.
The areas covered are the Ngorongoro, Serengeti, Tarangire (Lake) Manyara, Selous, Ruaha, Mahale, Katavi and the city of Arusha and the recipes cover everything from snacks to starters, salads, main courses, baked treats and desserts, all with simple & easy-to-follow instructions.
Tarangire Tree Tops, the camp which my husband and I designed and built features 5 recipes including “Tarangire Shamba Salad with Cheese Balls” (a ‘shamba’ is a farm); “African Beef Kebabs” and the universal favourite “Lemon Meringue Pie”. Serengeti Migration Camp, the camp which my husband and I renovated and extended/rebuilt new parts of before running it ourselves, features recipes such as “Aubergine Salad” and “Fish in Pastry” and our all time favourite camp in the Tarangire National Park, which was the first Tanzanian camp we ever ran, “Swala Camp” ("Swala" means "Impala" in the local Kiswahili language, as the camp had it's own 'resident' herd) features such delights as “Chargrilled Tarangire Vegetable Towers with Balsamic Dressing” and “Decadent Chocolate Mousse Cornets”.
The photography is brilliant, the recipes contain easy-to-get ingredients (even back in 2002/2003 when the book was put together & published, you could get much less here in the way of ingredients than you can today) and it’s a wonderful keepsake to take home with you as a memory of your African safari – or even if you’ve never visited Tanzania, it’s a lovely book for you to buy and use to sample some wonderful Tanzanian recipes – and best of all, it’s uniquely and beautifully 100% Tanzanian !
(For those of you who might like to look this book up online, the ISBN number is -: 9987-667-23-6 & it is published by “Gallery Publications” in Zanzibar)
Several years ago, a uniquely Tanzanian book was published called “Safari Living Recipes” by Javed Jafferji (who took all the gorgeous colour photo’s throughout the book) and Gemma Pitcher (who wrote and edited it). Javed Jafferji had already published a few Zanzibari/Tanzanian books at this time (and has since gone on to publish many more, and I am the pleased owner of many of them !) but this one interested me especially, because it was a recipe book compiled of recipes taken from top lodges, camps and hotels in Tanzania.
Three of the camps featured in this book were camps that my husband and I used to run and/or built and many other camps and lodges featured are ones that were either run/owned by friends of ours or places where we have stayed or eaten at over the years. So this book is very special to me – and as a result I have several copies of it, as everyone thought it would make a great gift and in Christmas 2003 there were a few of these under the tree for me ! (This book was compiled the same year that we started farming, so we were not actually running any of these camps at that time, although many of our old managers, staff, chefs etc were still there).
The book is broken down into sections which cover the different areas of Tanzania, and then into a selection of accommodation establishments in each area, with photographs of the properties & food served there, aswell as a selection of 4 – 5 recipes from each lodge, camp or hotel.
The areas covered are the Ngorongoro, Serengeti, Tarangire (Lake) Manyara, Selous, Ruaha, Mahale, Katavi and the city of Arusha and the recipes cover everything from snacks to starters, salads, main courses, baked treats and desserts, all with simple & easy-to-follow instructions.
Tarangire Tree Tops, the camp which my husband and I designed and built features 5 recipes including “Tarangire Shamba Salad with Cheese Balls” (a ‘shamba’ is a farm); “African Beef Kebabs” and the universal favourite “Lemon Meringue Pie”. Serengeti Migration Camp, the camp which my husband and I renovated and extended/rebuilt new parts of before running it ourselves, features recipes such as “Aubergine Salad” and “Fish in Pastry” and our all time favourite camp in the Tarangire National Park, which was the first Tanzanian camp we ever ran, “Swala Camp” ("Swala" means "Impala" in the local Kiswahili language, as the camp had it's own 'resident' herd) features such delights as “Chargrilled Tarangire Vegetable Towers with Balsamic Dressing” and “Decadent Chocolate Mousse Cornets”.
The photography is brilliant, the recipes contain easy-to-get ingredients (even back in 2002/2003 when the book was put together & published, you could get much less here in the way of ingredients than you can today) and it’s a wonderful keepsake to take home with you as a memory of your African safari – or even if you’ve never visited Tanzania, it’s a lovely book for you to buy and use to sample some wonderful Tanzanian recipes – and best of all, it’s uniquely and beautifully 100% Tanzanian !
(For those of you who might like to look this book up online, the ISBN number is -: 9987-667-23-6 & it is published by “Gallery Publications” in Zanzibar)
