As a child the primary location of refuge, of passionate conversation and perfumed well-being was at, or occasionally under, the green Formica table my Mother kept scrupulously clean in the corner of her kitchen. Regardless of the terrors that lay immediately beyond the house or, indeed as it was more often than not, the volatile nature of the some of the inhabitants of the house itself, her kitchen prevailed. All three of her sons, now some 40 years later, cook passionately for their families, friends and communities. That this kitchen was located in a place called Cape Town and that many of...