Kitchen Sanity, Johannesburg

Kitchen Sanity, Johannesburg Food reviews, and making healthy food taste great. Keep it simple! Tailored maid training offered too. Please message me if you want to know more!

Kitchen Sanity is a consulting service which will help you organise your family meals in advance, leaving you more leisure time! Based on your family tastes and schedule, I tailor a plan for your evening meals for the month, kids lunchboxes and home lunches, and can even teach your helpers to how to make what's on the plan. I also run monthly 3-hour workshops on demand, where you learn easy recipes to impress family and friends, and how to do most of your preparation in advance!

Omg I could have eaten three bowls of this!I had some Uptodate potatoes that needed using up.So asked my friend N for so...
06/09/2026

Omg I could have eaten three bowls of this!
I had some Uptodate potatoes that needed using up.
So asked my friend N for some ideas, thanks N!
I cubed the potatoes, skin and all.
I prepared a spice mixture of tumeric, salt, coriander and cumin powder.
And chopped up one deseeded bullet chilli.
Fried the cubes in some avo oil until going golden and crispy.
This goes quite quickly with these soft potatoes, but they are starchy, so tend to stick very easily if you don’t have enough oil or keep scraping them off the bottom of the pot!
A tip is to boil or microwave the potatoes whole for a few minutes first … that seems to help get rid of the starch.
Anyway, I digress.
Then I added in the spice mixture and the chopped chilli and sauteed a bit more until the spices were cooked.
Then added a generous squeeze of lemon (this is vital!) and a whole lot of fresh curry leaves from my own curry leaf plant (the smell of these is addictive!).
Checked the salt.
Left it to cool for eating the following day, but admit I stole quite a few cubes, could not resist!
Reheated uncovered, starting in a cold oven, set to about 160C, until hot and crispy again.
This was just a side starch. Served with lots of veg and some grilled spicy meat.

Summer supper for two.Yes, we eat THAT much salad 🤪.Mexican chicken and avo salad.Added some pickled jalapenos for a nic...
06/09/2026

Summer supper for two.
Yes, we eat THAT much salad 🤪.
Mexican chicken and avo salad.
Added some pickled jalapenos for a nice bite.
Made in two layers as always.
Dressing was some fresh lime, olive oil, a bit of juice from the pickled jalapenos, some coriander stalks, salt, and a pinch of cumin and coriander powder.
Should NOT have added the bella tomato wedges. They jarred a bit.
I think feta or feta balls would have worked far better.
Or corn and black beans.
We had baby abby potatoes as our side starch.
And a glass of De Grendel Rosé 😋.
Love this bowl so much, thanks J!

If you happen to find yourself down on the KZN South Coast …We had our first meal at Shelly Ski Boat Club (thanks C for ...
06/09/2026

If you happen to find yourself down on the KZN South Coast …
We had our first meal at Shelly Ski Boat Club (thanks C for telling us about it).
Just around the corner from the fabulous Woolies at Shelly Mall.
The restaurant is very reasonably priced. Clean. Good service.
And plenty of tables inside and out.
Literally right on the beach, and plenty of action to watch as the boats come in and out.
We both had a lovely piece of grilled hake, but I chose salad as my side instead of chips. The salad was huge and fresh and even came with a homemade dressing.
All for R75!
My w**e by the glass was Two Oceans. Albeit in a chunky glass (perhaps a carafe would have been a notch up).
Would not recommend the calamari - it is those long thick strips, and although tender and nicely crumbed, to me it has to be tender tubes.
And you pay extra for tartare sauce btw.
Apparently their breakfast buns and toasted sandwiches are also good.
Must try their prawns next time.
Oh, they did have linefish: it was Dorado that day.
A bit further for us to travel to than the Ramsgate Ski Boat Club, but preferred the food and setup at this Shelly one!

Oh my goodness Checkers I will NOT be buying these again!Yes no junk.But rather sweet, and needed such a dose of salt to...
05/09/2026

Oh my goodness Checkers I will NOT be buying these again!
Yes no junk.
But rather sweet, and needed such a dose of salt to make them edible.
They are like those orange puffed maize snacks sold at spaza shops … just gone to boarding school and made tasteless 😂.
Kitchen Sanity rating 2/5.

I don’t think I have eaten Nandos for about 25 years 😱.Back then 🤪, when the menu was much more limited, we found the wh...
05/09/2026

I don’t think I have eaten Nandos for about 25 years 😱.
Back then 🤪, when the menu was much more limited, we found the whole chickens rather dry, and preferred our homemade ones on the Weber.
Anyway, today we decided to try a few items from the Waterfall Drive branch.
I was impressed by the way you can choose your cut of chicken, which garnishes you want to leave off your burger, and the range of sauces on offer!
We chose HOT for the chicken livers. They were delicious, but way too hot. Definitely medium next time.
Loved the peri potato salad … mild and basically their potato wedges just lathered in mild Nandos mayo.
Chips are good but have ABSOLUTELY NO flavour. Need to order peri peri chips perhaps?
Burger nice and moist.
The brown meat we ordered (one Hot, one Mozambique paprika), was great.
Would definitely order the Moz sauce again. Not hot but full of flavour.
Did hate the fact that every side order is in its own box, so for five people we had a ton of packets and boxes. Would have preferred each persons meal in one box!
At least it was all paper and cardboard 👏.
Would I order again?
Yes.
No paper serviettes provided, so lucky we brought it home to eat.

Haven’t made celery salad for ages.SOOO good.Works well as a side for rich fatty red meat or chicken with skin.So simple...
05/09/2026

Haven’t made celery salad for ages.
SOOO good.
Works well as a side for rich fatty red meat or chicken with skin.
So simple …
Fresh fresh plump celery, a whole head, washed and sliced on the second thinnest setting of a mandolin.
Juice of one lemon.
Good olive oil.
Himalayan salt and plenty of black pepper.
And loads of grated pecorino or parmesan.
Easy as that!
Thanks N for sharing this recipe with me many moons ago!

Another open lasagne: a caprese version!As the caprese filling, I used Woolies Effortless Entertaining pearl mozzarella ...
05/09/2026

Another open lasagne: a caprese version!
As the caprese filling, I used Woolies Effortless Entertaining pearl mozzarella ready marinated in basil pesto, and just added halved mini rosa tomatoes, a bit more homemade pesto, some torn basil leaves and some grated pecorino.
This was good, but not for a cold evening, better for a summer lunch?
But I think it would have been even better with some added creamy stracciatella cheese (which The Italian Job deli in Bryanston apparently stocks).

Once I spotted the new Woolies fresh lasagne sheets at Kyalami Corner, I knew I wanted to make an open lasagne. Probably...
05/09/2026

Once I spotted the new Woolies fresh lasagne sheets at Kyalami Corner, I knew I wanted to make an open lasagne.
Probably last made one a decade ago!
I decided to cheat a bit and use a sachet of Woolies creamy mushroom&peppers chicken minifillets as the base, which I cooked up in the morning.
Of course I wanted to add more of the same veg, so I also sauteed up some extra black mushrooms, yellow peppers, garlic and shallot.
Open lasagne generally needs to be individually plated.
Each person gets two sheets of pasta.
One forms the base layer (with some baby spinach wilting underneath), then I topped that with the creamy chicken and the extra veggies, then some shavings of parmesan, then the second layer of pasta, more shavings and some crispy panko breadcrumbs or pangrattato.
Very tasty, satisfying, lots of veggies, no cheesy sauce, and not rich like normal layered lasagne.
Absolutely divine with a smooth glass of red.
Warning: although this sounds easy, it is rather a logistical challenge! Although the fresh pasta sheets only take about 2-3 minutes to cook, you can only cook about four sheets at a time, and since this needs to be individually plated, the five of us ate in stages 😱. And also, as I did not preheat the bowls, or use a hot tray, the food was not really nice and hot.
But delicious nonetheless.
A far easier version would be to put the cooked chicken, veggies and spinach into a casserole dish, heat that, and just tear in the cooked pasta sheets, strappata-style!

Sadly NOT worth buying. I baked it 8 minutes, and perhaps I should have given it another 2-4 minutes as per the package ...
05/09/2026

Sadly NOT worth buying.
I baked it 8 minutes, and perhaps I should have given it another 2-4 minutes as per the package instructions, but the crust was already a bit hard.
The chili was more medium than mild - too much for a chili-averse person.
The texture was dry rather than moist and cheesy.
We even tried lightly toasting slices and that did not improve it at all.
Back to the drawing board Woolies.
Kitchen Sanity rating 1/5.

I posted recently about spotting these trout belly bits at Woolies Kyalami Corner.Great pricing, but wasn’t sure what th...
25/08/2026

I posted recently about spotting these trout belly bits at Woolies Kyalami Corner.
Great pricing, but wasn’t sure what they’d be like …
Each long strip had NO bones, other than one fin, which was quite easy to snip out once I had done one or two.
So that did take ten minutes 🙄.
But I am sure the mongoose that visits my garden was thrilled with what he found hidden in the bottom flowerbed 😜.
I marinated the strips in a bit of Woolies poke sauce for 10 minutes before cooking, which gave a lovely sweet-saltiness.
Decided to braai them on the solid Weber pan, for a grilled flavour.
Gloriously fatty … we are supposed to be eating more oily fish hey?!
Should not have used ANY avo oil when I cooked them!
Started them skin side down, and since they were thin strips they literally needed 30-60 seconds a side!
Straight off the grid they were crispy and divine!
Would have just been enough for 2 substantial or maybe 3 small poke bowls.
For R26!!
Worth the cutting.
Definitely buying these again!
Thanks Woolies for not wasting these belly strips.

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