Cooking Good!

Mogau Seshoene, the chef entrepreneur known as the Lazy Makoti, is anything but . . .

- Shanaaz Prince

IT’S enough to make your hair stand on end – a knock on your front door heralding the arrival of unexpected guests weeks after the end of the festive season, in the month of “Januworry”. What’s a good host to do? 

It’s possible to entertain last-minute guests with what’s left in your nearly empty kitchen cupboards, as chef and entrepreneur Mogau Seshoene (29), better known as The Lazy Makoti (The Lazy Bride), proves when we turn up at her front door.

Wearing a warm smile and a red apron, Mogau effortlessly whips up a meal of tuna and sweet potato fishcakes with a crunchy fresh salad and broccoli on the side.

“The trick is to find really easy go-to recipes and master them. Switch them up every time for variety,” Mogau says in the kitchen of her flat in Centurion, Pretoria.

“I’m also the queen of recycling leftovers,” she adds, laughing. “In our home, my mom raised us never to waste food.”

And apparently never to waste time either. Mogau quickly gets down to her culinary business, switching on the stove and getting out her chopping board.

“I’m always cooking,” she says. “For me, it’s like therapy – it’s my comfort and solace.”

Although she’s been driving The Lazy Makoti business digitally since 2014, she’s now expanded to a traditional medium too.

Her cookbook, The Lazy Makoti’s Guide to the Kitchen, will be in bookshops early this year. Her hope? “That this will be the last recipe book you’ll ever need to buy. It will have everything you need to know, from how to soft-boil an egg to how to cook chicken and how to tell when it’s ready.