Cook & Connect

29/10/2026

Low tide on the Wild Coast. A man hammers the rocks for red bait, used for fishing. Shellfish are gathered from the same rocks. And further along, a stool stands where the waves reach it. Sikha wildcoastwonderstours , a senior guide here, told me it is called a magemfu, a ceremonial stool, and that it was left there for the spirit. This coast feeds people, and it holds meaning too.

27/10/2026

Maize, ground by hand. Then, by machine. Both still in use. For how long?

17/10/2026

Maize, and the ways of turning it into food. The grinding stone. The hand mill. And the knowledge of how coarse, how fine, how much, for which dish.

I knelt at the stone myself. It is slower and harder than it looks.

And the stone is giving way. A young woman from this village in Pondoland explained that today, a bride asks for a mill, not a stone, when she marries. The mill saves hours, and it is easy to understand why. But when the stone goes, the knowing of how coarse and how fine goes with it.

Documenting this kind of knowledge before it disappears is what The Memory of Food is for.



Maize, and the ways of turning it into food. The grinding stone. The hand mill. And the knowledge of how coarse, how fine, how much, for which dish.

I knelt at the stone myself. It is slower and harder than it looks, and it tells you something about every meal that began this way.

Documenting this kind of knowledge before it disappears is what The Memory of Food is for.

16/10/2026

Day One of five on the Pondo Trail. Nobody warned me about the cattle on the beach. Ancestral herds travelled south with Bantu-speaking groups during their migrations, arriving in present-day South Africa around 600 AD. In Xhosa and Zulu life, Nguni cattle are more than livestock: they are wealth, a link to the ancestors, and part of how families are joined in marriage.
Cattle mark wealth and status. Among the Zulu, they link families through marriage and legitimise children.
The cattle enclosure (the byre) is where a homestead’s ancestors are “housed,” and sacrifices are made there to honour them, especially when they have become angry.
Amasi is raw milk fermented, traditionally in a calabash or clay pot, over two to three days, producing whey (entloya).Those working with a calabash assert that the repeatedly used organic vessel contains cultures from previous batches of amasi, which enhance those that come after it. People eat it with umphokoqo (crumbly pap).

14/10/2026

Five days on foot, from Port Edward to Mbotyi, sleeping in homestays along the Pondo Trail.
I walked it the way I do all my fieldwork: slowly, with my hands open, and with the people who still know how the land feeds them.
Over the next two weeks I will share what I found. This is the same method behind The Memory of Food, applied to a trail.

15/09/2026

In the hills north of Chiang Mai, a Karen villager laid our meal on a banana leaf pulled from the tree that morning. No plate. No table. Just what the forest gave, returned to the forest by tomorrow.
This is the method behind The Memory of Food: presence first, camera second, and knowledge documented in the hands of the people who still hold it.
Twenty years of this kind of fieldwork are gathered in "What the Hands Remember." The next chapter starts in Corsica.

18/04/2026

Some knowledge lives only in hands. In the way a grandmother presses mochi, or a chef reads the mountain before dawn. It cannot be written down until someone chooses to follow it.

The Memory of Food is a long-term field research project documenting endangered culinary knowledge held by elderly knowledge-holders across cultures, before it disappears with the generation that carries it.

Japan was one of the many encounters that became What the Hands Remember, a field document covering Japan, Réunion, South Africa, Zanzibar, Laos, and Chiang Mai.
More field work is underway.

Nadège Lepoittevin
Food explorer and cultural researcher
Founder, Cook & Connect, Cape Town

15/02/2026

25/11/2022

Cooking classes for individual and kitchen staff, Culinary tours in France with Nadege Cuisine -

The last months, I have been twice to Tanzania to create a retreat menu (raw food, vegan and Gluten/Sugar free) for Chole Mjini Tree House and an Energetic Kilimanjaro hikers menu for Altezza Travel. For both places, I have been there to train the kitchen staff (even did the Kilimanjaro ascend!...

08/04/2022

Tip of the week!

Tomato skins can be quite bitter to eat, so I usually skin them with a knife using this simple technique. Just chop the tomato into 4 pieces and remove the skin like I do in the video. It takes a minute, but can totally transform the taste of your dish. Bon appetit!