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Cape Town: The Cape of South Africa was first conceived as a garden, and so it remains. The first planting was done in the l650s ago by Dutch settlers with a mandate to provide fresh produce for the trading ships which stopped here, the halfway house on the long voyage from Europe to the Indies. The towering, flat-topped mountain overlooking their gardens was often clothed with a trail of fog resembling a tablecloth, so they called it Table Mountain.


Today within 30 miles of the central Cape Town bloom some of the richest orchards and vineyards in the world, basking in the benign semi-Mediterranean climate. "You must meet Jane Touwen", exclaimed a friend, "her family have been farming for generations". That's why I've crossed the dramatic Sir Lowry's Pass to the Elgin Valley. Paying attention to the signs saying "Do not feed the baboons," I turn left at the fruit-bedecked farm stand to wend my way through ranks of neatly espaliered pear and apple trees in full blossom -- it's September and spring down here in the southern hemisphere. Jane Touwen and her husband Bert are waiting on the patio of their rambling house, where the kitchen takes pride of place.


It emerges that Bert, who came from Holland aged l2, manages the 300 acres of orchard, while Jane gives cooking classes and writes for magazines. As I talk to Bert, I realise he must be businessman as well as farmer, responsive to international trends. "The market has been revolutionized since the lifting of sanctions", he explains. "Now we export 50 percent of our produce to the European Community. Soft citrus such as clementines and satsumas are the latest novelty -- we're tripling sales every year."


Each valley in this hilly region is a microclimate and specialisation is important. With citrus Bert has been unsuccessful. "You can see this isn't export quality", he says, cutting open a lemon to show the thick pith. We can't even tackle plums and peaches, but over there", he waves at a trellised slope "they can do apricots because they like dry soil." Bert must concentrate on pears and apples, the familiar Golden Delicious and Granny Smith, and others with names like Gala and Star King. But he likes to experiment -- one new pear is speckled and called forelle, meaning trout in German.


Bert takes me on a tour of the property in his four-wheel drive and explains that much of the cultivation and all the harvesting of l50,000 trees is done by hand, the livlihood of the local African village. "The men do the picking while the women sort and pack, They are good at pruning too -- they earn good money", says Bert. At the height of the season, migrants arrive from Transkei in the north, staying only to pick and then return to their farmlands in the wild veldt.


Back home, I admire Jane's Kitchen-in-the-Garden lined with bottles of glowing kumquats, pickled peppers, various marmalades, and green fig chutney, a Cape specialty which is half candy, half pickle. This year she has salted her own olives: "It's really much easier than the books suggest". Jane talks of her childhood in Zambia, where her mother was renowned for flaky pastry which she would shape into giant Cornish pasties filled with a pound of ground beef, sustenance for her father to take on expeditions prospecting for minerals.


Jane's cooking is a reflection of the new South Africa, a combination of British simplicity backed by Dutch tradition, all overlaid with a whiff of Malayan spice. (Malays were brought from the Indies to cultivate the early plantations, and have remained a strong community in the Cape). As the name of Jane's kitchen implies, she relies on fresh produce for recipes such as grilled sweet potatoes with lemon and garlic (lemons grow in the yard) and sun-dried tomato (made locally) and eggplant terrine. Her cakes are piquant with ginger and her bread is fragrant with herbs.

I ask about the unfamiliar berry jam I've seen at the farm stand and she laughs. "Cape gooseberries!" she says. "They're a weed here. Bert must have rooted out a hundred from the garden last year. But they have a pleasantly tart flavor, I like them." Here is Jane's recipe for Almond and Cape Gooseberry Torte. Often called goldenberries, Cape gooseberries are starting to appear in gourmet stores here in the U.S. They originated not in South Africa says Bert Touwen, but in South America, and owe their name to their "cape" or papery husk which resembles a tomatillo.

Almond and Cape Gooseberry Torte
Serves 6

Raspberries can be substituted in this recipe. The cake is good served with plain yogurt folded into an equal quantity of whipped cream.

2/3 cup unsalted butter
3/4 cup granulated sugar
l50 g ground almonds
l cup flour
l l/2 teaspoons baking powder
l/2 teaspoon salt
l egg
l teaspoon ground cinnamon
l/2 lb hulled Cape gooseberries, or raspberries
Confectioners' sugar (for sprinkling)
8-inch cake pan

l. Heat the oven to 350F/l80C. Butter the cake pan, line base with wax paper, butter and flour it. Sift together flour, baking powder, cinnamon and salt. In a mixer, cream butter, add sugar and beat until soft and light. Beat in the egg until light. Stir in almonds and flour. The batter will be quite stiff.

2. Spread half batter in the prepared cake pan. Sprinkle fruit on top and dot with remaining cake mixture so fruit is almost covered. Bake in the heated oven 45-50 minutes until cake starts to shrink from sides of pan and top is firm when lightly pressed with a fingertip. The top will be rough, like a crumble.

3. Let cake cool l0-l5 minutes in the pan, then unmold onto a rack. Set a serving plate on top, turn cake over onto plate and leave to cool. Sprinkle with confectioners' sugar and serve warm or at room temperature, with yogurt cream if you like.

Anne Willan is the founder of the famous French cooking school, LaVarenne, and has also served as president of the International Association of Culinary Professionals. She is the author of over a dozen internationally published cookbooks.