She whirled from baking on boats to churning out cookbooks and judging the popular Koekedoor baking program. Mari-Louis Guy takes a short break from preparing an Easter feast for thirty family members to have a stern word with bacon and ponder the prevalence of all things sugary in her life.
What is your favourite flavour combination? The royal combo of peaches and cream.
What is your most cherished food memory? My husband Chris and I travelled the American South on a pie-eating trip – we even visited Graceland. Deep dish apple pie, Shoofly pie, peaches and cream pie, cherry cobbler pie…
What food scares you the most? Eat-as-much-as-you-can buffets.
Which cheese do you most identify with? Boursin (garlic and fine herbs), an everyday hero that elevates every meal.
Who are your food heroes? Trendsetters, direction changers, food designers and stylists. Marco Pierre White was my first love. Cherished his book White Heat – wish the person that borrowed it would return it.
What would you say to bacon? Why don’t you let me be vegetarian? SET ME FREE!
What is the trait you most deplore in yourself as a dinner party host? All the attention goes to the concept, food and décor and then I scramble at the last moment to get dressed and prettified.
What is the trait you most deplore in dinner party guests? Early arrivers. Early departers. Dinner parties are like the old-fashioned debutante balls – bring your best social game.
What is your favourite food moment in a film? Jacqueline Bisset assembling her massive la Bombe Richelieu in Who Is Killing All The Great Chefs Of Europe (a 70s cult classic).
What is your most embarrassing kitchen moment? I dropped a very big, elaborate Baked Alaska right in front of the charter guests in the first minutes of the new millenium. A movie moment. Them in their finery, feathers, fireworks and the dessert on the floor. That silence before the slow clap – which never came.
What do you consider the most overrated ingredient? Wine in food. Love mine in a glass.
Which words or phrases do you most overuse while eating? None, but I do hate it when TV chefs keep saying ‘use the best quality ingredients’. Repetitive snobbery.
What do you regret eating? When I first joined yachting a fresh batch of the finest Belgium chocolates were flown in every Friday and they binned the previous week’s leftovers. I tried to rescue as many of these pretty jewels as possible by eating them. The smell of expensive chocolate still haunts me – cannot eat it at all.
What is your current state of stomach? Sugar junkie hanging for a fix.
What is your essential kitchen utensil? Radio. Talk radio – I cook with Keeno Kammies, John Maytham and my favourites Bruce Whitfield and Steven Grootte on a daily basis.
What is your most treasured drink? Dirty Martinis in Miami – (green olives stuffed with blue cheese and a dash of olive brine in the Martini)
What do you regard as the lowest depth of over-indulgence? That somehow ten minutes after the excess, I crave fruit chutney crinkle cut chips.
Who is your favourite TV chef? I’m out of touch as I have 3 small children so the Squarepants guy rules. I do love Nigel Slater – a point of calm in my stormy life.
What is the quality you most admire in a steak? Its neighbours – the sauces, the café de Paris butter, crinkly baked spud with sour cream and the salads.
What is the quality you most admire in a salad? It makes me feel like Kate Moss. Tastes as good as skinny feels.
What food or drink is your favourite guilty pleasure? I used to feel guilty about the amount of cakes and tarts that I eat. Now I feel it is my duty as a Koekedoor judge. Milktart for breakfast – why not?
What is your motto in the kitchen? I make the rules.
Jacqueline Bisset lighting La Bombe Richelieu in Who Is Killing All the Great Chefs of Europe
*The Prost! Questionnaire is this Kitchen Vixen’s tongue in cheeky version of Vanity Fair’s Proust Questionnaire. The Prost! Questionnaire therefore belongs to me, unless Vanity Fair objects, in which case it will be theirs.
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