Fancy whipping up a tasty treat in a tumble drier?

I had such fun last Friday morning, as I stepped into a colourful wonderland at the Nando’s pop-up in Braamfontein. It’s a space full of wonderful surprises and bright colours, a warm welcome compared with the icy cold weather outside.

The room is filled with cooking stations, each is colour-coded and it works like this: Surrounded by lots of helpers you are asked to pull out a disc from a box, the colour indicates the dish to be made and matches with a cooking station. You are then handed the ingredients for the dish to be made at the chosen station where you find everything you need, plus a helpful assistant who guides you to success. 

Of course such a clever concept has clever people behind it, such as the ingenious creative thinker Hannerie Visser and her team from Studio H in Cape Town — Visser poured her creative thinking into the latest series of MasterChef SA — and food creative and stylist Keletso Motau.

The concept is about introducing two new flavours to the Nando’s Peri-Peri Bag and Bake range. It’s a grocery line that comes with seasoning and a parchment cooking bag in which to cook chicken portions. Today there's no chicken but plenty of quirky ideas and thinking out of the bag.

Fancy some nutty chocolate clusters using the new Smokey Churrasco flavouring with a hint of peri peri? Which is what I used to spice up the chocolate clusters made by breaking up a slab of dark chocolate, crushing some biscuits, adding peanuts and a generous sprinkling of flavouring, which I tossed together in the parchment bag. I stapled the bag closed and popped it into a tumble drier, as one does, and in 15 minutes the now gooey mixture is spooned into clusters and left to set. That’s if you can wait that long.

Beyond the tumble drier, the next dish proved even more hands-on. I made creamy spinach with lemon in the parchment bag with another new flavouring, Paprika Citrine, which is a heady mix of smoky paprika with zesty lime and mild peri-peri — and cooked using an iron. 

Yes, I gently guided the iron over the parchment bag with spinach and other ingredients, turning it over to “cook” on the other side. It was delicious, the fresh spinach cooked to perfection.

Two clever ideas — and the best part is there's no washing up. There are other natty ideas using a microwave and an air fryer but I won’t spoil the surprise, except to say the last day of this pop-up is on Sunday so hurry and book your space now.

• Nando's pop-up is open daily from noon-7pm until July 10, the best part is it's free and is open to over 18-year-olds. Booking is essential.

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