Drought stricken Western Cape brings waterless cooking to the table

As if water restrictions are not enough cooking without water might become a reality for many people living in the drought stricken Western Cape.

Celebrity chef Pete Goffe-Wood from MasterChef SA and Ultimate Braai Master fame will‚ along with other culinary artists‚ be putting their skills to the task to come up with waterless meals. Their brief? No boiling‚ steaming‚ simmering‚ poaching‚ parboiling or blanching‚ or any process that needs water.

Goffe-Wood said that this initiative should be used to get people to change their cooking habits and save water.

“We all have to be continually aware of our footprint with regards to water usage and I’m very excited to be part of this initiative. Hopefully‚ we’ll get other chefs as well as consumers thinking about how they use water in the kitchen” said Goffe-Wood.

Every Wednesday in September‚ the chefs will be airing their recipes on a local Cape Town radio station.

Advertising agency 140BBDO and Smile 90.4FM launched the H2Zero campaign for listeners to expand on their water saving initiatives as the Western Cape is experiencing a crippling drought.

CCO of 140BBDO Mike Schalit believes that this campaign will encourage creativity to address the problem.

“We’re hoping that the Waterless Cooking challenges can become a movement in which people‚ and establishments alike‚ see that responding to a problem is not synonymous with sacrifice but instead‚ it can offer an exciting and prospective venture‚” said Schalit.

This campaign comes after the Western Cape government received a R21-million injection from the Department of Cooperative Governance via the National Disaster Management Centre.

The City of Cape Town also aims to bring down the daily water consumption to 500 million litres of water through projects that will cost R3.3-billion. This includes desalination‚ groundwater extraction and water reuse. The current usage is 629 million litres a day.