Khanya Mzongwana shares her food story and favourite dishes

Khanya Mzongwana, deputy food editor of Woolworths Taste magazine, is the winner of the 2022 Food XX Award for food styling, launched by Studio H in 2019 to recognise women in the food and hospitality industry. A food stylist is the person who designs, prepares and styles dishes for photography, striving to make it look fresh, delicious and desirable.

Being able to cook is like possessing a type of magic — especially when you're trying to figure out what to make with the last can of beans and an onion at the end of the month. 

I grew up in Gquebera in the Eastern Cape around abject poverty and that environment taught me plenty about what enjoying food means and how powerful the ability to cook a meal with next to nothing can make you.

Mine is a typical food story, having learnt how to cook with my mom and gran, and everything we did centred on food. As the only girl child in the family my skills were a large part of what I was exposed to in the kitchen; I was baking bread  when I was nine years old.

I don't follow a vegetarian lifestyle but have empathy for people who don't eat meat. Featuring vegetables in different recipes has opened my mind and encouraged me to cook beyond my comfort zone. I'm famously not great at cooking meat. 

Cabbage is one of my favourite vegetables and I have always loved it. My gran didn't eat cabbage and I ate her share. Cabbage is cheap and goes a long way.  And sweet potato, I can demolish a whole roasted sweet potato rubbed with salt and olive oil — that's a meal when you live alone. At my core I'm a very simple eater.

Winning the Food XX Award for food styling was one of those nice surprises. Food styling brings me joy and for that to be recognised is special to me; it confirms I'm moving in the right direction. Taste food director Abigail Donnelly has played a huge role in my food life, and my job has been a big part of my learning. Coming  from a journey of freelancing and trying to find an environment where I feel safe, this is the place I want to be.  

What makes a good food stylist? It's what makes a good cook — deep love, reverence and respect for the food. For someone to undertake any kind of creative work they have to have a sense of style and their own creative identity. There is a level of bravery that comes with getting better at your art, whatever your art may be.

Apart from winning the award, a highlight in my working year was going to Zambia to cover a story on a beautiful luxury lodge - I was so inspired by their community development project for young chefs. The strangest thing I ate there was a fruit the locals call bubblegum plant; it has a tough exterior but inside the seed pods have a sticky texture and the idea is to chew them, hence the name.