Cape Talk interview with The Roasted Dad
Clarence Ford interviews MasterChef SA winner Shawn Godfrey on Cape Talk’s ‘Views & News’
After collaborating with Juicy Delicious and creating several recipes including stone fruit, I was invited on Cape Talk to cook three of these dishes and share some braai tips.
Clarence Ford interviewed me on his show “Views & News’’” on Cape Talk. I spoke about the recipes I created for Juicy Delicious. From snoek basted with jam, boerewors rolls topped with peach chutney and ribs smothered in sticky plum sauce, stone fruit goes so well with our favourite pastime – a braai!
If you don’t want to listen to the recording you can read a summary of the interview below. It’s also available on Apple Podcasts, so you can listen on the go!
My love affair with food
Food is my love affair. I juggle entrepreneurship with running The Roasted Dad, running multiple other companies (Lumalytic and RetailWave Technologies) alongside my day job as the CEO of LED Lighting SA.
Food is my love, my outlet. It is also the only company that my family - including my kids- can be part of. Essentially The Roasted Dad encompasses everything in my world is happiness.
The Roasted Dad history
As a child, I was always cooking lasagna and other family meals. That’s where it started. When COVID kicked me up the backside, I ended up venturing into the food industry. During the lockdown I was bouncing off the walls with my business really struggling through COVID. My wife encouraged me to start food blogging and writing a recipe every day. And when I started an Instagram account I needed a handle that incorporated cooking and being a father of three, and ‘The Roasted Dad’ was it. It just rang true, and that's it. It's been The Roasted Dad ever since. And it is an extension of the Roasted family, there’s The Roasted Mom and The Roasted Dog as well.
Writing recipes
I enjoy perfecting something. Working on recipes is a way to take South African ingredients that I am not familiar with and make something delicious that I can share with my family. When we were all going through COVID it was tough at times, but cooking became a very positive outlet. It was something beautiful that came from having that time being stuck at home, where I could make something.
When it comes to cooking, especially as a chef, you can’t be half pregnant with your creations. This is true for me for all aspects of life. Anyone who knows me, knows that I'm an all in man. Even in preparation for the radio interview, I was quite stressed about making sure the dishes looked good. Even though it is on the radio and those listening in to the interview can't see it, I still love going all in. I'm not a half baked man. I always put my passion behind the dish.
What is Juicy Delicious?
Juicy Delicious is representing the stone fruit industry, and on their website the feature many South African chefs who have shared recipes featuring stone fruit. And what's beautiful about it is that you're getting all different cultures and different flavours in the recipes, with a different take on South African stone fruit by each chef, to understand how it's been used in different cuisines in South Africa.
What is stone fruit?
Stone fruit is a fleshy type of fruit that a hard pit or stone inside that houses the seed. Peaches, nectarines, plums, apricots and cherries are examples of stone fruits. Another word for stone fruit is drupes, but stone fruit is the more common name in South African lexicon.
Stone fruit recipes
In South African cuisine we have a lot of bold flavours and a blend of different cultures that come together. If you're willing to experiment with flavours, herbs, spices, different stone fruits and meats, we just need to be a little bit more brave.
The South African food industry is really maturing and we're starting to believe in ourselves and actually trust that we've got the hero ingredients and that our local dishes are something to be proud of. After trying to replicate what is happening in cuisines across the world, South African chefs are now focussing a lot more on local ingredients, to celebrate what we have right here on our doorstep.
A South African braai typically includes boerewors, lamb chops, and steak on the on the braai. Our sides are made up of potatoes, a bean salad and garlic bread.
Yet stone fruit is grown in South Africa and we have some of the best peaches, nectarines, plums, and cherries in the world. If you think about it, stone fruit is generally well-integrated into South African cuisine, from our aunties making jams to chutneys served with bobotie, curries and other Cape Malay dishes. But the collaboration with Juicy Delicious was about integrating stone fruit into the cooking that South Africans really love: the braai. Featuring stone fruit alongside meat is a great pairing.
In the three dishes I cooked for the show, I featured some traditional South African favourites, such as ostrich fillet and lamb chops. These are our hero dishes, featuring hero meats, and stone fruits pair very well with that.
Stone fruit on the braai
Stone fruit is a available in summer, which is when we braai. Yet putting stone fruit on the fire is something that many home cooks are not yet used to doing - in a way it is exploding paradigms in terms of braaing for a lot of South Africans. But if you treat a stone fruit like you would treat a meat in terms of marinating it and being quick on the braai, you will find that it’s a really delicious addition to your cooking. Ideally, you should cook it as you would braai a lamb chop or a fillet steak. You don’t slow cook these either, you will have a piece of leather. Fruit behaves in the same way. So you want to do it quickly, be bold and do it on an open flame and get those nice grill marks. You don't wanna blacken it, but you wanna char it and then get it off quickly so that it retains its texture. You don't want it to go pulpy and mushy, but keep it nice and crispy The flavour is beautiful when you do that. It is appealing to the eye and you can see it's come off a flame.
Cooking stone fruit on the stove
You can cook stone fruit on the stove as well with a a grill pan. But my suggestion is to use a braai and add the smokiness and the beautiful flavour that you get over a South African braai into the food.
The best wood to braai
My favourite braai wood is sekelbos. It is widely available throughout South Africa. A lot of people swear by kameeldoring, which originates from the arid areas in South Africa and Namibia. What I prefer about sekelbos is that it is generally cut in smaller pieces. It burns at a really high heat and keeps nice coals, without needing to wait long before it gets to coals. I'm not a fan of blue gum. It burns very hot and fast and it powders. I don't like all that powder going off, onto my meat. I think it's more good for a fireplace. Wood also flavours the meats, and often people don't often realise that. A sekel or kameeldoring really gives a beautiful, real smoky flavour, whereas blue gum, I find, gives it a bit of a bitter note.
Another tip for a braai at home is to always make different heat zones the braai. Often South Africans make coals, put the braai grid with all the different types of meat on top and ‘we are braaing’. But to cook the different kids of meat perfectly, you need different heat zones. Chicken as an example needs a slower and lower heat for and a lamb chop or ostrich steak needs a high heat so that you don’t have to cook it too long to get to the perfect medium rare, and dry it out. So make sure you scrape your coals around within the braai to have a hotter section for the types of meat that need the heat, and a lower heat section for the ‘low and slow’ types of meats. To know whether your coals are ready, you can put your hand over the coals where the grid is. If you can keep your hand there for five seconds, you have the right low heat for chicken.
I braai throughout winter as well - nothing will stop me. At home I have a big roof or afdakkie over the braai section so that I can braai right through the winter. In winter I like to make chutneys and use stone fruits, potatoes and use them into baked dishes.
Braai sides
We do not season or flavour our salads. Generally we don't like salads as much as we do. Many South Africans stick to vleis, rys en aartappels. But this is possibly because we are not exploring good quality produce and flavouring it. We don't season enough. You should be putting salt and black pepper on our salads. I also always try and make a dressing. There's so many ways that you can flavour salads and use it as a braai side and it's absolutely delicious if you go that way.
Life after MasterChef
The whole idea of MasterChef is from home cook to chef. That's the journey. It's a fast interjection into becoming a chef. What it did for me is give me the confidence that I didn't have before. When I started in the MasterChef kitchen, I was very nervous, anxious, and not confident in my skills. By the end of the show, obviously, I won. That was an affirmation that clearly I must be able to cook. Ever since then I've just been working on the skills and refining them.
The show really did change my life. It changed my business life too. I really love entrepreneurship. It is amazing networking. Other people will go watch a rugby game and have beer with their customers. I cook for them. Not everyone loves sports, but everyone everyone can identify with eating.
Beyond cooking
I am the CEO and co owner of LED Lighting SA. It's a factory just around the corner in Paardeneiland. A very proudly South African business with a hundred staff in it. We do commercial lighting, for retailers in South Africa. We also do train lighting for, the French company, Alstom Gibela. We do automotive lighting, and we also do food display lighting.
We're looking to export and go global at the moment. So we're actually wanting to go to The States and Australia.
We're also just about to localise an audio system through RetailWave Technologies. So we're working with an Italian partner, and we're gonna be the first locally produced, speaker for commercial instances. We've already landed already 15 brands in South Africa.
It is an integral part of who I am. I don't do anything half measure, so when I get to the point where I'm really confident in something that I could put on the retailer's shelves, I will definitely go for it. After I won MasterChef I started an ecommerce range, selling leather aprons, but ultimately I wanted to focus on my lighting business and the MasterChef journey, and this is where I landed up. But it's definitely something for the future. I'd absolutely love to get something on the shoulders of a of a retailer.
As a creative and an entrepreneur I am vested in many different spaces. But profit is never going to be at the expense of the creativity. It's got to be done perfectly.
From Clarence Ford interviews MasterChef SA winner Shawn Godfrey on Cape Talk’s ‘Views & News’, 04 April 2025
About Shawn Godfrey
Photo credit: Niki M Photography
Shawn Godfrey is an entrepreneur based in Cape Town, South Africa. After the Covid-19 lockdown saw his business in financial distress, cooking was the creative outlet that helped to keep him sane. To keep track of his recipes, and encourage friends and families to join him, he starts his instagram account The Roasted Dad.
Fast-forward to late 2021 - on a whim Shawn (encouraged by his wife Lianne) enters MasterChef South Africa. It is a crazy time of life: running a 200 people business and struggling to keep it profitable, two small children with a third on the way, and about to move into a new house. But when Shawn gets selected to be one of the 20 contestants participating in the fourth season of MasterChef South Africa, he decides to go all in. Leaving his 7-month-pregnant wife to look after their then three and one-year-old children, he battles it out and comes back home five weeks later with the trophy and a million rand prize money in his pocket.
It all started with an Instagram account, but The Roasted Dad is so much more now. Shawn has stayed his entrepreneurial self and whilst he hosts Private Dinner Parties and Cook-with-Me Demos, does Restaurant Take-Overs, he still runs the lighting company and several other businesses.
On his blog, Shawn shares mostly recipes, but also Restaurant Reviews and Accommodation Reviews, and gives an insight into the wild and wonderful life he leads together with his wife Lianne, and their three children Aiden (7), Olivia (5) and Harvey (3).
Sign up to the newsletter below to be kept up to date with events, new recipes and reviews, or contact Shawn to chat about recipe creation, restaurant takeovers and public speaking events.
