Nov 22 - JHB North

The sweetest thing
Blame Megan Meikle when you’re next at Marble, Zioux, Saint or The Pantry
and your will power deserts you. She’s the brains, skill and sweet, sweet talent
behind the Marble Group’s decadent desserts.
Text: LISA WITEPSKI. Photo: THE MARBLE GROUP.
Megan shares
Zioux’s Malt Churros
recipe with us for you to
try at home. You will find the
recipe on our website at
getitmagazine.co.za/
joburg-north
Other people may regret feeling
the cold easily, but not Megan. “It’s
definitely an advantage to run cold
when you’re working with butter
and chocolate all day,” she laughs.
You could say that Megan
discovered the benefits of having
frosty fingers serendipitously. “I
never considered cooking as a
career while I was growing up. In
fact, I wasn’t into food at all, not
even eating it! I was more focused
on art and design.”
That all changed when her uncle
invited her to spend some time at
his chef’s school, and she came to
see cooking as another art form.
The love of pastry set in some time
later, after Megan had joined in
several cheffing competitions with
Team South Africa, the Springboks
of the culinary world. “I had joined
the team as a kitchen chef, but
they really needed a pastry chef. At
first, I wasn’t keen, but they insisted
– and once I’d tried working with
pastry, I never looked back!”
What’s fascinating about
pastry, she says, is that it
comes out of nothing:
it’s not like a recipe for,
say, a pasta dish, where
you can imagine
what the ingredients
will taste like when
they’re cooked
together, based on
their individual flavours.
Pastry ingredients can
be processed in so many
different ways, always creating
a different result, and this makes
it possible to push the limits of
your creativity.
26 Get It Magazine November 22