FIRE STARTER

Celeb TV chef Clem Pedro - of Afternoon Express and Expresso fame takes the art of hosting to pro level and not because he went to hotel school or worked for TASTE, but because he started in his mom's kitchen. We asked him to share his food nerd roots and family braai secrets.

- ANNETTE KLINGER

On a clear Sunday morning in 1997, 10-year-old Clement Pedro and his six-year-old sister Mikhaila were seated in the back of their mother Verna's pale-yellow VW Beetle, headed to the hospital to visit their dad, Peter. As per Verna's instructions before they'd left home, the kids weren't making a peep, so that she could concentrate on shifting the gears. "You'll crack the Da Vinci code before you find a gear on a Beetle," laughs Clem as he tells the story. Then, he turns serious. "It's only now that I realise how stressful that time must have been for my parents. My dad had serious spinal surgery, so he was in hospital for a while and when he came home, he was on his back for the longest time."

That Sunday, however, Clem and Mikhaila were merely thrilled at the novelty of a car trip with their mom, who'd only recently passed her driving test. "I made my first braai that Sunday," says Clem. "It's weird, because I hadn't ever had any instruction from my dad; it was purely based on what I saw him do."

Back from the hospital, Clem had packed the family's small stainless-steel braai with firewood that he had chopped himself (another first - albeit under the watchful eye of a nervous Verna) and proceeded to braai lamb chops and boerewors. "And it was good; it was perfect," he says, smiling. "When we went to the hospital again for evening visiting hours, we took my dad a little Tupperware with the meat I'd made that day, and some potato salad. My mom still talks about the day I made that braai."