There's a secret recipe when it comes to making a real Cape Curry and it's to be found in the steamy kitchens of the Bo-Kaap.

The Bo-Kaap is a treat. It's a combination of things that make it one of those great places to visit: the houses are painted gorgeous bright colours that won't fail to make you smile, there are always children playing in the streets and the haunting call of the muezzin will remind you of exotic destinations such as Istanbul and Cairo. And then there's the smell of spices that drifts through open doorways and comes rushing out at you as you walk past Atlas Trading, the local spice emporium. You might be just minutes from the centre of Cape Town, but you'll feel as though you're in a foreign country.

In the late 17th and early 18th centuries, for all intents and pur-poses, the Bo-Kaap was a different country and was the enclave where the slaves who worked in the city were confined. Although commonly referred to as Malays, the slaves came from all over Asia, including the Indonesian archipelago, India, Turkey and Madagascar. They brought with them their skills as carpenters and plasterers. Happily for us foodies, they also brought with them their food and their spices. The names of the spices alone can make your mouth water - cumin, fenugreek, bay, star anise, cardamom and vanilla. And then there are the dishes - fragrant curries, samoosas, bobotie and koeksisters. Mmmm!

If you've shied away from making curry because it seems way too complicated, with far too many daunting ingredients, a great way to learn to cook a mean curry and explore the Bo-Kaap is to put aside a Saturday morning to do the Andulela Cape Malay Cooking Safaris. The tour is conducted by Monique Le Roux who explains, ‘Andulela is a small company that has a variety of interactive tour experiences which are as popular with locals as they are with foreign visitors wanting to get to know more about the diversity of our cities and countries.'

Our curry quest began with a guided stroll around the village and an outline of the history of the people who make up the area. We wandered the side-streets, peered over waist-high walls at bright dahlias growing in pots and watched children play a game they had etched onto the road with chalk. We were lucky enough to be invited into the oldest mosque in the city, and before we even had time to flag, we had a shopping list for the day's lunch ingredients. Destination? Atlas Trading.

I once met a spice dealer who told wonderful stories of drinking copious amounts of vodka with Russians to secure the best paprika and of travelling for hours over treacherous mountain passes to find good quality saffron. Walking into Atlas Trading is like entering Aladdin's cave and it brought these stories flooding back. It's one of those unspeakably romantic places that conjure up images of far flung lands and spice traders of yore.

Old-fashioned bins line the sides of the shop and you can hop from one spice to another until your head spins from a thousand different fragrances. With our ingredients safely secured, we headed up the road to one of our local hosts who showed us how to make their delicious curry. Andulela partners with a number of different families in the Bo-Kaap who are more than happy to welcome amateur cooks into their homes. These are people who have curry-making coursing through their veins and are keen that visitors get to know the Bo-Kaap better.

Our hosts for the day also put to rest any curry-making fears. It was actually easy! While we chopped, stirred and tasted we chatted amongst ourselves. Once the chicken curry was bubbling on the stove, we got down to the very serious business of learning how to make samoosas.

There's no ice-breaker quite like sitting around a table with a pile of purr (samoosa pastry) and a big bowl of filling that needs to go somewhere. Within minutes we were all laughing at our disastrous attempts and then admiring our handiwork as we became more skilled. The food and the cooking did exactly what it has done over decades - it brought us out of ourselves and for a short while we became a small community with a common goal: Lunch!

We were an interesting bunch, and our conversations skipped around the table and around the world. There was a Frenchman who had been working in Afghanistan doing conflict resolution; a pretty young woman who had left South Africa to marry a German and was ‘home' for the holidays with her husband and two babies and another who worked in gender studies. I was the...