Friday, May 16, 2014

140516 Main Ingredient's MENU - Old Mutual Trophy Feedback, Keet & van Biljon wines, Mediterranean delicacies, spiced meat loaf

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Gourmet Foods & Ingredients
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In this week’s MENU:
* Old Mutual Trophy Feedback
* Keet & van Biljon Wines at Aubergine
* Chocolat with Mediterranean, Knead & Nitida
* Spiced Meat Loaf
This week’s Product menu – If the cold weather is driving you indoors and you getting excited about cooking exotic winter dishes, remember we have all the difficult to find spices like whole nutmeg, grains of Paradise, juniper berries for game, za'atar and sumac, Ras al Hanout for tagines, and rose water and orange blossom water as well..
If you can find it in the supermarket, we don't usually stock it, just the products you would struggle to find.... Check our online shop to see more details and prices.
Old Mutual Trophy Feedback’s Exciting results for the SA wine industry in 2014      There are quite a few wine competitions throughout the year and they all have different formats. Some are judged by wine experts, others by the wine trade, some by pure amateurs, and others by winemakers, journalists or the entrants peers and some are a combination of all the above. Old Mutual Trophy employs a mix of different specialists involved in the wine industry and invites several of the judges each year from different countries to get a good outsiders view of how the local industry is doing. The wines are subjected to rigorous tasting. This year 212 producers entered wines, and 1040 wines were tasted in three and a half days. And there are some very exciting results reported at the Feedback session last Thursday .
We heard that the depth of talent in most classes was extraordinary and how hard it was to keep wines out of the medal classes. High silvers this year would have been gold a few years ago. There are 23 Trophies this year, including the Museum class, 14 gold, 121 silver and 496 bronze awards.  LOTS MORE here about the Feedback, with pictures
 Old Mutual takes the top wines on a national road show to introduce them to discerning wine lovers in eight cities in Southern Africa. Check out the website www.trophywineshow.co.za for more details
Keet & van Biljon Wines at Aubergine      To say we are big fans of Christopher Keet and his wines is an understatement. We first met Chris in the mid 90s, when we both were beginning to get involved in the wine industry – he lectured in our Wine Academy Diploma course - and we have loved his wines ever since. His intelligent and precise winemaking produces classic wines. They are brought out from our cellar on high days and holidays to be enjoyed and the 1997 Crescendo is still drinking beautifully. We were distressed when Cordoba closed and he had to go out on his own, so we were excited to buy some of his First Verse 2009 when he released it.  Last Friday we attended the launch of his 2010 First Verse, an extremely elegant red blend of Cab Franc, Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, Petit Verdot and a soupçon of Malbec, together with the launch of another wine he has made for Anton and Julia van Biljon, a powerful classic Bordeaux blend called Van Biljon Cinq 2011. They are very different, but both excellent.  Both need time.  Then we had the pleasure of a lovely Aubergine lunch cooked by chef owner Harald Bresselschmidt. MORE here
Chocolat with Mediterranean, Knead & Nitida under the stars      The May weather may not seem sensible for an evening watching a film on a rooftop in Central Cape Town but we had such fun on Tuesday night at the Grand Daddy Hotel. Mediterranean Foods laid on a huge spread of dips, cheeses, olives, crudités and other delicacies, there was great bread from Knead and really special wine from Nitida in Durbanville . Then we took our seats in the small outdoor cinema and armed with blankets, a superb glass of red wine (Nitida Calligraphy) and popcorn to watch this lovely movie with nostalgia. Was it chilly? Yes it was but we were all well wrapped up, and they came up trumps when they provided a cup of hot cocoa mid-performance. And they sent us home with a lovely goodie bag full of some new products to try like an Asparagus dip, Halva and roasted artichokes. MORE
This week’s recipe       We thought it was time for a simple meat loaf. Prosaic, yes, delicious yes, you can’t cook special meals all the time and this is quick to assemble and easy to make. This is suitable if you are cutting out carbohydrates. Flavour to your own taste using dried spice and herb mixes like Nomu, Cajun, Garam masala etc. And cook a spoonful to check the taste before baking the loaf. Should serve 4 (or 2 for two meals). You could also bury a couple of peeled, just hard-boiled eggs in the centre of the loaf.
Spiced Meat Loaf
350g beef mince – 1 small onion, finely chopped – 1 jumbo egg – 2 T almond flour – 1 small grated carrot – 1 clove of garlic, finely chopped – 80g haloumi or other hard cheese, cut into 1 cm squares - 1 t marmite – 1 t mixed dried herbs – 1 T fresh chopped parsley – 1 t Cajun spice or garam masala or ras al hanout – ½ chilli powder or cayenne - 1T mixed seeds (sunflower, flax, sesame, pumpkin) – salt and freshly ground black pepper
Put everything into a large bowl and mix together really well. Take a small spoonful and fry it or put into the microwave for half a minute and taste and adjust seasoning. Line a small loaf tin (19 x 10 cm) with foil and fill with the mince mixture. Cover the top with the foil. Put into a tall sided baking dish and add boiling water to that dish until it comes half way up the sides of the loaf tin. Put into a slow 160°C oven and bake for about three quarters of an hour or until the loaf is cooked through but still moist. Serve slices with a good home made tomato or mushroom sauce and lots of vegetables. You can double this up to make a large meatloaf.
Buying from us On Line    We have a lot of fun putting MENU together each week and, of course, doing the things we write about, but making it possible for you to enjoy rare and wonderful gourmet foods is what drives our business and drives the wheels that enable us to produce MENU possible. We stock a good range of ingredients and delicious ready-made gourmet foods. You can contact us by email or phone, or through our on line shop. We can send your requirements to you anywhere in South Africa. Please do not pay until we have confirmed availability and invoiced you, then you pay and then we deliver or post. When you make an eft payment, make sure that it says who you are. Use the form on the website to email us your order. Click here to see our OnLine Shop.
There is a huge and rapidly growing variety of interesting things to occupy your leisure time here in the Western Cape. There are so many interesting things to do in our world of food and wine that we have made separate list for each month for which we have information. To see what’s happening in our world of food and wine (and a few other cultural events), visit our Events Calendar. All the events are listed in date order and we already have a large number of exciting events to entertain you right through the year. Events outside the Western Cape are listed here.
Learn about wine and cooking We receive a lot of enquiries from people who want to learn more about wine. Cathy Marston and The Cape Wine Academy both run wine education courses, some very serious and others more geared to fun. You can see details of Cathy’s WSET and other courses here and here and the CWA courses here. Karen Glanfield has taken over the UnWined wine appreciation courses from Cathy. See the details here
Chez Gourmet in Claremont has a programme of cooking classes. A calendar of their classes can be seen here. Nadège Lepoittevin-Dasse has cooking classes in Fish Hoek and conducts cooking tours to Normandy. You can see more details here. Emma Freddi runs the Enrica Rocca cooking courses at her home in Constantia. Brett Nussey’s Stir Crazy courses are now being run from Dish Food and Social’s premises in Main Road Observatory (opposite Groote Schuur hospital). Lynn Angel runs the Kitchen Angel cooking school and does private dinners at her home. She holds hands-on cooking classes for small groups on Monday and Thursday evenings and she has decided to introduce LCHF (Banting classes). The Kitchen Confidence classes, which focus on essential cooking skills and methods, have been expanded and are now taught over 2 evenings. She continues to host private dining and culinary team building events at her home. She trained with Raymond Blanc, and has been a professional chef for 25 years. More info here
16th May 2014
Remember - if you can’t find something, we’ll do our best to get it for you, and, if you’re in Cape Town or elsewhere in the country, we can send it to you! Check our online shop for details and prices.
PS If a word or name is in bold type and underlined, click on it for more information
Phones: +27 21 439 3169 / 083 229 1172 / 083 656 4169
Postal address: 60 Arthurs Rd, Sea Point 8005
Our Adamastor & Bacchus© tailor-made Wine, Food and Photo tours take small groups (up to 6) to specialist wine producers who make the best of South Africa’s wines. Have fun while you learn more about wine and how it is made! Tours can be conducted in English, German, Norwegian and standard or Dutch-flavoured Afrikaans.
Recommendations of products and outside events are not solicited or charged for, and are made at the authors’ pleasure. All photographs, recipes and text used in these newsletters and our blogs are ©John & Lynne Ford, Adamastor & Bacchus. Our restaurant reviews are usually unsolicited. We prefer to pay for our meals and not be paid in any way by anyone. Whether we are invited or go independently, we don’t feel bad if we say we didn’t like it. Honesty is indeed our best policy. While every effort is made to avoid mistakes, we are human and they do creep in occasionally, for which we apologise. Our Avast! ® Anti-Virus software is updated at least daily and our system is scanned continually for viruses.

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