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Main Ingredient’s weekly E-Journal
Gourmet Foods, Ingredients & Fine Wines
Eat In Guide’s Outstanding Outlet Award Winner from 2006 to 2010
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Water lily buds with dragonfly
In this week’s MENU:
Mezbaan Indian restaurant Beaumont open day Gooey chocolate puds Products Our market activities, events and restaurantsMezbaan We were invited to try the Curry buffet held every Thursday evening at Mezbaan restaurant in the Cape Town City Centre Hilton Hotel in the Bo Kaap. Opened for the World Cup, this previously Halaal hotel is now under the Hilton brand and does have a bar, but the restaurant is still strictly Halaal. Welcomed by extremely friendly staff we were given a drink in the bar before dinner. Lynne had Seagram’s gin for the first time and really liked the juniper flavours in it. Then it was off to the restaurant which is fairly masculine in design with heavy dark furniture and drapery with a few Indian touches and some strange internal stained glass windows. Warmly welcomed by their excellent staff, we were given a tour of the spotless kitchens and met the three chefs who all come from Mumbai in India. We were guided to the buffet by the head chef, Muhammed Khan.
The buffet starts with Poppadums with two dips: Tamarind and Herb and a quite salty Mango Atchar and two Raitas. Then there is a Chilli Paneer salad, and a Chicken Hyra salad and a Tomato soup. A range of bains marie contained Garlic Chicken Tandoori, Lamb Sagh Gosht, Lamb Vindaloo, Butter Chicken, Spicy Mango Chicken, Tarka Dal, a vegetable Jalfrezi and a Fish Masala made with Kingklip. We tried small portions of many of these dishes, see photos. None of the curries are at all hot, which was a slight disappointment for John, who likes a bit of buzz in Indian food and some of the chicken was a little dry. Sadly, the bains marie kept going out so that some of the food was a little cold. We were served excellent, freshly made garlic Naan with our food. One is offered soft drinks or water to drink. We opted for the water, cream soda and similar offerings not being our favourites.
It reminded Lynne of Khan’s in London, where you went for a good feed if you had a shortage of money - especially as the cost of the buffet is R131 per person, so you get a lot for your money. Dessert was rice pudding, what looked like crème brulée and a chocolate pudding. We left feeling very full indeed. Every Tuesday, they have a kebab evening for R99 a person. Call 021 481 3700 to book.
Open day at Beaumont The open day at Beaumont in Bot River is one of our favourite events of the year and where we get the chance to taste through their entire range and we drove out there on Sunday morning. It turned into a scorcher of a day and it was superb that they had their marquee up so there was some shade. Ariane Beaumont and her husband Jean-Pierre Rossouw have just become the proud parents of twins, so there was lots to celebrate with the family, as well as tasting the lovely wines and dipping into the great spread on the central table. It is a great family effort, with Sebastian responsible for the wines, his wife Nicci Beaumont and her partner Jennifer Franklin, (who have the catering company called Zest Catering) looking after the food. Jayne, the lovely matriarch, holds it all together.
Great dips of aubergine, olive and artichoke, lovely Brie - completely ‘à point’ (completely at the point of ripeness and readiness) - fresh fruit and crisp grapes, a huge Klein Rivier gruyere to chip at, wonderful chutneys and preserves, and very crisp, hot falafel balls with humus, biscuits and bread amongst others things. And they do organize events and weddings on the farm. (See pictures). One of the farm’s special attractions is the beautifully restored water mill, which produces the flour used to make the farm’s delicious bread.
Lynne loved the Raoul’s Jackal’s River white blend of Chardonnay, Sauvignon blanc and semillon, all grown on the farm and insisted that we bought a case to enjoy at home. Their two Chenin Blancs are both superb, full deep and rich ripe fruit, very suitable for keeping for a while and John succumbed to three bottles of the magnificent barrel fermented Hope Marguerite 2010. We both loved the rich spicy Shiraz Mourvedre, so we had to have some of that as well. We had intended to stay for a picnic by the lake but it was so hot that we fled home along the magnificent coast road with the aircon full on, so that John could complete his UCT assignment.
In the small art gallery, there was an interesting exhibit of hand knitted garments made of alpaca wool. The alpacas are reared by Christopher and Alison Notley at Helderstroom Alpacas and the garments knitted by ladies from the Villiersdorp community as an empowerment project.
Willie’s Chocolate Factory Cookbook by Willie Harcourt-Cooze This flourless pudding saved us a lot of bother on Monday night. Lynne bought lots of his chocolate from Woolworths when they mysteriously reduced it to a quarter of its price. This is NOT a chocolate fondant but it is very good and you can prepare two bowls – one with the unmelted chocolate, sugar and butter and one with the mixed eggs and sugar and vanilla - in advance in the fridge and then cook when dinner is over and you need dessert quickly. We halved the recipe and got six small puddings. It is very rich. Use the highest number dark chocolate you can find. We used his Madagascan 71%. He recommends unsalted butter but chocolate is always enhanced by a bit of salt so Lynne uses ordinary butter.
GOOEY CHOCOLATE PUDDINGS
180g 70% DARK chocolate, finely grated or broken into small pieces – 200g butter – 175g caster sugar – 6 eggs – 2 t vanilla extract – 40g ground almonds – 6 to 8 buttered ramekins
Preheat the oven to 160°C. Melt the chocolate and butter by placing them, along with 60g of the caster sugar, in a large heatproof bowl over a pan of simmering water. Or heat briefly in a microwave. Stir in the ground almond. Lightly beat the eggs with the rest of the sugar and the vanilla extract. Fold the chocolate mixture into the egg mixture and put into greased ramekins. Bake for 12 to 15 minutes or until they are just cooked – they should start to crack on the top - and serve at once with whipped cream. You can add fruit soaked in alcohol such as apricots in brandy or raisins in rum for an adult twist.
Products Predictably, we sold out of Prego sauce again last week and have replenished our stock. Most other products are available, except goose fat – we should soon have news - but we still have plenty of duck fat, which is an excellent alternative. If you are looking for anything, have a look at our product list and tell us what you want. Work progresses on our online shop, which you will access through our website, where you will be able to order and pay us through Payfast. If you can’t find what you need, let us know and we will try to find it for you. Until it is ready, drop us an email and we will help you.
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. We stock a good range of ingredients and delicious ready-made gourmet foods. You can contact us by email or phone, or through our website. We can send your requirements to you anywhere in South Africa.
Scandalous, shocking and AGAIN. Our market activities We were scheduled to be at The Place at Cavendish tomorrow, February 3rd. The market organiser (yes, Triangle Square, the same one who cancelled Long Beach Market on the 18th of December in 2010) has summarily cancelled only last night, giving us almost no notice and a very poor reason. We want to be there, as do some of the other market traders and we will tweet our progress with negotiations. If you ordered something from us which you intend to collect tomorrow, please email us and we will try to get the items to you somehow at our expense.
We will definitely be at Long Beach Mall next Friday, 10th February. We will be at the Old Biscuit Mill’s brilliant, exciting and atmospheric Neighbourgoods Market, as always, this Saturday between 09h00 and 14h00 and every Saturday.
There is a huge 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 help you choose an event to visit, click on our lists for January, February and March. We also have a list of special events in restaurants and on wine farms for Valentine’s Day. All the events are listed in date order and we already have exciting events to entertain you through into the new year. Click here to access the list. You will need to be connected to the internet.
Some restaurants have responded to our request for an update of their special offers and we have, therefore, updated our list of restaurant special offers. Click here to access it. These Specials have been sent to us by the restaurants or their PR agencies. We have not personally tried all of them and their listing here should not always be taken as a recommendation from ourselves. If they don’t update us, we can’t be responsible for any inaccuracies in the list. When we have tried it, we’ve put in our observations. We have cut out the flowery adjectives etc. that so many have sent, to give you the essentials. Click on the name to access the relevant website. All communication should be with the individual restaurants.
Summer time is picnic time and several wine farms offer picnic facilities. We have put together a list of wine farms who can provide you with a picnic. We haven’t put in much detail, just where it is, phone number, email address and a link to the website. The latter is where you will find all the important information. Go and check it out.
2nd February 2012
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 product ist 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 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 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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