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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
+27
21 439 3169 / +27 83 229 1172
One of the joys of summer: an early
morning walk on the beach
In this week’s MENU:
On Line
Shop
This
week’s Product menu
Our
market activities - new Cape Point Vineyards Market
Dinner
at Leinster Hall
Tasting
wines at Thelema
Christmas
mince pies
Angelfish
Veronique
Wine
and Food Events in 2012 & 2013
Wine
courses & cooking classes
To take a look at our Main Ingredient blogs, follow the link: http://adamastorbacchus.blogspot.com/ because to tell our whole story here would take too
much space and you can also read earlier blogs. We are constantly surprised at
how many of the older blogs are still being read. Google Analytics tells us how
many people are reading them and where they are. There is something special
about seeing that our ramblings are being read in China or South Korea. Readers
in Europe, The UK and North America are a good percentage, but the surprise
always comes from the countries outside our normal reach. Click on underlined and Bold words in the text of this edition to
open links to pictures, blogs, pertinent websites or more information.
Follow us on Twitter: @mainingmenu
Main Ingredient's On Line Shop is performing very well. We
are continuing to update it with new products and with photographs of products.
E had a small glitch when we removed our bank details and this prevented a few
of you from placing an order. We have corrected this, but - Do not pay until we
have confirmed availability and invoiced you. Use the form on the
website to email us your order and we will send you the final invoice. Click
here to see the shop.
This week’s Product menu Marrons glacé are selling well and we have
boosted our stock of the strong French Fallot mustards. The 4 year old solera
sherry vinegar is now in a 750ml bottle and the price has hardly changed from
the previous 375ml. We have a range of wicked French patés, especially for our
French customers who must have them for their Christmas celebrations.
Fresh truffles
are still available
to special order. We need to know your requirement as soon as possible after
you receive this, so that we can quote you and receive your payment in time to
send your order to the supplier. Burgundy is the most affordable and orders
must be in multiples of 50 grams. The truffles will be airfreighted. We can
source white truffles from Alba and black truffles from Perigord but the price
is significantly higher. Send
us a message if you wish to order.
Christmas cometh whatever we may do.... Lynne has
been baking her individual mini Christmas cakes and full size Christmas puddings this week. Send her a message if you’d like to place an order.
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.
Our market activities Come and visit us at the Old Biscuit Mill’s
wonderfully exciting, atmospheric Neighbourgoods
Market, as always, this
Saturday and every Saturday between
09h00 and 14h00. Tip: Some visitors tell us how they struggle to
find parking. It’s quite easy if you know how. Click here for a map which shows
where we park.
Cape Point Vineyards Market in
Noordhoek is
where we 'll be again next Thursday evening. Come and buy some Christmas gifts,
enjoy some of their stunning wines and have a picnic while you watch the sun go
down. We apologise to any of you who were inconvenienced by our absence on
Wednesday. John was being filmed in a German TV commercial for a patent
medicine. The temperature was 37°C and he had to dress for winter, in a suit
with a heavy overcoat, a woollen scarf and a cap! Shorts and a T shirt would
have been much more comfortable.
Cape Town Club at Leinster
Hall in the Gardens We were delighted to be asked to our first
Christmas dinner of the year at the Cape Town Club on Friday by the new Chairman,
Philip Engelen, and his wife, Sandra. They owned and ran the Greyton Lodge for
many years and now have Brooklands House in Rondebosch. The
Club’s beautiful Georgian building, Leinster Hall in Weltevrede Street, is an
historic and graceful house, just behind the Mount Nelson. It has an elegant
garden and verandas, top and bottom, where one can enjoy tea or a drink. The
Cape Town Club formed as a result of a merger in 1976 of Cape Town's two oldest
clubs, the City Club (founded 1878) and the Civil Service Club (founded 1858). If
you live overseas, we see that the club does have reciprocal membership with
many distinguished overseas clubs.
Members of the Cape Town Club have the run
of the very traditional upstairs rooms, while the public is welcome to visit
the downstairs restaurant, called Leinster Hall www.leinsterhall.com/.
The upstairs rooms contain the Great Room, which incorporates the Rhodes bar,
lounge and library. These rooms have been magnificently restored and appointed
in keeping with the traditions and history of a respected Cape Town institution. Click
here to see the Leinster Hall menu
The young and very talented chef is Albert
Venter and he cooked us an amazing six course meal, seven if you count the
canapés beforehand. This was served with a selection of La Vierge wines from
the Hemel en Aarde Valley. Click here to see photographs of the evening and the food.
Thelema and Sutherland Wines
On Monday afternoon, we ventured out to Stellenbosch, through the city
afternoon traffic, along the N2 and then, after making a quick delivery in
Stellenbosch, we suffered their early
evening traffic before we climbed up the Helshoogte Pass to Thelema for the
trade tasting of these two super ranges of wines produced by Gyles Webb and his
son Thomas. Going up that pass on a good
modern road makes one appreciate the courage it must have taken for the early
settlers to travel up the “Hells Heights” in an ox wagon, when there was no
road. John has early memories of his parents’ 1941 Chevrolet boiling its way up
the steep, winding gravel road when he was a small child.
However, sometimes, you really envy people
who seem to have picked one of the best spots to live in the world. Thelema
stands right on top of the pass with magnificent views back to Cape Town on one
side, the beautiful mountain pass and the Banhoek valley that opens up on the
other, the way to Franschhoek. When you stand on their front porch at sunset,
listening to the peacocks cry and see the flowering jacaranda tree with the
soaring purple mountains beyond, you know they have found a small piece of
paradise.
Then it was time to taste through their two
ranges of wines. Rudi Schultz has been making the wines since 2000, Gyles
offering an experienced and steady hand behind him as the cellar master. Thomas
is the manager and handles the marketing. Thelema wines come from Stellenbosch,
while Sutherland wines are all grown in Elgin. The two different terroirs do
show completely different characteristics in the wines. Lynne loved the crisp
Thelema Sauvignon Blanc, John preferred the Elgin one. We both loved the
exciting Sutherland 2010 Viognier Roussanne blend, an unusual mix of grapes which
works. The light and flowery Muscat de Frontignan is full of rose petals and
Turkish delight, while Ed’s Reserve 2010 Chardonnay is very easy to drink
indeed. It is named for Gyles’ late mother-in-law Edna MacLean, whom many of us
remember fondly as the friendly face in the tasting room some years back. Thelema
Cabernet Sauvignon has always had a minty taste, thought to come from the blue
gums on the farm, and the 2011 is called “The Mint”. Our red wine of the
evening was the lovely soft Sutherland 2011 Pinot Noir and it was hard to leave
that to taste some of the other good reds.
Gyles did us proud by cooking, on the braai,
mounds of boerewors - made by a friendly
butcher in Ceres - for the rolls and salads we ate. This was followed by some
very good ice cream, made in Franschhoek, to finish off the evening - rather
messily for us as it was in cones and the evening was warm. Click here to see the photos and the wines.
Top Mince Pies of the year At HUGE
personal expense and at least another inch around our middles we have carefully
and dutifully tested for you: 3 sorts from Checkers, 2 from Pick n Pay, 1 from
Shoprite and 1 from Woolworths. All except one pack of 6 were dull, dull, dull
and too heavy on the bad thick pastry. And many of them tasted similar, so we
conclude there is one factory making many for all. The Sea Point Pick ‘n Pay
pies, marked “Milchik”, which we had tonight were probably the worst. The mince
tastes like raisins soaked in sugar water and the raisins still have pips in
them, a shocking crime.
The winner this year is: TA
DA! Mr Kipling, available from Checkers at R24.95 for six (no more expensive
than others), very Christmassy looking, and yes, imported from the United
Kingdom, where they obviously know something about making mince pies. Other
stores, please go and buy some and try to replicate next year. Sorry Spar, we
didn’t get to you this year so yours are not on the list.
This week’s recipe Sometimes
we ignore the classic dishes at our peril. Sole Veronique is one such classic
and it is a very simple dish to produce. You do need fresh seedless white grapes and
they are in season right now. If you don’t like sole, how about using one of
our local fish, like angelfish or yellowtail, both green on the SASSI list. Sole
is now on the Orange list and we are buying them much too small.
Lynne made this with angel fish this week
and it was delicious. It would make a very good dish for Christmas Eve, as it
is not very heavy.
Angelfish
Veronique
10g butter, plus extra for greasing - 4 x 200g
skinless angel fish fillets - 200ml good quality fish stock -
100ml dry vermouth or martini - 1 fresh bay leaf – squeeze of lemon juice - 150ml double cream
- 200g green seedless grapes, cut in half - salt and pepper (white
is best)
Preheat your oven to 180°C, then
lightly butter a shallow ovenproof dish. Put in the fish fillets and dot with
pieces of butter. Add the bay leaf. Pour the fish stock
and vermouth around the fish, and then cover it with a piece sheet of buttered
aluminium foil or baking paper. Bake for 20 minutes, or until just cooked.
Remove the fish from the oven and
carefully pour the cooking liquid into a large frying pan. Re-cover the fish
with the foil and rest in the cooling oven. Bring the liquid to the boil over a
high heat and cook until it reduces to about 100ml liquid. Stir in the cream
and return to a simmer. Stir in the grapes and add a good squeeze of lemon.
Cook for a further minute, or until the grapes are hot. Taste the sauce and
then season with salt and pepper.
Remove the fish from the oven, remove
the covering and gently pour over the sauce. Serve immediately. Great with
small new potatoes or with a creamy mash and some fresh asparagus or peas.
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 help you choose an event to visit, click on 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. Click here to access the Calendar.
You will need to be connected to the internet. We have a new calendar for 2013. Check it here.
Learn about wine and cooking
We have had 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 here.
Chez Gourmet in Claremont has a programme of
cooking classes. A calendar of their classes can be seen here.
Pete Ayub, who makes our very popular Prego sauce, runs evening cooking classes at Sense of Taste, his
catering company in Maitland. We can recommend them very highly, having enjoyed
his seafood course. Check
his programme here. Nadège Lepoittevin-Dasse has cooking
classes in Fish Hoek and conducts cooking tours to Normandy. You can see more details here.
Sadly,
refreshing our restaurant specials list takes more time than we have,
especially at this time of the year, so we have set it aside for now. There are
numerous special dinners listed in the above-mentioned events calendar.
13th December 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 list 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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