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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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Vergelegen and its ancient camphor trees at midnight
Babel at the Taj RMB Starlight Concert at Vergelegen Champagne Pommery tasting Mullineux wines Jamaican Jerked Chicken Products Our market activities, events and restaurantsTaj for Babel Have you ever tasted a white pinotage? Strictly speaking, this wine should be called a Blanc de noir, (a white wine from red grapes). We tasted it at the Paarl and Wellington wine tasting, held before the “Expressions of Paarl and Wellington” launch dinner in Mint restaurant at the Taj last Thursday night. Another farm made a white cabernet sauvignon previously, but this was made by putting a red grape through reverse osmosis, which removes all the colour (and most of the flavour). The Mellasat white pinotage is made fairly conventionally, with minimal skin contact, but is rather a strange expression of the grape because it does not show recognisable characteristics of the base wine or of its parents Pinot Noir or Hermitage (Cinsaut), but it was nevertheless quite quaffable. We found similarities to white Zinfandel. We preferred their flagship red, called M, a Cape blend of Cabernet, Shiraz and Pinotage.
This series of dinners, prefaced by a wine tasting on the launch evening, gives you a chance to meet and chat to the wine makers and marketers while tasting some delicious wines. And you don’t have to book for dinner to come and taste the wines. Click here to see the programme for these monthly tastings and the monthly Expressions dinner themes in the Mint restaurant.
The dinner was very, very good. Babel on Babylonstoren seems to be the flavour of the summer this year, bookings are hard to get, so it was good to be able to see what the chef Simoné Rossouw is doing. We were welcomed with a glass of Welbedacht Mon René MCC and the dinner started with one of her famous Green Salads, a plate full of green vegetables and herbs and flowers with a mint geranium dressing; it was very refreshing. This was accompanied by Mischa Rousanne 2011. The main course was a stunning surprise. Large fillets of Franschhoek smoked trout, lightly cooked with a superb strawberry and Viognier sauce. Lynne had done a similar dish earlier in the week using pomegranate molasses, fish sauce and lime but the strawberry was superior by far. Who would have thought that strawberry would so complement smoked trout? This was served with the Bosman Chenin Blanc 2009 and the Doolhof Malbec 2009, so you could have the colour you preferred with fish. Several of the other guests liked the Malbec with the fish, there being enough fruit to work with the strawberry and smoky flavours, but we preferred the more delicate flavour of the Chenin.
Then came a stunning dessert; a chilled plum soup with plum sorbet which had lovely undertones of five spice. It was served with a glass of their MCC, which had been augmented by the Babylonstoren homemade plum cordial. We can still taste the clean fresh plum flavours and want more!
A fourth course of Gorgonzola Crème brulée with almond and Parma ham crisp was a fabulous, if very rich, ending to a lovely meal. This was served with Andreas Shiraz 2009 and one of our favourite dessert wines, Glen Carlou’s The Welder Natural Sweet Chenin Blanc 2011. Please note that several of these courses have been incorporated into Mint’s menu for the whole month of March should you wish to try them. The wines are also available for tasting with the food. Pictures can be seen here.
Brilliant Starlight Concert We had the most stunning evening at this annual tour de force concert at Vergelegen, where they showcased local talent this year. Lynne usually drops an emotional tear or two at the sheer wonderment of the performances. This time the South African Youth Choir and the full Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra started with the Nation Anthem and continued with a tribute to Nelson Mandela - a superb arrangement of The Impossible Dream, from Man of La Mancha. We rocked the night away with Freddie Mercury and Queen songs, performed by the orchestra and Joseph Clark, our local expert Freddie Mercury impersonator. Several numbers had the audience bopping, rocking and singing in the aisles. We had performances from two stunning (local) opera singers Musa Nkuna, who had returned for the concert from the Berlin Opera, where he is performing and Friedel Mitas, whose beautiful soprano voice is clear as a bell. Nomfundo Xaluva had us singing along and swaying to all the wonderful Miriam Makeba and Brenda Fassie songs, backed by the Choir. Charlize Berg - talented 19 year old Afrikaans vocalist sang a selection of Afrikaans songs as a tribute to the late Johannes Kerkorrel. Ian von Memerty skilfully and professionally produced the whole event and also performed and delighted us. But the star of the evening is always Richard Cock, the maestro conductor, whose humour and knowledge gathers this whole concert together so well. We had a very funny audience participation in the 1812 Overture, where we were the cannons, bursting brown paper bags – hysterical. And there were many, many more talented acts. Thank you all at Rand Merchant Bank for organising and sponsoring yet another blockbuster concert. Click here to see a selection of Photographs.
And just when you thought it couldn’t get any better We were invited to a trade tasting of Pommery Champagne at the Taj (again!) this week, paired with food made in the Mint restaurant, which has a very suitable Mezzanine venue for guided tastings. We started with the Brut Royal, which was elegantly accompanied by a West Coast oyster. Lots of Crus are blended in this non vintage champagne, which has a lovely brioche nose and is full of sweet fruit flavours, but finishes dry. Then, enormous Salmon sashimi rolls accompanied the delicious Brut Rosé which has an addition of red wine to colour the champagne. It is crisp and clean with delicious strawberry fruit nuances, but is also dry as a bone - a very good accompaniment to food. Duck confit parcels with spiced kumquat preserve accompanied Lynne’s favourite, the Blanc de Blanc (100% Chardonnay), “Summertime”. It gave a nice counterpoint to the rich duck and orange flavours, full of perfume and violets; it is very clean and lean on the palate with lime, lemon and grapefruit notes. Then slices of rare ostrich, topped with berry chutney, were served to accompany the Blanc de Noir “Wintertime”. Yeasty and complex on the nose, this fills the mouth with prunes, plums and other pink fruits, with a very long follow through and rich mouth feel of pinot noir.
This evening, just in time to make it into this week’s MENU, we enjoyed a tasting of Mullineux Family wines (from Riebeek-Kasteel) at French Toast at the top of Bree Street. Chris and Andrea Mullineux are enjoying a meteoric rise in reputation and enjoy the distinction of earning five stars for their Syrah in the current John Platter guide. We started with the more affordable Kloof Street range, Chenin Blanc and Swartland Rouge. These are priced at under R100 and both earned 4 stars in Platter. The Rouge is in the Rhône tradition, 73% Syrah with Mourvedre, Cinsaut, Carignan and Grenache; a perfumed nose with spicy rich fruit flavour. The barrel-fermented Chenin is rich with a mineral undertone. Both Kloof Street wines are delicious and accessible. The Mullineux White blend (Chenin Blanc with Clairette Blanche and Viognier) has a mineral base with peachy citrus flavour. After tasting the Whites and the Kloof Street Rouge, we moved on to the Flagships, the Mullineux Syrah range. The Mullineux Syrah 2010 is wonderful; rich spicy perfume, with signature black pepper, dark fruit and herbs. In addition to this moderately expensive wine, there are two premium, single vineyard versions of this wine, Granite and Schist. Both are accessible now, but they will benefit from a few years careful rest. They are expensive: R675 per bottle each, so most of us will need to save up to enjoy them. This is a premium range of wines and you will find them at specialist wine merchants like Wine Concepts. The 2011 Chenin blanc Straw Wine was very popular, so much so that we took too long tasting the reds and it had all gone by the time we were ready for it. French Toast served very good canapés, lovely soft chicken kebabs and (our favourite) a small mélange of prawn, calamari and fish in tempura with a soft spicy undertone which complemented the wines, even the lighter red.
This week’s recipe should add a dash of spice to your life:
JAMAICAN JERKED CHICKEN
25g Allspice Berries - 5 cm stick of Cinnamon - 1 teaspoon freshly grated Nutmeg -1 red chilli, seeded and chopped - 4 spring onions thinly sliced - 1 Bay Leaf crumbled -Sea Salt and freshly ground Black Pepper - 1 Tablespoon dark Rum - 6 chicken pieces
To make the seasoning, pound all the ingredients (other than the chicken) to a thick paste in a pestle and mortar or in a food processor. Slash the chicken pieces deeply on the skin side and rub the paste all over them. Cover, and leave in the fridge for 1 to 2 hours. Roast, grill or braai the chicken till cooked - approx. 20 minutes. Serve with a salad and, for those not dieting, rice. You could make a good salsa to go with this, using fresh pineapple, tomatoes, spring onions and avocado.
Products We have had to put in increased stock levels of the truffle balsamic reduction, and have added a white balsamic reduction and a chilli reduction, all from Italy. Goose fat and duck fat are on our table and the Spanish products, especially Paella rice and smoked paprika are popular. Thank you, again, Rick Stein. We also have Spanish sherry vinegar. Rose water and Orange blossom water are also being asked for and we have increased our stock level. Mediterranean/ North African flavours are still all the rage and we can hardly keep up with demand for Ras el hanout, Sumac and Za'ataar. French patés are flying out and we have a half-price special on a short-dated, very luxurious goose paté. They are all in our product list. Check it here.
If you are looking for anything, have a look at our product list and tell us what you want. You will be able to access it through our website. If you can’t find what you need, let us know and we will try to find it for you. Until our online shop is ready, drop us an email and we will help you. We are very happy to see that traffic on our website is increasing and more orders are coming from it. The financial year end has put a temporary halt to work on our online shop. The financial year end has but a stop to work on on-line developments, but we intend to concentrate on it in March.
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 We will be back at Long Beach Mall tomorrow, Friday, 9th March for our South Peninsula friends and 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 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 list for March, April and beyond. 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.
1st March 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.
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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