MENU
Main Ingredient’s weekly E-Journal
Gourmet
Foods & Ingredients
Eat
In Guide’s Five time Outstanding Outlet Award Winner
+27
21 439 3169 / +27 83 229 1172
A Cape Town
evening: The 92 year old Russian four master Sedov leaves Table Bay, while a
gentleman paddles his surf ski
In this
week’s MENU:
Muratie
vertical tasting
A
Day’s Jaunt to Wellington: Ridgeback, Twist, Klein Optenhorst
Puy
Lentil, cherry tomato & Haloumi salad
On
Line Shop
This
week’s Product menu
Our
market activities - Neighbourgoods, Long Beach
Wine
and Food Events
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. Click on Bold words in
the text of this edition to open links
to pictures, blogs, pertinent websites or more information. Follow us on
Twitter: @mainingmenu
This week’s Product menu: Products of the week are our pulses: Puy
lentils, Beluga lentils and a variety of beans. Winter is on the way and these
are some of the best base ingredients for nourishing, warming meals and a great
source of vegetable protein. See them here. Our order of the
sensational Grains of Paradise, a richly flavoured, hot, spicy pepper from West
Africa, which we mentioned last week, has
arrived.
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 which you are unlikely to find elsewhere in
South Africa. 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. 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
and we will send you the final invoice once we’ve made sure stock is available.
Click here to see the shop.
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. We will be back at the market in Long Beach Mall, Sun Valley,
Fish Hoek on Friday,
May 3rd.
Muratie
What is a vertical tasting? It is a tasting of a
progression of the same wine, starting with the oldest vintage that is still
available and working your way to the most current. Not all wine farms seem to
keep vinoteques of their wines, so it is always an extreme pleasure to be
invited a tasting like this, especially when it is a farm which we respect and
which has a faultless reputation, like Muratie. And to find that we would
have vertical tastings of three separate wines was even more of a treat. Unless
someone you know has a very good cellar and buys the same wine year after year,
or you can afford to go to an expensive restaurant where they have a good
selection of different vintages, the only other time you are likely to experience
a vertical tasting might be at a good wine show.
Last Thursday, we drove through autumn tinged
Stellenbosch vineyards to the Muratie estate for a vertical tasting of their
wines. This is such a charming, rustic old farm in the Knorhoek valley. It was
founded in 1685. We were welcomed by the owner Rijk Melck and taken through the
wines by Francois Conradie, the winemaker and farm manager. The room the
function was held in was previously one of the concrete wine tanks or Kuipe and
the tasting room has centuries old cobwebs and ancient leaded windows. Some say
they are a national monument! They also have a small restaurant run by Mrs Kim Melck,
which serves farm and local produce.
We tasted the Isabella Chardonnay 2008 through to
2012; the Ansela van de Caab Bordeaux red blend from 2005 through to 2010 and
the Muratie Shiraz 2005 through to 2010. We found the chardonnay had changed
the most. They stopped using screw caps after 2010 and this has improved the
depth and flavour of this wine. It has become much more French in style,
lightly wooded , full of honey and citrus notes but crisp and dry on the palate
with lovely minerality. The 2012 is the most exciting, but we would happily
drink all the last three vintages.
Next was the Bordeaux red blend, Ansela van de Caab. The
range does vary quite a bit. The oldest, the 2005 is drinking beautifully now,
which shows that this wine needs keeping, but we were excited by the 2009 with
its very concentrated fruits, tomato, chalky tannins and smoky background and,
while the 2010 still needs lots of time, we think it has good potential.
The Ronnie Melck Shiraz’s are packed full of flavour
and character, they just got better and better throughout the tasting. The 2010
has got everything going for it and is definitely a wine to buy to drink now
and to put down for the future. They have concentrated spicy fruits, vanilla,
liquorice and violets and are wonderful food wines.
We were then treated to a lovely farm style lunch. All
the dishes we had are on the winter menu and if you want to enjoy the best lamb
shank we have ever had, make a booking. These are, apparently, cooked in an old
woodstove in the farm’s own kitchen and are amazing. And, of course, you can
also spend time in the tasting room, finding the wine you want to drink with
your lunch. Click here to see the photographs of this most enjoyable
day.
A Day’s Jaunt to Wellington What makes a really successful jaunt out
with friends? Variety and good company. Four of us set out at 10 on Sunday
morning to drive to Wellington. Our purpose: to have fun, discover some new
wines and eat some good, but not expensive, food and to see a beautiful garden
and perhaps buy some plants. We love Wellington and, sadly, they will not have
a wine festival this year, so we needed to visit.
Despite the lack of any road signage, we finally made
it to Ridgeback.
The council won’t let them put up a sign at their entrance, so we drove nearly all
the way to Paarl and when we turned back found a sign facing the other way,
about 10 meters from the turn off from the R44! The winery overlooks a large
pond which is inhabited by swans, geese and ducks and, as the weather was very
pleasant, it was a delight to sit outside on the deck. Normally, you can taste
up to 5 of their wines, but they recognised us as previous retailers of their
wines and so took us through nearly all of them. It is quite an extensive list
and we were delighted to see that all of their wines are priced at under R90.
Several have won awards and their Vansha White, a blend of Sauvignon, Chenin
and Viognier, has a 2013 Best Value award at R50. We especially liked their
Viognier, with light wood smoke on the nose and packed full of ripe white
peaches. This crisp wine would be a great foil for spicy food. Impressive are
the Ridgeback 2008 Cabernet Franc, and the 2008 Shiraz. These are both high end
wines; they sell for only R85 a bottle and are drinking beautifully. The
classic Bordeaux blend of Cab Franc, Cab Sauvignon, Merlot and Petit Verdot,
Journey 2011, is absolutely delicious and has years to go. We also tasted one
of the specials they have on offer, The Lion Hound, which is made for the
Chinese market and is currently selling for R28 on the farm. A light and fruity
shiraz, it tastes more like a pinot with spice! A case of 12 accompanied us
home for everyday drinking. Our friends bought several cases of the red wines.
We are so glad we visited.
By now we were feeling the need for food and rushed
off to Twist Restaurant on the Hexberg Road in Wellington. We’d had several
recommendations from locals to try this and we were impressed, so we’d made a
reservation. We had wanted brunch but, because of the long stop at Ridgeback,
we arrive half way through lunchtime. They have a good menu on a chalkboard,
which the chef changes regularly. The food is all freshly cooked. Chef Johan
van Schalkwyk comes out and describes it all to you. He could have been an
actor, his presentation is so faultless. You can see the sort of food by
looking at their web site.
Three of us plumped for one main dish each, another had two vegetarian starters
and we all tucked into the very delicious fresh foccacia bread they make, while
we were waiting for our food. Click here to see the place and what we ate.
We ordered a bottle of Nabygelegen Chenin Blanc; this very good wine matched
all the food very well. The bill with service and wine came to R118 each.
Then it was off to our final destination, Klein
Optenhorst, for their open day. On arrival, we had a look
at the plant sale, then bought a bottle of their just released Cap Classique, a
blend of Chardonnay and Pinot noir, strolled through and admired the lovely
gardens and then settled down for a cup of tea and some freshly baked scones,
which were included in the entrance fee of R30 a person. We met several people
who read MENU
and we heard that the farm had had a very busy and successful weekend. We hope
those of you who went enjoyed it as much as we did. This is truly one of the
best and most peaceful gardens in the Cape and Mrs Ferreira is a true
plantswoman. She has what is probably the best collection of salvias we have
ever seen. We have some photographs.
Autumn is upon us, but some days are so pleasant that we are
still in salad mode. Having a substantial salad as a main course is always a
good idea for supper and this week’s recipe contains Puy lentils, which require
only a little cooking and stay firm. They are the base of this salad. You can
vary the salad ingredients, but you do need the lentils and the Haloumi cheese.
Puy Lentil, cherry tomato & Haloumi
salad
150g Puy lentils – 400ml vegetable stock -
250g cherry tomatoes, halved – 1 fennel bulb, finely sliced – 200g green beans,
cut into 2 cm pieces – 200g artichoke hearts – 1 small garlic clove, crushed –
2 T lemon juice – 2 T olive oil – 1 t basil or Dijon mustard – a good handful
of fresh mixed herbs roughly chopped: rocket, flat parsley, coriander, basil,
mint, sorrel according to your taste – salt and pepper – 250g haloumi cheese
Cook the lentils in the stock until just tender.
Drain. Blanche the green beans for just a minute in boiling water then drain. Mix
the lemon juice with the olive oil, mustard and garlic and add seasoning. Pour
over the tomatoes, green beans and fennel and let them marinate for half an
hour. Grill the cheese until golden, cut into cubes and then combine all the
ingredients in one bowl. Check the seasoning and serve.
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.
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.
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. 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).
1st May 2013
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 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.
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