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Main Ingredient’s weekly E-Journal
Gourmet
Foods & Ingredients
Eat
In Guide’s Five time Outstanding Outlet Award Winner
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21 439 3169 / +27 83 229 1172
Table Bay autumn
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In this
week’s MENU:
Matthew
Gordon's winter menu at Harvest restaurant on Laborie
Waterkloof’s
new Sauvignon Blanc with lunch
Wolftrap
Steakhouse Championship Awards at the Pot Luck Club
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: Mustards go very well with steak amd other meats and
we carry a sensational range of gourmet mustards from France. The Edmond Fallot
brand from Beaune in Burgundy are the last mustards still ground by stone in
France and therefore have a little bit of a kick. The range of consists of a smooth
Dijon, a grainy Dijon, a Green Peppercorn, Basil, Tarragon, Cassis and a sweet
mustard. We also have the Vilux brand in Gingerbread, truffle and champagne
flavours.
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 17th.
Matthew
Gordon at Harvest restaurant on Laborie Chef
Matthew Gordon has a very good reputation. During his long sojourn at Haute Cabrière
restaurant, he was producing some of the most exciting food in the Cape. He
moved to take over Harvest restaurant at
Laborie last
year and we were invited to come and sample his winter menu last Thursday.
After enjoying a good glass of Laborie Brut and sampling the low alcohol range
of wines called Lazy Days, we moved through to the large commodious dining room
located in one of the old farm buildings.
It has a terrace in front with a lovely view across vineyards and Paarl
village to the mountains. They have a large herb and vegetable garden outside
and we saw chefs picking herbage for our lunch, which was a compilation of
dishes from the winter menu. Click
here to see that menu and photographs and descriptions of what we ate.
Matthew concentrates on local and seasonal ingredients
and we certainly were presented with a feast. Definitely a place to visit when
you are next in Paarl. We found the pairing with the Laborie wines worked very
well, but then we expect nothing less. They do produce some very good wines.
However the star alcohol of the day for us was their Alambic brandy made from
Chardonnay and Pinotage grapes which in 2010 was voted as the Best Brandy in
the World at the International Wine & Spirits Competition in London. And we
could see why. Lynne is not a brandy aficionado as, to be honest, she prefers
Whisky when she does imbibe, but this knocked her socks off. It was full of
butter and citrus and as smooth as a baby’s bottom. No hot spirit alcohols that
make you cough and it went beautifully with the warm chocolate fondant we had
for dessert.
A special treat that came with this lunch was being
fetched from our house by Laborie’s driver Geoff Samuels and brought home after
the lunch. KWV Marketing director Jeff Gradwell told us that this is now their
policy as they don’t believe that they can show their wines properly at media events
and expect their guests to drive home afterwards. We are most appreciative.
Waterkloof’s new Sauvignon Blanc with
lunch Waterkloof is perched
on the top of a high hill near Somerset West, with beautiful views across False
Bay. Besides the winery, there is an excellent award winning restaurant above
the cellar. Invited to taste the about-to-be-released 2012 Sauvignon Blanc, we
also had a lunch with the owner/custodian Paul Boutinot who, until recently,
was a wine merchant in the UK. Paul is passionate about his wine and the winery
and has done so much to develop it along all the right environmental and
biodynamic lines. To quote the web site “His private investment in Waterkloof
is not that of the archetypical foreign-based lifestyle investor, but rather as
a hands-on dedicated entrepreneur-cum-winemaker. It is his desire consistently
to produce truly fine wines with a defining sense of origin” a view we greatly
respect. And they believe in using minimal intervention to produce good wines.
We were enchanted to see a horse pulling a plough
between the vines, getting ready for the sowing of the winter cover crop. They
have Percheron horses on the farm which are used in place of tractors. The
re-establishment of the fynbos on the farm is truly remarkable.
This event was planned long before harvest; the
Sauvignon Blanc is still fermenting and will not be bottled for at least
another week or two. We were given glasses from the barrels to sample and it is
clear to see that this wine has an interesting future with many of the building
blocks necessary for a good sauvignon showing their presence, but it is still
very young and unready. Paul is very clear about his wines. This will be a wine
made from Sauvignon Blanc grapes, and will not necessarily confirm to ideas of
what a sauvignon blanc should be. And he feels the same way about all the wines
they make.
At lunch we began with an interesting Marron bisque
which was accompanied by their Circle of Life white blend. Marron are
freshwater crayfish, originally from Australia, that are now being farmed
locally. The bisque was quite delicious as was the marron. Did the roasted
tomatoes fit in this dish? The jury is out on that one. The bisque did go very
well with the Circle of Life white blend of Sauvignon, Chenin and Semillon.
Our main course of very gamey springbok was paired
with the Circle of Life red, (Platter 4 star) a blend of mainly Merlot with
Shiraz and 4 other varietals. It is smooth and silky, juicy and hot and has
deep red berry fruit with liquorice on the end. It is a very good wine for game
and robust meat dishes. At last we thought, Chef Gregory Czarnecki has given us
a starch with our meat as there was a square of what looked like polenta – he
is not fond, we have found, of including them. But no, it was a lovely smooth
parsnip purée.
No dessert, but a beautiful selection of cheeses was
produced to accompany some of the other Waterkloof red wines and their sweetly
sticky straw wine. Then came coffee and delightful friandise. Click
here to see the photographs.
Wolftrap Steakhouse Championship Awards
at the Pot
Luck Club This is the first year of this competition
and, on Wednesday, we were invited to the awards lunch to meet the three
finalists. We are delighted to announce that the winner is Steve Maresch of The Local Grill
in Parktown North, Johannesburg and the two runners up are Giorgio Nava of Carne
in Cape Town and Martin Lombard of Little Havana in Umhlanga Rocks in
Natal. The judges of the completion were JP Rousseau, Arnold Tanzer and Pete
Goffe-Wood, who travelled the country tasting at all the nominated restaurants
so that they could make their own nominations and judgements.
The Wolftrap wines – “steak’s ideal partner” - were
the sponsors of the competition and the winner has won a year’s supply of
Wolftrap wines for his restaurant. Over the next months, there is a prize of a
meal for two at The Local Grill – simply buy a bottle of The Wolftrap for
details! And check
out the Facebook page of the competition.
Convenor JP Rossouw commented: “The Top Three
Steakhouses were all excellent in terms of selection, knowledge, maturation and
preparation of their meats, but what gave The Local Grill the edge was the
fantastic meat experience it offers in terms of range of cuts (including grass
and grain) and even choice of bovine. The fact that you get a tour of the meat
locker if you show the slightest bit of interest, is also fantastic and says it
all about a place that truly "preaches" steak!”
The Awards brings to a close a search that began with
an open round during which the public nominated their favourite steakhouses –
there were an astounding 21,600 nominations and nearly 200 establishments were
named as contenders in the Championships. The Top Five from this nomination
round then joined an expert's selection of award-winning steakhouses to go into
the Play-Off Round in April where 14 steakhouses went head-to-head during
personal visits by the Steakhouse Championships judges.
We were then treated to a really splendid lunch by
Luke Dale Roberts. Luke was recently nominated as the International Chef to
Watch in the San Pellegrino The World’s 50 Best Restaurants. He also came in at
a respectable No 61 on the list and of course has previously been recognised as
best restaurant and chef of the year in South African food awards. Envious? You
should be. Click here to see the feast.
More coming... This has been a really busy week for us and we have just got back from
the Old Mutual Trophy Feedback session at Grande Roche today, followed by the
Fine Brandy Fusion show at the CTICC this evening. You can still visit the
Brandy show tomorrow evening. We will be reporting on these, posting blogs and
showing lots of photographs of these two events during the next week. Watch
this space. Details of the Trophy tastings in Johannesburg and Cape Town can be
found in our events calendar.
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). 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 Wednesday evenings. She trained
with Raymond Blanc, and has been a professional chef for 25 years. More info
here
9th 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
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