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A Sea Point sunset
In
this week’s MENU:
Angala The Vineyard’s
Pinot Festival Norma,
‘The First Lady of South African wine’ Diet?
No, change of lifestyle Ranch
Dressing
This week’s Product menu – The next four weeks
or so are so full of public holidays that many of us will be taking advantage
of the short weeks and long weekends. We have some wonderful French delicacies
in jars, ready to heat and eat like Cassoulet, Garbure and Chou
farci, as well as the delicious pâtés and confit duck. Have a look at them here.
If you can find it in the supermarket, we don't
usually stock it, just the products you would struggle to find.... Check our online shop to see more details and prices.
Happy Easter and
Passover We wish you all a very happy Easter and
Passover and hope the year to follow will be happy and fruitful and joyous.
This is coming to you a little earlier in the week than usual – we anticipate
that most of us will be taking a little time off
Angala We try to go away into our magnificent
country areas as often as we can, as the Cape has so much bounty to offer. We
stay at really lovely places, but sometimes we go to somewhere so perfect, so
beautiful and so peaceful that we never want to leave. Our life is not geared
to a pursuit of luxury, but natural beauty and experience are what we love. When
we were married, Lynne said to John she didn’t need a 5 star life, just no
camping (she is an ex girl guide and back-packed around Europe a lot
so camping days are done), but our own bedroom and a bathroom in a clean and
neat place would be fine. But we
do enjoy a little luxury and spoiling. We love being able
to sit outside when we are in the country and not be confined to a room and we
love observing nature. Last week we were invited to Angala, a superb boutique hotel
nestled under the beautiful Drakenstein mountains in Franschhoek and we found
one of those places. Click here to read more.
The Vineyard’s Pinot
Festival Sunday was a sensational day, sunny and
just hot enough to require a large sun hat. We were invited by the Vineyard
Hotel to come to their Pinot Noir festival and we had a great fun afternoon
tasting some of the very best Pinot’s available. Click here to see the photos and learn more
Norma, ‘The
First Lady of South African wine’ Norma
Ratcliffe came here from Canada in 1971, and married Stanley, a farmer who had decided,
in 1964, to grow grapes. She then decided to learn how to make wine and so
began the Ratcliffe dynasty. Norma and Warwick wines are celebrating the
anniversary on Mother’s Day, 11th of May. See the details here
Diet? No, change
of lifestyle We have to confess. We are
Banting. Lynne took John to a Tim Noakes lecture and he got the message,
because the science was explained very clearly by Dr Noakes. Neither of us has
high blood pressure, nor are we pre-diabetic, nor are we likely to be. But we
do both carry the rotund badge of our profession on the front of us and we
would like to do something about reducing it! Is it working? Yes, slowly, and
we feel very energetic. We bought the cook book, The Real Meal Revolution, and it
has certainly inspired Lynne to try a different approach to food. Neither of us
is missing bread or other starches. We do have a very small amount of starch
once in a while but that is allowed. Lynne made a good lamb Massaman curry and
we decided we would like to have a small half cup of rice with it. Our
vegetable and protein intake is up, we still battle to eat fat and oily foods,
but Lynne is getting better at hiding these in dishes we love to eat. A large
Cajun chicken salad with walnuts and avo can have a thick creamy ranch dressing
slavered over it and you don’t notice the huge amount of cream and cheese in
it. And we are becoming adept at swiping the protein from the top of canapés.
It is probably puzzling to the caterers getting their bases back, but we are
certainly not the only ones doing it. Perhaps it will encourage them to think
more about these.
THIS WEEK’S RECIPE You are probably eating special family foods
for the holidays so we thought we would give you that Ranch dressing recipe. It
is superb. We substituted thick Greek yoghurt the buttermilk which we could not
find that day.
Ranch
Dressing
50g blue cheese
(Gorgonzola is best) – 50g real cream cheese (NO low fat allowed) – 100ml
buttermilk – 1 handful of fresh parsley, chopped – 1 small bunch of chives,
roughly chopped – salt and pepper – 100ml water
Blend all the ingredients
together in a liquidiser or use a stick blender. This keeps well in the fridge
and can also be used as a dip with crudités .
Buying from us On Line 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 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, then you pay and then we deliver or post. 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. Click here to see our OnLine Shop.
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. Events outside the Western Cape are listed here.
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. Karen Glanfield has taken
over the UnWined
wine appreciation courses from Cathy. See the details here
Chez Gourmet in Claremont has a programme of cooking classes. A calendar of their classes can be seen 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
15th April 2014
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 online shop 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 and standard 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
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