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Foods & Ingredients
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In Guide’s Five time Outstanding Outlet Award Winner
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Waterlilies in
Elgin morning light
In
this week’s MENU:
Old Mutual Trophy
Feedback Elgin Cool Wine and
Country Festival StellenBloggers’
Party The
Bollinger Exceptional Wine Service Award Prawn
paté
This week’s Product menu – Winter has arrived and it’s
time for warming comfort food. Nothing fits the bill better than South West
France’s traditional delight, Cassoulet. We can supply it ready made or you can
prepare your own with some delicious duck confit. Have a look at them here and place an order.
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.
OLD MUTUAL
TROPHY FEEDBACK SESSION Is our
talent in winemaking extraordinary? Are our wines growing in maturity and
sophistication? Does Merlot need more love? Are SA Chenins mind-blowing? Are
our Chardonnays praiseworthy? And are our unusual varietals a surprise with an
interesting future....?
As we go to press today, we
have just returned from a fascinating insight into the judges’ findings at this
well respected award tasting, which took place at Grand Roche during this week.
We will give you a full and detailed report about this next week. It’s
interesting and mostly great news……
ELGIN COOL Wine
and Country Festival Someone said, over the
weekend, how beautiful fruitful Elgin is and commented that, when most of us
were growing up, we drove straight through, never knowing how beautiful the
valley and the hills are. You do need
to go and explore this marvellous place. At the moment, the trees are full of
ripening apples and pears. In spring, it will be full of blossom. And at
harvest time, the vines will be laden. It's full of lovely, welcoming people
too.
The weather is slowly changing
from autumn to winter and, in Elgin this weekend, we had both kinds of weather.
The liquid amber trees are putting out the most beautiful show of reds, oranges
and maroon shades. We started at Hannay wines, where they had a vertical
tasting of their sauvignon blancs and some of their winemaker, Catherine
Marshall’s, Pinot Noirs. A lovely tasting, held inside the working wine cellar,
that was very well attended. You had the option of staying on for a simple
buffet lunch costing R80 and, for every case of any of the wines bought, one
person's lunch was free. They sold a lot of wine. We loved their 2012 Sauvignon
Blanc, which has a little Semillon added, a classic of the varietal in this
area, and all of the Pinots were impressive. Cathy makes very, very good pinot,
in the fruit driven style that we like. Her pièce de resistance was the 2012 –
cherries, violets and roses on the nose and full on sweet berries with such
elegance and style, a food wine with length and depth. MORE here!
Then it was off to see the new
Wallovale tasting room. Paul Wallace is a well respected viticulturist who consults
for many farms in the Elgin area and elsewhere. His client base includes
Boschendal, and their range of Elgin grown wines was also available for tasting
alongside the Wallovale wines. Nicky Wallace had decorated the inside of the
tasting room beautifully in lavenders and pale mauves and was herself toned to
match on the day. We sat on the terrace chatting to friends and enjoyed the
view while sipping their Little Flirt Sauvignon Blanc and some of their well
deservedly renowned Black Dog malbec. We and lots of others also loved the
Boschendal Chardonnay which is very elegant and restrained. It was great to see
lots of cases of wine going out of the winery that day. John watched some
exciting rugby as our team, The Stormers, beat the New Zealand Hurricanes by
one point. See photos of the venue here Then it was off to
Cathy Marshall for supper, lots of chat and wine and a night’s accommodation.
She makes a great breakfast as well as great wine.
Sunday morning, there was a
major storm sweeping in and it was quite impressive. The three of us went to
Charles Fox for a cellar tour and to taste and buy some of his excellent MCC
bubbly. He makes a Brut from Pinot noir and Chardonnay and a Brut Rosé from
Pinot noir with a touch of Pinot meuniere. MORE
Then it was time to depart for
South Hill. Kevin King had kindly invited us to visit and sample the menu of
chef Damian Dearlove. We took Cathy with us and were joined by the Wallaces. Photographs here
StellenBloggers
Party On
Monday night, we were whisked off from the Waterfront in rather speedy minibus
taxis with 23 other food and wine bloggers to join many others at Dornier for
this very large event. Four International bloggers have been touring SA hosted
by Stellenbosch American Express® Wine Routes. Sadly, we were not told
beforehand who they were, so did not get to interview them; the information was
only sent to us after the event. It was quite a crush, but very enjoyable. Tables
had been set up for several Stellenbosch wineries and each had a dish to
support one of their wines. If they had a restaurant, their chef was there and
so we were able to sample lovely food from Michael Broughton of Terroir at
Kleine Zalze, Richard Carstens of Tokara and a few others We think we were
meant to blog throughout the evening but, sadly, the WIFI was not working
terribly well. John did manage to get some out, Lynne did not. The
international bloggers were staying at Dornier for the week. MORE
It is time for The
Bollinger Exceptional Wine Service Award again. Entries for the
First Round of The Bollinger Exceptional Wine Service Award 2014 are now open
and candidates are urged to enter soon, as entries close on the 31st May 2014.
For more information and to download the Registration Form and Question Paper
candidates must please go to: www.wineserviceaward.co.za. We know that we
have quite a few readers, who are in the industry, and who might like to enter,
or you may know someone who qualifies.
This week’s
recipe - Prawn paté
275g well drained
peeled pink prawns or shrimps – 150g butter – 2 garlic cloves, finely chopped –
¼ T grated nutmeg – zest from one lemon – 1 T lemon juice - good shake of
cayenne pepper –salt and pepper –2 T good quality mayonnaise or crème fraiche
or rich cream cheese – 1 T snipped dill or chives. Optional extra 50g butter
Melt the butter in a pan and
add the garlic. Cook for a moment then add the prawns. Cook briefly and begin
to add the nutmeg, lemon, juice and cayenne. Taste and adjust seasoning .
remove from heat. Blitz with a hand blender, leaving some texture. When cool,
stir in the mayonnaise and the dill or chives; put into a serving bowl. If you
want to keep this for a day or two, melt another 50ml of butter, clarify it and
pour the melted butter over the top. Allow to set in the fridge. Serve with
prawn crackers, crudités or, if you are not Banting, good brown bread
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 and drives
the wheels that enable us to produce MENU possible. 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
8th May 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
they do creep in occasionally, for which we apologise. Our Avast! ®
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continually for viruses.
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