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In
this week’s MENU:
The Tradition of
Morgenhof KWV Classic Wines
go with Japanese Good Food and Wine
Show at the CTICC Any Port in this
storm? Shiraz and
Charcuterie Festival Angala Packages The Wolftrap
Steakhouse Championships Old Mutual Trophy public
tasting Nutty Banting bread
This week’s Product menu – Winter is with us and we all
want something warm. The Portuguese live with a similar climate to ours (apart
from the North-West corner of Portugal) and their cuisine is very popular here.
We are told that June 10th will be National Portuguese Day. We have
written about South African Ports lower down, but the warm spices of the
Iberian peninsula will also help to spice up the spirit. We are investigating
some interesting chilli products but can offer you a great idea. Smoked Paprika
is a wonderful spice to use in many Portuguese and Spanish recipes. Try it with
stir fried prawns... See 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.
The Tradition of
Morgenhof It has been a while since
we visited this beautiful farm in Stellenbosch and it was delightful to be
asked to come for lunch and taste their new vintages last Thursday. Owner
Madame Anne Cointreau was there to welcome us and, despite it being another
chilly grey day, the fires were lit and we had a good tasting followed by an
excellent lunch. She was at pains to tell us that she is NOT trying to produce
French style wines here in South Africa but, working with viticulturist Pieter
Haasbroek (who has been there since 1998) and winemaker Andries de Klerk (since
2012), they are trying to express the best their dry land terroir can give
them. It certainly shows in the wines. Morgenhof has always produced excellent
Chenin blanc from really old bush vines and the vintage we tasted, 2011, was
full of lovely tropical fruits with the richness nicely balanced by good
acidity. Their reds do need time, as they have both structure and elegance and
we enjoyed drinking them with food very much, particularly the Cabernet Franc,
which is drinking beautifully and is a lovely food pairing wine. Which led us
on to a great lunch prepared by chef Thys Esterhuizen. MORE.....
KWV Classic
Wines go with Japanese at Kyoto
Garden restaurant, off Kloof Nek Road last Thursday, where KWV presented their
Classic range to the media and we ate our second multi-course meal of the day. Luckily,
the beautiful food at Kyoto Gardens is light and has barely any carbohydrates,
so we managed. Yes, we did crumble at the four pieces of Wild Alaskan King Crab
sushi. The wines are aimed at the middle market and sell very well, as they are
competitively priced at R40/42 for the whites and R57 for reds - KWV Cellar
Door prices. MORE.....
Good Food and
Wine Show at the CTICC We spent
the morning at this exhibition and were amazed to see the absence of the large
food conglomerates and supermarkets, the increased presence of small, good
producers and so much charcuterie. We tasted lots of it, all good apart from
some really dodgy looking red hot dogs and frankfurters which we saw being
sold. We avoided all the sinful pastries and confectionery and spent some time
and some money in the wine area. We were delighted to find that Baleia Bay,
whose Chardonnay won the trophy for the Discovery of the Show last week at the
Old mutual Trophy Awards, had a stand. We tasted and immediately bought a case.
It is very lean and crisp and entirely to our taste. We also tasted their Pinot
Noir and so another case was purchased. This has to wait a while but is full of
red berries and elegance. We enjoyed the show this year. MORE.....
Any Port in this
storm? Yes, there was - at the Third Annual Port Awards,
held at Muratie on Tuesday. We drove there at the start of a big storm and it
was lovely to sit near the wood burning stove in the cellar and taste... first,
lots of different wines made from Port varietals, and then some beautiful award-winning
ports. Everyone was hoping the famous Muratie Lamb shanks would be on the menu
and we were delighted that they were. If you want to see the full list of the
Cappa Port & Wine Awards click on this link. Some of the
wines and ports were available during lunch and we particularly enjoyed the
Boplaas Portuguese Connection 2012, which you will find on sale in Woolworths. Axehill’s
Distinta was also a great food match. Both were in the top 10 table wines. We
drank some of Peter Bayly’s Cape Vintage 2004 port which got a gold medal in
the museum class and it was so smooth and full of Christmas fruit. We are off
to the Calitzdorp Port Festival soon and will write up the ports and wines in
more detail then. We love good Port and encourage all of you to try it, if you
have not had the opportunity. In blind tasted international competitions, many
of our best Ports have proved to be a very good match for the European
equivalent! MORE.....
The Shiraz and
Charcuterie Festival is being held on Hartenberg this Saturday; we hope to
see lots of you there. What else are you going to do in bad weather? Not sit at
home feeling miserable, but drinking great Shirazes and eating wonderful
charcuterie, surely.
Angala Packages You may remember that we stayed at this
wonderful Guest House in April. They have some super packages at the moment and
we think you should investigate Click on http://www.angala.co.za/packages
The
Wolftrap Steakhouse Championships 2014
The final five steakhouses for 2014
(in alphabetical order) are: HQ (Cape Town). Fahrenheit
(Edenvale), Johannesburg. The Godfather (Centurion), Pretoria (Finalist in
2013). The Local Grill (Parktown North),
Johannesburg (2013 Champion). Theo’s (Mouille Point), Cape Town.
In the next few weeks the Final Five
will be visited by a select group of South Africa’s food experts and chefs to
select this year’s winner, and the 2014
Steakhouse Champion will be announced on 24th June at The Local Grill in
Parktown North, Johannesburg (the inaugural 2013 Champion Steakhouse). Follow
on their website www.steakhunter.co.za where you can also win a prize for predicting the winner.
The Old
Mutual Trophy public tastings Last week, we attended the Awards ceremony
and reported on it. There are many wonderful wines to be found among the
winners. Tomorrow, Friday, D Day, 6th of June, Capetonians will have an
opportunity to taste the best of them at the CTICC and our many Johannesburg
readers will be able to share the experience at Sandton Convention Centre, Bill
Gallagher Rooms on Thursday, 12th June. Click here for more information and to book.
This
week’s Recipe...
...is a wheat free ‘loaf’
recipe which was in last week’s Sunday Times and is so easy to make and so good
to eat, that we thought we should reprint this in case you missed it. It makes
a small rich loaf, but you could double up the quantities should you need more.
It does keep, if wrapped in cling film and put in the fridge. Lynne might
experiment with adding some mixed seeds to this to make a more complex and toothsome
loaf next time.
Nutty
Banting bread
2 ½ cups almond
flour – ½ tsp salt ½ tsp bicarbonate of soda – 3 extra large eggs – 15 ml runny
honey – ½ tsp apple cider vinegar
Combine the dry ingredients in
a large mixing bowl. In another bowl mix the honey with the eggs and vinegar. Stir
into the dry ingredients. Oil a small loaf pan or line it with buttered baking
paper (this has quite a cakey consistency) and bake at 160°C for 45 to 55
minutes or until a skewer comes out clean. Turn out, and cool.
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 Thursday evenings and she has decided to
introduce LCHF (Banting classes). The Kitchen Confidence classes, which focus
on essential cooking skills and methods, have been expanded and are now taught
over 2 evenings. She continues to host private dining and culinary team
building events at her home. She trained with Raymond Blanc, and has been a
professional chef for 25 years. More info
here
5th June 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
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