Friday, July 25, 2014

140724 Main Ingredient's MENU - 10 yrs Saronsberg Shiraz, Steenberg, De Grendel's new chardonnay, Dynasty Chinese

MENU
Main Ingredient’s weekly E-Journal
Gourmet Foods & Ingredients
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The Sea Point beachfront with a gathering storm and a “hat” on Lion’s Head – a sure sign of turbulent weather
In this week’s MENU:
* Launch of a big Chardonnay at De Grendel in Durbanville
* Tasting 10 vintages of Saronsberg Shiraz
* Steenberg wines at Bistro 1682
* This week’s Recipe: Poached chicken
* Food and wine (and a few other) events for you to enjoy
* Learn about wine and cooking
To get the whole of our story, please click on READ ON..... at the end of each paragraph, which will lead you to the related blog, with pictures and more words. At the end of each blog, click on RETURN TO MENU to come back to the blog version of MENU.
This week’s Product menu – The fourth season of The Great British Bake Off starts this week. If you are inspired, we do stock Nielsen Massey real extracts: Vanilla Bean paste, Vanilla, Orange, Lemon, Almond, Chocolate, Coffee, Mint, Rose Water and Orange Blossom Water. ................. See them all here
We’ve enjoyed three completely different wine tastings this week combined with three completely different restaurant lunches
Launch of a big Chardonnay at De Grendel in Durbanville     De Grendel’s wines always impress, the restaurant produces very good food and the farm has one of the best views of Table Bay and the mountain in the country. On Tuesday we were invited to taste the wine ‘Op die Berg’ 2013 Chardonnay, paired with a three course menu prepared by chef Ian Bergh and his team who are all on show in their open kitchen.  READ ON....
Tasting 10 vintages of Saronsberg Shiraz      We feel very privileged when we are invited to this sort of tasting. Saronsberg winemaker Dewaldt Heyns took us through the ten vintages of their Shiraz at Auslese this week, followed by lunch with our favourites. To see the progression of this wine on one table is amazing and very, very interesting. It started out as a big, full on spicy, warm Shiraz and, as the vines have aged, it has turned into a Northern Rhône style shiraz, full of minerality and refined layers of flavours, but still recognisable as the same wine. Lynne had two very different favourites, the award winning block buster from 2007 and the elegant 2010. Hard to believe that they are from the same vines, but what a marvellous progression. We have all asked if we can do this again in another 10 years so that we can taste 20 years of the wines progress! Here’s hoping we will all still be around tasting wine.  READ ON....
Steenberg wines at Bistro 1682     Another one of those terrible days. Storm sweeping an from the North West, we headed off to Steenberg to meet Marketing manager Caroline van Schalkwyk in the tasting lounge, where she warmly welcomed us with a glass of their new Sauvignon Blanc bubbly. Not an MCC, not enough time on the lees, more of a Prosecco fresh and crisp, a sparkly style. Then we sat down and tasted through some of their other wines before going through to the restaurant for what turned out to be a very long lunch indeed. Were we having a good time? Yes, you bet, or we might have left at a decent hour. And we were captivated by Chef Brad Ball’s food from his new Bistro style menu.  READ ON....
Building a Dynasty     We do try to support our local Sea Point restaurants as often as we can, despite being invited out to many others all over the Cape. Dynasty is where we go the most, it is close to home, we know them well now and if Lynne doesn’t feel like cooking or gets a longing for good sushi or excellent authentic Chinese food, it is to Dynasty that we go. They are in the Nedbank Building on the Corner of Kloof Road and Irwinton road. We thought you might like to see their food.  READ ON....
How to Poach a Chook     Not so much a recipe this week as a cooking suggestion. Determined to recreate the really moist chicken at De Grendel, Lynne happened to watch one of the closing episodes of Masterchef Professional Australia, where they cooked a whole chicken in a very different way. We are definitely going to try this out this weekend and thought you might like to hear about the method and try it yourself. But we offer no guarantees that it will work for us, or for you.
You need a huge pot of what they call a Master Stock. Enviably, Brad at 1682 has one that is 8 years old. Many other chefs have their own too. Ours will be as aged as it takes to assemble it. Here is the recipe from the internet:
Masterchef Master Stock
600ml light soy sauce – 1 litre good chicken stock - ½ bottle sake (or you can use Shao Xin rice wine) - 1 tsp ground star anise – 1½ cinnamon sticks - 1 large knob ginger, chopped - 4 garlic cloves, chopped - 2 cups caster sugar - ½ orange, pared zest
And here is Matt Preston’s recipe for poaching the chicken:
HOW TO POACH A WHOLE CHICKEN
HERE'S how to simply poach your chook for that delicate softer-set flesh using a simpler version of the steps taught to me by Peter Gilmore of Quay in Sydney.
Step 1) Buy a 1.5kg bird - the best you can afford. The quality of the flesh will shine through with this form of poaching. First check the bird's cavity and remove the giblets if included. Now rinse the bird inside and out and dry using kitchen towel or a spotlessly clean tea towel.
Step 2) Pick a pot with a lid that will comfortably hold the bird without swamping it. Now bring three litres of stock or a 2:1 ratio mixture of stock and water with your choice aromatics to the boil. Have a kettle of freshly boiled water handy. Slip the bird in breast side down into the pot so the stock covers it. Add more boiling water from the kettle, if needed, to cover the chook.
Step 3) Remove the pot from the heat, bang on the lid and leave for an hour. Do not let the chook sit in the pot until the stock goes cold but remove it from the stock after an hour and place in the fridge to cool. After an hour or so the barely poached pink chook flesh will be ready to pull apart for salads or popping in a pie. Just rub the chook all over with a little sesame oil, cut into segments and serve with boiled rice and steamed bok choi for a healthy meal. Served this way, the chook is perfect with my spring onion relish or red chilli relish - see www.taste.com.au
It's not an exact science but, for a larger bird, I use more stock and leave it in the stock 15 minutes longer.
As they say on The Great British Bake Off, “COOK!” That fabulous show’s third season is back this weekend and Lynne, who rarely bakes, will be glued to the TV for the whole enjoyable series.
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 type of event 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 list of wine and food pairing dinners, list of Special events with wine and/or food connections, list of Wine Shows and Tastings and list of special dinner events. All the events are listed in date order and we 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
The Hurst Campus, an accredited school for people who want to become professional chefs, will soon start a new series of short courses in baking. Check the ad in our blog page or see the details here
Chez Gourmet in Claremont has a programme of cooking classes. A calendar of their classes can be seen here.
In addition to the new Sense of Taste Culinary Arts School, Chef Peter Ayub runs a four module course for keen home cooks at his Maitland complex. Details here
Nadège Lepoittevin-Dasse has French cooking classes in Noordhoek 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





24th July 2014
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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! ® Anti-Virus software is updated at least daily and our system is scanned continually for viruses.

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