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A bee harvesting
on a dandelion flower. Spring is here!
In
this week’s MENU:
John Collins trade
show High Road tasting Buying wine in bulk Lunch in Big Bay Groote Post Sunday
market Allée Bleue tasting Elgin Shiraz tweet
up KLINK AWARDS The Pebbles Project Lunch at
Joostenberg Flash fried
marinated Asian Calamari 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 Does the warm weather make you think of Mediterranean food like Paella
and fish soups. If so you should know we have just taken a consignment
of the best Spanish Saffron. And of course we do have the special Bomba
rice for Paella See
them here
John Collins
trade show This annual treat was held
this year at Ottimo Cibo, the beautiful Mediterranean themed villa of Nikki
Booth and her advocate husband, William, in Kirstenbosch. John Collins
represents a small, but perfectly formed, list of wine farms and, this year, we
were delighted to see that he has added a friend, Chris Keet, with his First
Verse wine. Nikki always lays on a fantastic spread of canapés and she did not
disappoint. READ ON
High Road
tasting Despite horrid wet weather, with MENU to
put to bed, we dashed off from Kirstenbosch to spend a short time at a tasting
of wines from The High Road, which was held at a venue new to us, Mano a Mano
in Park Road, just off Kloof Street. It was pumping with people tasting the two
wines but, beside three other media members and the winemaker, Mark Carmichael
Green, we did not know any of the other guests. They seem to have a good
mailing list business. READ ON
Buying wine in
bulk Saturday dawned sunny, bright and warm! What
a way to start Spring. We wanted to go D’Aria, a Durbanville wine farm, where
Get Wine were holding a sale of their wine, because at these tastings you can
taste all the wines before you buy, something we much prefer to do. We could
not believe the crowds walking out of the cellar all clutching several cases of
wine, as we did ourselves. Prices are good, and so is most of the wine. Lynne
said “Ka’ching Ka’ching” to congratulate Johan Wegner the owner of Get Wine, as
we love to see a successful business doing well. What did we buy? A case (12)
of Edgebaston Honeyshale Hill Chardonnay 2013 made by David Finlayson, a case
(12) of Horse Mountain Chenin/Viognier 2011, and a 6 bottle case each of Cederberg
Merlot Shiraz 2011 and Klein Constantia KC Cab Merlot 2011. The first two are
for summer drinking; the second two have gone into the cellar as they both need
a little more time.
Lunch in Big Bay Well then, what to do for lunch on such a
stunning day? We decided to head for the beach and, because we so rarely visit
this side of the Bay, we headed for Big Bay, along with half of the people who
live in the area. We took a chance and sat down at the first restaurant we saw
serving fish, called Ocean Sizzler. It looks like it has been there since the
1970s, with quite shabby decor, but it seemed to be popular. READ ON
Groote Post
Sunday market Sunday dawned and the weather
was even better. We were so happy that we had accepted an invitation to go up
the West Coast to Groote Post to attend their new monthly market. The spring
flowers are all out and we had such a lovely relaxing day. It was amazingly
well attended given their location and you could see people were really
enjoying themselves. Just before lunch, we spoke to someone who was counting
customers and she had got to over 2 000 by then. The next markets will be held on 28th
September, 26th October, 30th November and 28th December, should you wish to
go. READ ON
KLINK AWARDS It’s
time for the third ‘Klink’ Wine Tourism Awards – the Awards where you decide
who walks away with the ultimate accolade and where you, simply by voting, for
your favourite winery or destination in one or all of our 16 shortlisted
categories, will automatically be entered into weekly draws to win
unforgettable wine experiences – a meal at a wine farm restaurant, a night at a
wine farm guesthouse, a special wine pairing tasting experience, or, of course,
the fruits of the vine itself. Go to the Klink website to place your
votes. We are on the Klink panel and hope that you will take the time to go and
look at the site and vote. Several candidates have sent us emails asking us to
vote for them. Sadly, we can’t. We are disqualified because of our involvement
with the process.
The Pebbles
Project
- Does the
Wine Industry “Give Anything Back” You bet it does. Last week we told you how
the R20
000 awarded
to each of the top 10 Chenins goes right back into the local community for
upliftment. This week, we want to tell you about the Pebbles Project, as some
of that money was going to it. You may have already contributed to Pebbles,
consciously or unconsciously. In certain local restaurants a voluntary amount
is added to your bill as a donation.
The Pebbles Project’s purpose
is to enrich the lives of children with special educational needs from
disadvantaged backgrounds, especially those whose lives are affected by
alcohol, through providing support and training to local wine farm and township
crèches and establishing after-school provision for older children living in
the Winelands. If you want to know more check out
their web site
The FACET Foundation (UK),
established in 2008 by Laurence Graff, and the Pebbles Project Trust have
partnered to provide mobile education programmes for children living on farms
in the Western Cape. On Wednesday this week, we attended the Pebbles AGM held
on Warwick, where two magnificent buses were donated to the projects by Delaire
Graff. Delaire Graff has raised an astronomical 8.5 million Rand in private and
public donations to Pebbles over the last couple of years. Both are fully
fitted out, one as a computer lab and the other as a mobile library. READ ON
Lunch at
Joostenberg There we were in Stellenbosch
and wanting a simple lunch. We had things we needed to do back in town so it
had to be on the way back. We remembered that Christoph Dehosse at Joostenberg
has, with his wife Susan, just finished renovating their restaurant so that was
where we decided to go for a simple quick lunch on their terrace. And it was
worth the detour. READ ON
Allée Bleue Trade Tasting This was held at the Cape Town Club in
Queen Victoria Street and we managed to do a very quick tasting before the next
appointment. Cathy Raath has taken Allée Bleue on to the list of good wines
that she represents. We were welcomed by a glass of their 2012 Brut Rose MCC
and shown a table of all the things the farm produces. We were able to taste
all the current wines and then some of the older. Sadly we did not have time to taste their new
port. READ ON
ELGIN Shiraz Tweet Up The Tweet ups have begun again and this
one was held at Chalk and Cork wine bar in Kloof Street. What is a Tweet
Up? Wine media meet in a Cape Town
location and are guided by an Elgin winemaker. We taste and tweet about each
wine. In Elgin, the makers of the wines watch what we are tweeting about the
wines and they also tweet. It is fast and furious and, usually, quite honest.
We had great fun tasting and tweeting about 11 of Elgin’s Shirazes, ably led by
Richard Kershaw MW and Karin Glanfield Pawley READ ON
Flash fried marinated Asian Calamari
250g calamari
rings, slices and/or tentacles - 2 cloves crushed garlic – 2 cm piece of fresh
ginger, grated – 2 t fish sauce - 1 T lemon or lime zest – 1 T lemon or lime
juice
– 2 t fresh chopped coriander – 1 small chopped fresh red chilli - peanut oil - salt
and pepper
Marinate all the ingredients
together for 30 minutes or more. Heat a griddle pan till smoking hot and quickly
dry fry for one or two minutes in small batches. Season and serve with lemon or
lime wedges
Serve with a salad dressed
with a sesame, sweet chilli sauce and rice wine dressing, cauli rice, or jasmine
rice
Serve with a salad dressed
with a sesame and rice wine dressing, cauli rice, or jasmine rice
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
4th September 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
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