Wednesday, October 15, 2014

Main Ingredient's MENU - The White Room, Elim Festival, Mariana's, Cabo Esperança Wines, Gooey Chocolate Pudding


MENU
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An olive thrush in Mariana’s garden, contemplating which of a feast of mulberries he should choose next
In this week’s MENU:
* The White Room at Dear Me
* The Elim Wine & Food Celebration
* Mariana’s in  Stanford
* La Vie en Rose with Kyle’s Cabo Esperança Wines
* This week’s recipe: Gooey Chocolate Pudding
* Important festivals this month
* 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 onREAD 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 One of the all-time favourite flavours is real vanilla and we have been finding it in various dishes we have tasted recently, including this week’s recipe. We stock some of the world’s best vanilla and other extracts in the Nielsen Massey range.  See them here
A week filled with good food, good friends and even some relaxation by the sea. We have had good and, sadly, some spectacularly bad food over the last couple of weeks. This week it was all good.
The White Room at Dear Me     On Friday night, we visited The White Room at Dear Me, having been invited to taste the Five Course food and wine pairing menu at this Cape Town restaurant, which has just been placed in the Eat Out Top 20 list of best restaurants in South Africa, and is nominated for a place in the top 10. The timing couldn't have been better. Chef Vanessa Marx is over the moon with joy at her nomination and, having tasted the food, we think she deserves it. Two of her dishes really intrigued, amazed and delighted us. Read on
The Elim Wine & Food Celebration     Early on Saturday morning, we picked up our friends and, trusting our GPS, headed off to the wilds near the southern tip of Africa, Cape Agulhas. We have learned, lately, not to trust the GPS implicitly, as this was another occasion when it got its directions horribly wrong and took us on a detour on very bumpy dirt roads. But, when we reached Black Oystercatcher Winery in Elim, we knew that the 3½ hour trip had been worth it. It was a real old fashioned country wine and food festival with the lovely wines of the area and masses of food stalls, music and other entertainment. Given the distance, we were amazed how many people from Cape Town had been attracted to the fiesta. Read on
Mariana’s in  Stanford     After our visit to the Elim Festival, we spent the night at a friend’s daughter’s holiday house in De Kelders, where we had a lovely relaxing evening and morning, reading papers and our books, cooking huge prawns for supper, watching whales and poachers, getting some sun while doing the crossword and then it was time to head over to Stanford, where we had managed to get a reservation for lunch. We have not been for several years, as this small restaurant is amazingly popular (deservedly so) and bookings are hard to get. We were warmly welcomed by Peter Esterhuizen and given a lovely table outside on the vine-covered terrace, facing Mariana’s legendary vegetable garden. Then came the wonderful food. Read On
La Vie en Rose with Kyle’s Cabo Esperança Wines     Kyle Martin has long been a business friend. He used to sell us wine when we had the shop and has remained a personal friend ever since. Recently, he started up his own wine business, Cabo Esperança Wines representing, initially, four good wine producers: Blackwater Wines, Keermont, Oak Valley and Vondeling. His inaugural trade tasting was held at La Vie Café Bar, on the beachfront at Rocklands, on Monday evening and we tasted some really special and two very unusual wines. Read On
This week’s recipe: Gooey Chocolate Pudding
John’s chocolate pudding at Mariana’s was so delicious that Lynne thought she would find you a similar one and this tried and tested recipe comes from Willie Harcourt-Cooze. You do need to use the best dark 70% or 80% chocolate that you can find. The recipe calls for unsalted butter, but all chocolate is improved by the addition of a little salt, so we use ordinary salted butter; you can choose. You might get more than 6 puddings out of this, so have a couple of extra ramekins ready for the overflow. Confusingly, he recommends 6 to 8, but it might depend on the size of your ramekins. You could also use small coffee cups. You make this just before serving, so get all your ingredients ready
180g 70% dark bitter chocolate – 200g unsalted butter – 175g caster sugar – 6 extra large eggs – 2 teaspoon real vanilla extract – 40g ground almonds
Preheat the oven to 160°C. Grease 6 ramekins. Melt the chocolate and butter, with 60g of sugar, in a bowl over a pan of simmering water. Do not allow the base of the bowl to touch the water. You could also melt the chocolate in the microwave. In another bowl slightly beat the eggs with the remaining caster sugar and the vanilla extract till pale. Stir the ground almonds into the melted chocolate mix. Then gently fold this mixture into the eggs. Divide between the ramekins and bake for 12 to 15 minutes. The tops will rise and start splitting when they are ready to serve. Serve immediately with thick cream.
You can also add dried fruit soaked in alcohol for a more adult pudding. Brandied cherries would be superb.
Important festivals this month  Robertson’s great annual Wine on the River Festival starts this Friday and ends on Sunday. It is one of the best wine events of the year and we will be there on Sunday. Caroline’s White Wine Review will be at the Table Bay on Tuesday, October 21st. Tickets are in short supply, so book as soon as you can. Durbanville’s Season of Sauvignon takes place on twelve Durbanville farms on Saturday and Sunday, October 25th and 26th.
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, has a variety of courses. 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.
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





16th October 2014
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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.
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