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Main Ingredient’s weekly E-Journal
Gourmet
Foods & Ingredients
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Pincushion Protea, Leucospermum
This week’s
Product menu - Mexican food is so suitable for hot
weather and we do have stock of real Mexican Chipotle Chillies in Adobo sauce to
spice up your Nachos or other Mexican meals. The range also has a delicious
Chipotle Salsa for dipping into or
pouring over and there is a great Black Bean Salsa. Mexicorn are
importing these from Mexico and packaging 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.
Festival
time Harvest festivals are
taking place all through March, so you are spoilt for choice as there will be
some exciting and different things happening. Check our Events Calendar for the many, many
things you can enjoy in the winelands. Most festivals take place over the entire
weekend and Robertson has things all through
the month of March. This weekend we will be going to the festival at Muratie and
on Sunday to Durbanville for the Feast of the Grape. Next weekend
will see us at the Paarl
Ommiberg on Saturday and on the 15th we will be in
Wellington for their Festival.
Solms Delta's ATKV Oesfees will happen on
Saturday 22nd and
we are also going to that.
Constantia
Fresh
took place on Saturday at Buitenverwachting and was a marvellous festival of
good wines and some lovely food. Tickets cost R400 and for that you got to taste
all the wines available and eat the food of five chefs. It was hugely popular;
there were 950 tickets available and they sold out. We saw people being turned
away, so if you want to come next year, buy your tickets in advance. With added
guests and media we estimate there were at least 1000 people attending and it
never seemed crowded. The festival was spread out on the lawns and there was
seating available or you could just sit on the lawn. They also added an antique
fair as another facet. Click here to read and see more
Ommiberg
Festival in Paarl will take place next weekend,
8th and 9th of March and at last the sleeping dragon underneath the Pearl has
awakened! Most farms but not all, are doing many varying events on their farms
and in Paarl on both days. On Friday there is a golf day at Paarl Golf club.
Most of the farms start you off with a free tasting of
their young wines and a slice of onion tart, with the proviso that “While stocks
last!” which should encourage you to get there early. Click here to see the full exciting festival
programme
We
were invited to a media briefing day on Tuesday and were taken to several
different venues where they will be holding the festival to see what they have
to offer. Click here to read about our day and see what you might
experience
Scansa Trade
Day at Durbanville Hills Three Streams Trout Farms
in Franschhoek bought Scansa, a large importer of salmon
and other products from Europe, a couple of years ago when the owner retired and
they have now become one of the largest suppliers of trout and salmon in South
Africa. They begin the value chain “from Egg to Plate” with their trout
hatcheries in Franschhoek and also in Lesotho and are the largest hatchery in SA
providing 1.6 million fingerling trout a year to fish farms. There is now a huge
demand for salmon worldwide but we have so overfished the seas that in future
most of it will have to be farmed. They are about to do a trial in Saldanha Bay
to see if it can be done in our waters. They are major importers of fine quality
salmon and other fish products from Scotland and Norway. They also have a BEE
company, Cape Trout, and all farms in the Western Cape are being restructured.
The chain then moves logically onto the Smokehouse in Franschhoek where 75% of
what they produce is for Woolworths and the remainder for their own retail
brands
Three Streams or Scansa. They also have a very long list with other exciting
products. You can taste many of these at the Salmon Bar in Franschhoek. And
there is a factory shop in Montague Gardens. We love their products and often
buy them and we were delighted to have a small tasting of some lovely Durbanville Hill wines
matched with some of their products including the new
farmed Kabeljou.
Banoffee
Pie We know you all do a lot of
entertaining in summer, despite the hot weather. Lynne though she would give you
a simple but delicious recipe which takes very little time or effort to make, as
many of the ingredients could come from your store cupboard or a quick trip to a
local supermarket. It is that old favourite, Banoffee
Pie
1
packet of digestive or other biscuits – 120g melted butter – 3 bananas – half a
lemon - 1 tin of Caramel condensed milk, Nestles Treat – 250 ml of whipping
cream – optional: 1 t or 2t of whisky – chocolate curls – pecan
nuts
Put the biscuits
into a food processor and break up to a rough crumb. Or put into a plastic bag
and beat with a rolling pin. Put into a bowl and pour over the melted butter and
mix well. Take a loose bottomed cake tin approx 20 cm and line with a
disc of
baking paper. This makes it much easier to cut later. Press the biscuit crumbs
firmly onto the base. Then slice the bananas and make two layers of them at the
bottom of the pie. Squeeze over a little lemon juice to keep the banana white
and to add a little contrast to the very sweet caramel. Pour or spoon on the
caramel and cover the bananas. Put into the fridge to set. Just before serving
whip the cream and top the pie. You can add a little whisky to the cream if you
like and you can sprinkle over some chocolate curls. Some people like to add
some nuts to this pie but these are all optional extras and are not traditional.
For a dinner party you could make individual pies. Make them in soufflé dishes
so they don’t have to be turned out and sliced. You
can
make your own caramel by boiling tins of condensed mik for hours, but save the planet's resources and just buy the
ready made one.
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. 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
27th February 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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