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A gemsbok (Oryx
gazella) at Groote Post, Darling Hills
In
this week’s MENU:
Lunch in Gordon’s
Bay John’s Wine Tours Thelema
trade day Farewell
Supper Party La
Boheme Pork
belly
This week’s Product menu - The weather seems to be changing rapidly
into winter, missing out our short Autumn. So menu thoughts are turning towards
more substantial dishes. We stock several different rices and they can
all be used as the base of some amazing rib sticking food. There are creamy
Violone Nano and Carnaroli rices from Italy for risotto or suppli balls, Bomba
rice from Spain for the perfect paella and black rice from the East.
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.
Lunch in
Gordon’s Bay We took our visiting Dutch
friends through to Somerset West to have morning tea with a favourite aunt and
decided to go and have some lunch afterwards.
We had recommendations from friends in the area for good places to go
and we ended up in the harbour at Gordon’s Bay, as it was a really beautifully
sunny day and we like good views with our lunch. The original destination was
called The Tavern, but has been renamed and was full of smokers. It was a bit
dark, grimy and pub-like, with not many people eating, so we fled the smoke for
a very clean and quite clinical looking place, also in the harbour called,
appropriately, Harbour Lights. It was purchased a couple of years ago by a
South African Italian who runs it. They have a very casual fish and chip take
away/cafe downstairs, but we wanted a table and some wine so headed upstairs.
The menu is a little limited and even a
little bit scary, as the prices are rather high, even for seafood, but it
turned out that they had a seafood stew special for R165. Each dish was topped
with 2 crayfish tails and we all plumped for this. Redolent of garlic and a
little chilli and cooked by their two Angolan chefs, we enjoyed it very much.
We had a good view of the harbour and a bottle of Sophie Te’blanche and might just
return there one day. See it here
John’s Wine
Tours John runs extremely personalised wine tours,
goes to places the normal public would never get. His clients get to meet
people normally in the background like the winemakers and owners and gets to
taste wines unavailable to most visitors, often from tanks and barrels in the
cellar. He is ably assisted in this by our many friends in the wine industry
who really push the boat out for him and his tour clients. Last Friday, a
repeat booking, he took an American client who had previously joined him on a tour and wanted to go somewhere different. She
was on the cruise liner Crystal Serenity with her husband for a round the world
tour. They brought along two fellow passengers. This is what they did. A big tranche of gratitude is due to all
the wonderful people of Darling whose generosity made this tour so successful.
Thelema trade
day This was held at Dear Me
restaurant in Longmarket Street on Tuesday 1st of April and we
tasted through the entire range of Thelema and Sutherland wines. They
have some absolute crackers and you will be sorry if you don’t source some of
them soon before they sell out. The Thelema 2012 Chardonnay is already sold out
although there may be some in good wine shops and you will certainly find in on
good wine lists at good restaurants. We think the Thelema Shiraz may well win
awards, the Merlot 2010 is probably the best Merlot we have tasted this year, soft, fruity, no
stalky green notes, and no lactic either. The Thelema Cabernet Sauvignon 2009
is an absolute classic, full of all the forest floor and dark berries one
expects. The Mint Cabernet is also one
to try, different and good with food we think, lots of chocolate and mint
flavours.. The Sutherland Viognier Roussanne is excellent, the Sauvignon
Blanc a lovely example of what Elgin
grapes can do. There are Rieslings from Thelema and Sutherland. Both are very
good, but the Thelema 2011 showed a little more terpene on the nose than the
Sutherland - perhaps because it comes from a warmer area, although the 2009
Thelema we tasted a little later had less terpene than the 2011. Pictures of the tasting are here
Farewell Supper
Party Last Sunday, we gave a small supper for
our friends who departing to Holland after a month’s holiday here and their
local relatives. Lynne made Snoek pâté, braised pork belly, duck fat roast potatoes,
roasted Mediterranean vegetables and a raspberry jelly. No one was driving. Taxis
had been arranged, so we pushed the boat out as far as wine was concerned. Our
welcome drink was L’Ormarins Blanc de Blanc MCC. We had some delicious 2010
Cape Point Reserve Sauvignon Blanc with the fish pâté served with crudités, and
two bottles of 2009 Beaumont Shiraz Mourvedre. We opened a bottle of Nuy White
Muscadel 2006 with the dessert, a variation of Lynne’s red raspberry jelly, made this time with a
bottle of Laborie’s Lazy Days Rosé, and then we moved on to Italian Gorgonzola, so
some port had to be found. As the first bottle of Overgaauw 1998 was judged a
little dry, we put that aside for a soon to be cooked venison in port recipe we
love and opened a Landskroon 1995. Then it was time for coffee and we broached
the new bottle of Laborie Alambic brandy we bought on our stay there last
week. It was a lively party, not too
inebriated as people were doing small portions, but it is so nice to be able to
do this once in a while and not worry about people driving. We took a few photographs
La Boheme Our friends wanted to make sure they had a
good supper before the flight back to Europe on Monday, so we suggested one of
our favourite haunts - La Boheme in Sea Point’s Main Road. We had a good early
evening meal and then it was time to head for the airport. Click here to see what we ate.
This week’s
recipe Lynne thought you might like her recipe
for the Braised Pork Belly. She has
adapted this over the years from Ruben Riffles recipe in his cookbook Reuben
Cooks (credit and respect where credit is due) and it works every time.
Ruben only used 500g of pork
which feeds two, Lynne usually doubles or even quadruples the quantity of meat
for a dinner party. She finds that the quantities of the marinade/cooking
liquids work for up to 1 kg of pork; if you increase it, then adjust the liquid
quantities accordingly.
1 kg Pork Belly,
preferably pre- boned - 2 cups chicken stock – zest of one orange – juice of 1
orange – 1 cup of light soya sauce – 3 cm piece of fresh ginger, finely grated
or chopped – 1 whole, but broken star anise – 1 x 5cm cinnamon stick, broken in
2 or 3 pieces – ½ cup sugar
Mix up all the ingredients. Put
the pork, skin side up, into a deep roasting pan or dish which is quite a good
fit, with just a little space around the pork. Pour over the marinade and cover
with foil. Roast in the oven for 4 hours
at 160°C. Inspect every hour or so and make sure it does not dry out. Just add
a little water to keep the cooking
juices liquid if you see them drying out. You need them for a sauce
later.
Remove from the oven and if
there are any bones in the pork, remove them carefully now. Then replace the
pork in the pan with the sauce, recover with foil and place a brick or any
other heavy object that nearly covers the pan on top. Lynne uses a large
plastic container filled with water.
Leave in the fridge for 3 hours or until completely cool. Or overnight. Skim
off any fat on top. Carefully remove the skin. Transfer the meat into a serving
dish, pour on the sauce and reheat in the oven until hot. Then serve.
You can try to make crackling
with the skin.
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
26th March 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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