Sunday seafood platter at Ocean Basket

Sunday bloody Sunday

Sometimes you have to turn a disaster into a positive. We were invited to lunch on a Helderberg wine farm but, when we got there, no one we spoke to knew about the invitation! A bit of a PR nightmare, but apologies have been received. After a long drive, huge expectations were dashed. So we decided to go down to the sea, where we had a lovely seafood platter at one of our favourites, Ocean  Basket on the Strand. Marvellous views. 

For those of our readers who are overseas, this wonderful selection for two costs only R215. Which currently equates to about €15.37 or £12.25, for which we conjecture you could buy a couple of muffins and 2 coffees in some of the countries we have visited

The bill. No corkage was charged for the bottle of Kleine Zalze Chenin Blanc we had bought locally, thinking we might have to picnic on the beach. We have to say a special thanks to the Blue Bottle liquor store, who gave us a wine glass to go with the one we already had in the car

A brave fisherman wearing waders.  It was the beginning of the Spring tides and the water was right up to the top of the beach and roadside

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© John & Lynne Ford, Adamastor & Bacchus 2014

20140911 Main Ingredient's MENU - New World Wine Show, Truth Coffee, Taj Chilli Festival, IWSC Results

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The old prison boat Susan Kruger ferrying visitors to Robben Island

In this week’s MENU:

 New World Wine Agency trade tasting

 Truth Coffee. Doing the Right Thing

 Taj Chilli festival

 IWSC announces Beautiful South Wine results

 Sunday bloody Sunday

 Recipe - Cauliflower Keema curry

 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    Our Indian feast at The Taj and this week’s recipe are a reminder that we have a range of Indian and other spices which you will not easily find anywhere else, like Garam masala, Fenugreek, Five Spice, Mace, Shichimi togarashi, Ras el Hanout, Za’atar, Baharat, smoked Spanish paprika, superb Spanish saffron and Sumac  See them here

New World Wine Agency trade tasting     Each of the Trade Wine tastings we go to has a different location and also a completely different character. It depends very much on the personality of the people involved, both organisers and winemakers; and on the wines, on the warmth of the welcome and on the venue. Monday night saw us happily enjoying all of the above at the Vineyard for this fun tasting of some very good wines. Read On

Truth Coffee. Doing the Right Thing     We received a mysterious invitation from Coffee entrepreneur David Donde, asking us to arrive at Truth at 3pm on Tuesday for something exciting, and some free coffee. It was headed “Truth Coffee Roasts on left overs”. We arrived to see his newly refurbished behemoth of a coffee roaster, circa 1947, which had been adapted to work on Bio-fuel instead of diesel. We applaud this green initiative. He is currently installing solar on the roof of his building. David says that Truth is the only roaster in Africa and probably the only one in the world roasting completely on waste fuel. Read On

Taj Chilli festival     We are great curry fans and we like curries of all types, meat, chicken and vegetarian. So we were excited to be invited to The Taj Hotel for the Chilli Festival currently being run in the Bombay Brasserie. They sent a car for us which meant John could really enjoy the wine and beer, paired with the food and not worry about driving home. This small but perfectly decorated restaurant seats, on average, only 40 people, and has lots of well trained staff of character and good manners.  We had a wonderful time. Read On

International Wine and Spirit Competition announces Beautiful South Wine results.     Bright and early and just a little bleary eyed after our Chilli Festival the night before, we arrived at a new venue for us, the Shimmy Beach Club, which is right on the edge of the breakwater area in Cape Town docks. We were promised, and were given coffee, then breakfast with a glass of one of the winning wines, the deliciously crisp and lean Graham Beck Blanc de Blanc Brut 2009, a wine that is scooping lots of international awards, while we heard about this year’s awards. Read On

Sunday bloody Sunday     Sometimes you have to turn a disaster into a positive. We were invited to lunch on a Helderberg wine farm but, when we got there, no one we spoke to knew about the invitation! A bit of a PR nightmare, but apologies have been received. After a long drive, huge expectations were dashed. So we decided to go down to the sea, where we had a lovely seafood platter at one of our favourites, Ocean  Basket on the Strand. Marvellous views. Read On

Recipe - Cauliflower Keema curry

1 T coconut oil - 2 large onions, very finely chopped or gated – 1 T grated ginger – 3 cloves of garlic, finely chopped – 1 t turmeric - 1 t ground coriander – 1 t white mustard seeds – t 1 cumin seeds – 1 t fennel seeds – 1  green chopped Jalapeno chilli  - 500 g beef or lamb mince – tin of chopped tomatoes –salt and freshly ground black pepper – 1 small cauliflower, broken into large pieces – 1 onion, thinly sliced – peanut oil – 200 ml thick plain yoghurt

Fry the onion gently in the oil till very soft, but not coloured. Add the garlic and ginger, and cook for a minute or two.  Add the dry spices and temper for a moment. Stir in the mince and brown. Then add the tomatoes and season with salt and black pepper. Simmer for half an hour then add the cauliflower. Finely slice the third onion and cook until crisp and brown, then drain on kitchen paper. Cook the curry until the cauliflower is getting soft. Stir in yoghurt and top with fried onions. You can use half and half broccoli and cauliflower.

Food and wine (and a few other) events for you to enjoy

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.

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

11th 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.

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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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