Don Quixote and Sancho Panza statue in the
Cervantes Monument, Plaza de España in Madrid
Scanned from a Kodachrome slide, photographed by
John in 1971 - with an iconic Nikon F, not the camera in the picture
Perhaps significant as we prepare to embark on an
Iberian Odyssey
The media season goes very quiet over the whole
Easter period, so this week's MENU is very
brief. We will be off on a month of adventure in Portugal and Spain next week
and will be posting brief updates on Facebook,
Twitter, LinkedIn
and Instagram
as we travel and giving you the full story in episodes on our return in early
May. So, no MENU for four weeks, but we do
hope that you will keep in touch on the other media. If you remember our road trip through northern Europe and Scandinavia
last year, the format will be similar.
This is the ideal time to go to Europe; it is
spring, but the expensive tourist season has not quite begun. We will of course
be writing about the wine, food and accommodation on our travels and have already
made some good contacts there. If you know of any, we would be very grateful
for the contacts, recommendations and 'don’t do’s’! This is our route map, for
our road trip from Porto up the Douro Valley, and to Lisbon, then south-east
into Spain, through Andalusia and up to Madrid, then back to Porto and home
after 4 weeks. We have hired a car and all accommodation has been booked on
AirBnB or Booking.com
All we require now is to receive John's Visa, the
process of acquiring which is being very frustrating. Travel in Europe for
South Africans is becoming very complicated; the amount of information you have
to produce for the visa is staggering, they insisted on all accommodation,
flights etc. being booked and paid for beforehand and documented with both our
names on all the accommodation bookings; this despite an invitation to visit
from Amorim Cork. Lynne spent days on line researching and booking and paying
for all the accommodation. The days of just getting there and exploring are
GONE. They have no idea how much money they are losing in restricting tourists
this way. And WHY? We don't want to live there, just visit as we have done to
many countries over the years. Insurance, medical insurance, receipts, tickets,
bank statements, Passports, ID's, municipal bills and even pension statements
were demanded and some rejected because they were "not quite correct",
so they had to be replaced. Bureaucracy gone mad. And you don't deal direct
with the Embassy any more, you have to pay an Agency to do it all. We suspect
they get paid for the number of visits the visa seeker makes, so they keep
sending you away for more Bumph. It used to be that if your spouse was a citizen
of the EU, as Lynne is, none of this was required. Not anymore. Lynne wonders
whether the same will apply to people with British passports when Brexit is complete.
And it appears that no one at the Portuguese Consulate has any concept of the
urgency when one is waiting for a visa and, indeed, one’s passport with only a
few days until we are due to fly.
However, we are really looking forward to the trip,
flying on TAAG Angolan airline to Porto from Cape Town with a brief stop in
Luanda to pick up more passengers. They have very good fares. We booked with
TravelStart who have great specials on lots of flights. Our house sitters are
ready to spoil the cats.
Portuguese
Visa Postscript: Thank Heavens for a
persistent wife! While John was fruitlessly struggling with VFS (Visa
?Facilitation? ?Services?), Lynne phoned the Portuguese Consulate. Sounds like
an obvious thing to do, but all enquiries are directed to VFS. Phone calls,
emails, web enquiries and, eventually, another visit to VFS in Strand Street
all came up with the information that his passport was with the Portuguese
Embassy in Johannesburg awaiting action. No information about progress or
timescale. This was Thursday, we fly on Monday. Lynne’s call to the Portuguese
Consulate brought the information that the passport had never been sent to
Johannesburg. It was at the Consulate in Cape Town and the visa was ready for
collection from a lovely, helpful lady named Sandra.
This poses the question: Why do they use VFS, an
organisation which does everything it can to obstruct efforts by potential
visitors to obtain a visitor’s visa? Friends who have acquired Schengen visas
for other countries tell us of similar experiences. We had similar problems
getting a Schengen visa last year from the Netherlands and a close friend who
works for Foreign Affairs in the Netherlands Government – and wrote a
supporting letter for our application – found the whole process quite strange.
It seems that VFS is based in India and works all over the world. They make
dealings so difficult that one wonders if the Guptas are involved
- Portuguese visa challenges
- Breakfast at Knead in Sea Point
- Three Wise Monkeys
- Tuna cream, tomato and black olive filled pancakes
- MENU’s Wine of the week. Buitenverwachting Sauvignon blanc 2017
- Druk My Niet wine estate in Paarl rises from the ashes
is another place we have been dying to try out in Sea Point. It's on Regent Road, diagonally opposite Checkers. A friend made a reservation a few months ago, but when we got there they knew nothing about it so we left and went somewhere else. This time we went for lunch on a quiet weekday. We love Asian food, and Three Wise Monkeys specialises in Ramen, Sushi and Poke bowls. A Poke Bowl has recently become quite trendy; they describe it as deconstructed sushi. It is a bowl with a sushi rice or spinach base topped with Tuna, Salmon, avocado, edamame beans, mixed vegetables, season fruit, sesame seeds, nori seaweed, firecracker/Japanese mayo/soya and sesame house dressing. Might have to try Poke another time
This is an easy canapé recipe. Lynne made this for
our wine club meeting. No cooking required, unless you are going to make your
own pancakes. You need about 20 small pancakes - luckily Woolworths sells them
in a box, interleaved if you are really pushed for time, as she was. But of course
you could make them yourself. If you do, you already have the recipe. Please
use real cream cheese, with a high butterfat content, the 'creamed' cottage
cheese will not work.
500 g cream cheese - 50g cream - 1 tin
of tuna in water, drained (but keep the liquid aside) - the finely grated rind
of one lemon- 1 teaspoon lemon juice - 1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper - 1
Tablespoon of finely chopped lemon verbena - 100g rosa baby tomatoes - 2
Tablespoons of chopped black olives - salt to taste - 20 small crêpe pancakes
Blend the cream cheese, cream and tuna together
with the lemon rind, lemon juice and cayenne pepper. You may need to add a
little more cream or some of the liquid from the tuna if the mix is too stiff. You
need a spreading consistency, the cream must not be runny. Finely chop the
tomatoes, salt them and put into a strainer to get rid of some of the juice. Pat
them with kitchen roll to dry them out a little more. Add them and the chopped
olives to the cream. Taste and season to your taste, adding more lemon, salt or
cayenne. Take the pancakes and put a good heaped dessertspoonful in the centre
of each, spread it out and roll up neatly. To serve, cut them down the middle
so that they are easier to eat. Sprinkle with fresh basil.
It is crisp, long and delicious, a food and
quaffing wine. Fig and gooseberry flavours dominate the long finish, with a
hint of green pepper at the end. Tasted nearly a year after it was picked, the
early acidity has tempered, but it retains enough crispness to be a great match
with a creamy dish. In the USA, where they cannot pronounce Buitenverwachting,
it is marketed as Bayten and it sells very well at $19 a bottle. R100 from the
farm in Constantia
6th April 2018
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© John & Lynne Ford, Adamastor & Bacchus 2017
Phones: +27 21 439 3169 / 083 229 1172 / 083 656 4169
Postal address: 60 Arthurs Rd, Sea Point 8005
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. This electronic journal has been sent to you because you have personally subscribed to it or because someone you know has asked us to send it to you or forwarded it to you themselves. Addresses given to us will not be divulged to any person or organisation. We collect them only for our own promotional purposes. If you wish to be added to our mailing list, please click here to send us a message and if you wish to be removed from our mailing list
