Thursday, May 30, 2019

This Week’s MENU. Middelvlei Centenary, La Mouette Winter menu, Beau Constantia, Beef Casserole, Middelvlei Shiraz

Watching the winter waves, between Clifton and Camps Bay

Sometime, years ago, someone said that winter is a time to slow down, to hibernate, to pause and reflect on life. That may be true in another life, but it is certainly not true in this little corner of our world. This week, we celebrate old and new, the centenary of a family’s farm and new developments on another, newer estate; and a family birthday, celebrated with a special meal. A fairly quiet week, while we brace ourselves for an acceleration of events. Watch, as they say, this space…. As we are all going to do with our new Government


In 1919 two brothers, Tinnie and Niels Momberg, bought Middelvlei, just outside Stellenbosch, and moved their families onto the farm and now, 100 years later, they are celebrating their centenary and nearly ten generations of Momberg family farmers. We were invited to join them, to taste some of their wines, older and new vintages and to experience their 'egte Boerebraai' (real farmers' barbecue). Middelvlei is in the beautiful Devon Valley in Stellenbosch. It was a very special day of great wines, good food and superb hospitality…


A family birthday always means a food celebration in our house and this weekend we went to try out the Winter Special at La Mouette for daughter Clare's birthday. We would thoroughly recommend this! It was indeed a feast and rather good value…


An invitation to visit Beau Constantia last Monday evening to learn about new developments there was gratefully accepted. Darkness is falling at 6 pm in Cape Town at the moment, but John's camera still finds enough light to show another Constantia farm along the valley...


This was our favourite wine of the Vintage tasting held at Middelvlei. Rich cherry, raspberry, strawberry fruit, like a summer pudding, with some spice and black pepper on the nose. Rounded and deep on the palate, full of cherry berry summer pudding or fruit jelly flavours initially, then the kick of alcohol gives almost Romtopf complexity. Delicious. It finishes with some cumin and cinnamon spice. Drinking beautifully now and undoubtedly will age well. A great Shiraz for complex food, including game, meat and dishes from foreign shores like Morocco, Mexico and India


Lynne wanted to try and recapture the wonderful flavours of the casserole we had at Bones restaurant when we went there a couple of months ago. This is her attempt. Getting a huge piece of shin of beef on the bone is not easy so she used cut rounds of shin…








30th May 2019

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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 our website and ancillary works are © John & Lynne Ford, Adamastor & Bacchus. Our restaurant reviews are often 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.

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