Tuesday, October 01, 2019

This Week's MENU. MENU's UK Adventure. From Cape Town via Dubai to Edinburgh

Edinburgh Castle, which dominates the city from its hill top vantage point

Five and a half weeks seems a long time to be away from home. Looking back on it, the time seems to have gone by in a flash with many wonderful memories of an adventure in which we visited some old haunts and saw many places which were new to us. We visited old friends and family and, towards the end of the journey, visited two South African owned wine estates which are being developed in Sussex. We have many stories to tell and will publish them over the next weeks, interspersed with our reports of current events. We thank our loyal subscribers for their patience; travelling 3700 kilometres, editing 3800 photographs and enjoying many adventures takes time and effort and we could not do all these things and work on MENU. We hope you will enjoy reliving the experience with us. We start this week with three stories about travelling to and enjoying time in Edinburgh
We are a little late with this message, but we wish our Jewish readers a happy and prosperous New Year and well over the Fast

 A huge thank you to all our generous readers who have paid a voluntary subscription to MENU into our Payfast and PayPal accounts. PayPal works well for readers outside South Africa, but PayFast works better for contributions in Rand
Your contributions help us to cover the expenses we incur in publishing MENU
MENU's UK Adventure 1. From Cape Town via Dubai to Edinburgh

We love travel but, sadly, flying is not the best part. Financial constraints mean looking for the cheapest flight, so we went the long way round with Emirates via Dubai to Gatwick for the start of this year's adventure in England and Scotland. Because John needs a visa, which takes time, it precludes getting any cheap flights early on in the year, which is a major setback. Lynne was born in London, but we had not been back since 2004. And family and friends there are, like us, getting older, so it was now or never…
MENU's UK Adventure 2. Days and nights in Edinburgh

A day in beautiful Edinburgh with soft weather (rain) on and off all day. It started to rain, quite hard, while we were in Prince's Street, so we bought ponchos, expecting to need them at the Tattoo that evening but, as soon as we opened one the rain stopped, never to return - it’s called Sod’s Law…
MENU's UK Adventure 3. The Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo

One of the main reasons we came to Scotland, and to Edinburgh in particular, besides family connections, was to treat John to the famous Edinburgh Military Tattoo, held every August (2nd to 24th August 2019), during the Edinburgh festival. John was a Piper in his school band and we both love the sound of a pipe band. This delivers them en masse. Lynne has been twice in the past and it is one of those very special memorable events. You book tickets on line and we managed to get a night in the last week. The walk up to the castle from our AirBnB apartment was a fairly easy 20 minute stroll uphill, through this beautiful ancient city that has managed to preserve so much. This is where you become part of the gathering crowd all going the same way…
On the MENU this week. Venison Pie

With the strange weather we are having at the moment – from a major heat wave (in September?) to a terrifying gale with rain, it’s quite difficult to plan meals. This is when Lynne dives into our freezer to see what we have. This time she came up with some cubed venison (Springbok) and some good, frozen flaky pastry…
MENU’s Wine of the Week. Leopard’s Leap Culinaria Chenin blanc 2015

Leopard’s Leap is in Franschhoek, but they source many of their grapes from other areas. This lovely Chenin was made with grapes from the Voor Paardeberg, home of so many excellent Chenin blanc producers. It has, as you can see, a lovely rich, golden colour…


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

If you are not already a subscriber, and wish to subscribe to this email reminder which we send out each week, please go to the "Contact us" page and send us the request. If you have a problem with the link, please mail us at Please subscribe me to MENU

 MENU has appeared nearly every week since March 2003, initially as a free newsletter from our shop, Main Ingredient, and is sent to our subscribers by email. Many of our subscribing readers have followed us from our earliest days and we appreciate your support
It is also published on our website, as a blog, on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram and gives our personal view of events relating to food, wine, accommodation and travel in photo stories, as well as weekly recipes and wine reviews
We have never charged a subscription fee, and MENU has never made us any money. But our expenses are putting pressure on our pensions, so we are taking a bold step and asking our readers for a voluntary subscription to help us to cover our expenses. MENU is produced, on average, 45 weeks per year. We leave it to you to decide the amount of your subscription. We suggest a voluntary annual subscription of R100 (roughly the price of a mid range bottle of wine), which is less than R2.50 per week. In International currencies R100 is approximately £5.80/€6.30/$7.10. Links to our PayFast and PayPal accounts are on our website

 We'd love it if you'd follow us on Twitter, Facebook and check out our photographs on Instagram and Pinterest

 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
Posted by MENU at 10:29 pm 1 comments

MENU’s Wine of the Week. Leopard’s Leap Culinaria Chenin blanc 2015

Leopard’s Leap is in Franschhoek, but they source many of their grapes from other areas. This lovely Chenin was made with grapes from the Voor Paardeberg, home of so many excellent Chenin blanc producers. It has, as you can see, a lovely rich, golden colour

On the nose, there are aromas of butter, toffee and peach. On the palate, we found crisp and intense flavours of roasted pineapple, then ripe pear with a dash of lime and finishing with dark oak. Another wine which shows the benefit of being kept for a few years in a good cellar. Platter awarded the current 2017 4 stars. It is available from the Leopard’s Leap at R99
Posted by MENU at 9:16 pm 0 comments

On the MENU this week. Venison Pie


With the strange weather we are having at the moment – from a major heat wave (in September?) to a terrifying gale with rain, it’s quite difficult to plan meals. This is when Lynne dives into our freezer to see what we have. This time she came up with some cubed venison (Springbok) and some good frozen flaky pastry

So Venison Pie it was and it fed us on Saturday and Sunday. Not complicated and very delicious. Served with creamy mashed potato, some good al dente green vegetables and a good red wine

 2 T canola oil - 1 kg venison shoulder or leg, cubed - 200 g smoked bacon, cut into 2 cm pieces - 1 large onion, chopped – 2 cloves of garlic, roughly chopped - 2 carrots chopped - 2 celery chopped - 2T flour - 2 T Mustard powder – 1 bottle (750 ml) good quality dry red wine - 6 Juniper berries, crushed – 3 sprigs of Rosemary and 3 of thyme – 2 bay leaves - Salt and freshly ground black pepper – 2 litres of good meat stock – 1 teaspoon sugar – 200g frozen petits pois - a roll of flaky pastry – 1 beaten egg
In a large ovenproof casserole, brown the meat in the oil, then add the bacon. Remove from the casserole. Replace with the onion, sprinkle with a little salt and fry gently for 5 minutes until soft and beginning to take on colour. Add the garlic and the carrots and celery and fry for 4 to five minutes to allow them to soften. Add the flour and the mustard powder and stir well to incorporate and cook a little, but not brown. This will thicken the stew. Stir in the red wine and let it bubble to boil off some of the alcohol and reduce. Stir while doing this, so it doesn’t stick to the base of the casserole. Add back the meat, then add the herbs, the stock and the sugar. Season well and simmer gently on the stove top or in the oven at 170°C for at least 2 to 3 hours or until the venison is tender but not falling apart. Check and stir the pot every hour or so, to make sure it is not drying out or sticking to the bottom. Add more water if it looks dry. When it is ready, set aside to cool slightly and stir in the petits pois. There should be a good amount of liquid remaining in the venison stew. Some of this will become gravy to serve with the pie

Preheat your oven to 180°C. Take an oven proof pie dish with a rim and put egg wash around the edges. Using a slotted spoon, put the venison stew into the pie dish and carefully cover with the pastry. Seal the edges well and cut a tiny hole in the centre. Trim the edges and scallop them using your thumbs. Use any trimmings to decorate the top of the pie with leaves and flowers or just diamonds. Brush the top with the egg wash to give a golden finish when baked. Bake the pie in the oven for about 20 to 30 minutes or until the pastry is golden and crisp. Use any liquid left in the casserole as gravy

If you don’t want to use pastry, you could do with mashed potato or potato slices. Or make this just as a stew or a potjie, and you could add baby mushrooms. It is delicious and rather filling. Drink with a really good red wine, preferably a blend or a Shiraz. We enjoyed a bottle of Kloovenberg 2007 Shiraz from our cellar which was such a good match
Posted by MENU at 9:11 pm 0 comments
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)