Friday, November 15, 2019

This Week’s MENU. Neethlingshof; Champagne; Eden Project, Padstow, Port Isaac in Cornwall; Wine & Recipe of the Week


We are pretty dedicated omnivores. We eat a wide range of foods and endeavour to enjoy a very balanced diet – within the constraints imposed by frequent meals at events and in restaurants. So it was interesting to be offered a vegan three course meal at a wine estate restaurant last week, a restaurant which does have vegan dishes as part of their portfolio. So that is part of this week’s MENU, along with a Champagne event and more stories about Cornwall. We enjoyed it all and hope that you will enjoy our stories
Gauteng readers can enjoy Wade Bales Cap Classique & Gin Affair at the Southern Sun in Hyde Park Rooftop Terrace Bar, on  Saturday 23rd November from 3-7 pm and Sunday 24th November from 1-5 pm. Book your tickets today at QUICKET TICKETS
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Vintage launch and Vegan lunch at Neethlingshof, Stellenbosch
An invitation to visit Neethlingshof to taste their newly released white wines, some of their current red wines and some barrel samples followed by lunch was quickly accepted. It is rather a long time since we last visited and tasted the wines of winemaker De Wet Viljoen. Read on…

Wine Concepts French Champagne Festival was an even better success this year than in the past. Why? They changed it to a Saturday afternoon affair and it was much appreciated by the guests who came in their droves.  How special to spend an afternoon tasting the top Champagne marques and enjoying some canapes for R500 a person, cheaper than a bottle of a single Champagne marque. Read on…


Mevagissey is only a few miles away from the Eden Project, which is an educational charity.  Inside two massive connected biomes, covered in plastic, are plants that are collected from many diverse climates and environments, including South Africa. The project is located in a reclaimed china clay pit, located 5 km from the larger town of St Austell, which you go through to get to Mevagissey. It was started in 1998 and completed in 2001. Its purpose is to demonstrate the importance of plants to people and to promote sustainable use of plant resources. Read on… 
Even though he had visited Cornwall several times, John had never visited Padstow, so Lynne wanted to show it to him. She has spent many happy days there, walking along the cliffs and then finding a good pub to have a good beer with mates and a pasty from the Rock Bakery on the other side of the estuary. Padstow is a very popular town and is well known for having several Rick Stein restaurants. We love his cooking programmes and his recipes have become standards in our home. Read on…

On the MENU this week. Fennel and Pear Salad

It seems that we may be about to enjoy a period of warmer weather, so it is back to eating salads for us. This is something very easy to put together and rather unusual. We think you will like it. If you have a mandolin grater, it makes thinly shaving the fennel very easy. Read on...
which is full of green pepper pyrazines, fig leaves and granadilla on an intense nose. Crisp and round on the attractive palate with some sweetness mid palate, green peppers, lime and guava. We enjoyed this wine so much; it is an excellent example of a good Cape Sauvignon Blanc. It went so well with food too. And the price is affordable. R80 on the farm

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Posted by MENU at 6:47 pm 0 comments

On the MENU this week. Fennel and Pear Salad

It seems that we may be about to enjoy a period of warmer weather, so it is back to eating salads for us. This is something very easy to put together and rather unusual. We think you will like it. If you have a mandolin grater, it makes thinly shaving the fennel very easy
The original recipe has watercress instead of rocket in the dressing. We can no longer get watercress in South Africa as it is an invasive species and I found that peppery rocket works just as well. Do not overcook the potatoes, if you can get the waxy ones, they work well. 
175g fennel, thinly sliced - 2 ripe pears, peeled and diced – 225g diced cooked potato – 50g toasted almonds, roughly chopped
Combine the above ingredients
Dressing: 150ml soured cream – 15ml lemon juice – 30g rocket
6 spring onions, chopped – salt and pepper
Blend these in a liquidiser, then lightly toss the salad with the dressing, adjust seasoning and serve.
Posted by MENU at 5:23 pm 0 comments

MENU’s Wine of the Week is Neethlingshof Estate Sauvignon Blanc 2019


which is full of green pepper pyrazines, fig leaves and granadilla on an intense nose. Crisp and round on the attractive palate with some sweetness mid palate, green peppers, lime and guava

We enjoyed this wine so much, it is an excellent example of a good Cape Sauvignon Blanc. It went so well with food too. And the price is affordable. R80 on the farm
Posted by MENU at 3:01 pm 0 comments

MENU's UK Adventure 15. Chasing Rick Stein to Padstow; a visit to Port Isaac

Even though he had visited Cornwall several times, John had never visited Padstow, so Lynne wanted to show it to him
She has spent many happy days there, walking along the cliffs and then finding a good pub to have a good beer with mates.... 

and a pasty from the Rock Bakery on the other side of the estuary. The tide was out

Padstow is a very popular town and is well known for having several Rick Stein restaurants
We love his cooking programmes and his recipes have become standards in our home

Bold young kelp gulls are everywhere

Parking is along the front on the extreme right
So we walked into town trying to find the Rick Stein Fish and Chips restaurant

A long view of Rock, across the bay

We wandered around for ages, up hills and down many streets being misled (again) by our satnav
Eventually, we found Stein's Patisserie, selling all sorts of tempting things;
we asked them how to find the restaurant we wanted
They were very helpful, but we were not pleased by the answer
Just our luck. It was back along the quayside, near where we had parked the car!
Still, it meant we had seen quite a lot of Padstow

It’s in a huge old wooden warehouse building that has been modernised
The Seafood Bar & Fishmongers looked good, but we had set our sights on fish and chips

If only our local fish suppliers looked as fresh and good as this

Found it, further down in the same building
Lots of beers, wines and cider for sale as well as soft drinks and water

Prices above the 'bar'. We ordered one hake and one cod in batter with chips
And two local India Pale Ales, which came in the bottle! No glasses or cups
They apparently have gone green, so if you hate drinking beer out of a bottle, as we do, take your own glasses
John did manage to nick one last plastic cup from the counter (which, of course, being green ourselves, we recycled later)
The fish is all cooked in beef dripping; our SA doctor and “fishatarians” might have a fit at that, but it was very good batter
We could see seats to the right of the kitchen, but we were not permitted to sit there
"No", we were told, "that is separate, you have to eat round the back of the building in the open air"
We had obviously missed the fact that the take away and the sit down sections are separate,
even though they share a kitchen
It would have cost us £1 extra each to sit down in comfort
And rules is rules..., even though we’d offered to pay the extra pound

Thank heavens it wasn’t raining. Around the back of the building,
there are some picnic tables and we managed to find seats, eventually
We halved the fish, so each of us had a taste of each fish;
it was superbly fresh and pearly, just as it should be and had great flavour
The crisp batter is a little greasy and we got nice and messy, eating with our fingers
The chips could be crisper; we did ask for them to be crisp,
but they were not, and being packed beneath the steaming fish softens them more

The tide was coming in fast,

filling up the harbour. We decided to head up the coast to Port Isaac
(aka Portwenn, where Doc Martin and the movie Fisherman’s Friends have been filmed)

Lynne is a fan of Doc Martin, but that was not the purpose of our visit to this beautiful fishing village
A good friend of hers, Nick Farmer, had lived there with his mother for years. Nick, sadly, died last year
The view from the car park is superb; you can see a long way up the coast

and you see buildings that are familiar from TV shows

The wind was fresh and the gulls were having such fun catching the breeze off the cliffs

A Port Isaac scene many will recognise

You have to park quite a way out of town and then walk down the steep streets to the centre

A view of the town beach

Was this ever a chemist? We like the name "May Contain Nuts" on the bakery

Tiny narrow streets, we missed seeing the four laughing lasses

Stand back against the wall; cars passing in the narrow lane

A view from the beach. Nick had lived above the cliff to the right. We hope he had a happy life there

Even dogs like the Cornish ice cream, so rich and creamy

Lots of good long cliff walks in the area

There are many B&Bs in the area

Many make a pilgrimage to the Doc's house, the little one on the left
The big house on the right was a BnB in Fisherman's Friends
We had to head 'home' back to Mevagissey via Bodmin, having made our own pilgrimage to remember a good friend

Next: Falmouth and more Rick Stein; Fowey, then off to London

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