.: 02/20/20

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All content © John & Lynne Ford, Adamastor & Bacchus

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Phones: +27 21 439 3169 / 083 229 1172 / 083 656 4169

Postal address: 60 Arthurs Rd, Sea Point 8005

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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

MENU's Wine of the Week. Iona Wild Ferment Sauvignon Blanc 2018

John tasted this wine at Iona with his American tour clients

who declared it one of the best sauvignons they had tasted anywhere. They are particular fans of Sancerre

When just opened, it shows initial “cat's pee on a gooseberry bush” on the nose. This settles to grapefruit and Elgin Sauvignon’s signature granadilla as well as a whiff of elderflower.

Fermented in used oak barrels with native wild yeasts, it has a rich, full mouthfeel and is delightfully fresh-flavoured with comfortably moderate acidity. It is a super drink on its own as an apéritif, but will be a fabulous accompaniment to creamy fish or chicken dishes. The grapefruit follows gently on the palate, with developing flavours of fig and gooseberry, ending bone dry with a hint of granadilla.

Platter scores it 4½ Stars. Expect to pay around R190 per bottle

All content © John & Lynne Ford, Adamastor & Bacchus

On the MENU This Week. Escalivada

We find many people fail at roasted vegetables simply because they cut them up before cooking and then grill them, this means they do not concentrate in flavour and often dry out.

You need to leave most of them whole and you do need to bake them in the oven. You then get the benefit of their juices in the bottom of the pan which help to make up the dressing. If you are a fan of roasted garlic, include a whole head of garlic when you add the tomatoes. You can then peel this and add the cloves to the salad at the end.

1 red, 1 green, 1 yellow pepper - 1 or 2 small aubergines - 2 large purple onions - 5 medium courgettes - 2 large tomatoes

2 crushed garlic cloves - Extra Virgin Olive oil - Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Optional: 2 small sweet potatoes – 1 small butternut – 1 head of garlic

Peel the onions and cut a cross twice in their tops, cutting only 2/3rd of the way down. Leave all the vegetables whole but remove any stalks. Oil the peppers, aubergine, onion and courgettes well, sprinkle with salt and pepper and put them into a large baking tray, drizzle with more oil and place in a moderate 160°C oven for 45 minutes. Remove the tray from the oven and add the two oiled tomatoes and the head of garlic if using. Return to the oven for another 15 minutes.

Have a large bowl ready - glazed earthenware with 5 cm sides looks good. Place the onions in the centre of the bowl - they will have opened out like lilies. Slice the aubergine but leave it as a whole, showing both the purple skin and the pale lime interior. Ditto the courgettes and the tomatoes. Put the warm peppers into a plastic bag and let them steam till cool. You then will be able to easily peel the peppers, deseed them and chop into fairly large pieces. Add them to the dish with their juices. The object is to make a very pretty arrangement of the vegetables so that there are patches of contrasting colour, not to mix them up together.

Now deglaze the baking tray with some fresh green olive oil, add the crushed garlic, taste and adjust the seasoning. Perhaps a dash of balsamic vinegar or glaze? Then pour these wonderful juices over the vegetables and serve. If you serve it cold, you will find that the juices often jellify. This dish just cries out for a good ciabatta to soak up all those lovely juices.

What local vegetables do we add? Sweet potatoes which you roast whole with the other vegetables. Butternut, but cut big slices on their skins and remove the seeds. This way you get some caramelisation on them, which adds to the flavour

All content © John & Lynne Ford, Adamastor & Bacchus

A wine tour to Elgin

A lovely American couple booked a tour, specifying that they preferred cool climate varietals, especially Sauvignon blanc, Chardonnay and Pinot noir. After we presented them with the best alternatives, they chose Elgin, so they were fetched from The Taj and taken there on a lovely summer day. Elgin is a relatively new wine producing area, and is internationally famous as a producer of excellent apples and pears and an equally famous apple drink

We began the experience at Oak Valley, a huge estate whose hundreds of oak trees feed the pigs. The acorns influence the flavour of the hams for which the estate is famous. Wine is quite a small component in the business of the farm - fruit and cut flowers are the prime focus and Wagyu cattle also play a part in the farm's activity

But we were there for the wine. The wine tastings are held in the Pool Room. Sadly, this is not operating as a restaurant at present, but we hope that a new operator will be found to run it and the deli

Fabio Turilli gave us a a warm welcome

and gave us very instructive and well- informed tasting through the farm's extensive range of wines

watched by Kevin the peacock

Our next stop was at Almenkerk. The ultra modern winery was designed by the renowned Cape Town architect Derick Henstra

Our tourists loved the beautiful landscape

and insisted on posing in front of it

Malefane "Famous" Moeketsi guided us through a very good tasting of the wines

He has completed WSET Level One, scoring 86%, and has started on Level Two

Dana and Michael were especially impressed with the Chardonnay and the Syrah

As always, we and other visitors had a very warm welcome from owners Natalie Opstaele and Joris van Almenkerk

Natalie was very kind and took us through the cellar, explaining how they work

Next stop was at Paul Cluver, where we had booked for lunch at Craig Cormack's lovely restaurant, SALT

Lynne loves cats, so I took pictures of this one which was drinking deeply from the pond

The Menu

Michael's starter, Salt and Pepper Squid

Dana had Three Flavoured Fish

and Michael had Miso Cured Pork Neck as his main course

while John fell for the excellent Twice-Baked Cheese Soufflé

The Paul Cluver Estate Chardonnay was an excellent partner to the food

After lunch, we went into the tasting room with one objective

Michael had heard very good things about the Seven Flags Pinot Noir and Chardonnay

He loved them and bought them

He had enjoyed the Riesling the evening before

From Paul Cluver, we drove up to Iona,

perched on top of the hill overlooking the Elgin Valley on one side and the Atlantic Ocean on the other

General Manager Brad Gold CWM met us and started with a walk though a vineyard, explaining their philosophy of working as naturally as they can, with minimal chemical interference. In fact, the only factor which prevents them being completely organic is the need to spray sulphur on the vineyards to combat the mildew which results from the frequent mists which cover the farm

Then into the tasting room, which houses owner Andrew Gunn's first Porsche, his immaculate 1958 356C

Brad began our tasting with the excellent Iona Pinot noir,

followed by the other red wines in the range, One Man Band and Solace Syrah

Brad follows the Burgundian practice of tasting Pinot before Chardonnay

The delicacy of Pinot can often be overshadowed by a rich Chardonnay

We started the whites with Elgin Highlands and Kloof Chardonnays

and finished with the Wild Ferment Sauvignon blanc, our Wine of the Week

All the wines we tasted at Iona and most of the wines on the other farms score 4½ stars in Platter

All content © John & Lynne Ford, Adamastor & Bacchus

A Weekend at De Kelders

We love showing you beautiful parts of our wonderful country. Last weekend was spent with friends

who had invited us to stay with them in their daughter’s house at De Kelders on the Southern Cape Coast

From the deck there are great views of Hermanus across Walker Bay and then right down the coast to Hangklip

And, on this particular day, we were even able to see right across False Bay to Cape Point

Bird life is all around and we spotted this bright eyed bulbul on an aloe

On a warm but moody late afternoon, the light on the mountains and sea created beautiful monochrome pictures

In the foreground, skeins of cormorants head for their overnight roosts

We braaied a peri peri chicken and some sweetcorn

and watched the sunset, with sundowners, of course

It developed into a real flare of bright light that paints the sky and clouds orange

Off to visit Black Oystercatcher wine farm, a 45 minute drive inland, where we found the farm dog cooling off in the fountain!

It is that time of year when vegetable gardens offer huge abundance ...

... arranged just like a Dutch master's painting

Some beautiful local proteas

We tasted samples of two of the Fraser's Folly beers from their Brew house and enjoyed them very much

The audience was completely split between orange flavoured Hoppy Lager and Moerkoffie Chocolate coffee mocca stout

Candlesticks at the ready for a power cut!

We sat on the shaded deck and enjoyed some rosé and the White Lady blend of Sauvignon Blanc and Semillon

The lawn is big enough to accommodate the annual Wine, Beer and Music festival held in December

They will have an end of Harvest celebration in March.

and there is lots of space inside

The menu

With a separate Pizza offering

The wine and beer list

A view of the countryside from the deck

A generous free platter of figs and grapes arrived on the table and were very much appreciated and enjoyed

The Sauvignon Blanc and the figs were a perfect match

One of the Margherita Pizzas

Guess who had the huge hamburger and crispy chips? He loves them

A Trout gravadlax salad

More like smoked trout than gravadlax, a few bits of goat's cheese and herbs and lots and lots of leaves
There was some melon but the promised avocado is out of season.

It was one of the most expensive dishes on the menu at R129

and, perhaps, they could have been a bit more generous with the trout

The Deluxe Waldorf Salad

The burger comes with melting brie, bacon, preserved figs and some pesto

The bacon could be more crispy

We had fun watching some very little girls using the fountain as a swimming pool on the hot afternoon - with parental supervision

The waves at De Kelders sometimes have dolphins and seals surfing in them

Apricot sunset and navy blue sea on a warm evening. We had supper on the deck

On our way home on Sunday, we saw a sign pointing to Grotto Beach in Hermanus and, as we hadn't been for a long time,

we took the turn. Wow, what a wonderful beach, with white soft sands and lots of waves to paddle in

Good for boogie boarders, assisted by Grandpa

or just keeping fit ...

... which is what we (and others) were doing with a brisk half hour walk on the firm sand

Who is taking whom for a walk! Some boisterous hounds having such fun in the surf

Watch out, the tide is coming in!

A wonderful discovery. If you walk far enough down the beach, you get to the outflow of the Klein River lagoon