This week’s recipe: Chilled soba noodle salad with roasted sesame, fresh asparagus, lightly smoked salmon trout

Chinese and Japanese friends have always told us that when their weather gets hot, they eat a comforting salad made with soba noodles. Lynne decided to try making one and this is the recipe she came up with. She bought the Salmon Trout at Woolworths, who always stock it. Soba noodles contain buckwheat, which is gluten free. If you are gluten intolerant, check that the packet you buy is 100% buckwheat. It is a great lunch dish.

1 piece of lightly smoked salmon trout, approx 250g -  3 or 4 thin slices of lemon - 2 teaspoons of butter - 2 T of sesame seeds - 9 or 10 fresh asparagus spears - 150 g dried soba noodles - ⅓ cup light soy sauce - 2 tbsp rice vinegar - 1 tbsp sesame oil - 1 tsp sugar - 1/2 teaspoon freshly grated ginger - some green salad leaves

Lay the salmon trout fillet on a piece of foil more than twice its size. Place three [Lynne Ross Jarché] or four thin slices of lemon on top of it and three small knobs of butter then wrap into a loose but sealed parcel. Bake in a 180⁰C oven for no more than 10 minutes, remove and allow to cool. Tear into large flakes, leaving the skin behind and set aside. Cook the soba noodles in well salted boiling water till al dente, about 5 minutes, refresh in cold water, drain and allow to cool. In a very small heavy bottomed pan, lightly toast the sesame seeds until they change colour but do not burn. Remove any hard ends of the asparagus by snapping them off and steam for only one and a half minutes. You can also cook them on a ridged pan till just al dente. They do need to be a little crisp, not overcooked and mushy.

Mix up the Soy, rice vinegar and sesame oil, half the toasted sesame seeds , ginger and sugar in a small jar and shake well. Taste and adjust to your own taste. Pour over the soba noodles and allow to permeate.

Time to assemble: On a wide salad serving dish, place the washed and drained salad leaves. Pile the soba noodles and dressing in the centre, put on the asparagus spears and the flaked salmon trout. Sprinkle over the rest of the sesame seeds and serve.

We enjoyed it with a Rivergold Chenin blanc 2010 from Robertson

Menu's Wine of the Week: Incipio 2014 shiraz/chenin blend

Our wine of the week is Incipio 2014, a blend of Shiraz and Chenin Blanc, made by Martin Lamprecht of Doran Vineyards in the Voor Paardeberg. We tasted it at Christian Eedes' Winemag Wine Label Design Awards 2016 on Tuesday. 

An unusual blend of one white and one red Swartland standard. The chenin softens the shiraz in a marvellous way, it is silky and intensely fruity, with hints of expensive oak on the nose with pepper, spice and vanilla. It has flavours of ripe black plums with ginger and cinnamon and a little salty liquorice, a tongue tingling surprise.

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© John & Lynne Ford, Adamastor & Bacchus

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Westin Full Moon dinner with Avondale wines and star charts

Full Moon dinner in the On 19 restaurant at the Westin Grand

Photo courtesy Westin website

From sunset to the fabulous full moon this week. The Westin Hotel has a restaurant on the 19th floor called On19 with spectacular views over the Waterfront and looking at the mountain. They invited members of the media to join them and celebrate the full moon, have our astral charts plotted by Astrologer Dianne Garven and enjoy a really impressive dinner. All this was accompanied by wines from Avondale, which owner Johnathan Grieve presented

It is right at the top of the Westin which is part of the Cape Town International Conference Centre complex

Getting to know each other with non alcoholic cocktails

A special bottling of Avondale Samsara Syrah called the View 2016, given to us when we left. The bottle is beautifully acid etched

Views of the business centre of town looking up Bree Street toward the mountain and Lion's Head

and toward the V&A Waterfront

Michael Liffman GM of the Westin hotel gave the opening speech and welcomed us. You too can experience a full Moon dinner as they are scheduled to happen on the date of each full moon this year.   You must book: http://www.westincapetown.com/ for details. Phone: +27 21 412 9999

The dates are 23rd March; 22nd April; 21st May; 20th June; 20th July; 18th August; 16th September; 16th October; 14th November; and 14th December.  Every month each patron will receive a personalised birth chart with their details, which Diane will be able to elaborate on with an individual reading (optional extra)

Executive Chef Grant Cullingworth explained the menu.  The starters would be sharing platters. The food we were served is all local, and they have a farm to table policy.  Some of it comes from their rooftop garden on the 20th floor which produces herbs vegetables and edible flowers. They offer healthy options

Johnathan Grieve of Avondale told us about their select range of organic and biodynamic wines which are terroir driven

We were all dying to see our Astral charts.  They map the sky on the day we were born from the location we were born in.  Dianne Garvin did not give individual readings, but she did explain some of the things on the chart

Waiting for the first course to arrive at the long table

An evening view looking towards the V&A Waterfront

The menu

The platter of 'Natural pickings" to share.  Good crisp bread rolls, smooth and rich duck liver paté , small slices of hay smoked beef on onion marmalade, organic baby vegetables with a small smear of Bagna Cauda, bocconcini and warm lamb fritters. More of the bagna cauda perhaps in a small bowl for dipping would be lovely. A generous and well thought out sharing platter for 2.

She who cooked the dinner. Talented Chef de Cuisine Anerith Tamsyn Smythe

To accompany the meal Avondale's  2013 Cyclus, the Power of the Vortex. a white blend of  24% Viognier, 24% Roussanne, 24% Chenin Blanc, 14% Chardonnay and 14% Semillon grapes. to quote We could also have Avondale's 2014 Chenin Blanc called Anima, it was intense barrel fermented wine with great minerality and depth of flavour, full of yellow fruits.  Also  on offer was the red blend La Luna, a Bordeaux blend made from 46% Cabernet Sauvignon, 35% Merlot, 7% Cabernet Franc, 6% Malbec & 6% Petit Verdot organically-grown grapes. This was a fruit day, so the wines were showing beautifully with the food

The next course had three choices.  Lynne chose the perfectly cooked sous vide Satsuma and Soy glazed Salmon Trout, soft, pink and falling into moist flakes and full of flavour. The bulgar wheat salad beneath had great flavour and was topped with a rather oniony fennel and fresh coriander grenolata. It was on a vanilla parsnip puree and a honey and miso jus. Lynne does not like vanilla in savoury food, but acknowledges that it is very popular

This is the vegetarian option which one of our table neighbours had. Spinach, Feta and butternut Tortellini, with roasted pumpkin seeds, tomato concasse, truffle buerre noisette a cashew nut crumble and butternut gremolata. She enjoyed it very much

John chose the charred beef fillet.  This was outstanding, Lynne tasted it and declared it one of the best pieces of steak she has ever had.  It was as tender as butter - we surmise also cooked sous vide, then seared for exactly the correct amount of time on a wood fired grill to give it a smokey taste, but not overpowering or burnt, superbly seasoned and came with smoked aubergine puree, bone marrow fritters, pickled baby beetroot, fondant potatoes and a black cherry jus. A tour de force of delights. One to return for

Astrologer Dianne Garvin explaining the star charts

Dessert was called the Milky Way and represented the planets.  Tiny biscuit stars, white chocolate and caramel milk chocolate truffles, date chocolate pudding and stracciatella ice cream with a Saturn ring of chocolate. This was served with the Avondale Armilla Blanc de Blanc 2009 MCC, satisfying crisp and dry to contrast with the sweet dessert

And finally, a good double espresso with two 'nougats' one made with blue cheese honey and nuts, the other a traditional nougat packed full of apricot and pistachio nuts. A great dinner with good wines. Thank you Westin and Avondale

The huge February Harvest full moon with its smiling face

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© John & Lynne Ford, Adamastor & Bacchus

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The Annual Grande Provence Harvest Day Festival

An early start last Saturday to get to Franschhoek in time for the 'OFF' for a tractor ride into the vineyard to pick some grapes with the other families. Then you could stomp some and make your own juice which they will turn into wine. We arrived in time for a good coffee and rather healthy muffin and then picked a row and a half of Cabernet on our own, getting to be good at this. Then the day just got better and better

Grande Provence opens its doors to a day of harvest fun for the family

An early start last Saturday to get there in time for the 'OFF' for a tractor ride into the vineyard to pick some grapes with the other families. Then you could stomp some and make your own juice which they will turn into wine. We arrived in time for a good coffee and rather healthy muffin and then picked a row and a half of Cabernet on our own, getting to be good at this. Then the day just got better and better

On arrival you are greeted by this life size bronze elephant statue by Jean Doyle - very impressive. Lynne giving it a hug. Or was it just too early to stand up straight? Some people don’t do early mornings easily

Off to check in

Those healthy muffins and the queue for coffee

Karl Lambour, Grande Provence general manager, winemaker and cheerful muffin server

Playing chess with Pa. And they all knew the rules. Encouraging

Gathering together

Karl makes his welcome speech to the crowd

The future programme of events

And we are off on our tractor ride

Arrival at the vineyard

Oh great, we can taste the new rosé to give us energy for picking. It's lovely, crisp dry and full of red summer fruits

Wow, impressive Cabernet Sauvignon grapes

And we had a regte Cape band to serenade us as we picked. They sang many of the old Kaapse Klopse (Cape minstrels) songs that we all know and love and can sing along to: Daar kom die Alibama; January February March; Welcome to Cape Town and others

Show me how to do this please

One of the two boxes we picked, we are getting good at this

Grapes in a lug box waiting to be sent to the press

Phones at the ready!

Back to taste four Grande Provence wines: The Limited Release Sauvignon Blanc - crisp and dry, made from Durbanville grapes, full of cats pee and elderflower and a little Durbanville salt. The Chenin Viognier blend is dry, notes of grass, pineapple, apple and peach on the nose, fresh juicy white peaches and a lees character on the palate, a food wine. The Pinot Noir is woody, spicy, forest floor on the nose and dark rich cherry flavours with a kick of maraschino and dry chalky tannins showing it will age well, our favourite wine of the tasting. The Angels Tears Merlot Cabernet, a steal at R38 a bottle, has wood smoke on the nose, bacon, cassis and, on the palate, good red berry fruit with some nice soft chalky tannins. It opens up in the glass. Drink, don’t keep

We were ably guided through the tasting by this young man from the tasting room, whose name we did not get

Enjoying tasting the wines

Inside the manor house, the table is set for another more formal tasting

Tables being laid for lunch outside. The weather played along well; even though it was a grey day, we only had a few spots of rain at midday

Into the wine cellar, where Karl told us about the harvest this year. It is the second year in a row that they have harvested a month early and he is predicting that el Nino will stay for another 18 months. Global warming and the 2°C rise in temperatures worldwide is changing things. In the last 2 plus months they have seen the warmest and driest days ever recorded in the wine industry. It is a 10 to 12 year cycle, more grapes are being grown in peripheral areas, but they do not benefit from our Mediterranean climate with wet winters. It means writing a book with different chapters each harvest, using different techniques, different yeasts and taking risks. But you need to control the parameters. They let all their reds ferment naturally, yeast is only added to the white wines. This is Karl's fourth vintage at Grande Provence. Grande Provence follow the IPW system of wine making, a voluntary environmentally sustainability scheme. www.ipw.co.za/

Then it was time to taste the newly fermenting juice of the Sauvignon Blanc. Sweet honeyed grape flavours, with good pyrazenes, figs and some grape leaf hints. The sugar in this wine was 180g/L, but most of it will be fermented out and turned into alcohol. The grapes are from Maastricht vineyard in Durbanville.

And then the juice of the Malbec grapes, which is all to go into the 2015 Bordeaux blend. Great concentration of berries, rhubarb and raspberry on the nose, green leaves and hot just ironed linen. Superb red mulberry juice flavours on the palate, an absolutely beautiful wine to be. Some green tannin, some savoury umami notes and a long end. We tried to persuade Karl to keep back some for one or two barrels of this single varietal, which we think has enormous potential

Then off outside to see the grape stomping. And we could do that with a glass of the spicy Grande Provence Shiraz

It’s from the 2010 vintage

Get down into the grapes, nice and sticky

paddling in juice

Fashionable feet

Mom and children enjoy

And then it was time for lunch. What a menu they produced

See it here

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© John & Lynne Ford, Adamastor & Bacchus

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