Master of the Trade Routes Gala Finale aboard SA Agulhas II

The Master of the Trade Routes three-month culinary challenge of winter food specials at the V&A Waterfront has come to an end with the Cape Grace’s Signal Restaurant claiming the title of the Master of the Trade Routes for 2012.

The gala finale was held aboard the SA Agulhas II on Wednesday, August 29th, where the top eight finalists from the original 27 participating restaurants had a last chance to impress a panel of judges: chef, Taste SA Festival director and food stylist Justine Drake, CapeTalk’s John Maytham and Food24 editor Caro de Waal.

SA Agulhas II at her berth in the Victoria Dock

Mark Bayly, Master of Ceremonies for the evening, with a friend

Our wonderful mountain and the V&A Waterfront from the deck of the Agulhas

The canopy on deck, venue for the function

Mark Bayly explaining the format of the evening

Ellen Raubenheimer, publisher of Get It magazine, and Coenie Visser, restaurateur from Oak & Vigne, Greyton

Mark Bayly on stage entertaining us

The judges: Chef, Festival  director of Taste SA shows and food stylist Justine Drake; CapeTalk’s John Maytham and Food24 editor Caro de Waal, discussing the dishes.

The V&A Waterfront’s Executive Manager of Strategic Marketing, Chantelle Cole, telling us about the awards

Are they enjoying this dish? Much amusement and discussion

One of the skilled barmen pouring some Groot Constantia Brut

Linda Holmes, John Collins of John Collins Wines, Colleen and Allan Mundell all having fun, and warmly dressed

Sam Wong the sushi chef from Willoughbys

Craig Paterson, Executive Chef at Dash at the Victoria Hotel, dressing the plates

The chefs from Reuben's having time for a celebratory glass of bubbly

An organiser and chef Greg Vaverstock from The Grand in discussion

The judges having judged, they had time for photos and relaxing

Sushi from Willoughby's: Willoughby Threesome - R79
Salmon, Tuna & Local Fish prepared in 3 different ways:
- Salmon in a Citrus Yuzu & Soya Dressing
- Tuna in a spicy Garlic & Peanut Dressing

- Local Fish - Ceviche - Coriander, Lime & Fresh Chilli

Chef Jason Millar from Reuben's restaurant at The One and Only with his Beef and 

Guinness Pie

Den Anker’s Seared Canadian Scallop on a White Asparagus Risotto with a lightly curried Beurre Blanc made by talented chef Doekle Vlietman

The Grand’s Grand Fusion seafood pasta with fishcake made from crayfish, prawns and fish

The overall winner, Signal restaurant at the Cape Grace Hotel, with their tender,  succulent and spicy De-constructed Bobotie -  Bobotie spiced springbok loin, roasted parsnip, pickled mango puree, almond crumble and curried lentil jus

Sevruga’s dish  by chef Justine Hurter: Miso-marinated Kingklip with matafam potatoes and caramelised onions and herbs

Harbour House’s free range beef short rib, with Pommes Anna, baby vegetables and a rather sharp balsamic and red wine reduction.

Chef Desmond Ntomnaba and the manager of Harbour House in the Waterfront with their dish

From the second placed restaurant, Dash at the Victoria Hotel, a pan-seared magret of duck breast on a spiced Elgin pear puree with sage and quinoa (Executive Chef Craig Paterson and Head chef Jamie Dempster )

From the right: Executive Chef Craig Paterson and Head chef Jamie Dempster with their  support chefs from Dash

Just like the Olympics, a cannon blast of paper heralded the main award winner Signal restaurant and their executive chef Malika van Reenen

The winner! Malika van Reenen of Signal restaurant at the Cape Grace Hotel with V&A Waterfront CEO David Green and Michael Liffmann, Cape Grace F&B manager

Some of the dessert items from Emporio Leone.  

A red velvet cake

Tiny chocolate tarts

Sticky macaroons

Mini meringues

Baby cakes

Chocolate truffles

Lauren Cohen of Corporate Image PR getting into the spirit of the Navy

The stern of the Agulhas II showing the canopy erected on deck, in which we celebrated

Photographs © John Ford, Adamastor & Bacchus 2012

The Nedbank Cape Winemakers Guild Auction Showcase in Cape Town

The Showcase started with a guided tasting for invited guests in the afternoon
Many members of the wine industry regard this as the most important wine tasting of the year, because of the very high standard of all the wines selected for the auction

A glass of bubbly to get the palate ready

Long rows of tables, set with glasses, water and cream crackers

David Biggs and Mike Bampfield-Duggan having a laugh

CWG chairman Louis Strydom made the introduction

The wines were poured by beneficiaries of the CWG Protégé programme which is designed to bring about transformation by cultivating, nurturing and empowering promising individuals to become excellent winemakers

Each winemaker whose wine had been chosen for the tasting introduced it to the audience

Among them, Teddy Hall

Peter Finlayson of Bouchard Finlayson

Rianie Strydom of Haskell Vineyards

Kevin Arnold of Waterford

and Beyers Truter of Beyerskloof

In the evening, all the members of the Guild showed their wines at the public tasting:

Johan Malan of Simonsig with Michael Pownall, GM of the Taj Cape Town

Sjaak Nelson and Gary Jordan of Jordan

Carl Schultz and Heleen Rabe showing Hartenberg Gravel Hill Shiraz

Bernhard Veller and Jacus Marais of Nitida

Xenia and Deon Oliver enjoyed the tasting

Bartho and Suné Eksteen of Hermanuspietersfontein with Xenia and Deon Oliver

Abrie Beeslaar and Heidi Kritzinger of Kanonkop

Paul Cluver's Andries Burger with Warwick's Norma Ratcliffe

Teddy Hall

Photographs © John Ford, Adamastor & Bacchus 2012

15 August 2012 Main Ingredient's MENU - Vineyard Hotel vine pruning, Drizzle & Dip, Dinner at Burrata, Venison with Port & Mustard, Products, Our market activities, Events, Restaurant specials, Wine courses, cooking classes

MENU

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A trawler battling a storm off Sea Point

In this week’s MENU:

     Products

     Our market activities

     Vineyard Hotel vine pruning

     Drizzle & Dip

     Dinner at Burrata

     Venison with Port & Mustard

     Events and Restaurant specials

     Wine courses & cooking classes

To tell the whole story here would take too much space, so click on underlined and Bold words in the text to open links to pictures, blogs, websites or more information

This week’s Product menu   The wintry weather gives us all a taste for warming food, which is why we have a rich casserole recipe for you further down. We are also seeing a steady demand for duck confit and ready-made cassoulet.

To see what else we have available for you, you can access our product list and see pictures in our website. If you can’t find what you need, let us know and we will try to find it for you. Until our online shop is ready, drop us an email and we will help you. We are very happy to see that traffic on our website is increasing and more orders are coming from it.

We have a lot of fun putting MENU together each week and, of course, doing the things we write about, but making it possible for you to enjoy rare and wonderful gourmet foods is what drives our business. We stock a good range of ingredients and delicious ready-made gourmet foods. You can contact us by email or phone, or through our website. We can send your requirements to you anywhere in South Africa.

Our market activities  Come and visit us at the Old Biscuit Mill’s wonderfully exciting, atmospheric Neighbourgoods Market, as always, this Saturday and every Saturday between 09h00 and 14h00. Tip: Some visitors tell us how they struggle to find parking. It’s quite easy if you know how. Click here for a map which shows where we park.

We will be back at Long Beach Mall on Friday 17th August from 09h00 to 16h00. We look forward to seeing you there.

If you live in the Cape, you’ll have spent most of the last week sheltering, as we have. We have had a succession of really violent storms, heavy rain and hail and there has been flooding in places. We feared for sales on Saturday as one of the storms was at its height. Everyone in the market was relieved and delighted that so many of you did come to buy food, eat lovely things and to enjoy the wonderful atmosphere. Lynne manned our stand on her own for most of Saturday because she had been kind enough to allow John to join a happy band of fellow guests who had been invited to prune the little vineyard at the Vineyard Hotel in Newlands. He and the other guests had a lot of fun pruning the vines and then joining the Vineyard’s GM and F&B Managers for lunch in their restaurant, The Square. You can see the pictures of the event here.

We are still getting lots of messages from you about our car accident and we can reassure you that we are fine, if still a little shattered. Thank you again for your concern.

Our car has been written off by the insurers and we are battling to try to replace what we had without huge loss, so that we can continue our business. We have found a replacement, but it is in Durban, so it looks as if we will be flying up there and driving it down ourselves over a few days. This won’t disrupt our market attendance as we can fit it in between weekend commitments. In the meantime, we have a loan of a bakkie from the wonderful girls, Angela and Elaine at Food Fanatics. It has proved to be a great carrier for all our 19 bits of equipment, food, boxes etc. However it is only for a couple of weeks and a bakkie cannot do wine tours, so we are keen to get another Sharan. John has already had to turn away two wine tours he was offered over the last two weeks and that lost business hurts our income flow. Onward and upward.

Drizzle and Dip’s New Cookbook    Food stylist Samantha Linsell (who is a neighbour and friend) launched her cook book titled Drizzle and Dip last night at Sotano in Mouille Point and we went to support her and see the new book. To quote Sam herself: “It consists of a mix of recipes with varied and diverse flavours and cross-cultural culinary inspiration. Divided into three chapters – “Morning”, “Noon” and “Night”, each section of the book focuses on recipes recommended for enjoyment during a specific time of day, also taking into account the preparation time available to the busy home-cook during his or her hectic daily schedule.”

It is available from all good book shops, so do go and have a look. Sam has a very popular blog also entitled Drizzle and Dip and this book is the result of many years in the industry doing food styling, writing about food and doing recipes. Click here to see the pictures of Sam, the book and the launch.

Burrata     Tradition has it that, on her birthday, John takes Lynne to a good restaurant. We have wanted to go to Burrata at the Old Biscuit Mill since we sampled their food at a wine trade day and, despite the awful storm, we had a super time and Lynne a great birthday. See what we ate by clicking here.

It is a popular choice and was almost full on a very rainy, cold and stormy Tuesday night. So do book. You can park inside the complex to visit this restaurant and the two run by Luke Dale Roberts, The Test Kitchen and the Pot Luck Club, for a small charge. It serves marvellous pizza from its wood burning pizza oven, imported from Naples, which gets to 480°C and cooks a pizza in 90 seconds. It also has some very classic Italian dishes and some with new and modern twists. Burrata is owned by Neil Grant who was previously at Rust en Vrede before opening this, his own venture. The talented chef is Annemarie Steenkamp who spent five years as executive sous chef under Margot Janse at Le Quartier Français in Franschhoek. Her talent is visible on all the plates she sends. Still water at the table comes in recycled wine bottles and is filtered on the premises. Neil has bought the necessary water filtering and bottle washing equipment. We wholeheartedly approve of this environmentally friendly initiative, and hope more restaurants will follow this example which, we believe, was pioneered in SA by Protea Hotels, who are in the process of installing it throughout their group. We use too many of our resources in packaging water and transporting it round the world.

Neil recognised us and we chatted for a while about the restaurant. He was at Rust and Vrede before opening this, his own venture. He very kindly and generously sent us both a dish of their popular risotto with crispy pork, green granny smith apple and current vinaigrette which we really loved.

After three courses each, we had no room for anything further at all. The bill for two courses each including service was R370. We must mention our really lovely waitress Michelle who is a star and was also very friendly, informative and patient – it took us a while to decide what to eat as the menu, although quite small, is very interesting.

480°C and cooks a pizza in 90 seconds. It also has some very classic Italian dishes and some with new and modern twists. Burrata is owned by Neil Grant. The talented chef is Annemarie Steenkamp who spent five years as executive sous chef under Margot Janse at Le Quartier Français in Franschhoek. Her talent is visible on all the plates she sends.

This week’s recipe is a dish to bury in the oven and eat on a very cold and miserable night. Pretty easy to make, it is a one pot wonder or, to use the South African vernacular, a Potjie. Lovely, rich, deep flavours and nothing else to add. You could serve it with rice or samp if you have to have another starch, but this is a complete meal in one, serving four. You can use other flavoured French mustards like Green Peppercorn, or Tarragon or Dijon. We stock the superb stone-ground Edmond Fallot mustards from Beaune which have a little kick and are stronger than most of the French mustards we see. You could also add other vegetables like parsnips, courgettes or turnips. We enjoyed it with a 2005 De Grendel Shiraz, which suited it very well.

Venison with Port and Mustard

1 T olive oil - 1 onion, finely chopped – 1 carrot, finely chopped – 1 stick of celery, finely chopped – 1 sliced leek - 3 cloves of garlic, finely chopped – 600g venison pieces – 200 ml red port – 300 ml beef or veal stock – 1 T good sharp grainy French mustard – salt and freshly ground black pepper – 1 cup of frozen peas – 12 baby potatoes

Using an oven proof cast iron casserole with a lid, fry the onions with a little salt in the oil until just starting to brown. Add the carrot, celery, leek and garlic and allow them to sweat for five minutes. Add the venison pieces and brown them on all sides, then add the port and the stock. Stir in the mustard and a little seasoning, cover, bring to a simmer, and put into the oven for at least three hours at 160°C. Check during the cooking time that the liquid does not boil away; if it reduces, just top up with water. One hour before you want to eat, remove any bones that are in the venison, then add the peas and the potatoes and check the liquid level. It should just cover the meat and the peas. Put back into the oven for one hour and, before serving, taste and adjust the seasoning.

Food and wine (and a few other) events for you to enjoy

There is a huge and rapidly growing variety of interesting things to occupy your leisure time here in the Western Cape. There are so many interesting things to do in our world of food and wine that we have made separate list for each month for which we have information. To help you choose an event to visit, click on our Events Calendar. All the events are listed in date order and we already have a large number of exciting events to entertain you right through the year. Click here to access the Calendar. You will need to be connected to the internet.

Learn about wine and cooking We have had a lot of enquiries from people who want to learn more about wine. Cathy Marston and The Cape Wine Academy both run wine education courses, some very serious and others more geared to fun. You can see details here.

Chez Gourmet in Claremont has a programme of cooking classes. A calendar of their classes can be seen here. Pete Ayub, who makes our very popular Prego sauce, runs evening cooking classes at Sense of Taste, his catering company in Maitland. We can recommend them very highly, having enjoyed his seafood course. Check his programme here.

Restaurant Special offers. Some more restaurants have responded to our request for an update of their special offers and we have, therefore, updated our list of restaurant special offers. Click here to access it. These Specials have been sent to us by the restaurants or their PR agencies. We have not personally tried all of them and their listing here should not always be taken as a recommendation from ourselves. If they don’t update us, we can’t be responsible for any inaccuracies in the list. When we have tried it, we’ve put in our observations. We have cut out the flowery adjectives etc. that so many have sent, to give you the essentials. Click on the name to access the relevant website. All communication should be with the individual restaurants.

16th August 2012

Remember - if you can’t find something, we’ll do our best to get it for you, and, if you’re in Cape Town or elsewhere in the country, we can send it to you! Check our product list for details and prices.

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

Our Adamastor & Bacchus© tailor-made Wine, Food and Photo tours take small groups (up to 6) to specialist wine producers who make the best of South Africa’s wines. Have fun while you learn more about wine and how it is made! Tours can be conducted in English, German, Norwegian or Dutch flavoured Afrikaans.

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 these newsletters are ©John & Lynne Ford, Adamastor & Bacchus. Our restaurant reviews are usually 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. Our Avast! ^® Anti-Virus software is updated at least daily and our system is scanned continually for viruses.

This electronic journal has been sent to you because you have personally subscribed to it or because someone you know has asked us to send it to you or forwarded it to you themselves. Addresses given to us will not be divulged to any person or organisation. We collect them only for our own promotional purposes and keep our mailing list strictly confidential. If you wish to be added to our mailing list, please click here to send us a message and if you wish to be removed from our mailing list, please click here to send us a message.

Manuka at Southey's, Somerset West

The restaurant interior, with a view to the garden - we were a bit late and this was after everyone else had left.

We each had a very generous toasted pita with bacon and avocado.

Winemaker Bruwer Raats, 

his Quattro Stagioni

and his healthy boys with healthy appetites

The Manuka wine shop

Lynne chatting to manager Morné de Villiers

Photographs © John Ford, Adamastor & Bacchus 2012