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Monday, January 11, 2016

Relaxing by the sea at Paternoster

We are normally very energetic and like holidays where we do lots of different things. But this year we were dog tired and knew we had to stop and do nothing for a while. Lynne found a lovely place in Paternoster, our very first AirBnB booking, and it was a huge success. We had our annual wine club Christmas party on Sunday the 13th and left for the West Coast the next day for our week by the sea. It's a lovely drive up, but the countryside is looking very sere and dry with the drought.

The centre crossroads of Paternoster with the illegal crayfish sellers - who no longer sell at bargain prices; legal or illegal are now R50 to R80 a cray. We stay legal and buy from registered people, as many of the crayfish sold at the lights are undersized and you don't know how long they have been out of the water. Other than tourism and a bit of fishing, there seems not much industry in the village, and it shows

Our accommodation Karibu was just one road from the beach, with plenty of parking

We had a lovely apartment with a lounge/kitchen, spacious bedroom,

en suite bathroom and we could use the terrace. There is a second bedroom and bathroom, which we hired for friends who visited at the end of the week. Our host Gaby has the rest of the house

Gaby was very friendly, warm and welcoming. She has three lovely dogs, one marvellous cat

and a very talkative African grey named Harvey

Definitely a place for animal lovers. We were distressed to hear that Gaby had just returned from hospital after a fairly major op, but she had not cancelled and said she would be fine. She has lots of help from her local friends. We tried to tread as lightly as possible during the week. Confession: we did a lot of sleeping, reading and just plain lazing about. And very simple cooking and eating

The popular restaurant Voorstrandt was the closest to our house. We had a look and meant to go there, but somehow didn’t make it this trip. We had eaten there on a previous visit

We look a long walk on the beach that first evening and most evenings after that. It can be windy but is very reviving ...

... and many others do the same

It's a blue and white world, very reminiscent of Greece.

The housing style and colour is regulated, making for a visually very pleasant place. Kite flying in the wind

Paddling rather than swimming, as the current comes right from the Antarctic!

Black oystercatchers and cormorants on the rocks, with three types of gulls in abundance

Another walk to the other end of the beach the next day to see if we could buy some fish

A dead crab. We have never found any worth eating, as they are very small and don't seem to contain enough 'meat', although the gulls polish them off quickly when they are washed up

Signs of a warm day coming

It’s a long stretch of beach with lots of holiday accommodation

A sign at one of the local shops, which we liked

Dinner that night at SkatKis (transl. Treasure Chest) which has a great view and good calamari and is very reasonably priced. We think this could make the best sited restaurant in Paternoster if a professional chef was employed and the place was done up a bit. The service is friendly and professional and we like it very much

We took a generous supply of good wine with us for the week and enjoyed this bottle of Glenwood's Grand Duc Chardonnay 2012 very much with our sea food

Lynne's calamari and chips

John's hake and chips. They did have a wonderful sounding seafood platter on the menu for 2, but couldn't serve it as they could not get crayfish that day - all the legal sellers had sold out

Our bill came to just over R200 with tip

We watched from the terrace as the fishing boats came in. This one looks as though he is delivering crayfish in boxes

Picking up shells

Lovely soft evening light

Getting the boats off the beach

This side of the village has the small fishermen's cottages. Many have been sold to outsiders and they have been gentrified, but many are still occupied by their original tenants

A reminder that Christmas is coming to Paternoster

We took the short walk back to our accommodation, Karibu, and viewed the nightlife at the other restaurants. We were there just before the season really gets started over Christmas and New Year, when all the visitors flood in from up country

The prevailing South-Easter gave loads of opportunity to the windsurfers

A well built sea fort resisting the incoming tide

The village pond behind Karibu has lots of birdlife. Sadly, with the drought, the water level is dropping alarmingly

There are just a few shops in the village, but there is just enough for emergency supplies. Most people drive through Vredenburg en route and stock up there. Its only about 15 minutes drive from Paternoster

The old Paternoster Hotel is popular for lunches and drinks on the terrace but it closed at 9 while we were there

The village at lunchtime

The kids like helping the boats come in, perhaps to get a small fish. There is visible poverty, the children beg and the dog population looks very thin and ill fed. Many people have lost their income from the sea due to bad and or unfair allocation of fishing permits and they struggle

You can see the midday heat coming off the sand

Friends walking on the beach, they came down to join us for our last night

Finding sea urchins! How many of us did the same at their age

And posing for the camera with lots of humour, cheek and local patois. One child spoke slang with an accent we just could not understand

We decided to walk to the fishery but it was closed

After our long walk we had to stop (a vital necessity!) for a cold beer at De See Kat

Sadly the beers (Windhoek & Heineken) were too warm. John ordered a Darling craft beer and that was properly chilled

And dinner that night (a braai) was at Karibu. We managed to get four crayfish and one large cob. Sadly the fish had been frozen too long and was not great. The crayfish however, served with simple garlic butter and lemon, were stupendous. But expensive. This purchase cost us R410. We had salads and rather a lot of wine. The end to a very relaxing holiday

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Sunday, January 10, 2016

Lunch at Oep ve Koep, Die Winkel op Paternoster

This restaurant in Paternoster has earned many kudos and we decided, before we went to Paternoster on our summer holiday, that we would treat ourselves to lunch there. It was not cheap, but it was an exciting and very different experience, as the young chef Kobus van der Merwe, the 2014 winner of the Nederburg Rising Star Award, is a true forager and innovative cook. He combs the local tidal rocks along the uninhabited coastline and grows unusual local herbs and plants in his kitchen garden at the restaurant. The menu changes with the seasons or his mood or what he finds

You do need to book and they require a deposit or your credit card details when you do as, surprisingly, they have had many group 'no shows' and this for a small restaurant can be very expensive and a huge time and food waste. He prepares everything fresh so don't expect it to be a quick lunch. Dinner is only for groups of 8 or more people, which made us feel rather excluded and lunch is in the garden when possible. Restaurant open Wednesdays to Sundays

The restaurant is on the left at the crossroads as you come into town

The shop is full of interesting local bottled produce and cooking equipment, some touristy things and freshly baked bread and cakes

Our shady table in the garden

Chef Kobus explaining the dishes to other customers

The first course blew our minds. We have often see the ice plants (Mesembryanthemum crystallinum) growing on the dunes and had no idea they were edible. They need washing to get rid of the sand but are satisfyingly crunchy and nicely salty. They are served with a dip of !Nara (wild cucumber) oil flavoured with wild celery seeds, into which you dipped the leaves

This was served with a bitter Fynbos vermouth made by the chef

We took along a bottle of one of our favourite Chardonnays De Wetshof 2013 Bon Vallon and it was perfect with the innovative food. Corkage was R35

The menu for lunch that day

A smiling Chef Kobus van der Merwe

Also served with the ice plants are limpets, minced and cooked in butter and seasoned lightly with nutmeg. Absolutely delicious and the poor man's version of abalone - now try prizing them off the rocks and cleaning them yourself. With the necessary permit of course

The drinks list. Some good local wines. A new brand for us is Teubes which was sold in many Paternoster restaurants, and which we need to taste

The next course was an oyster served with a lichi granita, a squeeze of granadilla, topped with samphire - the best oyster John has ever had

We had warned them of our allergies and Lynne was served an ice plant taco of litchis, granita and samphire in an ice plant leaf. One to emulate at home!

Jars of some of the local fynbos species for you to examine

The huge bougainvillea hedge is breathtaking when in full flower with lots of different brilliant shades

Chef serving our next course of plump Saldanha Bay mussels in a Sauvignon Blanc jus, fresh Cape gooseberries (Physalis peruviana) which added a nice kick of acidity, and dune spinach. We grow lots of the gooseberries in our garden so we might also try this at home

This came with freshly baked bread and Bokkoms butter for dipping. Bokkoms are salted and air dried fish, usually harders or mullet, known also as fish biltong. Reconstituted in oil they can resemble anchovies

Baby nasturtium leaves also added for flavour

Next course was thick slivers of hot pickled kelp and crisp deep fried sea lava seaweed with watermelon rind and bitter leaves of celery or parcel. We love eating seaweed, more usually at our local Chinese restaurant, so this was enjoyed

A bowl of homemade mayonnaise and *sour fig nectar. *These also come from the Mesembryanthemum family and are a favourite of children as you find them at almost every coastal resort. They have a salty, sour and tangy fruit flavour. A tart jam can be made with them

And to accompany this dish came the sour fig leaves bearing sage smoked Angelfish made into balls and deep fried. You dipped them into the mayonnaise. Crisply delicious

Watching us while we ate, a Cape Robin chat

The next dish is quite contentious for us. One of the most well known and popular dishes of the Cape, with huge Cape Malay influence is Pickled fish. If you grew up with it, you love it. Lynne didn't and she doesn't enjoy its sour sweet pickled fish mixed with intense curry flavours. Be assured this is an excellent expression of the dish, we have no problem with it at all. We just don't enjoy it. It was ceviche style, served with sour yoghurt, Louis Leipoldt's egg sambal with coriander, a peach mebos, a peach and turmeric chutney which had lots of turmeric, and a small smoked tomato. Lots of work for the chef on one small plate which we do appreciate

Pretty coriander flowers. Lynne thinks better on the bush than on the plate. She likes the seeds but not the leaves

When we enquired about wild celery, chef brought is a plant from his garden to show us. It does indeed taste just like good celery seed and might be one for a Cape herb garden

Dessert may not have looked very big or impressive, but was Chef's expression of milk and honey revisited. A light buttermilk sorbet flavoured with honey and topped with unusual dune celery meringue - crisp and light honey flavour on the green meringue, a good end to a great lunch The set lunch costs R325 pp, not including service or wine. Thank you Chef, a very good meal

Two young ladies in conversation

The bill

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Tuesday, December 22, 2015

John & Lynne's Christmas letter

John & Lynne Ford

60 Arthurs Road, Sea Point, Cape Town 8005

+27 21 439 3169 ● +27 83 229 1172 ● +27 83 656 4169

johnford@iafrica.com / jarche@iafrica.com

17^th December 2015

A mathematician friend once explained that the years pass by so quickly as one ages because each successive year is a smaller percentage of one’s elapsed time. We suspect that this is influenced by the amount of activity one has fitted into the year. John having reached the age of 70 in a year in which we have done an unprecedented number of things (as those of you who read our MENU will know) has seen 2015 whizz by and events of a year ago seem as though we only just did them.

Right now, we are having a short summer holiday in a small self-catering flat a few metres from the beach at Paternoster, on the Cape’s West Coast, enjoying a week of minimal activity, enjoying each other’s company and, of course, enhancing the time with some good food and wine.

We have visited some wonderful places in this country (Bartholomeu’s Klip, The Karoo, Robertson, Stanford, Heidelberg, Elgin, Hemel & Aarde) and had some very special experiences, like having dinner on Queen Mary 2,

but the highlight was a three week trip to Istanbul and Greece. We flew with Turkish Airlines and had five days in Istanbul before going to Greece for two weeks. The flight was good, but we started our Turkish experience with a small hiccup. John applied for his Turkish visa on the internet and received it in 15 minutes. Lynne was told (by the airline and the Embassy) that she didn’t need one with her British passport. Wrongly. After queuing for about an hour to pass through immigration at 4 am, she was sent back to the beginning of the queue to buy a visa and then had to queue for another hour while John waited. Brits be warned!

We rented a small self-catering apartment 10 minutes walk from Kumkapı, the square which is full of restaurants. We walked all over the centre of the city and used all forms of the excellent and affordable public transport, which uses a similar card system to our MyCiti card and the British Oyster pass. We ate some very good and some fairly ordinary street food and had one excellent lunch at a restaurant called Asitane, which features classic Ottoman cuisine. Naturally, we visited all the palaces and mosques, took a wonderfully enjoyable boat trip on the Bosporus, did most of the “must dos” and took hundreds of photographs.

After a late afternoon flight to Athens, we took a long, slow bus ride to Piraeus and then a very round the houses ride in a taxi to the hotel near the port in which we had booked a room. Early next morning, we walked the distance from hotel to port in less time than the duration of the taxi ride and boarded the (very relaxing) ferry to Santorini. We made a mistake of not checking TripAdvisor when we booked our Santorini accommodation. A long story which you can see in our blog, but it was not great. Santorini was already full of visitors, many of them Chinese, and the narrow roads were clogged with traffic and kamikaze riders on scooters and quad bikes. Santorini is beautiful and we found some good places to eat and some very good wines. We walked on most of the three days, took a boat ride to the currently dormant volcano and rented a small car for one day to see the far end of the island.

You can see the details of this and all other aspects of our trip, if you wish, by clicking on the links at the end of this letter.

After Santorini, we spent two days on Naxos and could have spent longer. It is smaller, quieter and we had wonderful accommodation, which made a tremendous difference. We took a bus ride to the centre of the island to see some of the real, less touristy aspects and walked round the main village and seafront. Next time we will stick to smaller islands. This was John’s first trip to Turkey and Greece, Lynne had lots to introduce him to.

Then it was on to Athens for a couple of days, seeing the obligatory sights,

before taking the train to Corinth to visit our friend Terry who lives in the Peloponnese in Diakofto, a village on the shore of the Gulf of Corinth. He has intimate knowledge of the area and its history and took us to places and people we would not have been able to see on our own. We spent several days in Mycenae and visited many of the historical sites, like the stupendous amphitheatre at Epidavros, built with incredible precision over 2500 years ago. It was a wonderful trip and we are very grateful to him. Fortunately, we can reciprocate when he visits us here. (That dot standing in the middle of the stage is me – Lynne).

The early part of the year is when our friends from the Northern Hemisphere visit us and we were very happy to see and entertain several of you this year – and look forward to seeing even more in 2016. With the collapse of the Rand through the dreadful mismanagement of our economy by the government and, especially, our embarrassment of a president, we have become a very affordable destination.

The year has been marked by the arrival of a new great nephew, James, son to Richard and Candy, and grandson to brother Bill and Stephanie. It has also, very sadly, been marked by the loss of old friends, especially John & Bill’s childhood friend Harry Robertson in Hawaii. We celebrate the arrivals and mourn the departures. Another sad premature departure from kidney failure, was the demise of Hamish, our beautiful ginger cat, at the end of last year. This was followed by the happy arrival of another full-of-character ginger, Rory with the magnificent tail. It is hard to believe that the tiny kitten who arrived in January is now this long, elegant creature, who is as soft as butter and so affectionate.

John’s 70^th birthday last month was an occasion for great festivity, with Bill and Stephanie coming from Johannesburg to join us for the weekend. We had a small family dinner, followed by a lunch party the next day for a couple of dozen friends. Lynne made some wonderful food and a few of our best wines in our cellar played their part.

Just a few days after his birthday, John had a truly life-changing experience: a second cataract operation. His right eye had a new lens implanted in 2011; now it was time for the left eye. After wearing spectacles for 60 years, he is now able to see clearly without them, thanks to a very good surgeon and lenses from Mr Zeiss. You will only know the sense of freedom when you’ve lived with the restriction. After years of being short-sighted, he now uses reading specs when the light is a bit dim. Lynne is steeling herself for the same procedure and is still not quite persuaded that the procedure is as quick and as painless as it is. (I am a coward and will wait for the last possible moment and lots of tranquilizers. L). We are both very fit and active with just a few indications of age creeping up on us, like stiff bones in the morning). The only medication we take is Omega 3 oil capsules and fresh fruit and veg. We could be slimmer but look what we do for a living: eating and drinking professionally is rather a challenge and this year we had five months of events with canapés and both put on about 5 kilos more.

We have made an important change, one for which our country’s infrastructure is partly responsible. When we closed our shop nearly 6 years ago, we took the business on-line. This worked quite well until the Post Office started to disintegrate. It has now reached the stage where one cannot rely on orders reaching customers in good time – and the costs have doubled at the same time, making them disproportionate for small orders. So, sadly, Main Ingredient has all but expired. We still take special (fairly large) orders for food items which cannot easily be accessed by some of our customers, but we are concentrating on writing, photography and tours, which keep us very busy and which we are enjoying. MENU, our weekly newsletter, is reaching a wide audience and the associated blogs are being read by upwards of 15000 people each month, over half of whom are outside South Africa. The Main Ingredient website (www.mainingredient.biz) is now the home of MENU

Next year might well see more travel and we plan to make changes to our house, such as the installation of a photovoltaic electrical system. The capital expense of this is more than justified by the rising cost of electricity, not to mention possible unreliability of our supply. Lynne’s British pensions have given us more cash to achieve things we have planned for a while, and the travel.

So life trots merrily along and we are thoroughly enjoying these senior years, thankful for being able to enjoy them with good health and the means to be comfortable.

We hope that you will have a very good and happy Christmas and that 2016 will be a year in which life brings you health, comfort and a lot of well-being