A week of starting to enjoy a new car with more
toys than we ever imagined could exist in a vehicle. We enjoyed driving it to
Stellenbosch and to Elgin for the events you can read about here. We miss the
space we had in our old, much bigger, chariot, but we won’t miss the bills...
Celebrations at 96 Winery Road's 21st Birthday lunch-
Off to Elgin to Paul Cluver Family Day
-
Sundowners with the Wallaces
-
What's on the Menu this week? Black pepper chicken with
vegetables
-
Best Wine on this week's MENU Black Dog Malbec 2015
Tracy van Maaren continues to expand her
list with excellent wines, which makes this trade tasting exciting each year. Chef
Proprietor of Aubergine and Auslese, Harald Bresselschmidt, arranges food
pairings for some of these wines and they are interesting matches which make
one think about how you would serve these wines. This was held on Wednesday
last week (Read On....)
As we discussed during the lunch held last
week, there are not many successful restaurants who can claim to have survived
this long under the same owners. 96 Winery Road certainly fits the bill. Partners
Ken and Allan Forrester, Martin Meinert and chef Natasha Wray are still
involved and the restaurant continues to provide superb food. At the
celebration we tasted the all time favourites from their menu over the last 21
years, paired with some of the great Forrester Meinert wines (Read On....)
A Harvest festival of different sort, Paul
Cluver organised a train to take families from Cape Town to and from the farm
last Saturday for the fun day out, held in the Amphitheatre. We arrived under
our own steam (pun intended) just as the train arrived and a very jolly day was
had by all (Read On....)
We had booked an Airbnb for the night in
Elgin following the Festival at Paul Cluver and made a stop at Wallowvale to
visit our friends Nicky and Paul Wallace and watch the sun go down while
tasting their wines, exchanging trade gossip and making a fuss of the black
dogs and the terrier (Read On....)
Lynne uses strips of bite sized thigh meat in this
stir fry, but a mix of breast and leg meat will also be fine. You can use any
vegetables that are suitable for a quick stir fry like those below or add broccoli,
sweet corn, mange tout, mushrooms, etc. You need about four cups. You can use
coconut oil for frying if you don't have peanut. Peanut oil can take a very high
heat which makes it suitable for stir frying. Never use olive oil, it laminates
and turns to plastic which is very bad for you.
350 g chicken cut into 5 cm strips - 1
T corn flour - 1 tsp light soy - 1 tsp Shaoxing rice wine or dry sherry - 1
garlic clove, grated - 1.5 cm knob of fresh ginger, grated - 2 T peanut oil for
frying - selection of fresh vegetables, see below - ½ an onion, roughly chopped
- ½ cup of fresh bean sprouts - 4 spring onions, sliced
Stir fry sauce: 1 tsp freshly ground
black pepper, according to your taste - 2 Tbspns oyster sauce - 2 tsp light soy
sauce - 2 tsp Shaoxing rice wine or dry sherry - 1/2 t sesame oil - 1 tsp honey
- salt
Preparation
Stir the corn flour, the light soy and rice wine
into the chicken, mix well and set aside for at least half an hour. This flavours
and tenderised the chicken. This is known as velveting the chicken to tenderise
it. Make the stir fry sauce and set aside for use later
Vegetables: Cut these into bite size pieces: half
a red pepper - half a green pepper - 2 small carrots - 1 courgette - 1 stick of
celery - 10 green beans - 1/4 of a Chinese cabbage, roughly chopped
Heat your wok and when hot put in the oil. Just
before it begins to smoke, quickly add the rough cut onion and stir for a
minute. Add the garlic and ginger, stir then immediately add the chicken and
brown quickly on all sides. Add all the chopped vegetables and mix quickly to
stir fry for a minute or two. Add the sauce and stir well. Cook till it starts
to bubble. Fry for about three or four minutes till the chicken is cooked and
the cabbage is beginning to wilt. Add the bean sprouts at the end and quickly
stir them in. Top with the spring onions and serve from the wok with noodles or
rice. Taste and add salt if needed
Best Wine on this week's MENU Black Dog Malbec 2015
made by Paul Wallace
This wine has
really come into its own and is drinking so well at the moment. It has green
herbs, black cherries, and vanilla oak on the savoury nose. Supple and soft on
the palate with dark berry fruit, salty liquorice and soy. It's a wine for fine
foods or just to quaff with friends over supper. And it goes beautifully with
chilli and dark chocolate
5th April 2017
Phones: +27 21 439 3169 / 083 229 1172 / 083 656 4169
Postal address: 60 Arthurs Rd, Sea Point 8005
If you like the photographs you see in our publications, please look at our Adamastor Photo website for our rate card and samples from our portfolio
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 and our blogs 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. 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. 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.
© John & Lynne Ford, Adamastor & Bacchus 2017
