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Main Ingredient’s weekly E-Journal
Gourmet Foods, Ingredients & Fine Wines
Eat In Guide’s Outstanding Outlet Award Winner from 2006 to 2010
A farm, Hemel en Aarde Valley, late afternoon
In this week’s MENU:
Thai restaurant Spicy Asian Beef salad Cooking for guests Products Our market activities, events and restaurantsChasing Elephants It is so nice to discover another restaurant gem. Last year we wrote about the Thai Café in Hout Bay and how much we had enjoyed their food. They have since franchised and there are branches of these small fast Thai food restaurants in Claremont and Somerset Road, Green Point. The owners have now decided to go up-market and have opened Erawan in Wolfe Street, Wynberg village. Erawan is a mythical Thai three-headed elephant. They invited us to dine there last Friday evening. It is an incredibly elegant restaurant where you are welcomed by sylph-like Thai waitresses dressed from head to toe in red Thai silk and a very helpful waiter from Gauteng. The Thais were brought here from a 4 star hotel in Thailand to run the restaurant and exude gentle grace and hospitality.
The large space has been decorated in green and apricot gold and has lots of large Thai carvings and ornaments that add to the atmosphere. There is even the requisite flocked wallpaper in the ladies loo, if designer and very expensive! While the service is seamless, the speed of the food delivery is nothing short of amazing. We ordered a bottle of Durbanville Hills Sauvignon blanc and it arrived in an ice bucket in minutes, with a dish of prawn crackers served with three good dipping sauces. The menu is extensive and they have dim sum, so we had one basket of very light steamed rice dumplings Kul Chay stuffed with prawns and chives which had a taste of peanut butter and was gone all too soon R35. The food is mainly Thai but has other Asian influences, so we followed with one of the signature dishes: crispy duck and pancakes which, for Lynne, was the best she has had in the Cape, really crispy and a generous portion for two at R98. And we didn’t have to wait ages.
We often eat Thai, so we decided to go for two dishes we didn’t know. From north Thailand, Khao Soi Chang Mai: Prawns in egg noodles in their special curry sauce served with lemon and red onion and chilli on the side so you can alter your own heat levels, good and spicy at nose blowing level, almost creamy, R75. This also had deep fried noodles on top. Then pan fried crispy pork which was not too fatty and had a good crunch with good stir fried vegetable with mushrooms, Thai herbs R79 and a serving of jasmine rice R10. We thought we had no space for dessert but we were persuaded to share a portion of banana fritters, honey & vanilla ice cream R33. Made freshly the batter was light and crisp.
The Durbanville Hills sauvignon at R98 was an excellent match for this food. They don’t yet have a dry rosé on the menu; we think they should look at Buitenverwachting, De Grendel, Grangehurst or Pecan Stream, all of which are reasonably priced good rosés. The restaurant has not officially launched yet and they were already fully booked. AND for hot weather or small functions, they have an open roof terrace that seats about 18 people. Our bill would have come to R480 with wine, coffee and service and we think that is a bargain. We always tip when doing a review, especially if the service is as good as this.
Still in Asia If you are in Asian mood, Lynne invented this week’s recipe when we had some left over steak. You could use left over roast beef or just sear off one small steak for a small salad
Spicy Asian Beef salad
The dressing: 2T limejuice - 2 T fish sauce - 1 T palm sugar- 1 t red chilli paste or 2 finely chopped chillies (adjust to your own taste) – 1 clove garlic, crushed – 1 T sushi ginger (gari) finely sliced.
Green beans, carrots , courgettes cut into julienne strips – mixed herb salad leaves – 2 T extra fresh basil and/or coriander leaves – 2 squares of Chinese egg noodles – 1T Soy sauce - 200g cold beef, sliced
Slice the beef into ½ cm slices. Mix up the sauce then marinate the beef in half of it. Blanche the beans, carrots & courgettes for one minute in boiling water then refresh in ice cold water. Drain. Cook the noodles till they are just soft, drain, cool, then add the tamari sauce. Mix the salad leaves, herbs and the julienne vegetable then top with the beef. Drizzle over the rest of the sauce then top the dish with noodles and serve.
Attention to your guests I don’t know if you have noticed, but if you want to lose in “Come Dine With Me” you produce a meal that needs a lot of cooking while your guests are waiting at the table. Which is why when we have a dinner party, Lynne does most of the preparation beforehand because she likes to spend as much time as possible with her guests and only needs to pop something into the oven when guests arrive. We have had many guests over the last week, some from overseas, and it has required quite a lot of preparation and cooking. Not a great thing to have to do in hot weather but then it is her favourite occupation. We have also had a few guests with restricted diets but that is not a difficult problem in our house where we like to eat everything and we have a few restrictions of our own.
She has stuck to mostly Mediterranean inspired food, large composite salads, spread over two dinners. She made herb encrusted fish using haddock smoked by Julie of Ocean Jewels at the Biscuit Mill, crushed potatoes with peas, humus, roasted baby onions, spinach and ricotta gnudi (light as air, almost flourless gnocchi) in a tomato and parmesan cream sauce, gravadlax and barbecue chicken. Our star dessert (yes we did make it twice, there is no miracle workers in this house) was a wicked cherry trifle using up the last cherries we picked at Christmas, they really did last in the fridge, and topped that up with fruit from our Rumtopf which now can be topped up with more berries, sugar and cane spirit. The base was some Savoiardi (finger biscuits), the second time a slice of Panettone and some Amaretti biscuits. The secret of trifle is that it takes only a few minutes to assemble in the morning, especially with the help of good retailers! Woolworths do a great cherry juice which the cake/biscuits were soaked in with a little of the alcohol from the Rumtopf and the trifle is just topped with their great egg and cream custard and whipped cream sprinkled with almonds and grated chocolate. Lynne has discovered Lactase tables and they seem to be working – they provide the enzyme needed to digest milk products which she lacks. We hope you are enjoying easy entertaining with your visitors and friends. We have lots more dinners to do.
Book for a Peruvian Breakfast at Keenwä Peruvian Restaurant Keenwä, at 50 Waterkant Street, owned by Peruvian German de la Melena, will be hosting a Peruvian Breakfast Day on Saturday 28 January from 10:00am. Bookings are essential for this event, which is scheduled to take place regularly in future. The unusual menu consists of Tamales Criollos Rellenos con Escabeche de pollo (delicious corn paste with chicken foldover), Sandwiches de Chicharron con Camote frito y sarsa Criolla (slow cooked pork sliced and served with sliced fried sweet potato and red onion sauce), Sandwich de queso con aceituna (feta cheese and black olives sandwich), Papa Rellena (Stuffed mashed potato), Caldo de Pollo (Chicken soup) and a mystery dish, Adobo Cusqueño. A refreshing selection of fruit juices like papaya, orange, banana, and apple will be available as well as various fruit options, Coffee and, of course, Quinoa muesli with yogurt. They will be repeating this. Breakfast prices vary according to choice.
Products Last week’s order of Prego sauce went out with alacrity; we have ordered more - do come and restock. In addition to the black rice and Salish smoked salt from and Black Lava Palm Island Salt , we have added a fine Himalayan salt and fine and coarse Camargue salts from the French Mediterranean coast.
Most other products are available, except goose fat, which we won’t see before the end of the month, but we still have plenty of duck fat, which is an excellent alternative. If you are looking for anything, have a look at our product list and tell us what you want. We will soon have an online shop as well, accessed through our website, where you will be able to order and pay us through Payfast. If you can’t find what you need, let us know and we will try to find it for you.
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 We will be at Long Beach Mall tomorrow, Friday 27th January. We will be at the Old Biscuit Mill’s brilliant, exciting and atmospheric Neighbourgoods Market, as always, this Saturday between 09h00 and 14h00 and every Saturday. We will be back at The Place at Cavendish next Friday, January 27th.
There is a huge 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 lists for January, February and March. All the events are listed in date order and we already have exciting events to entertain you through into the new year. Click here to access the list. You will need to be connected to the internet.
Some 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.
Summer time is picnic time and several wine farms offer picnic facilities. We have put together a list of wine farms who can provide you with a picnic, We haven’t put in much detail, just where it is, phone number, email address and a link to the website. The latter is where you will find all the important information. Go and check it out.
26th January 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 ist 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.
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