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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
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The Sentinel & Hout Bay from the pool deck, Chapman’s Peak hotel
Products Our market activities Expressions dinner at the Taj Vanilla La Mouette A night at the Chapmans Peak HotelProducts We have had numerous enquiries from people who read this newsletter, asking which markets we attend and what products we sell. To make this information, which has always been near the end, more easily accessible, we have moved these paragraphs to the top. New this week is a range of Spanish sherry vinegars, solera aged for four and eight years, in addition to the less expensive sherry vinegars we have stocked before. These are still available, as are the real Spanish paella rice and smoked paprika. For those and any other products you need, 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. Do contact us if there is something you cant find, we may be able to help.
Our market activities We will be at the Old Biscuit Mill’s brilliant, exciting and atmospheric Neighbourgoods Market, as always, this Saturday (Easter) and every Saturday between 09h00 and 14h00, and we will be back at Long Beach Mall on lucky Friday, 13th April for our South Peninsula friends.
Another of the Expressions of... regional wine and food tastings with dinner was held last Thursday at the Taj hotel’s Mint restaurant, this time featuring the wines of Elgin, Lamberts Bay & Cederberg, cooler climate areas, with the food of Gordon Manuel from The Venue at South Hill wine estate in Elgin. We had a fairly rapid tasting of the wines before dinner and especially liked the Elgin Vintners new release Sauvignon Blanc Semillon blend, The Century 2011 – the perfect wine for celebrations. Paul Cluver’s Riesling Close Encounter 2011 was very Germanic in style, attractive and full of light honey and low in turpene flavours. South Hill’s very reasonable Cabernet rosé is one we will be ordering this year and the Radford Dale Pinot Noir was knockout; completely fruit driven and very Burgundian in style and not at all heavy and dark. Then welcomed into dinner with a glass of Elgin Ridge Sauvignon blanc with great company as the winemakers and markets join you, we ate very well. Pictures can be seen here.
Our first course of poached pears and gorgonzola, walnuts and candid beetroot puree was served with Iona Viognier 09. The next course was truly magnificent and very delicious. We don’t often eat chicken at restaurants but this Elgin free range chicken cooked en Papillote was served on a wild mushroom and truffle risotto and had been perfectly cooked: crisp skin on the outside and falling off the bone. We had two wines paired with the lovely dish and there was much debate about which of them best matched. We voted for the Thelema Sutherland Viognier Roussanne 09 but the Radford Dale Freedom Pinot Noir 2010 was a very, very close second. The next course was Beef fillet poached in red wine on a rather sweet smoked potato puree with vanilla infused baby vegetables and a port wine jus. Well matched with Cederberg’s Shiraz 2008 but a rather large helping after the chicken. The vanilla was intended as a component in the baby vegetables, but a little too much had leached into the meat and the potato puree, which rather overpowered the other flavours.
Dessert was a tiny apple mousse tart with strawberry compote, very good cardamom ice cream with ginger and this was paired with the South Hill Rosé which picked up the strawberry well. You can try these dishes on the Mint Restaurant menu for the whole month of April, paired with the same wines.
The next Expressions of ... Greater Simonsberg, Stellenbosch Valley and Bottelary Hills will be held on Thursday, 26th April with guest chef Christiaan Campbell of Delaire Graff, so be sure to book soon; these dinners are becoming very popular. And remember the Taj also has free regional wine tastings on from 5 to 8 pm on Wednesday evenings in the hotel lobby.
Vanilla There is quite a debate about vanilla. It is quite a sophisticated flavour. One first encounters it in vanilla ice cream and then in your mother’s or others’ baking. And of course it is a prominent flavour in wines, as good oak often imparts this to wines like Chardonnays and Chenins. Vanilla essence is a chemical compound that tries to capture the flavours of the real vanilla bean, the fruit of a tropical orchid, but never quite succeeds; extracts are the real thing. We think the difference is extreme and won’t use anything else but real vanilla. But do you want vanilla in savoury food? We have been offered truffle oil which contains vanilla and it appears fairly regularly on top restaurants’ menus in sauces for fish, seafood, meat and even vegetables. We find the sweet, rather cloying flavour does nothing for us on savoury dishes, but we are open to being persuaded. What do you think? You will, of course, find vanilla pods and the excellent Nielsen Massey vanilla extract and paste in our product list.
Flying with Seagulls Before putting our Dutch friends on the plane on Saturday night, they treated us to dinner at La Mouette, who have just introduced their very reasonably priced Autumn six course menu. The portion sizes are, thankfully, not gargantuan but you do feel you have had a substantial meal at the end of the evening. Chef Henry Vigar has, you will be delighted to know, left the truffle and cheese croquettes on the menu as the first course; these come with a bowl of smoked tomato aioli. Next was a rather chewy round ravioli filled with butternut and covered with a brown butter and crisply fried sage leaves, which much complimented the dish. Then came a fresh piece of roasted yellowtail on a chickpea, tomato and spinach ragout. Do whole chickpeas go with fish? The jury is out on that one. The next course was a Confit shoulder of beef – tender and gentle; the beef was almost like something out of a stew and, surprisingly for us as we are not usually fans, the sweet corn polenta was soft and smooth with distinct notes of corn rather than the hard rubber-like starch you get in other restaurants. A tomato gremolata and pea shoots accompanied it. Pictures here.
Then appeared a tiny treasure, a warm and airily light choux pastry doughnut with lemon curd and filled with coffee Chantilly cream. Served on a Chinese spoon, it was far too little – we all wanted a bowlful of them. Dessert was a gooey Chocolate orange macaroon, a chocolate financier, an orange puree, a very good marmalade ice cream with some lovely crusty scrapings of what tasted like Ovaltine around it and Cointreau syrup. This menu costs a very reasonable R165 per person and R330 if you have the wine pairings they suggest with each course. We had a bottle of Springfield Life from Stone, and took a very special bottle from our cellar of Cordoba Cabernet Merlot 2002. Sadly the Cordoba wine estate is no longer in production, but Christopher Keet, who made the wines, is now producing under his own name.
La Mouette also has a 7 course Gourmand menu on offer at R395, R560 with the wine pairings.
The perfect weekend away and only a few miles from home We were spoilt rotten on Sunday night by Lydia Nobrega, who invited us to come and stay at the Chapman’s Peak Hotel, which her family has owned for many years. Many of us have lovely memories of the old hotel, which is still there, and the great calamari they serve on the terrace, but they have built on a super modern addition and the rooms are very tasteful and cleanly luxurious, all with wonderful views across Hout Bay beach and bay towards the Sentinel and the harbour. Glass doors to the balcony completely block off any traffic noise and you sleep in great comfort. First we treated ourselves to a great dinner on the terrace. Fiery hot Peri peri chicken livers and calamari & chorizo were our starters, followed by 5 fat sardines with very crisp chips for John and prawns and calamari and a salad for Lynne. The food is freshly cooked and has always been of a very high standard. We ordered a bottle of Adi Badenhorst’s lovely rich, fruity and crisp Secateurs Chenin Blanc 2011, very reasonably priced at R99, and then opened a very special bottle of Cape Point Semillon 2006 which we had brought with us in case Lydia appeared. This wine just gets better and better in its fullness of flavour, depth and elegance. We had the rest the following night and it was possibly even better. As we were not going far, we were tempted by the chocolate tart and the crème brulée before tottering off to bed for a reasonably early night. Dinner came to R530 including a contribution for our great waiter Jethro. Breakfast in the dining room the next morning was a sumptuous spread of everything you could possibly want - you can order a full English breakfast or variations - which is freshly cooked for you. If the weather is great, you can have it on the terrace. John stuck to his usual fruit and muesli, Lynne had a cheese omelette and we both could not resist the freshly baked Belgian croissants with our good black coffees. Many of you will remember them; we sold them frozen, ready-to-bake from our shop. If you want to spoil your partner, book here for a very special night away. Lydia gave us a tour of one the two amazing penthouse suites on the top floor and took us to see the superb swimming pool built into the rocks above the road. We then had a short walk on the beach after which it was home and back to mounds of work for us. Pictures here
Felicitations. Most of our readers will be celebrating Easter or Passover. We wish you and all who fill the important spaces in your lives happy Easter and Chag Sameach. May you travel safely and enjoy a wonderful long weekend with people you love.
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 list for and beyond. 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.
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 courses, some very serious and others more geared to fun. You can see details here.
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.
5th April 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.
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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