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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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A pair of African spoonbills looking for lunch
Products Our market activities Villiera at the Vineyard Sue Anderson trade wine tasting Hartenberg’s The Stork, a champion Hostex Chicken and artichoke risotto Bottled v purified water Events and Restaurant specials Wine courses & cooking classes,Products Argan oil might be here sooner than expected. We hope to be able to supply it early in June because one of our suppliers has stock on its way. We have replenished our stock of walnut oil and 500ml cans of well-prices hazelnut oil should arrive next month.
In addition to the 200 gram jars of Valrhona Guanaja couverture chocolate “beans”, we should soon have more of the excellent Callebaut 70% couverture chocolate callets, for those who are looking for a more affordable alternative. We have new stock of beluga lentils and black beans. French mustards have been selling well and we have boosted our stock of these and of our French patés. 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.
Our market activities Come and visit us at the Old Biscuit Mill’s brilliant, exciting and 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. Click here for a map. We will be back at Long Beach Mall on Friday 25th May from 09h00 to 16h00. We look forward to seeing you there.
Tastes of 2012 Villiera dinner at Vineyard Hotel Invited for a friend’s 75th birthday celebration to eat in the Square restaurant last Friday, we were delighted to discover that it coincided with one of the Vineyard’s excellent wine and food pairing dinners, which they now hold every two weeks. (See their programme in our Events Calendar). We met in the foyer, where all the guests gathered for a welcoming glass of Villiera Brut Natural 2008, full of lovely ripe and mature flavours – an aged bubbly, very much to the gout Anglais (English taste), and then went in to dinner. Sadly, the table was not suitable for our host’s wheelchair, so there was a short wait while an appropriate one was found before then we sat down to the first course.
We so enjoyed this meal and will definitely be back to try another soon. The price of R265 per person includes all the wine, but not coffee or bottled water. The next one will be with Ernst Gouws & Co Family Vineyards on May 25th. However, a recommendation is that you do try to sit away from the rather loud piano, which does make conversation a little difficult. The service, as always, was discreet but attentive. Thank you, Sheehan, for letting us be part of your celebration. See description and photos here
Sue Anderson’s Trade Tasting at Burrata Restaurant in the Old Biscuit Mill precinct was held on Tuesday. Neil Grant, formerly the sommelier at Rust en Vrede, opened this restaurant with a Southern Italian theme recently, in the passage which leads to Luke Dale Roberts’ two restaurants. The head chef is Annemarie Steenkamp, who has spent the last five years at Le Quartier Français. We were served very good canapés and some slices of thin, crisp and smoky pizza during the tasting, so it is definitely a place to try if you like good Italian food and great pizza. We might be tempted to have one for lunch when we have finished working at the Neighbourgoods Market on Saturdays. If we are not watching carbs... Read more here.
CONGRATULATIONS TO HARTENBERG’S THE STORK 2008 We wrote about the marvellous Hartenberg Shiraz, The Stork 2007, at the beginning of the month when we tasted it at the Taj Expressions of…. Tasting. We are absolutely delighted to hear that their 2008 has just won the Top Shiraz in the World accolade at the Syrah du Monde competition in France. We think it is very well deserved. Well done to wine maker Carl Schultz and the rest of the team. This wine will be released in South Africa in September. Get your orders in now.
Boschendal Cecil John Reserve 2009, Saronsberg 2010 and Rust en Vrede 2009 were also gold medal winners. Bravo, it is so great to see South African Shiraz getting overseas recognition. Taste some really sensational Shiraz at Hartenberg on the 2nd of June when they hold their Feast of Shiraz and Charcuterie. You’ll find the details in our Events Calendar.
Hostex We attend this Hospitality Industry trade show each year and each year we find a couple of new suppliers. This year, we found some new Belgian chocolate, some very interesting Italian balsamic products and some excellent stocks from the United States. We are talking to the distributors.
Today’s recipe is a solution for left-over chicken. Yes, this dish does contain carbohydrates and some vegetables and it is absolutely delicious. We find it difficult not to crave this sort of food when the weather gets cold. You could use the left-over carcass of the chicken to make the stock, or just use a good commercial stock, like Nomu Fond.
Chicken and Artichoke Risotto
A pot of light chicken or vegetable stock (about 1.5 to 2 litres) - 1 onion, very finely chopped – 1 stick of celery, finely chopped - 1 clove garlic, finely chopped – 1 t fresh thyme leaves - 1/2 T extra virgin olive oil – ½ T butter - half a red pepper, finely chopped into small cubes – 2 cups Risotto rice – 250 ml dry white wine – 4 to 6 artichoke bottoms, each sliced into six pieces - 1 cup of cooked chicken in small pieces – ½ cup depodded broad beans or peas – salt and freshly ground pepper – 1 T butter
Put the stock on to simmer. On another burner, in a heavy bottomed pan, fry the onion, celery, garlic and thyme in the oil and butter till transparent and soft then add the red pepper and fry gently for two minutes. Put in the rice and let it coat in the oil and fry for one minute. Put in the wine and let it bubble so the alcohol burns off. Then add a couple of ladles of the hot stock. The secret is to cook the rice slowly in quite a lot of liquid and stir or shake the pan occasionally to circulate the rice. Do not let the rice dry out and as soon as you see it getting dryer, add more stock. If you cook too fast or on two high a heat the rice will only cook on the outside and get very mushy. When the rice is nearly done, add the chicken, the artichokes and the broad beans and warm through for five minutes. Taste and adjust the seasoning. The risotto should be quite soupy and creamy but not mushy, the rice should still have a separate grains. Draw the pan off the heat, stir in the butter and let it rest for five minutes then serve. Serves 4.
One of our pet crusades is against buying bottled water when perfectly good local tap water is available. We are especially lucky. Our water comes from high on Table Mountain, with minimal treatment, and it tastes clean and pure. Other areas are less fortunate and the water can be, at best, “perfumed” with a hefty dose of chlorine, which does justify buying a better-tasting water. Bottled water comes at a huge environmental cost. It is transported over huge distances, with a very large carbon footprint and the glass or plastic bottles are, too often, not recycled. We salute the initiative taken by Protea and African Pride Hotels, who have equipped more than 30 of their hotels with water purification units, enabling them to do away with bottled still water in their restaurants, bedrooms and conference facilities. They offer their guests purified still water in re-usable glass bottles instead. There is no charge for this. At least another 30 of their hotels will be added to this initiative in the next few months. It is an example we would love to see followed by other hotels and restaurants.
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.
Winter is coming in with a bang, but we can still expect some wonderful clear and sunny days. Make the most of them and enjoy a picnic on a wine farm; 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.
17th May 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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