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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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In this week’s MENU:
Products Our market activities Miques de mais Old Mutual Trophy Awards Burgundy Lovers’ Festival Events and Restaurant specials Wine courses & cooking classes,Products The Cape has been wearing her winter clothes and we have had a few days of typical damp and cool weather – just the thing for comfort food like risotto. We will have more risotto rice and stock cubes tomorrow. We have other winter delights in stock, especially ready to heat and eat duck confit and traditional French cassoulets and pot au feu. 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 8th June from 09h00 to 16h00. We look forward to seeing you there.
This winter weather does always send us to more sustaining food. Gascony in France is the area where they eat the most duck and use the most duck fat and where they have the lowest levels of heart disease. So Lynne is beginning to think it might be time to make that annual pot of cassoulet and other rich casseroles. Did you know they even eat cornmeal (phutu pap!) in that area? Here is their recipe using duck fat for a sweet or savoury treat. You can use polenta for this if you don’t have cornmeal.
Miques de Mais
250 ml fine cornmeal – 750 ml water – a pinch of salt – 25 g duck fat – sugar – brandy – more duck fat
Get the water, salt and fat to a rolling boil then pour in the cornmeal ‘ like rain’. Turn down the heat and simmer over a low heat, stirring with a wooden continuously for approx. 30 minutes until the mixture no longer sticks to the sides of the pan. Pour into a square or rectangular dish and allow to cool and set then cut into 3.5 cm squares. Fry these in duck fat then sprinkle with sugar and flambé with brandy or cognac. You can also serve them with a good rich duck gravy.
OLD MUTUAL TROPHY AWARDS AT THE MOUNT NELSON This extremely well organised event started with us arriving an hour too early as we got our wires crossed but allowed us a rare hour on the terrace of the Mount Nelson drinking great coffee and discussing business. We met the Nellie cat, a super shiny black sedan with huge green eyes, as yet unnamed but with a penchant for the buffet. We think he/she (difficult to tell) might like the name of Velvet after that lovely cocktail black velvet a mixture of champagne and Guinness. Class and naughtiness in one package!
Into the Conference centre at 12 for good canapés and a glass of bubby to see who was there and chat. It always amuses us when we see winemakers who think they are there simply to attend. Generally, if you have been invited, you have won something and these prestigious awards, now in their 10th year are worth getting. The rigorous blind tasting procedure by local and international judges means a fair showing for good wines. Click here for a list of the awards.
The awards are interspersed with a good lunch and this year Rudi Liebenberg gave us lovely food. We started with beautifully tender and rare pieces of peppered duck, duck confit wrapped in buttery pastry and duck giblets accompanied by sweet and sour pieces of pickled persimmon - a great match for the rich duck. Our table drank Ken Forrester’s Old Vines Reserve Chenin, Groote Post Reserve and Delaire Sauvignons Blanc with the first course.
Main course was a lamb loin wrapped in butternut slices, quite inspiring for home dinners; and a piece of very tender barbeque lamb neck that tasted like Asian duck and shredded beautifully, resting on a layer of spinach; a small square of pave potatoes (finely layered and baked) topped with Jerusalem artichoke puree and the dish dotted with winter vegetables, like carrots, baby broad beans and barley and a rich lamb jus.
We had tastes of Backsberg Shiraz, Hillcrest Hornfels 2008; and Uitkyk’s 2008 Carlonet, all of which were good wines for the food.
We had tastes of Backsberg Shiraz, Hillcrest Hornfels 2008; and Uitkyk’s 2008 Carlonet, all of which were good wines for the food.
Dessert, ahh dessert: Served to us was a delicious Nederburg Noble Late Harvest AND a Neethlingshof Maria so it needed to match all those complex sweet, fruity and nutty flavours and did. A nutty and soft square of wet almond cake covered with macadamia nuts, a caramel praline and an almond praline ice cream, vanilla poached pears and small squares of caramel toffee, all the tastes of the wine on one plate.
We had great company on our table: Old friends and colleagues Mike Neebe from Axe Hill, surprised and delighted with his award for the port, Jeff Grier from Villiera equally surprised at his award for the best Bubbly the Villiera for Woolworths. More about the awards, with pictures here.
BURGUNDY STYLE WINES GROWN IN SOUTH AFRICA – Chardonnays and Pinot Noirs. Last Sunday we were delighted to be invited by Corlien Morris of Wine Concepts to the Burgundy Lovers’ Festival at the Vineyard Hotel. This excellent, unique annual tasting showcases their selection of the best Chardonnays and Pinot Noirs produced in South Africa. Our Chardonnays are showing incredibly well now, especially if they have some age on them – the 2010’s were marvellous. We were so glad to find that only one of the many wines we tasted was over-wooded and too over the top for us. Should a wine have 14 months in 90% new French oak? Who, nowadays, is wealthy enough to afford all these new barrels? There were still people at the tasting who like this style but thankfully not many. Our wine trade has seen the light and is producing wines that show the character of this elegant noble grape and bring out the lovely fruit, not masking it with heavy vanillas and deeply scorched new barrels, but using gentle oak to support it.
Favourite Chardonnays tasted were Iona 2010, Newton Johnson Family Vineyards 2011 which is very Chablis like, Oak Valley 2011 is full of citrus especially limes and has a very full palate with a long end; De Wetshof The Site 2010 is pretty and perfumed and also full of lime and other citrus and we will watch the Paul Cluver 2010 which isn’t quite there yet but is showing great promise. The Vriesenhof 2011 was also a pinnacle showing Chablis style, some great fruit and even a little thyme mid palate.
It is good to see how many Pinot Noirs we have now, not all are perfect but there are definitely a couple of distinct styles emerging - dark, wooded and moody or lighter with full berry fruit and lots of elegant length. Our taste is more for the latter style, probably because it goes so well with the food we eat.
We loved the Shannon Rockview 2010 and lots of people in the room were talking about it very positively and recommending people taste it, so it is safe to say it was one of the show favourites. The Sutherland 2010 from Elgin grapes is delicious and the De Grendel 2006 is just superb with rich fruit predominating. Sadly it is sold out. If you have some, now is the time to drink it. Cathy Marshall always impresses and Lynne has written just one word of description in her notes: Beautiful. Creation 2011 is full of soft strawberries. Pictures of the event can be seen here.
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.
31st 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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