Vertical wine tasting at Muratie

The welcome board with the prices of the different tastings

A charming sign from past days

The front of the historic tasting room and cellar – the garden restaurant is on the right

The table laid for the vertical tasting of the Isabella Chardonnay, Ansela van de Caab Bordeaux blend and the Shiraz

Francois Conradie, the winemaker and farm manager, tells us about the Chardonnay we are tasting. Greg Landman on the left, Alan Mullins on the right

Also for tasting was a selection of some of Muratie’s best wines and ports

Owner Rijk Melck and Greg Landman, who writes for Country Life

The ‘layers’ of Isabella Chardonnay, ready for tasting - 2008 to 2012

Six glasses of Bordeaux Blend Ansela van de Caab - 2005 to 2010

A typical media tasting: visible, from left to right, are Philip van Zyl, Rijk Melck, Angela Lloyd, Lynne Ford, Joanne Gibson, Jan Laubscher, Anel Grobler, Maryna Strachan at the end of the table, Orielle Berry, Greg Landman and the back of Alan Mullins. All busy tasting and making notes on the wines

Francois shows us the new Muratie wine labels

Mike Bampfield Duggan of Wine Concepts

Kalinka Heyns

Alan Mullins of Woolworths

Francois Conradie, the winemaker and farm manager

Dr Rijk Melck, owner of Muratie, in his snazzy glasses

One of Rijk’s lovely German Shepherd dogs “Collapso Fatso” in front of the port barrels

It’s as good a place as any to store a saddle in the cellar. It has, apparently, been ridden at the occasional party

The day’s menu in the Cellar Kitchen

Lots of wine and lots of history in this cellar. The portrait is of Georg Canitz, Bohemian artist and previous owner of the farm, and the head is his sculpture of a young man who sat for him

Journalist Melvin Minnaar and Muratie PRO, Posy Hazell  having a good time...

.. .  discussing the industry and the wines

Kim Melck and her staff in the kitchen, preparing our lunch

The best lamb shanks we have ever had. Glazed with a sauce and simply cooked in a wood fired oven, served with grated carrots, peas and mashed potatoes.

Heloise Sykes and Kalinka Lombard with Mel Minnaar: "You don’t say!?”

The outdoor restaurant in the warm weather - a super lunch venue for a party of people from the Netherlands

A small ‘snug’ in the cellar building – apparently where Georg Canitz used to entertain the ladies he fancied

An old leaded glass window in the cellar tasting room

Alan Mullins’ driver, reading after his lunch in the cellar

More tasting and eating space in the cellar

A wonderful bit of old Cape wine history (cobwebs) and an amusing old sign from the 1930’s.

An old Dover stove under a portrait by Georg Canitz of a professor from Stellenbosch University

© John & Lynne Ford, Adamastor & Bacchus 2013

24th April 2013 Main Ingredient's MENU - Table of Friendship at Azure Restaurant, Savage wine launch, Gourmet Vegetarian, Organic in the market, Fun with food, Dry Rub recipe for Steak

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The view from Kommetjie to Chapman’s Peak and the mountains round Hout Bay

In this week’s MENU:                                                              

       Horst Frehse’s Table of Friendship at Azure Restaurant

       A Savage launch

       Fancy some Gourmet Vegetarian?

       Buy Organic in the market

       Off to see the gardens at Klein Optenhorst

       Fun with food

       Dry Rub recipe for Steak

       On Line Shop

       This week’s Product menu

       Our market activities - Neighbourgoods, Long Beach

       Wine and Food Events

       Wine courses & cooking classes

To take a look at our Main Ingredient blogs, follow the link: http://adamastorbacchus.blogspot.com/ because to tell our whole story here would take too much space and you can also read earlier blogs. Click on Bold words in the text of this edition to open links to pictures, blogs, pertinent websites or more information. Follow us on Twitter: @mainingmenu

Main Ingredient's On Line Shop is performing very well. We are continuing to update it with new products and with photographs of products. Please do not pay until we have confirmed availability and invoiced you. When you make an eft payment, make sure that it says who you are. Use the form on the website to email us your order and we will send you the final invoice once we’ve made sure stock is available. Click here to see the shop.

This week’s Product menu  In our Recipe this week, Lynne has used black peppercorns. We sell wonderful, very pungent black peppercorns as well as red peppercorns and Szechuan pepper. We have ordered more of the sensational Grains of Paradise and will let you know when it arrives.

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 wonderfully exciting, 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. It’s quite easy if you know how. Click here for a map which shows where we park. We will be back at the market in Long Beach Mall, Sun Valley, Fish Hoek on Friday, May 4th.

Horst Frehse’s Table of Friendship at Azure Restaurant     What better way to spend a very stormy day than to have a very gemütlich lunch at a smart hotel with a sea view, so you can watch the storm sweep in from across the Atlantic. Last Thursday, at the very beginning of a sensational and very early Cape storm, we drove though sheets of rain to the Twelve Apostles Hotel at Oudekraal to have a warm and friendly lunch at Azure with Horst Frehse, the General Manager of the Hotel, at one of his regular Table of Friendship lunches. We were also joined by Peter Finlayson, winemaker at Bouchard Finlayson. Lynne had some stimulating conversation with Nils Flaatten, CEO of Wesgro, who have taken over the task previously performed by Cape Town Routes Unlimited. As we believe we’re out there on the cutting edge of tourism, promoting the food and wine of the Cape in MENU, doing wine tours and working in markets where we meet many, many different nationalities, we have opinions and positive solutions on how to promote our beautiful city. So, thankfully, does Mr Flaatten. At John’s end of the table were the charming Lungile Nhlanhla, the junior food editor of DRUM magazine, and award winning wildlife photographer Daryl Balfour. We remembered Lungi as a contestant in Masterchef SA last year. A delicious lunch was prepared by Head Chef Michael McIntyre and we drank Bouchard Finlayson wines with each course. Click here to see the photographs.

A Savage launch     Thursday night, with the storm still raging, we drove through to Kuils River to the Langverwagt venue for the launch of Duncan Savage’s own range of wines. Duncan is the renowned winemaker at Cape Point Vineyards in Noordhoek and was now ready to release his Savage wines. The function venue belongs to members of his family and is very large and attractive. The launch was a gathering of a large number of the great and the good of the wine world, plus many members of Duncan’s wider family. Duncan has released two wines – there are 5000 bottles of 2012 Savage White, which is a blend of Sauvignon Blanc and Semillon in his classic crisp and elegant style. It has sweet fruit notes resting on top of crisp long flavours of granadilla and lime, marmalade and vanilla. The 2011 Savage Red is a blend of Shiraz Grenache and Cinsault and only has 12½% alcohol. Dark toasted wood, liquorice, cinnamon and black pepper on the nose, it is full of soft sweet red fruit with a salty liquorice and pepper end. Even rarer there is only 3000 bottles of this first release wine so order some now. Cellar door price of the wines is R180 per bottle, white and red. Contact Duncan here. We had a marvellous buffet dinner at a very long table in the old cellar. Click here to see the photographs. And the rain held off all through the evening.

Fancy some Gourmet Vegetarian?     Rhonda Watson is a very talented vegetarian private chef, who lives in Kommetjie and does catering in people’s homes. We met Rhonda when she was selling her wares at Long Beach Mall market. She wanted us to taste her cooking, so invited us to come to dinner last Friday after the market. We had a wonderful evening, as we both like eating this sort of food very much, although we will never be vegetarians. As a seasoned professional, she had done all her preparation beforehand and was able to spend much of the evening eating and talking with us while she quickly whipped up a feast. We took along a bottle of Bloemendal Suider Terras 2009 Sauvignon blanc and it went extremely well with all the food. If you would like her to cook some excellent vegetarian fare for you, you can contact her on: rcwprivatechef@gmail.com  Click here to see the photographs of the food and the evening.

Buy Organic in the market     There is a new organic vegetable stand behind us at the Biscuit Mill and it so distresses us to see that they are not being supported by customers. Surely this is exactly what you want to buy? Lynne has bought some great fresh peppadews from them and served these in a curry this week. And...(she doesn’t really want to tell you about this as you might take all of them) she has bought some superbly fresh organic farm eggs with blindingly orange yolks. She has tasted their freshly pulped organic apple juice and see their beautiful carrots and beetroot and preserves and bottles of fresh vegetable soup. Come and help them stay at the Biscuit mill by buying something from them.

Off to see the gardens at Klein Optenhorst     Klein Optenhorst wine farm in Wellington has one of the most beautiful gardens in the Cape and, luckily, you can visit them this weekend as they have open days on Saturday and Sunday – 9.30 to 4.30. The R35 entrance fee will also get you homemade scones with cream and tea; 2011 Klein Optenhorst Brut Rosé will be available for sale by the glass and by the bottle and there will be an art and pottery exhibition. They will also have a sale of rare and unusual plants. Do let them know if you are coming, so they can bake enough scones. We are definitely going with friends on Sunday and hope to see lots of you there. See www.kleinoptenhorst.com/

Fun with food     Lynne has been having a lot of fun cooking in the last week. It started with the Masterchef method to cook the perfect steak and she made the ‘dry’ rub using onion, garlic herbs and black peppercorns blitzed with olive oil and then applied to the steaks as far ahead, if not overnight, as possible. They were stunningly good and we will definitely use this recipe again.  She had a lot of the rub left over and so this went into a Minestrone soup she made on Monday, which added huge amounts of flavour. When you make minestrone, remember to cook your onions till caramelising, then do the same with the celery, carrot and fennel. Then add the rest of the vegetables and cook them for only half to three quarters of an hour. Should you add tomatoes? Stock? Beans? Bacon? I think it is regional and entirely up to you..

Rhonda Watson gave us the rest of her green Thai curry paste, which went with cubes of beef, coconut cream and three hot peppadews last night – not one drop was left of this curry. It is interesting to note how Lynne finds the effects of different chillies. Some burn on the lips, others on the front of the tongue, others at the back of the throat and others are so hot your whole mouth is on fire. Peppadews made the mouth so hot it felt ice cold. Must be the brain playing tricks on the palate but the effect was good. John is much less affected – perhaps a legacy of being born in Durban.

Here is James Privit’s Masterchef recipe for you to try yourself. We used it on 2 Rib eye steaks rather than Sirloin and halved the recipe.

Dry Rub for Steak

2 medium onions, cut into chunks -12 cloves garlic - 3 tablespoons rosemary, leaves picked and finely chopped - 3 tablespoons thyme, leaves picked and finely chopped - 1 tablespoon dry sage - 3 tablespoons black peppercorns -4 tablespoons olive oil - Salt to taste - 4 x 250g sirloin steak

Place onion and garlic in a food processor and process until a mulch is formed. Transfer to a bowl.

Add rosemary, thyme and sage and combine. Using a mortar and pestle, crush the peppercorns so that they are not a powder but resemble a fine kibble. Add this to the marinade with the olive oil and some salt. Mix the marinade together, forming a paste. Massage marinade into the steaks and allow to sit covered in the fridge overnight (or at least 6 hours).

Food and wine (and a few other) events for you to enjoy

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 see what’s happening in our world of food and wine (and a few other cultural events), visit 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.

Learn about wine and cooking We receive 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 of Cathy’s WSET and other courses here and here and the CWA courses 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. Nadège Lepoittevin-Dasse has cooking classes in Fish Hoek and conducts cooking tours to Normandy. You can see more details here. Emma Freddi runs the Enrica Rocca cooking courses at her home in Constantia. Brett Nussey’s Stir Crazy courses are now being run from Dish Food and Social’s premises in Main Road Observatory (opposite Groote Schuur hospital).

24th April 2013

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 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. Our Avast! ^® Anti-Virus software is updated at least daily and our system is scanned continually for viruses.

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. We own our mailing software and keep our mailing list strictly confidential. 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.

Dinner with Rhonda

Lynne and Rhonda Watson discuss food and cooking

Our amuse of a miniature caprese salad topped with Rhonda’s homemade basil pesto

Rhonda in her tiny kitchen – it is amazing what you can do with very little equipment if you know what you are doing

Rhonda plating our two starters

First was a cake of ricotta on top of spinach served with a green salad and garlic bread

Delicious starter of blanched asparagus spears wrapped in pan fried haloumi cheese and tomatoes

A very small table for plating up the main course

which was a superb vegetable and tofu spicy Green Thai curry with fluffy jasmine rice. The vegetables ere green beans, broccoli and courgettes.  And Rhonda makes her own green Thai curry paste from 23 ingredients. We were given the leftover paste to take home

Dessert was rich chocolate mousse with cream, grated chocolate and pomegranate aruls

© John & Lynne Ford, Adamastor & Bacchus 2013