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Thursday, July 25, 2013

Bennett Street venue launch

A welcome glass of Rickety Bridge with a rare picture of the photographer at his craft – see in the mirror

Sean Skibbe, winemaker at South Hill, telling us about his wines

A guest with a blue lagoon

and the whisky tasting

Lots of takers for the World's Most Awarded Single Malt – Glenfiddich

Guests were function organisers, travel trade professionals, film and ad agency people, conference organisers and some media

Chris von Ulmenstein with one of the friendly Gold staff and a platter of sweet and spicy paper-wrapped prawns (filo actually)

The upstairs terrace where the smokers congregated

Everybody enjoying the event

TA DA! The opening ceremony of the Bennett Street function venue.

In the plastic bubble, an electronic violin player, next to a table set for a celebration dinner, as an example of what they offer

The Violinist was very, very good

Behind the table, a nice comfortable seating area with couches and comfortable chairs and, behind that, the long bar

Launching their venue, Kevin King and Jan van Huysteen

The bar, fully stocked

The dance floor, with seating all around, and it has an upstairs section as well

The view of the room from the upper level. Note all the interchangeable lighting

And in another area, a formal dining area

or space for smaller more intimate functions

The manager tells us what the venue has to offer

Cindy Muller tells us what Gold can add to your experience

We were treated to a drumming performance by the Gold staff

The Mali puppets

African singing and dances

Kevin King introduces us to their short film, which you need to see as it shows all the many different applications for which the venue has been and can be used

Downstairs, below the Function venue, is an open space at street level for holding product launches, photographic sessions, art exhibitions etc.

KWV Mentors tasting

La Concorde in Paarl, KWV Headquarters

The Mentors wine range - all with screw caps

The table set for the tasting

Brand Manager Tania Theron-Joubert introduces the wines. Maryna Strachan, editor of Wine Extra pays attention

The first flight, the white wines, to be followed by the reds

The wood-panelled tasting venue

and the adjacent lounge

We were offered a glass of Laborie MCC, but pressure of time and driving were against it

Thursday, July 18, 2013

130718 Main Ingredient's MENU - Happy birthday Madiba, Cooking vegetables, Andy’s sushi, Bulk wine exports

Main Ingredient’s weekly E-Journal

Gourmet Foods & Ingredients

Eat In Guide’s Five time Outstanding Outlet Award Winner

www.mainingredient.biz - http://www.adamastorbacchus.com/ http://www.adamastorphotos.com/

+27 21 439 3169 / +27 83 229 1172

Click here to Subscribe to MENU or to contact us

A Franschhoek winter sunset

In this week’s MENU:

Cooking vegetables

Andy’s sushi

Bulk wine exports

Happy birthday Madiba

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

This week’s Product menu: We expect to pick up another order of Prego sauce tomorrow. Duck fat is back in stock and we have a good supply of chestnuts and chestnut purées. The French Fallot “mustards with attitude” are still popular and the prices have not changed - yet.

Buying from us On Line 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 which you are unlikely to find elsewhere in South Africa. You can contact us by email or phone, or through our on line shop. We can send your requirements to you anywhere in South Africa. 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.

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.

To the man for whom we have huge respect and love, Nelson Mandela: Happy Birthday Tata. May you feel loved and appreciated, you have given so much to South Africa.

Different ways of cooking vegetables As we have mentioned before, Lynne’s mission this winter is to cram as many vegetables into our diet as possible. She hopes that when we eat all this warming winter comfort food, at least we will be getting less calories and more nutrition. But eating steamed beans and boiled carrots alongside a dish can get very boring, so we find that we have to be really creative in how we cook with them. Obviously one way is to put them into every soup and stew you are making – start with a conventional mirepoix: onion, carrot, celery, and then add others, chopped up. Don’t ignore spinach, it is great in soup, whether baby leaves, Swiss chard or other green leaves. When making Bolognaise ragout, Lynne adds grated carrots (as you should) but also puts in grated courgettes, celery and you can even put in grated parsnips.

But looking at each vegetable individually, there are many ways of making them more appealing. Turn peas into a pea puree, braise fennel in some stock, do the same with baby leeks, roast small onions with sun dried tomatoes, make vegetable spaghetti with grated carrots and courgettes and then steam them quickly in the microwave. Poach baby carrots in a little stock and butter till they are just done. One super simple dish is a roasted and stuffed butternut – use other vegetables, nuts and pumpkin seeds for texture.

The easy way to roast a butternut, a squash or an aubergine is to prick them all over with a knife then cook for a few minutes on full power in the microwave until they are soft. Then scoop out the flesh and prepare in a way you like. If you start softening aubergine like this for just a few minutes, you will find you need much less oil when you come to fry it. We love mashed butternut with butter, salt and pepper and a grating of nutmeg.

We love spices and often prepare vegetables using Asian recipes. Fry some onions until caramelised, throw in some baby spinach until just wilted and then scatter over some garam masala.

What we made last night to serve with some good country boerewors (sausage) was Champ. Make some good creamy mash. Finely slice about two cupfuls of green cabbage and two leeks. Braise them in some water and a little butter and then stir them into the mash, and season. You can use spring onions instead of leeks. Cook Savoy cabbage the same way and add a teaspoonful of caraway seeds.

And don’t forget the age old Stamppot from Holland. Put a mixture of carrots, potatoes, onions, leeks, kale or cabbage, turnips, parsnips, butternut or squash in a pot, add seasoning. Just cover with water and top with a large smoked sausage (Rookworst). Cook until the vegetables are just soft. The sausage will flavour the dish. Remove it, mash the veg and serve it with slices of the sausage on top. Now this is comfort food at its best.

Go on, be adventurous, the supermarkets are full of wonderful fresh vegetables at this time of year.

We found Andy Sometimes, when there is a new restaurant in your neighbourhood, you hear an undercurrent of comments. We had heard mutters of ”Tiny new restaurant in Sea Point, ex Willoughby’s chef, does the same food but at about a third of the price” but they didn’t know exactly where it was. Interested, we told friends who are fans of Willoughby’s and they had heard about it independently from someone else. So the search began. On the net, only a restaurant which was opened in 1996 and wasn’t there anymore. We don’t often drive down Main Road so we asked other friends to look for us and then we found him. It is a very tiny shop indeed in The Firmont, the old El Rio building on the Signal Hill side corner of Main and Firmount Roads, right next door to where Kebab Mahal used to be.

So, today at 1 we arrived, just as another winter storm was hitting Sea Point, to find that we were only the second customer. We were closely followed by someone ordering a take-away. As we could tell from the impressively printed full colour menus, Andy was indeed once a sushi chef at Willoughby’s and his food is very similar to the fresh seafood salads and sushi they serve. As it was so cold, we all decided to start with soup. Two of us ordered the Tom Yum, which is vegetarian, and the other two ordered hot and sour with prawns. All were packed full of fresh Asian flavours and heat. The Tom Yum had fresh tomato slices in it, straw mushrooms, fresh cucumber and Chinese cabbage and was delicious. Lynne loved the unusual tomato and we will definitely add this when we make some at home. The hot and sour was classic, nice and chilli hot and had several prawns. The bowls are large and generous. We ordered two large different platters of sushi and the four of us shared them. Good fresh fish, nicely prepared, with perhaps a touch too much vinegar in the rice, but that is a personal taste preference, not a criticism. Our delight was that Andy was offering a 30% discount on the sushi as an opening special and our bill was really very reasonable. It is NOT a third of Willoughby’s price but you will not spend a fortune. We took along wine and he did not charge us corkage. He uses Paris goblets. Click here to see the pictures. We are planning a return visit soon and hope that Andy becomes a fixture in Sea Point with your and our support. His English is not good, but he says his wife (who was not there today) does speak it well.

Bulk wine exports According to Wines of South Africa, bulk wine represents 66% of the wine exported from this country this year. Total wine exports are up 40% on last year, helped by the relative weakness of the Rand against other currencies, but our growing reputation for good quality has helped. It is indeed fortunate that wine which has been bottled and labelled at source is showing healthy growth in export sales. We believe that, while the income from bulk wine (exported in large tanks and bottled and labelled at the export destination) is welcome to the producers, it is also very dangerous to our wine industry. Reports on our wines in international publications, like the Wine Spectator feature we mentioned last week, are boosting our reputation, but too much of the South African wine on supermarket shelves in other countries is bottled under labels none of us would recognise and under conditions which are beyond the control of the producer. We have tried a few of them and the quality was such that the consumer’s impression would be of a cheap and nasty product. Su Birch, WOSA CEO, believes that the growth in bulk wine exports is not sustainable, as the world supply will return to a better balance in 2014. We hope she is right, because our impression is that they are not good for our wine industry in the long term.

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. It needs updating and we’ll do that tomorrow. 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. We plan to visit their French establishment after Vinexpo. 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). Lynn Angel runs the Kitchen Angel cooking school and does private dinners at her home. She holds hands-on cooking classes for small groups on Monday and Wednesday evenings. She trained with Raymond Blanc, and has been a professional chef for 25 years. More info here

18^th July 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.

Andy's - a new sushi venue in Sea Point

It is a very tiny shop indeed - in The Firmont, the old El Rio building on the Signal Hill side corner of Main and Firmount Roads, right next door to where Kebab Mahal used to be

Andy was indeed once a sushi chef at Willoughby’s and his food is very similar to the fresh seafood salads and sushi they serve

A small place, with simple decor

We took along wine and he did not charge us corkage. He uses Paris goblets

The Tom Yum had fresh tomato slices in it, straw mushrooms, fresh cucumber and Chinese cabbage and was delicious

The hot and sour was classic, nice and chilli hot and had several prawns. The bowls are large and generous

We ordered two large different platters of sushi and the four of us shared them. Good fresh fish, nicely prepared, with perhaps a touch too much vinegar in the rice, but that is a personal taste preference, not a criticism

Our delight was that Andy was offering a 30% discount on the sushi as an opening special and our bill was really very reasonable. It is NOT a third of Willoughby’s price but you will not spend a fortune

We hope that Andy becomes a fixture in Sea Point with your and our support

Friday, July 12, 2013

130711 Main Ingredient's MENU - Lanzerac Womens' Day preview, Wine Spectator on SA

Main Ingredient’s weekly E-Journal

Gourmet Foods & Ingredients

Eat In Guide’s Five time Outstanding Outlet Award Winner

www.mainingredient.biz - http://www.adamastorbacchus.com/ http://www.adamastorphotos.com/

+27 21 439 3169 / +27 83 229 1172

Click here to Subscribe to MENU or to contact us

The Lanzerac manor house under a winter sky

In this week’s MENU:

Sampling luxury at Lanzerac

Pot roast chicken

Wine Spectator in praise of South African wine

This week’s Product menu: The exchange rate is biting. We have already had some massive price increases, especially on French poultry products (we were warned a while ago) and we are seeing rises on some of the more ordinary products as well. The adage “buy while stocks last” was never more true. We are also seeing the more slow-moving products being discontinued, and we have started to remove some of these items, like aged balsamics, from our online shop. We saw the increases on the shelves in France and the dip in the value of our own currency amplifies the effect. One of the wine dealers who imports wines from Europe has discontinued all imported labels for the present.

Buying from us on Line 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 which you are unlikely to find elsewhere in South Africa. You can contact us by email or phone, or through our on line shop. We can send your requirements to you anywhere in South Africa. 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.

Ramadan is upon us. We wish all our Muslim readers well over the month of fasting. We hope you will enjoy peace and good health.

Sampling a little luxury at Lanzerac? You can too. Staying at a five star hotel is something we all love to do but, with the recession, we find sometimes that the budget just doesn’t stretch that far. So we look for great bargains and, often in winter, we find superb offers that are too good to miss. Being in the media also helps us as we are very fortunate to get invited to some of them, often because of the Klink awards. We will be doing a few others over the next few weeks.

Last Friday, we and several other members of the media sampled an event that will start on Women’s Day, Friday August 9th at Lanzerac Hotel and Spa. Hosted by Jenny Morris, the very popular Giggling Gourmet, they have organised an absolutely fun and luxury filled event. You will enjoy a three course gourmet dinner paired with Lanzerac wines, 5 star luxury accommodation, a hearty hotel breakfast and a cook off between Jenny and talented chef Stephen Fraser on Saturday morning, which you will be able to enjoy as a light lunch with the Estate’s newly released Mrs English Chardonnay, before setting off home with a complimentary goodie bag. And all this for the amazing price of R1 250 per person. Places are limited, so get your booking in NOW. For reservations and queries contact 021 887 1132 or res@lanzerac.co.za. To see what we did, what we ate and drank, where we stayed and how much we enjoyed it (and we most certainly did), click here. While you are there, you could also take advantage of their Spa, prices are on their web site and this must be booked. Please note, this is not part of the offer.

This week’s recipe is for a pot roasted chicken. Lynne uses a romertopf, a clay pot with a lid the same size as the base, which you soak in water for half an hour before putting in the chicken, spices, herbs on a base of vegetables and roasting for about an hour. The chicken comes out beautifully moist. You can remove the lid and crisp up the chicken at the end, but the best thing about this is that all the wonderful chicken juices help to cook and flavour the vegetables beneath it and produce a rich gravy. You don’t need a romertopf, you can use a heavy casserole with a tight lid, like Le Creuset, and you can choose your own mix of vegetables and accompanying flavours. You do not have to add any oil or fat to the vegetables, as the chicken has enough to moisten the dish. You can season the chicken with just salt and freshly ground black pepper or any combination of spices you like. Paprika, celery salt and za’atar are a great mix, so is ras al hanout, which will give the dish a Moroccan flavour, or you can use a favourite rub. Despite the fact that you are putting a whole bulb of garlic into the dish, it will be roasted and mild. You can peel it or leave it in its skin.

Pot Roast Chicken on a bed of Winter Vegetables

1 free range organic chicken – 1 bulb of garlic, split into cloves – 1 lemon cut in half – a bouquet garni (tie together with string, sprigs of thyme, rosemary and oregano wrapped in two bay leaves. Leave a long end to make it easier to fish out after cooking) – 1 sprig of rosemary and 2 of thyme – 1 T of olive oil – seasoning to taste

Roughly chopped and peeled onions, carrots, celery, fennel, turnips, butternut, parsnips, leeks courgettes, or what you like best or have in the house.

Place the vegetables in the base of the pot with the bouquet garni. Season lightly. Put in most of the garlic with the vegetables but keep about 6 aside to put inside the chicken. Rub the chicken all over with the oil, then season it well inside and out with your chosen seasonings. Put one half of the lemon inside the chicken with the garlic, a sprig of rosemary and thyme. Rest the chicken on the vegetables. Squeeze the other half of the lemon over the chicken and add two tablespoons of water to the vegetables. Set the oven to 180°C and roast closed for half an hour. Baste the chicken and add a little water if there is no liquid in the bottom of the pan. Close the pot and roast for another half an hour or until the chicken is cooked and starting to fall apart. Drain off the juices and use as gravy. Portion the chicken and serve with the vegetables. We like separately roasted potatoes with this but you can add your potatoes to the other vegetables.

Wine Spectator’s July Cover story is all about South African wines. We quote: “South Africa's challenge is to meet the future without abandoning the best of the past. It's a balancing act, and a difficult one. The nation is making better wines than ever thanks to new plantings and the best of old-vine vineyards... This profoundly beautiful wine region is finding a new path to quality in the post-apartheid era. How a new generation is reshaping South Africa’s destiny, fuelled by a flood of energy, technology and investment”. South Africa: An Emerging Giant. Their senior editor, James Molesworth, spent two weeks visiting wine producers in the Cape. He wrote a series of blogs about his trip, which make interesting reading. In the article they list 535 wines and give them scores between 95 and 79. We are proponents of the system of scoring out of 20, because scores out of 100 imply a precision which can never be entirely accurate, given the personal and subjective nature of the process of tasting and scoring wine. So we read them as scores between 19 and 16. We have published the list in a blog, and added the ratings the wines received in Platter (they don’t always agree) and approximate South African prices. See it here.

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

11^th July 2013

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

About us

MENU, our weekly email newsletter, started as an advertising medium for Main Ingredient, our specialist retail grocery business. We opened our Sea Point shop in December 2002 because realised that there was a place in South Africa for a grocer catering to people with sophisticated tastes and needs. We moved the shop on line in 2010, but discontinued it in 2015, having decided that it is time to “retire” and concentrate on our writing, photography and tour guiding. MENU has a wide circulation and is read nationally and internationally.

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