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Main Ingredient’s weekly E-Journal
Gourmet
Foods & Ingredients
Eat
In Guide’s Five time Outstanding Outlet Award Winner
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A bottle of Kleine Zalze MCC to welcome
us to Nobu
In
this week’s MENU:
Dinner with Colmant
MCC and Champagne at the Mount Nelson Muratie
Harvest Festival RMB
Starlight Concert Durbanville
Feast of the Grape Nobu
and Kleine Zalze Competitions Chargrilled
Aubergine and Courgette slices
We apologise for the late
arrival of this week's MENU. A huge number of events, with appropriate number
of words and photographs, coupled with a bit of load-shedding interference from
Escom, have made it inevitable.
Trying not to make you too
jealous, we are having the time of our lives at the moment and loving every
moment. It is a little exhausting but we are of the opinion that life is short,
so no snoozing - enjoy every possible minute. This has been a very busy week
with some superb events and there are yet more to come. We hope you too are out
there, enjoying life and what it has to offer you. In the Cape, there is plenty
happening that you can take part in and we hope you do check out our Events Calendar regularly and
plan your free time around some of the really remarkable events.
This week’s Product menu - You may think of lentils and
other pulses as winter food but they do make surprisingly good
salads The small green lentils (we'd recommend Puy lentils, but they are
currently unavailable) cook very quickly but stay whole and when warm you can
pour over a good vinaigrette and serve with cold meats. Bean salads are also a
good way of getting protein if you are a vegetarian. Check out our on line shop
for our full range of pulses, beans and rice.
If you can find it in the
supermarket, we don't usually stock it, just the products you would struggle to
find... Check our online shop to see more details and prices.
Dinner with
Colmant MCC and Champagne at the Mount Nelson Hotel The dear old Nellie has just had its 115th
birthday, so our weekend started very well with an invitation to come to the
Mount Nelson Hotel for the first of the series of Wine and Dine dinners that
they will be running through the coming year. Click here for the programme.
Executive Chef Rudi Liebenberg and Sommelier Pearl Oliver have teamed up with
some of the world's most talented winemakers, brew masters and whiskey
producers to bring you these delicious gastronomic evenings.
Chef Rudi and Pearl, who
invited us, had matched the seven course menu to compliment the MCC sparkling
wines of Jean-Philippe (JP) Colmant in Franschhoek, plus two champagnes from
France the Follet and the Tribault which JP represents in South Africa. Read on and see the pictures
Muratie Harvest
Festival Some of our wine farms radiate
the expense of money and sophistication and lots of bling. At others you can
see the long history and real tradition marked on all their walls, echoed in
their wines and carried on by their owners and staff. Muratie is one of the
latter and we love her for it. So missing her Harvest Festival each year is not
a option. This took place on the farm last weekend and we had a ball. Read on here and see the photos
RMB Starlight
Concert We left Muratie just after four and
travelled fast to Vergelegen wine farm for the Starlight concert. This annual
event is another highlight in the Cape calendar of events and it is also held
in Johannesburg. We are extremely lucky to be invited by Rand Merchant Bank and
absolutely love the experience. The Concert is ably marshalled by Conductor
Richard Cock and features some local and international talent which is a huge
cross section of the arts from classical music played by the Cape Town
Philharmonic orchestra, to dancing, both ballet and ballroom, choirs, opera,
puppetry and acrobats. Click here to read and see more
Durbanville
Feast of the Grape This very country style wine
festival took place last weekend on D'aria Farm and we went on Sunday. With
your entrance ticket costing only R50 you received a good quality glass and 10
coupons, which enabled you to taste the wines at the festival. More coupons
could be bought as needed. Shady marquees were put up all around the field
holding all the Durbanville wine farms involved, who had many of their wines to
taste and, between almost every wine farm, there was a food stand, often run by
that farm. They did very interesting tastings in a tent throughout the day and
we managed to get into two: One by Charles Hopkins, Cellarmaster of De Grendel,
on the Unusual & Rare Varieties grown in the Durbanville area and one by
Brandon Butler, winemaker at Nitida, on the white blends of the area. They had
a lot of wine on sale at special festival prices to take home or drink in situ and
the food on offer was also all reasonably priced. We had a lovely afternoon. Click here to learn more
Nobu and Kleine
Zalze We think Nobu is one of the very best
Japanese restaurants in Cape Town and love going there. So when we were invited
to a Kleine Zalze vertical tasting of their Chenin Blancs at Nobu, we were
rather enthusiastic . These wines were then all paired with seven courses of
beautiful food and the tasting was a delight. Have a look at what we ate and drank here
We have two very exciting competitions for you this
week
TASTE OF CAPE
TOWN This superb annual food show will take
place at the Green Point Cricket Club on the 3rd to the 6th
of April . Check out their
website for more details of who is attending this year.
We have ten pairs of standard entrance tickets to give away. Just answer
this simple question: How many years has Taste of Cape Town taken place,
including this year?
The first ten correct entries
will each win a pair of tickets, which will be sent to you by the organisers.
We will notify the winners.
and
ENTERTAINER CAPE
TOWN This is a large book full of money-off
coupons. We have been given a copy and are quite interested to see how many
good places the book contains. If you would like to win one, enter the
competition below.
- The NEW
Entertainer Cape Town 2014, available now as a printed book and a new
Smartphone App. Download the free App now (available from iTunes,
Blackberry World and Google Play) and access FREE trial offers for Le
Venue at The House of J.C. le Roux in Devon Valley, Stellenbosch and Tasca
de Belem on the V&A Waterfront.
- The full
Entertainer Cape Town product features over 850 buy one, get one free
offers for dining, leisure & beauty across Cape Town, including 120
international hotel offers, so you can save literally thousands of Rands.
From Beluga and De Grendel Wine Estate to Ratanga Junction and The Grand
Café & Beach, view the full list of participating merchants at https://www.theentertainerme.com/protected/Gallery/P14SACT.PDF
- Offers are valid 7
days a week, at all times (except public holidays). You don’t need to book
ahead and you can use up to 4 vouchers at one time, so eight people can
dine for the price of four!
- At just R
495, the Entertainer Cape Town could save you over R 520 000 this
year!
- To buy
your copy, or for more information, visit theentertainerafrica.com
Question: How many Buy One, Get One Free dining and
leisure offers are in the Entertainer Cape Town?
This week’s recipe is a very
summery one as lots of us are braaiing in the super late summer evenings
Chargrilled
Aubergine and Courgette slices
Take one large aubergine, cut
into 2 cm thick slices, salt both sides and leave to drain in a colander for
half an hour. Top and tail 6 medium courgettes and slice in half lengthways.
Wash salt off the aubergine slices, pat dry with kitchen paper, then put them
and the courgette halves on a braai grid. Sprinkle with flaked salt and freshly
ground black pepper. Put over a hot fire. Turn over after 4 minutes and
continue cooking until they are softening and ready. Put them on a plate and
sprinkle with some good olive oil and garlic and serve. You can also do
mushrooms this way but do add the oil and garlic before cooking them. You could
sprinkle all these vegetables with smoked Spanish Paprika for a more intense
flavour.
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. 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, then you pay and then we deliver or post. 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. Click here to see our OnLine Shop.
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. Events outside the Western Cape are listed here.
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. Karen Glanfield has taken
over the UnWined
wine appreciation courses from Cathy. See the details here
Chez Gourmet in Claremont has a programme of cooking classes. A calendar of their classes can be seen 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
7th March 2014
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 online shop 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 and standard 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! ®
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