Peruvian inspiration for dinner with Martin Moore at Durbanville Hills

Taste your way around the World   Durbanville Hills Wines are taking guests on an eight-week journey to discover the foods and cultures of countries from around the world - paired with Durbanville Hills wines and typical cuisine from New Zealand, Spain and the other countries which their winemakers have visited, while promoting the wines of Durbanville Hills. These culinary journeys are happening on Wednesday evenings until September 3rd. Your tour guide might be Cellarmaster Martin Moore, whose business travels inspired these tastings, red winemaker Wilhelm Coetzee or white winemaker Gunther Kellerman – all are avid cooks. The cost is R280 per person. Contact Simone Brown at sibrown@durbanvillehills.co.za or 021 558 1300 to book or visit the website for more information

We had been invited to try last night’s journey to the food of Peru and we had a ball. Recent food fashions dictated that we have all had to discover Vietnamese food, then it was Spain and el Bulli, then foraging with the Scandinavians. Now, according to Martin, Peruvian food is going to be the next big thing world-wide. Many of the ingredients we eat today originated in South and Central America, like chillies, peppers, potatoes, tomatoes, maize, avocados, quinoa (pronounced keenwa) and chocolate. We quote: “Foods that were prepared by ancient civilizations are still enjoyed today, while typical Peruvian dishes have also benefited from European, African and Asian influences. Peru's geographic characteristics yield diverse ingredients: abundant seafood from the Pacific, tropical fruits from the jungle and unusual varieties of grains and potatoes from the Andes”. We have eaten some Peruvian food at Keenwa restaurant in town and enjoyed it very much, so it was with a keen sense of anticipation that we sat down to dinner with Martin Moore, our able guide … READ ON......

Sunset over Durbanville and down to the sea at Blaauwberg

Welcoming faces in the tasting room

A very good welcome was the Pisco sour, Peru’s famous cocktail

We all gather kin the reception area, before going upstairs to the restaurant for dinner

Taking our places at the long table

Martin Moore explains the food of Peru and tells of his many trips there on business. After three trips, he fell in love with the people and the food. It is a culinary adventure, he says

He tells us of the amazing diversity of Peru. There are 32 officially recognized climatic regions in the world. Peru has 28, from the dry desert coastline through the tropics, right up to the high Andes.

A line up of glasses to be filled with Durbanville Hills wine to match the food

Chef Louisa Greeff did a marvellous job, producing Peruvian food with little experience and many recipes from the internet. Ingredients were also a challenge to source

Martin introduces her to us

We learn more details of Peru. Lynne makes notes

The interesting menu

Our first course arrives:  Papa a la Huancaina (not ‘The father of the hurricane’ as Lynne assumed, but the more prosaic "Huancayo style potatoes" ! )

A mild cheese is added to a sauce,  which is mixed with a nice kick of warm chilli and other spices. The sauce is then thickened with ground salty crackers! This is poured over sliced boiled potatoes and topped with a hard boiled egg and some salty olive slices. It is served cold. Sounds ordinary? It wasn’t. Full of flavour and a really good compliment to the earthy potatoes. Might be worth trying at home. Peru has hundreds of varieties of potato. Paired with the Durbanville Hills Chardonnay which added a little roundness and sweetness to the dish

The next course, Anticuchos, is street food on every corner in Peru. Well flavoured grilled meat on a skewer, served with grilled corn. You might find that your lunch is guinea pig, or other rare meat. We were served beef and it was very tender and nicely cooked. The grill burn on the corn is also great, as it caramelises the corn. Nicely paired with the full fruit Rhinofields Pinotage

Martin tells us the story of Ceviche, fish ‘cooked’ in lime or other citrus juice. It was an Incan dish but, apparently, was improved immeasurably by the arrival of Japanese immigrants in the last century The sauce that cooks the raw fish is known as Leche de Tigre (tiger’s milk). This is added only just before serving

It was served with some corn, and a slice of potato. Nice lime flavour on tender morsels of fresh raw fish. And it went so well with the Rhinofields Sauvignon Blanc, that Lynne was motivated to buy 6 bottles to take home.

The next dish was not a poem on the plate, but it was pure comfort food. Aji de Galina is shredded chicken in a thick sauce, with garlic walnuts and cheese and is served on basmati rice. Lovely with the Rhinofields Chardonnay

And then came dessert. Pionono is described as jelly rolls and was the lightest swiss sponge filled with jam and cream and some dolche de leche, which is caramelised condensed milk - a South American fixation found everywhere there. And on our supermarket shelves too! We were served Rhinofields absolutely delicious Noble Late Harvest and couldn’t decide which we liked more, the dessert or this sweet honeyed wine

The entrance to the  winery at night

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© John & Lynne Ford, Adamastor & Bacchus 2014

140724 Main Ingredient's MENU - 10 yrs Saronsberg Shiraz, Steenberg, De Grendel's new chardonnay, Dynasty Chinese

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The Sea Point beachfront with a gathering storm and a “hat” on Lion’s Head – a sure sign of turbulent weather

In this week’s MENU:

 Launch of a big Chardonnay at De Grendel in Durbanville

 Tasting 10 vintages of Saronsberg Shiraz

 Steenberg wines at Bistro 1682

 This week’s Recipe: Poached chicken

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

 Learn about wine and cooking

To get the whole of our story, please click on READ ON..... at the end of each paragraph, which will lead you to the related blog, with pictures and more words. At the end of each blog, click on RETURN TO MENU to come back to the blog version of MENU.

This week’s Product menu – The fourth season of The Great British Bake Off starts this week. If you are inspired, we do stock Nielsen Massey real extracts: Vanilla Bean paste, Vanilla, Orange, Lemon, Almond, Chocolate, Coffee, Mint, Rose Water and Orange Blossom Water. ................. See them all here

We’ve enjoyed three completely different wine tastings this week combined with three completely different restaurant lunches

Launch of a big Chardonnay at De Grendel in Durbanville     De Grendel’s wines always impress, the restaurant produces very good food and the farm has one of the best views of Table Bay and the mountain in the country. On Tuesday we were invited to taste the wine ‘Op die Berg’ 2013 Chardonnay, paired with a three course menu prepared by chef Ian Bergh and his team who are all on show in their open kitchen.  READ ON....

Tasting 10 vintages of Saronsberg Shiraz      We feel very privileged when we are invited to this sort of tasting. Saronsberg winemaker Dewaldt Heyns took us through the ten vintages of their Shiraz at Auslese this week, followed by lunch with our favourites. To see the progression of this wine on one table is amazing and very, very interesting. It started out as a big, full on spicy, warm Shiraz and, as the vines have aged, it has turned into a Northern Rhône style shiraz, full of minerality and refined layers of flavours, but still recognisable as the same wine. Lynne had two very different favourites, the award winning block buster from 2007 and the elegant 2010. Hard to believe that they are from the same vines, but what a marvellous progression. We have all asked if we can do this again in another 10 years so that we can taste 20 years of the wines progress! Here’s hoping we will all still be around tasting wine.  READ ON....

Steenberg wines at Bistro 1682     Another one of those terrible days. Storm sweeping an from the North West, we headed off to Steenberg to meet Marketing manager Caroline van Schalkwyk in the tasting lounge, where she warmly welcomed us with a glass of their new Sauvignon Blanc bubbly. Not an MCC, not enough time on the lees, more of a Prosecco fresh and crisp, a sparkly style. Then we sat down and tasted through some of their other wines before going through to the restaurant for what turned out to be a very long lunch indeed. Were we having a good time? Yes, you bet, or we might have left at a decent hour. And we were captivated by Chef Brad Ball’s food from his new Bistro style menu.  READ ON....

Building a Dynasty     We do try to support our local Sea Point restaurants as often as we can, despite being invited out to many others all over the Cape. Dynasty is where we go the most, it is close to home, we know them well now and if Lynne doesn’t feel like cooking or gets a longing for good sushi or excellent authentic Chinese food, it is to Dynasty that we go. They are in the Nedbank Building on the Corner of Kloof Road and Irwinton road. We thought you might like to see their food.  READ ON....

How to Poach a Chook     Not so much a recipe this week as a cooking suggestion. Determined to recreate the really moist chicken at De Grendel, Lynne happened to watch one of the closing episodes of Masterchef Professional Australia, where they cooked a whole chicken in a very different way. We are definitely going to try this out this weekend and thought you might like to hear about the method and try it yourself. But we offer no guarantees that it will work for us, or for you.

You need a huge pot of what they call a Master Stock. Enviably, Brad at 1682 has one that is 8 years old. Many other chefs have their own too. Ours will be as aged as it takes to assemble it. Here is the recipe from the internet:

Masterchef Master Stock

600ml light soy sauce – 1 litre good chicken stock - ½ bottle sake (or you can use Shao Xin rice wine) - 1 tsp ground star anise – 1½ cinnamon sticks - 1 large knob ginger, chopped - 4 garlic cloves, chopped - 2 cups caster sugar - ½ orange, pared zest

And here is Matt Preston’s recipe for poaching the chicken:

HOW TO POACH A WHOLE CHICKEN

HERE'S how to simply poach your chook for that delicate softer-set flesh using a simpler version of the steps taught to me by Peter Gilmore of Quay in Sydney.

Step 1) Buy a 1.5kg bird - the best you can afford. The quality of the flesh will shine through with this form of poaching. First check the bird's cavity and remove the giblets if included. Now rinse the bird inside and out and dry using kitchen towel or a spotlessly clean tea towel.

Step 2) Pick a pot with a lid that will comfortably hold the bird without swamping it. Now bring three litres of stock or a 2:1 ratio mixture of stock and water with your choice aromatics to the boil. Have a kettle of freshly boiled water handy. Slip the bird in breast side down into the pot so the stock covers it. Add more boiling water from the kettle, if needed, to cover the chook.

Step 3) Remove the pot from the heat, bang on the lid and leave for an hour. Do not let the chook sit in the pot until the stock goes cold but remove it from the stock after an hour and place in the fridge to cool. After an hour or so the barely poached pink chook flesh will be ready to pull apart for salads or popping in a pie. Just rub the chook all over with a little sesame oil, cut into segments and serve with boiled rice and steamed bok choi for a healthy meal. Served this way, the chook is perfect with my spring onion relish or red chilli relish - see www.taste.com.au

It's not an exact science but, for a larger bird, I use more stock and leave it in the stock 15 minutes longer.

As they say on The Great British Bake Off, “COOK!” That fabulous show’s third season is back this weekend and Lynne, who rarely bakes, will be glued to the TV for the whole enjoyable series.

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 type of event 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 list of wine and food pairing dinners, list of Special events with wine and/or food connections, list of Wine Shows and Tastings and list of special dinner events. All the events are listed in date order and we 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

The Hurst Campus, an accredited school for people who want to become professional chefs, will soon start a new series of short courses in baking. Check the ad in our blog page or see the details here

Chez Gourmet in Claremont has a programme of cooking classes. A calendar of their classes can be seen here.

In addition to the new Sense of Taste Culinary Arts School, Chef Peter Ayub runs a four module course for keen home cooks at his Maitland complex. Details here

Nadège Lepoittevin-Dasse has French cooking classes in Noordhoek 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 Thursday evenings and she has decided to introduce LCHF (Banting classes). The Kitchen Confidence classes, which focus on essential cooking skills and methods, have been expanded and are now taught over 2 evenings. She continues to host private dining and culinary team building events at her home. She trained with Raymond Blanc, and has been a professional chef for 25 years. More info here

24th July 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! ^® Anti-Virus software is updated at least daily and our system is scanned continually for viruses.

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Launch of De Grendel's big, new Op Die Berg Chardonnay in Durbanville

De Grendel’s wines always impress; the restaurant produces very good food, the wines are excellent and the farm has one of the best views of Table Bay and the mountain. On Tuesday, we joined a group of wine and food writers to taste this wine, ‘Op die Berg’ 2013 Chardonnay, paired with a three course menu prepared by chef Ian Bergh and his team, who are all on show in their open kitchen

The Chardonnay grown on this Durbanville farm has been used in The Winifred, their recently discontinued white blend, and their MCC, which is where they will continue using it. The Chardonnay vines on their Ceres farm are now ready and their grapes have been improving so much over recent years that they wanted to produce it on its own. The wine is big and bold, leesy, with perfume and slight smoke on the nose. It has been in oak for 8 months and has a full, rich mouthful of buttery golden delicious apples, then marmalade, followed by some dark toasted oak, which will soften with time. It has long, defined flavours and goes very well with food

The sad news is that this Chardonnay means the sacrifice of The Winifred blend of chardonnay, Semillon and Viognier. We are trying to encourage them to try to continue making this elegant wine which we love, by finding or growing some more chardonnay!

The tasting room terrace has wonderful views of Cape Town

We met in the private dining room and were welcomed by Restaurant manager Gerrie Dreyer with a glass of their own MCC, 2012 vintage, which is is a blend of 76% Chardonnay and 24% Pinot Noir and is beautifully crisp and appley

Public Relations for De  Grendel is handled by Errieda du Toit, who is quite famous for her work with Kokkedoor, the Afrikaans TV cooking programme, which resembles Masterchef in some ways. She has edited the Kokkedoor cookbooks

Lynne chatting to old friends from the media, Michael Olivier and Graham Howe

The wine is poured and we await our first course at the beautifully laid table

The Chardonnay ready on the table, a serving of water is poured

Chef Ian Bergh explains the menu and the pairings

takes questions

and generates some amusement

Winemaker Elzette du Preez has been with Cellarmaster Charles Hopkins at De Grendel for 8 years. She trained at Elsenberg and worked at Backsberg for 6 years before joining the team at De Grendel. Here she tells us all about the wine

Rapt attention - lots of questions followed

Maryna Strachan of Wine Extra listens intently to Elzette

A toast to this new wine

is echoed by all

The menu. Printed in red at the bottom are the tasting notes for the wine which Chef Ian Bergh used to pair the food.

The starter was super soft poached chicken breast in a lovely, gentle but savoury, chardonnay velouté - accompanied by tortellini filled with pea purée, which was also on the plate, as were courgette ribbons. A lovely mix of flavours and textures, but the star was the moist chicken. Peas are a very good match for this wooded chardonnay. A very sophisticated dish

De Grendel has flocks of geese around their dam

The absolutely superb main course. On discussion with the chef, Lynne learned that the crayfish had been cooked sous vide, which accounted for its tenderness and the marvellous flavour of the sea. Bravo! So many people ruin this luxury by overcooking it. The sea bass was also perfectly cooked - moist and flaky. The whole dish, balanced on a slightly al dente risotto, was cooked in a stock reduction made from all the roasted shells of the seafood and chardonnay. A triumph. And another perfect match for the Chardonnay, especially the slightly smoky flavour from the roasted shells.

Graham Howe and Errieda enjoying the day

De Grendel has a wedding chapel on its hill

Relaxed members of the media over a great lunch

So simply and beautifully presented: dessert was a small slice of rich pear frangipani tart with apple slices, vanilla ice cream and some dulce de leche (condensed milk) with some toasted crumbs for texture. This was served with the Chardonnay and with a small glass of the De Grendel Noble Late Harvest Sauvignon Blanc 2012 (with 190 g/l sugar), which is full of litchi, citrus, apricot and peach, spice and honey.

The wonderful view of the city and our mountain from De Grendel

A quote we like from their web site: “De Grendel Restaurant is 100 percent South African. Farm produce and ingredients, sourced from local suppliers, are given an inventive, modern edge. Home-grown South African chefs and staff are employed and trained to international standards, generating jobs for local people.”

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© John & Lynne Ford, Adamastor & Bacchus 2014

Sea Point's Dynasty Chinese restaurant

We do try to support our local Sea Point Restaurants as often as we can, despite being invited out to many others all over the Cape. Dynasty is where we go the most, it is close to home, we know them well now and if Lynne doesn't feel like cooking or gets a longing for good sushi or excellent authentic Chinese food, it is to Dynasty that we go. They are in the Nedbank Centre on the Corner of Kloof Road and Irwinton. We thought you might like to see their food

Huge live abalone for sale at an incredible price and Chinese tourists in the corner at the large round table.  They also have live crayfish, oysters and clams in tanks. They are not crowded out with huge busloads of tourists, just discreet small groups. And there is plenty of parking outside

Lots of tables as this restaurant gets busy, we usually make a booking. The take away business is also lively

How is your Cantonese? Specialities at the end of the Menu for the Chinese visitors

We thought we would have a Hot Pot until we saw the choices we could make and realised that we'd need a larger group of friends to share this with. More research required! Sounds delicious, especially the crocodile tail, Pork stomach (tripe) and the swaweed (sic = seaweed). Lynne once had bacon made from crocodile tail and it was amazing. Very fatty and very crisp. She likes tripe, John does not.

They have a reasonably good wine list, but we often take bottles with us. We had been sent this to try and it went extremely well with spicy Chinese food, it was crisp, fruity and robust. Corkage is R25

Alex Xu is the owner, with his wife Shirley, and he is a master of sushi. He is properly trained, won’t cut corners – if the rice is not ready, you wait for it. He never uses day old, doesn't put MSG in any of the food and makes superb sushi.

Lynne was in an adventurous mood and decided to try one of the new specialities on the menu. It was described as deep fried aubergine pies stuffed with chicken and prawn meat. They resembled small breaded schnitzel with a layer of soft aubergine between the chicken. She could not identify any prawn taste and it was is very nice, rich, slightly spicy gravy. Enough for two!

John had hot and sour chicken stripes (sic) with mixed vegetables. Very spicy, very satisfying. Shirley says it is just the way her mother makes it in Shanghai. We shared a small bowl of steamed rice and left half as there was so much food

The bill got lost in transit, but here is our card slip which includes the two dishes, R25 corkage and tip

They do very good Peking Duck. They have given up on our tough and scrawny local duck (when will our producers realise that we need to feed them properly?) and they buy duck imported from China. This was for a table next to us and was served with pancakes and the usual accompaniments of hoisin sauce, spring onions and cucumber batons

It is a delight to watch Alex carving the duck

Each piece must have some of the crisp skin

Owners of Dynasty, Alex and Shirley Xu, who are originally from Shanghai. They now live in Sea Point with their young daughter, who is at school at Reddam, and run a very successful restaurant

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© John & Lynne Ford, Adamastor & Bacchus 2014