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An olive thrush in
Mariana’s garden, contemplating which of a feast of mulberries he should choose
next
In
this week’s MENU:
The White Room at
Dear Me The Elim Wine &
Food Celebration Mariana’s in Stanford La Vie en Rose with
Kyle’s Cabo Esperança Wines This week’s recipe:
Gooey Chocolate Pudding Important festivals
this month 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 One of the all-time favourite
flavours is real vanilla and we have been finding it in various dishes we have
tasted recently, including this week’s recipe. We stock some of the world’s
best vanilla and other extracts in the Nielsen Massey range. See them here
A week filled with good food,
good friends and even some relaxation by the sea. We have had good and, sadly,
some spectacularly bad food over the last couple of weeks. This week it was all
good.
The White Room
at Dear Me On Friday night, we visited
The White Room at Dear Me, having been invited to taste the Five Course food
and wine pairing menu at this Cape Town restaurant, which has just been placed
in the Eat Out Top 20 list of best restaurants in South Africa, and is
nominated for a place in the top 10. The timing couldn't have been better. Chef
Vanessa Marx is over the moon with joy at her nomination and, having tasted the
food, we think she deserves it. Two of her dishes really intrigued, amazed and
delighted us. Read on
The Elim Wine
& Food Celebration Early on
Saturday morning, we picked up our friends and, trusting our GPS, headed off to
the wilds near the southern tip of Africa, Cape Agulhas. We have learned,
lately, not to trust the GPS implicitly, as this was another occasion when it
got its directions horribly wrong and took us on a detour on very bumpy dirt
roads. But, when we reached Black Oystercatcher Winery in Elim, we knew that the
3½ hour trip had been worth it. It was a real old fashioned country wine and
food festival with the lovely wines of the area and masses of food stalls,
music and other entertainment. Given the distance, we were amazed how many
people from Cape Town had been attracted to the fiesta. Read on
Mariana’s
in Stanford After our visit to the Elim Festival, we
spent the night at a friend’s daughter’s holiday house in De Kelders, where we
had a lovely relaxing evening and morning, reading papers and our books,
cooking huge prawns for supper, watching whales and poachers, getting some sun
while doing the crossword and then it was time to head over to Stanford, where
we had managed to get a reservation for lunch. We have not been for several
years, as this small restaurant is amazingly popular (deservedly so) and
bookings are hard to get. We were warmly welcomed by Peter Esterhuizen and
given a lovely table outside on the vine-covered terrace, facing Mariana’s
legendary vegetable garden. Then came the wonderful food. Read On
La Vie en Rose
with Kyle’s Cabo Esperança Wines Kyle Martin
has long been a business friend. He used to sell us wine when we had the shop
and has remained a personal friend ever since. Recently, he started up his own
wine business, Cabo Esperança Wines representing, initially, four good wine
producers: Blackwater Wines, Keermont, Oak Valley and Vondeling. His inaugural
trade tasting was held at La Vie Café Bar, on the beachfront at Rocklands, on
Monday evening and we tasted some really special and two very unusual wines.
Read On
This
week’s recipe: Gooey Chocolate Pudding
John’s chocolate pudding at
Mariana’s was so delicious that Lynne thought she would find you a similar one
and this tried and tested recipe comes from Willie Harcourt-Cooze. You do need
to use the best dark 70% or 80% chocolate that you can find. The recipe calls
for unsalted butter, but all chocolate is improved by the addition of a little
salt, so we use ordinary salted butter; you can choose. You might get more than
6 puddings out of this, so have a couple of extra ramekins ready for the
overflow. Confusingly, he recommends 6 to 8, but it might depend on the size of
your ramekins. You could also use small coffee cups. You make this just before
serving, so get all your ingredients ready
180g 70% dark
bitter chocolate – 200g unsalted butter – 175g caster sugar – 6 extra large
eggs – 2 teaspoon real vanilla extract – 40g ground almonds
Preheat the oven to 160°C.
Grease 6 ramekins. Melt the chocolate and butter, with 60g of sugar, in a bowl
over a pan of simmering water. Do not allow the base of the bowl to touch the
water. You could also melt the chocolate in the microwave. In another bowl slightly
beat the eggs with the remaining caster sugar and the vanilla extract till
pale. Stir the ground almonds into the melted chocolate mix. Then gently fold
this mixture into the eggs. Divide between the ramekins and bake for 12 to 15
minutes. The tops will rise and start splitting when they are ready to serve.
Serve immediately with thick cream.
You can also add dried fruit
soaked in alcohol for a more adult pudding. Brandied cherries would be superb.
Important
festivals this month Robertson’s
great annual Wine on the River Festival starts this Friday and ends on Sunday. It is
one of the best wine events of the year and we will be there on Sunday. Caroline’s White Wine Review will
be at the Table Bay on Tuesday, October 21st. Tickets are in short supply, so
book as soon as you can. Durbanville’s Season of Sauvignon
takes place on twelve Durbanville farms on Saturday and Sunday, October 25th
and 26th.
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, has a variety of courses. 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.
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
16th October 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
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