A winter walk on the beach, Britannia Bay
When life gives you lemons This is
been a rather disappointing and very stressful week for us. We all have these
weeks from hell from time to time; the point is that you just have to take
charge and get through them. After the storm last week, most of the phones in
Sea Point were down. We registered a complaint, almost everyone is back on
line, we are not. Last time, in June, we were without a phone for 20 days and
dealing with Telkom is chronic. No response at all to our logged calls and no
appearance of anyone. How to run a business from home! Then, on Wednesday, on
the way to Steenberg, our car started kangaroo jumping. We assumed that there
must have been water in the petrol, as we had filled up after the storm the day
before from a garage at the bottom of our hill. No. We broke down that evening
while crossing the intersection of Beach and St John's Road at 7 pm. Dangerous.
Thank heavens for AA membership, and we were finally towed home at 9.30. Sea
Point Beachfront security were also supportive, thank you. We have an
electronic problem and a leaking gearbox. Barons, the VW dealership, only does
plug and play repairs with new components nowadays, they don't actually fix
anything and can't help us, so it now has to go to the gearbox people and then
to an electronic firm. The main problem? We are due to go to Tulbagh on Sunday
for five days, visiting Saronsberg and other wine farms, the Tulbagh Hotel,
restaurants and other fun things to do there, which we will write about. So car
hire looms. We will regard it as a holiday expense, regardless of the fact that
we will be working the whole time
MENU has
a new Facebook page
Tasting some of the Cape's best Reds at
Caroline’s Red Wine Review Caroline Rillema of Caroline's Fine Wines
holds two of the best wine tastings every year: her Red Wine Review in July and
the White Wine Review on Wednesday, 19th October. She selects wines that have
four and a half or five star status which she judges to be great wines. It is
an incredibly well attended tasting, held this year at rather hot Table Bay
Hotel.
An intriguing meal at Catharina's at
Steenberg Are
you an adventurous eater? Because we have been in the food and wine business
for so long, first as retailers selling unusual ingredients and fine wines,
then as writer and photographer of food and wine, etc, we tend to take
adventurous food in our stride, but the event at Steenberg this week made us
pause. We were invited to sample the food of new Executive chef Archie Maclean
and it turned out to be quite an adventurous journey that we absolutely loved,
but others, perhaps, were cautious.
Muscling
in on Mussels at Den Anker We had
been invited to Muratie for the Port Festival but sadly, without a car, we had
to cancel. That meant we were able to take up Mark Norrish's (he heads the wine
buying at Ultra) invitation to attend his annual Ultra Mussels Wine Celebration
at Den Anker Restaurant, V&A Waterfront, Cape Town as we can get there and
back by MyCiti bus
Nederburg
Pre Auction Tasting at Durbanville Hills
We attended the Nederburg Auction last year and Lynne did manage to
secure one lot, despite heavy bidding, of Graham Beck 2009 Blanc de blancs MCC
for John for his 70th Birthday. So we were delighted to be invited to taste the
wines that will be auctioned this year. However, because of heavy home going
traffic it became an exercise in speed tasting. A good friend kindly lent us
her car and we left Sea Point at 10 to 4. We reached Durbanville Hills at 10 to
6 - they were closing at 6. Luckily, others had also been working or delayed
and they kindly stayed open to allow us to taste till nearly 7 o'clock, for
which we are very grateful
What's on the MENU this week?
We had this dish for supper tonight and wonder why it is not more
popular. Chicory or witloof is a vegetable that is widely available, but we
don't see many of you buying it. Nor do we remember ever seeing it on a
restaurant menu. But, cooked the right way, it is delicious. You can also
include this as a standard Banting dish. You could use slices of smoked chicken
if you don't use pork. As the chicory needs proper draining, you might like to
start boiling it a few hours before you eat. We are having four and using 300
ml of thick cheese sauce and grating cheddar on top.
Chicory
enrobed in ham with a thick cheese sauce
2
large chicory bulbs per person - sea salt - one large slice of ham per chicory
bulb - salt and pepper - a rich cheese sauce - more grated cheese for the top
Take
a sharp paring knife and remove the bitter core of each chicory bulb. Insert
the knife tip in the root and rotate it, a tent shaped piece will drop out,
discard. Place all of the chicory in well-salted cold water. Bring to the boil.
Drain the pot and repeat once again. This removes any residual bitterness from
the chicory. Boil until it is very tender. Drain carefully and leave in a
colander to continue draining. When they are cold, squeeze out any residual
water and pat them dry. If they stay wet, it will thin out the cheese sauce. Wrap
each bulb in a slice of ham. Place in rows in an ovenproof casserole. Season
with salt and pepper. Pour over your thick cheese sauce. Top with a good
grating of strong cheddar. The matured English cheddar at Checkers is
especially good and well-priced. Put into the oven and cook uncovered for 20
minutes or until the top is browning and the sauce is bubbling. You can also
put this under a hot grill. The flavour is close to asparagus. Enjoy with a
crisp dry white wine. A white blend would also be good, but we chose a Chenin
blanc, Forrester Meinert FMC 2010, which, predictably, was superb.
What's on the WINE MENU?
Badsberg's
much awarded 2009 Noble Late Harvest made from Chenin Blanc and
Hanepoot grapes.
We
had a superb tasting of Noble Late Harvest wines last night at our wine club
and this wine was one that really impressed from those which are still
available for purchase. The bottle looks like a Christmas tree with baubles, it
is so decorated, but you do need to take the gongs seriously; it is not easy to
earn a Platinum award from Michelangelo or many of the other awards. The producer
is a co-operative in Rawsonville which produces a range of very good wines,
with dessert wines being four of the five wines which were awarded four or more
stars in the 2016 Platter. This wine earned four stars. The non-dessert wine in
this group of five is the Chardonnay sur lie.
The
wine is, as expected, a honeyed, amber-coloured sweet wine with great acid
sugar balance. It is full of treacle tart on the nose, quite salty, with almost
a liquorice drop character and with bucketfuls of apricots and marmalade. A
wine to go perfectly with desserts and rich patés. And, at last, some
serendipity. We discovered that we have a bottle in our cellar. It is made from
80% Chenin blanc and 20% Hanepoot (or, if you like, Muscat d ‘Alexandrie)
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.
If you like the photographs you see in our
publications, please look at our Adamastor
Photo website for our rate card and samples
from our portfolio
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.
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