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A visit to L'Ormarins and La Motte in Franschhoek

Wednesday, February 20, 2019

This Week's MENU. L'Ormarins and La Motte, Dainty Bess Between Us, The Industry brunch, Apricot Tarte Tatin, Tierhoek Straw Wine

A Clifton sunset

Of huge interest to the South African culinary environment is the news that a chef we visited and who excited us couple of years ago has made it into a well-deserved beam of limelight. Kobus van der Merwe of Wolfgat (Wolf’s Lair) restaurant in the small West Coast fishing village called Paternoster has achieved a double distinction at the inaugural World Restaurant Awards in Paris, coming away with not only the Restaurant of the Year Award, but also the award for best restaurant in the Off-Map Destination category. His restaurant is tiny, seating only 20 patrons, but the innovation and imagination in his use of very local ingredients were very exciting. Our story of our visit to his restaurant is below

This has been a week in which the term “interesting times” becomes more relevant. More of the worms are coming out of the woodwork and our Finance Minister delivered his Budget Speech today in which he shot a few arrows at his colleagues in the cabinet, promising that the ill-favoured chickens they have hatched are coming home to roost. At the same time, more of the corruption that has bedevilled us in the last decade is being laid bare and there are signs that appropriate action will be taken against the culprits. The evils which have corrupted our electricity generation and distribution are being brought into the open with promises that the long road to fixing them is being opened. We’ll see…

It is lovely to be on the receiving end sometimes. Last week some friends from Australia took us and some of their friends from Australia on a wine tour with lunch to Franschhoek. We began at Anthonij Rupert with a tour of the Motor museum and then moved to the historic Manor house. Note: You do need to make appointments at both should you want to visit…

Supper with Dainty Bess at Between Us, Bree Street

We were invited to join Jane Ferreira-Eedes for dinner at Between Us Restaurant at 176 upper Bree Street in town this week. A first visit for us. Run by twin sisters Jesse and Jamie Friedberg in what used to be an antique restoration building, it has a terrace and a large spacious interior with a bar…

Breakfast at The Industry, Main Road, Sea Point

Late Saturday morning saw us having Brunch at a fairly new venue in Sea Point, The Industry café, which is right opposite the Adelphi Centre and Pick n Pay on Main Road, Sea Point…

Wolfgat in Paternoster, Restaurant of the Year

We were delighted to hear the news that Kobus van der Merwe’s Wolfgat Restaurant in Paternoster has been awarded the distinction of Restaurant of the Year at the inaugural World Restaurant Awards in Paris as well as the award for best restaurant in the Off-Map Destination category. We visited him at his previous premises at Oep ve Koep in Pasternoster a couple of years ago and were “blown away” by the flavours and his imagination in using foraged indigenous ingredients. See our story here…

On the MENU this Week. Apricot and Fig Tart Tatin

This is one to make right now while the fruit is still in season, We had a dinner party and this is what we had so Lynne made another of our favourite Tart Tatins. It is a very good mix of fruit. Warning: Apricots do produce a lot of juice so be careful when turning out to have a serving dish that can take it. See the Recipe…

Our Wine of the week would go perfectly with this dessert

MENU’s Wine of the Week. Tierhoek Straw Wine NV

The ripe Chenin Blanc grapes from 30 year old trellised vines in Piekenierskloof are air dried on straw for 2 weeks to concentrate their flavour, then fermented and matured in a Solera system of old barrels where new wine has been added every year since 2007. Full, rich and very sweet with an immense concentration of dried apricots and honey, it has a great balance of acidity, just as it should…

Things to do

Sunday 24th February Groote Post's February 'Made with Love" Country Market For further information Contact I Love Yzer: 022 451 2202 or info@iloveyzer.co.za www.grootepostcountrymarket.co.za Facebook.com/GrootePostCountryMarket • @GPCountryMarket

Friday & Saturday, 1st & 2nd March RMB Starlight Concert at Vergelegen. Details and tickets at http://www.capetownopera.co.za/production/rmb-starlight-classics/

Friday, 1st March The American Express Cape Wine Barrel Auction at the Norval Foundation

Saturday, 2nd March The Cape Wine Auction sponsored by Nedbank Private Wealth at Buitenverwachting

For more information on the Cape Wine Auction, contact CWA director Darielle Robertson at darielle@thecapewineauction.com. For more information on the Cape Wine Auction Trust, contact Andi Norton at andi@thecapewineauction.com

Saturday, 2nd March Harvest Festival at Muratie Wine Estate in Stellenbosch. For further information and bookings contact Nina Martin at Muratie on 021 865 2330/2336 or info@muratie.co.za

Saturday 2nd March Perdeberg’s Harvest Celebration from 09h00 - 17h00 at Perdeberg Cellars. For more information contact Johan at +27 21 869 8244 or info@perdeberg.co.za

Wednesday, 6th March A night at the Italian Opera 18h00 for 18h30, Café del Sol Botanico, Bryanston, Gauteng Tickets are available at R650 per person, the three course dinner and wine are included. Limited spaces are available so e-mail marketing@cafedelsol.co.za to be part of this exclusive event.

Friday 8th March Wine Concepts Craft Festival at The Vineyard Hotel 17h00 – 20h00 Cost: R200.00 per person – includes tasting glass, tastings and light snacks. Tickets via www.webtickets.co.za or at Wine Concepts branches Telephone Newlands at 021 671 9030 or Kloof Street at 021 426 4401. Email: admin@wineconcepts.co.za or at the door on the evening subject to availability http://www.wineconcepts.co.za

20th February 2019

© John & Lynne Ford, Adamastor & Bacchus 2019

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

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 our website and ancillary works are © John & Lynne Ford, Adamastor & Bacchus. Our restaurant reviews are often 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. 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. If you wish to be added to our mailing list, pleaseclick here to send us a message and if you wish to be removed from our mailing list

On the MENU this Week. Apricot and Fig Tart Tatin

This is one to make right now while the fruit is still in season. We had a dinner party and the ingredients were what we had, so Lynne made another of our favourite Tartes Tatin

It is a very good mix of fruit. Warning: Apricots do produce a lot of juice, so be sure when turning it out to have a serving dish that can take it

1 kilo firm ripe apricots - 5 ripe figs, stems cut off - 2 T lemon juice - 50 g butter
50 g brown granulated or Treacle or Demerara sugar - a roll of good flaky pastry

Preheat the oven to 200°C

Halve and core the apricots. Sprinkle with lemon juice to prevent them going brown

Grease a fairly deep 19 cm flan dish thickly with the 50g of butter. Sprinkle on the brown sugar. Put the five figs in the centre of the dish. Arrange the apricots neatly in rounds covering the surface, skin side down

Roll out the pastry to just slightly larger than the dish; lay it on top of the fruit and fold any excess down the sides of the fruit inside the dish. Seal the edges well, but do not worry about neatness as this will become the base of the tart. Bake for half an hour, making sure you have a baking tin beneath the flan dish, as it can overflow. When the pastry is fully cooked, and is light brown and crisp, run a knife around the edge of the pastry, then very carefully upend the tart onto an attractive serving plate with a lip about 2.5cm deep. Do this just before serving so that the hot fruit and juice are on top of the crisp pastry. There will be quite a lot of juice. Serve immediately with thick cream and/or ice-cream.

You can pour over some alcohol to liven it up as you serve – as they do in Normandy. Calvados, Apricot Brandy, & Fruit Schnapps work well.

Our Wine of the Week would go perfectly with this dessert

MENU’s Wine of the Week. Tierhoek Straw wine NV

The ripe Chenin Blanc grapes from 30 year old trellised vines in Piekenierskloof are air dried on straw for 2 weeks to concentrate their flavour then fermented and matured in a Solera system of old barrels where new wine is added every year since 2007

Full, rich and very sweet with an immense concentration of dried apricots and honey, it has a great balance of acidity, just as it should. The total acid is 7.6 g/l and Residual Sugar is 272.8 g/l It. Sold in 375 ml bottles it is a perfect match for desserts like this, rich pates or with a good cheese board. Platter Score: 4½ stars, Neil Martin: 91/100. In a 375ml bottle from the farm at R170
For this week only: a special price of R150 if you quote this story Email: info@tierhoek.com
Phone: 021 674 3041

A visit to L'Ormarins and La Motte in Franschhoek

Note: You do need to make appointments at both should you want to visit

The manor house is from a past age and is furnished in mid 19th Century antiques

You can taste their Cape of Good Hope and Anthonij Rupert wine ranges

They have an MCC and nougat paired tasting and you can enjoy high tea in the beautiful garden

We enjoyed a glass of the Brut Rosé MCC while chatting

and then took a short tour of the house, which has magnificent bedrooms with bathrooms dressed to perfection in the Victorian style. They do have lots of other things to do on the estate: another venue called Terra del Capo for wine tasting, and a restaurant and a tram that connects all of them. And you can book all of these for one price. Look at their website for details. https://www.rupertwines.com/estate.php

We then sat down at the long table for our guided wine tasting. Because of the timing of our lunch booking, we could only do a small tasting

We began with the Ou Bosstok 2017 Chenin Blanc with smoke and figs on the nose, a lovely full mouthful of lively lemons and limes

Then the 2015 Laing Semillon. Rich nose, almost olive oil, crisp, sophisticated and interesting on the palate, a food wine.

The Cape of Good Hope Serruria 2016 Chardonnay is perfumed with golden fruit, and full of limes, lemon, butter on the palate, made for serving with cheese

Next, a red wine from the next door farm, the 2014 Optima Bordeaux blend; 60% Cabernet Franc, 20% Merlot, 20% Cabernet Sauvignon. Rich red fruit on the nose, plums and cherries on the palate, soft and silky with some umami flavours and wood on the end

Then the Anthony Rupert Cabernet Sauvignon. Cassis and red velvet on the nose, chalky tannins, soft cassis fruit and long flavours

The final wine was the Syrah. Rich on the nose, huge fruit, warm alcohol, berry bursts of purple fruit, cherries, plums, spice and pepper notes with soft chalky tannins. Very, very good. We should mention that almost all the wines score 4.5 to 4 stars in the Platter Wine Guide

Then our hired minibus delivered us to La Motte for lunch in the Pierneef restaurant

The lunch menu. All the dishes are paired with wines which you can have by the glass, which most of us opted to do

The menu is not detailed, the dishes are, so pick your favourite ingredient and you will be delighted

We were sent a salmon mousse amuse bouche and some good bread accompanied by whipped lard and some humus

Many on our table ordered the mussels starter and said it was fantastic, in a creamy seafood sauce

The starter La Motte Garden salad with cured egg, herbs and cheese

Lynne ordered the lamb rib, which was served on a bed of rosemary and another aromatic herb

Coated in sesame seed, it was beautifully flavoured and the meat fell off the bone

It was accompanied by a dish of chakalaka, which is a robust dish of onion, tomato, pepper, chilli, garlic and ginger

Lynne detected some nuts in it and it was on a bed of pulled lamb, which itself was on a thin pancake of polenta

They went so well together, warm, spicy and zingy

This was the vegetarian option of potato dumplings with spinach and morel mushrooms

The Belly of Pork was in a rich broth and a rhubarb chutney and was topped with tempura baby leeks and nasturtium leaves

Many of us could not resist ordering the duck and it was a great choice. Two slices of meltingly tender, pink duck breast, perfectly rendered crisp skin topped with nuts. Accompanied by a whole roasted fig, a tiny vol au vent filled with fig and duck geziers and liver; fig reduction dressed the plate with some ash. Served with a small salad and creamy pomme purée

The cheese course - four local cheeses, some watermelon konfyt and a relish, lavash and soft bread

The Chocolate cremeux and Passion fruit yogurt sorbet with honeycomb and a brandy snap was said to be very enjoyable

Our chef was Erik Bulpitt whom we know from when he was with George Jardine, then Newton Johnson restaurant in the Hemel and Aarde and most recently at Avondale. He is a very good chef, using good local ingredients and keeping the flavours real

One of the delights at La Motte is the wonderful Pierneef Gallery

in which we spent some time after lunch looking at his range of works

The beautiful porcelain plates from the 17th Century were made in China and brought here by the Dutch East India Company. So the not very realistic depiction of the animal, proteas and Table Mountain on each of them is from a description, not experience. They were made for use in the Cape and, we believe, come from the wreck of the Oosterland which was wrecked in Table Bay in 1697. Lynne's brother-in-law, Christopher, was one of the divers who found her

Here is another depiction of Table Bay and the mountain and it also shows Lions Head and the Twelve Apostles

There are huge chandeliers made from pieces of this porcelain, which you can see in the photograph of the interior

We then went to visit the Cheetah Project in the grounds of Grande Provence

These are rescued animals who, we were told, cannot be reintroduced into the wild

You get to stroke them while the handler holds their heads. They purr a lot, so appear to like it

We did a quick stroke

But we were concerned that this much contact all day long by visitors must surely be very tiring and stressful for the animals

Their fur up close is so beautiful

He's watching you, John

Wonderful paddy paws, shaped like tear drops on this fastest of all animals.

A group photo with our friends Phillip and Diana Loots