Monday, April 10, 2017

Breakfast at South Hill

We needed to have a good breakfast in Elgin on Sunday morning and Nicky Wallace had recommended South Hill for breakfast the next morning and she was so right, it was superb. Owner Kevin King was on the farm that morning. He joined us for breakfast and gave us a tasting of some of their wines
John was up early and caught the dawn and the birds stirring
Flowers from a wedding the day before. South Hill is a very popular wedding venue. When we saw the accommodation available we understood why
The tasting room recovering from the wedding, and the shelves were being refilled
This is also where we had breakfast, admiring the beautiful vineyard views
The restaurant, which has a larger room through those doors, is also full of art by South African artists, all for sale
The menu
John's cheese omelette topped with bacon
Lynne had the Eggs Benedict with salmon. It was quite splendid. The eggs were perfectly cooked with the yolks runny, the white firm, the Hollandaise perfectly seasoned with just a little bite of lemon. It came on a slice of ciabatta, topped with well seasoned spinach and was accompanied by crisp slices of wild mushroom. The best in a long time
With breakfast comes toast and preserves. We also had lots of black coffee and were impressed, as they had a water problem and sorted it out so that the coffee machine worked. Kevin joined us for breakfast as did his son Ben and Ben's wife. Kevin unexpectedly and very generously paid for our breakfast
The King of the Hill, is a single barrel 2015 Chardonnay made for Kevin by winemaker Matthew van Heerden (previously of Uva Mira, now at Grande Provence). This is made from best terroir Elgin grapes
South Hill wines are made by their wine maker, Sean Skibbe. We tasted the 2015 South Hill Syrah; light berry fruit and wood with warm tea, black pepper and garam masala spice, it is smooth, subtle and sappig. Then the Kevin King 2014 Pinot Noir called the Bazza (named after Kevin's father) Soft and sweet fruit with a tang, vanilla oak on the end. It has layers of cherries and mulberries. Age this
Then the Kevin King 2015 BBK Malbec named for Benjamin Barry King, Kevin's son. A savoury meaty nose, incense wood, its intriguing with some maraschino cherry on the end of the nose. Soft licorice with salt, this has great fruit concentration of dark berries and some herbs, chewy chalky tannins, this is made for rich meat dishes and stews
The Mica red blend of Shiraz (50%) Mourvedre (25%) and Barbera (25%) is a Southern Rhône style blend, a full on warm berry fruit attack, with herbs, vanilla and coffee mocha wood, wildness from the Barbera, very satisfying.
One of the family dogs enjoying Sunday morning
Kevin and his son Ben
The vineyards on the hill
Cape honeysuckle loved by sunbirds
We went on a short tour of the accommodation with the family and the dogs
The South Hill logo spears in the chef's vegetable garden
A trellis made with old vine stocks, just waiting for the climbing beans and peas in winter
South Hill do have a popular wedding venue. The wedding party had just moved out of the Guesthouse, which is a five bedroom, en suite luxury villa which can be hired. http://www.southhill.co.za/guesthouse/index.aspx. It has room for the bride and groom and for several guests. They can entertain themselves in the lounge and the kitchen. As the beds had not yet been made, we didn't take photographs of the bedrooms. They also have Pumphouse Honeymoon Cottage
A spiral staircase in the house separates the bridal pair from the rest of the party
An outside braai at the Guesthouse
Posted by MENU at 5:47 pm 0 comments

Wednesday, April 05, 2017

This Week's MENU. Winery Road's 21st Birthday , Paul Cluver Family Day, Sundowners with the Wallaces, Black pepper Chicken with vegetables, Black Dog Malbec

Tall, straight trees. Reaching to the sky. Paul Cluver Estate,Elgin
A week of starting to enjoy a new car with more toys than we ever imagined could exist in a vehicle. We enjoyed driving it to Stellenbosch and to Elgin for the events you can read about here. We miss the space we had in our old, much bigger, chariot, but we won’t miss the bills...

TVM annual trade wine show at Auslese     
Tracy van Maaren continues to expand her list with excellent wines, which makes this trade tasting exciting each year. Chef Proprietor of Aubergine and Auslese, Harald Bresselschmidt, arranges food pairings for some of these wines and they are interesting matches which make one think about how you would serve these wines. This was held on Wednesday last week (Read On....)
Celebrations at 96 Winery Road's 21st Birthday lunch     
As we discussed during the lunch held last week, there are not many successful restaurants who can claim to have survived this long under the same owners. 96 Winery Road certainly fits the bill. Partners Ken and Allan Forrester, Martin Meinert and chef Natasha Wray are still involved and the restaurant continues to provide superb food. At the celebration we tasted the all time favourites from their menu over the last 21 years, paired with some of the great Forrester Meinert wines (Read On....)
Off to Elgin to Paul Cluver Family Day     
A Harvest festival of different sort, Paul Cluver organised a train to take families from Cape Town to and from the farm last Saturday for the fun day out, held in the Amphitheatre. We arrived under our own steam (pun intended) just as the train arrived and a very jolly day was had by all (Read On....)
Sundowners with the Wallaces     
We had booked an Airbnb for the night in Elgin following the Festival at Paul Cluver and made a stop at Wallowvale to visit our friends Nicky and Paul Wallace and watch the sun go down while tasting their wines, exchanging trade gossip and making a fuss of the black dogs and the terrier     (Read On....)
What's on the Menu this week? Black pepper chicken with vegetables

Lynne uses strips of bite sized thigh meat in this stir fry, but a mix of breast and leg meat will also be fine. You can use any vegetables that are suitable for a quick stir fry like those below or add broccoli, sweet corn, mange tout, mushrooms, etc. You need about four cups. You can use coconut oil for frying if you don't have peanut. Peanut oil can take a very high heat which makes it suitable for stir frying. Never use olive oil, it laminates and turns to plastic which is very bad for you.
350 g chicken cut into 5 cm strips - 1 T corn flour - 1 tsp light soy - 1 tsp Shaoxing rice wine or dry sherry - 1 garlic clove, grated - 1.5 cm knob of fresh ginger, grated - 2 T peanut oil for frying - selection of fresh vegetables, see below - ½ an onion, roughly chopped - ½ cup of fresh bean sprouts - 4 spring onions, sliced
Stir fry sauce: 1 tsp freshly ground black pepper, according to your taste - 2 Tbspns oyster sauce - 2 tsp light soy sauce - 2 tsp Shaoxing rice wine or dry sherry - 1/2 t sesame oil - 1 tsp honey - salt
Preparation
Stir the corn flour, the light soy and rice wine into the chicken, mix well and set aside for at least half an hour. This flavours and tenderised the chicken. This is known as velveting the chicken to tenderise it. Make the stir fry sauce and set aside for use later
Vegetables: Cut these into bite size pieces: half a red pepper - half a green pepper - 2 small carrots - 1 courgette - 1 stick of celery - 10 green beans - 1/4 of a Chinese cabbage, roughly chopped
Heat your wok and when hot put in the oil. Just before it begins to smoke, quickly add the rough cut onion and stir for a minute. Add the garlic and ginger, stir then immediately add the chicken and brown quickly on all sides. Add all the chopped vegetables and mix quickly to stir fry for a minute or two. Add the sauce and stir well. Cook till it starts to bubble. Fry for about three or four minutes till the chicken is cooked and the cabbage is beginning to wilt. Add the bean sprouts at the end and quickly stir them in. Top with the spring onions and serve from the wok with noodles or rice. Taste and add salt if needed

Best Wine on this week's MENU  Black Dog Malbec 2015 made by Paul Wallace     
This wine has really come into its own and is drinking so well at the moment. It has green herbs, black cherries, and vanilla oak on the savoury nose. Supple and soft on the palate with dark berry fruit, salty liquorice and soy. It's a wine for fine foods or just to quaff with friends over supper. And it goes beautifully with chilli and dark chocolate

5th April 2017
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
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. 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, please click here to send us a message and if you wish to be removed from our mailing list, please click here to send us a message.
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© John & Lynne Ford, Adamastor & Bacchus 2017
Posted by MENU at 2:46 am 0 comments

Tuesday, April 04, 2017

What's on the Menu this week? Black pepper Chicken with vegetables


Lynne uses strips of bite sized thigh meat in this stir fry, but a mix of breast and leg meat will also be fine. You can use any vegetables that are suitable for a quick stir fry like those below or add broccoli, sweet corn, mange tout, mushrooms, etc. You need about four cups. You can use coconut oil for frying if you don't have peanut. Peanut oil can take a very high heat which makes it suitable for stir frying. Never use olive oil, it laminates and turns to plastic which is very bad for you
350 g chicken cut into 5 cm strips - 1 T corn flour - 1 tsp light soy - 1 tsp Shaoxing rice wine or dry sherry - 1 garlic clove, grated - 1.5 cm knob of fresh ginger, grated - 2 T peanut oil for frying - selection of fresh vegetables, see below - 1/2 an onion, roughly chopped - !/2 cup of fresh bean sprouts - 4 spring onions, sliced
Stir fry sauce: 1 tsp freshly ground black pepper, according to your taste - 2 Tbspns oyster sauce- 2 tsp light soy sauce - 2 tsp Shaoxing rice wine or dry sherry - 1/2 t sesame oil - 1 tsp honey - salt
Preparation
Stir the corn flour, the light soy and rice wine into the chicken, mix well and set aside for at least half an hour. This flavours and tenderised the chicken. This is known as velveting the chicken to tenderise it.
Vegetables: Cut these into bite size pieces: half a red pepper - half a green pepper - 2 small carrots - 1 courgette - 1 stick of celery - 10 green beans - 1/4 of a Chinese cabbage, roughly chopped
Heat your wok and when hot put in the oil. Just before it begins to smoke, quickly add the rough cut onion and stir fry for a minute. Add the garlic and ginger, stir then immediately add the chicken and brown quickly on all sides. Add all the chopped vegetables and mix quickly to stir fry for a minute or two. Add the sauce and stir well. Cook till it starts to bubble. Fry for about three or four minutes till the chicken is cooked and the cabbage is beginning to wilt. Add the bean sprouts at the end and quickly stir them in. Top with the spring onions and serve from the wok with noodles or rice. Taste and add salt if needed
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© John & Lynne Ford, Adamastor & Bacchus 2017
Posted by MENU at 11:19 pm 0 comments

MENU's Wine of the Week. Paul Wallace's Black Dog Malbec

This wine has really come into its own and is drinking so well at the moment. It has green herbs, black cherries, and vanilla oak on the savoury nose. Supple and soft on the palate with dark berry fruit, salty licorice and soy. It's a wine for fine foods or just to quaff with friends over supper. And it goes beautifully with chilli and dark chocolate
The wine is named after Paul's wonderful black dog
Like others of us, he is feeling the weight of the years
Here he is when he was in his prime, enjoying the upper dam on the farm about 6 years ago
What a handsome lad!
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Posted by MENU at 9:43 pm 0 comments

Elgin weekend - Sundowners with the Wallaces at Paul Wallace wines

We had booked an Airbnb for the night in Elgin following the Festival at Paul Cluver and made a stop at Wallowvale on the way to visit our friends Nicky and Paul Wallace and watch the sun go down while tasting their wines, exchanging trade gossip and making a fuss of the black dogs and the Jack Russell terrier
These are two of the wines made by Paul Wallace, Paul is a well known and renowned viticulturist who consults to many Cape Wine farms. Nicky, who has earned a great deal of respect in the industry as a wine marketer, runs the tasting room and takes care of the sales and marketing of their own wines. We began with The Little Flirt, a 2015 vintage Sauvignon Blanc, fresh and lively with lemon curd and lime notes, great at waking up the palate. The 2015 Brave Heart Pinot Noir is classic - restrained red berry fruit with potential to age and mature well.
Nicky and Paul helping customers with their orders in the tasting room after a busy Saturday
Paul pours John a glass of the Little Flirt
Hospitable to the end, Nicky brought out some cheese, biscuits and grapes, a perfect way to enjoy the wine and a busy day
The older Black Dog after whom the wine is named. Black Dog Malbec is Paul’s signature wine grown on the farm and it is our wine of the week; read about it here
Relaxing on the sofa. They light a fire in the tasting room in the winter
Autumn is upon us and the lovely lavender and ochre shades show well across the dam at sundown
New vineyards on the hill, with the established vines next to them
Egyptian geese in the farm dam
Elgin is going to have their Cool Wines & County Food festival on the 29th and 30th of April. Make sure you can get there. Details on info@winesofelgin.co.za We will be there
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© John & Lynne Ford, Adamastor & Bacchus 2017
Posted by MENU at 9:27 pm 0 comments
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