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Main Ingredient’s weekly E-Journal
Gourmet Foods, Ingredients & Fine Wines
Eat In Guide’s Outstanding Outlet Award Winner from 2006 to 2010
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In this week’s MENU:
Christmas Feast and recipe Healthy Eating Products Drinking and Driving Our market activities, events and restaurantsThis is the last MENU for 2011. We know that many of you are shooting off for your Christmas break and we are working like crazy at markets, trying to get out late orders in the post and trying to keep our stock levels up. This morning we made a trip to three suppliers to get more of the things you have asked us for. The journey was great fun as we watched our very unseasonal storms sweeping in across the bay. The temperature hovered between 14 and 15°C. It’s a normal La Niña year, when our winter rain comes later and, boy, is it like winter at the moment. We had soup for dinner last night, it was so chilly. Lynne has been trying to change the duvet for summer bedding and every time she gets it out, the night is a lot cooler. We have been promised better weather for the end of the week and hope to see lots of you at Long Beach Mall on Friday and at the Biscuit Mill on Saturday. Many of you seem to have left your purchases until you have received your end of year bonuses and we just hope we can keep up the stock levels to meet your needs. Some of our suppliers have already closed – something we will NEVER understand in the busiest time of the retail year..
The Christmas feast What are we having this year? No turkey, thank you and we haven’t been able to source a goose anywhere. We are having duck breasts, possibly with an orange/Asian glaze, peas, courgettes and duck fat potatoes. To start we are going to have a very retro dish which we love: Coquille St Jacques – scallops in a creamy white wine and mushroom sauce (yes, John will not have the mushrooms) served in a scallop shell surrounded by smooth piped mashed potato. We managed to find a kilo of small scallops today and when de-shelled they will just do the three of us. Pudding will be one of Lynne’s traditional luxury Christmas puddings with brandy butter and we probably will have ’Spies (our family word for Mince pies) later. Lynne might cook the gammon or it might wait for New Year – she wants to try a new cooking method which is to cook it in a roasting bag and then put it into our hotbox, and finally glaze it. Possible wines for the feast are Springfield Life from Stone or Buitenverwachting’s lovely Hussey’s Vlei Sauvignon blanc with the Coquille, Cordoba Crescendo or Klein Constantia Marlbrook ’98 with the duck and either Chateau Bourdon Sauternes ‘98 or Pierre Jourdan Ratafia with the pud - the last 4 being from our cellar and definitely not for sale! If we decide to enjoy a bubbly, it will probably be on Boxing Day and we’ll choose from our cellar between Silverthorn, Kaapse Vonkel, Laborie or Morgenhof.
If you don’t like Christmas pudding and want a more modern, fresh dessert, try this. It will feed four. Double it if you have more people. Do taste both the juice and the cream and sugar mixture before using and, if it is quite sharp, do add a little more sugar or honey.
Tropical Mango and Orange Tiramisu
1 packet boudoir (finger) biscuits – Juice of 4 oranges – 50 ml orange, marula or limoncello liqueur - 2 fresh ripe mangos, peeled and sliced – 1 tub of mascarpone cheese – 200 ml cream – 150g sugar, vanilla if possible or add 1 t of vanilla extract – juice and pulp of 4 granadillas (passion fruit)
Mix the orange juice with the liqueur and dip the finger biscuits into it. Make one layer in the bottom of a pretty dessert dish. Mix the mascarpone with the cream and the vanilla sugar and spread a layer over the biscuits then follow with a layer of mango slices and some of the granadilla pulp. Make another layer and finish by pouring over the rest of the juice and topping off with the rest of the granadilla pulp. Cover with cling film and keep in the fridge overnight until you are ready to serve.
Healthy eating On Saturday mornings, while we are preparing for our day at the market, there is a programme on Cape Talk and Radio 702 about health matters. Last week, their guest was a nutritionist. We were struck by the fact that she talked about supplements and advocated pills all through the one hour programme and only mentioned food for the first time at the close. Perhaps this is because too many people eat food which has insufficient nutrition; too much convenience food, laced with preservatives, and not enough fresh food. People often comment to us that they see very few obese people in France and Italy, where fatty foods and carbohydrates are a big part of the diet. They also have lower rates of heart disease than countries like this or the USA. The secret, we believe, is that they eat very little “fast” food and consume lots of fresh vegetables and healthy fats like olive oil, goose and duck fat. The last two are rich sources of Omega 3 and 6 fatty acids and also do not laminate (plasticise) easily, unlike most of the cooking oils and fats most of us use. We often see customers recoil when we offer them duck or goose fat. They shouldn’t. Have a look at this website which gives insight into the benefits of these fats. We found it very interesting.
Products The TV chefs have been using duck and goose fat quite a lot recently, and many of you have obviously been watching. We have been selling a lot of it and have had several orders from other parts of the country. Lynne has made more individual Christmas cakes, which make great office presents and we do have lots of lovely luxuries to tempt you. We will be working next week at Long Beach on Tuesday, Cavendish on Friday 23rd and at the Biscuit Mill on Saturday Christmas Eve the 24th. Hope to see lots of you there.
We will be working at the Biscuit Mill on Saturday 31st December as well, so you can get things from us for your New Year’s Eve party.
We have put together a list of wonderful Christmas gifts. Have a look at it here. You may place an order and we’ll do our best to get it to you in time for the 24th, or you could come and fetch your order from us at one of the markets listed. They include additions to our range of variations on chestnuts and chestnut purees. We also have a great range of meat patés and other delicacies, especially treats from France which our French customers and some who are not French will love to have for their traditional Christmas festivities.
In addition to these, we have stocked up with lots of foodie items which make great presents. We can put together hampers or boxes for you, just select products from our product list or tell us what you want. Lynne has made more Christmas puddings, which have been generously dosed with brandy and made with butter rather than lard. The price has not changed – they are still R85 each and are full of all the necessary luxury ingredients like cherries, dates, figs and nuts. They are pre-cooked and can be quickly reheated in the microwave. She has made small individual Christmas cakes which make delicious small festive gifts and were so popular last year. Also for the rapidly approaching Christmas festivities, we have added lovely small Italian Panettoncino cakes and Cantuccini biscotti.
We have a lot of fun putting MENU together each week and, of course, doing the things we write about, but making it possible for you to enjoy rare and wonderful gourmet foods is what drives our business. We stock a good range of ingredients and delicious ready-made gourmet foods. So, please have a look at our Product List and see what you need. You can contact us by email or phone, or through our website. We can send your requirements to you anywhere in South Africa, but don’t leave it too late. Remember the old maxim: “Post early for Christmas”!
DRINKING AND DRIVING OVER THE HOLIDAY PERIOD
We had our wine club annual party last Saturday and we are so proud of our friends who do drink responsibly and that most of us arranged for someone to come and drive us home from the party. Clare, John’s daughter came with us to the party and she does not drink, so she was our very kind chauffess for the evening. It is so good to see people being responsible and using family or one of the many services that are springing up. We hope that you, too, will drink responsibly and not drive. If you haven’t been a responsible driver so far during this period, please make a point of it in the New Year.
ENJOY!
As we said earlier, MENU will be taking a break until a little after the New Year. We wish you all a wonderful period of celebration over the holidays, whatever your beliefs (or non-beliefs) and may we all enjoy being with family and eating and drinking wonderful food.
Happy Christmas, Happy New Year, Happy Hanukkah, Happy St Nicolas, Happy Kwanza, Happy Bodha, Happy Ashura, Happy Las Posadas, and may you all have happy and healthy long lives.
This has been a difficult year for many people, and they will be very happy to see the back of it. Our recommendation: At the stroke of midnight on the 31st, having opened the best bottle of bubbly you can afford, shout, “Thank Heavens that’s over!”, relax, and prepare to face 2012 with a positive frame of mind. We hope that the New Year will bring better things to us all and that we will be given the grace and the opportunities to help it.
Our market activities You will find us at Long Beach Mall this Friday, 16th December from 09h00 to 17h00. We will also be at Long Beach on Tuesdays 13th and 20th December. We will be at The Place at Cavendish on Friday 23rd December. We will be at the Old Biscuit Mill’s brilliant, exciting and atmospheric Neighbourgoods Market, as always, this Saturday between 09h00 and 14h00 and every Saturday, including Christmas Eve, December 24th and New Year’s Eve, December 31st.
Best wishes from the Ford chaps, Thomas and Hamish – they haven’t had a hard year….
There is a huge variety of interesting things to occupy your leisure time here in the Western Cape. To help you choose an event to visit, click on our list of Interesting Food and Wine Events. All the events are listed in date order and we already have exciting events to entertain you through into the New Year. Click here to access the list. You will need to be connected to the internet.
Many of the specials in our list of restaurant special offers are continuing through summer and we have been told that there will be some new summer menus soon. Click here to access it. These Specials have been sent to us by the restaurants or their PR agencies. We have not personally tried all of them and their listing here should not always be taken as a recommendation from ourselves. If they don’t update us, we can’t be responsible for any inaccuracies in the list. When we have tried it, we’ve put in our observations. We have cut out the flowery adjectives etc. that so many have sent, to give you the essentials. Click on the name to access the relevant website. All communication should be with the individual restaurants.
14th December 2011
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 product list 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 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 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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