Night fishing in the new harbour, Hermanus
In this week’s MENU:
Jardine at Jordan Heaven & Earth & Babylon Products Our market activities Wine courses, Events and Restaurants Jordan We know we have written about eating at Jordan several times, but it is our favourite winelands restaurant. George Jardine’s food is delicious, local and fresh. His presentation is fantastic and we love the relaxed atmosphere of the restaurant, the views and Jordan’s great wines to accompany the food. We took our Dutch friends and their Aunt Maureen there for lunch last Thursday and we had a superb time.
It was an end of summer day with a heat haze across the valley, but the temperature at this time of year is very comfortable. The dams in all the areas we have visited are very low and we are all hoping for a wet winter this year. But it has been a fantastic harvest for many of the areas and we are already hearing great reports of superb wine. Some may produce quite low alcohol wines, as ripening has been slow and steady with good phenolic ripeness but lower sugars than usual, not a bad thing. READ MORE HERE Searching Heaven and Earth and Babylon
We took our friends to the Hemel and Aarde valley for three days this week, for some country air. We stay in a cottage owned by friends which faces the other Cape Babylonstoren mountains. It is peaceful and so quiet. The plan is always to do as little as possible but taste lots of wines in the valley so we have been to four vineyards this trip: Bouchard Finlayson, Newton Johnson, Ataraxia and Creation all of whom treated us like royalty. We bought wine at each farm and even had some sent to Holland. We had one meal out at Harbour Rock in Hermanus’ new harbour, which we expected to be busy as the school holidays have begun, but it wasn’t. See pictures by clicking here We ate fish and seafood, with very fresh kabeljou, West coast oysters, small starters of calamari, sushi and some not quite perfect prawns - some were a little raw and others overcooked. Some crisp chips but, sadly, lots of slap chips and minimal salads. Carolyn Martin at Creation had given us a bottle of the just released 2011 Sauvignon blanc to drink with dinner and we also had a bottle of Jordan Nine Yards 2003 Chardonnay, which Lynne gave John for his 60th birthday, and needed drinking. It was a golden yellow and still full of fruit and good flavours, but on the edge of maderisation, so we did drink it just in time.
AVGOLEMONO GREEK SOUP
With the weather starting to get a little more autumnal we thought a soup might be in order. This is a classic Greek recipe and really lovely whatever the weather. It is often served at holidays or celebrations in Greece. You can do the whole recipe or you can start with ready-made stock and some cooked chicken, depending on how much time you have. If you are doing this, start from ## with hot stock. This makes 6 - 8 Servings
1 whole chicken, 1.5 kg approx - water – 2 carrots, roughly chopped – 2 celery stalks, roughly chopped – 1 onion, roughly chopped – 2 bay leaves – 5 black peppercorns – 1 t salt – half a cup rice or orzo rice shaped pasta (optional) – 3 fresh eggs, at room temperature – juice of 2 lemons, strained – zest of one lemon – salt and freshly ground black pepper - parsley
Trim all the excess fat off the chicken, put it into a large pot with the vegetables and add enough water to cover the chicken by 5 cm. Bring to a simmer and cook for 1½ hours. Take out the chicken, remove the meat and set aside for use later. Strain the stock and skim off any fat.
## Add the rice or orzo pasta, if using, and cook until tender. While the rice is cooking, whisk the eggs until very frothy then add the lemon juice in a thin stream while you continue whisking. Put 2 ladlefuls of the hot soup stock into a separate bowl then slowly add the egg and lemon mixture. This will help to prevent the soup curdling. Put this back into the rest of the soup and heat gently. Do not boil once the egg has been added or you will get scrambled egg. Taste and adjust seasoning to your own taste, then sprinkle on the lemon zest and a little chopped parsley before you serve. You can add back some of the chicken meat if you want a more substantial soup and you can, if you must, add a couple of spoonfuls of corn flour to thicken, but this is not encouraged.
While the pasta is cooking, prepare the egg-lemon mixture. Using a whisk beat the eggs until nice and frothy. Add the lemon zest and the lemon juice in a steady stream while continuing to whisk.
When the pasta has finished cooking, turn off the heat. Ladle about two cups of broth into a bowl or large measuring cup. Slowly add the hot broth to the egg-lemon mixture while continuing to whisk. This will temper the eggs and prevent them from curdling once they are added to the hot broth.
Stir the egg-lemon mixture into the pot and heat over very low heat for approximately 5 to 10 minutes until heated through. Be careful not to boil the soup once the eggs have been added.
Adjust your seasoning for salt and pepper and add more as desired.
Traditionally, this soup is served without the chicken meat or vegetables. You can add them back or serve on the side as you prefer.
Products The Mexicorn products flew out last week, the most popular being the Chipotles in adobo and black bean and green salsas. We have ordered more, but have not yet received our stock. We hope it will arrive for Saturday. For those and any other things you want, you can access our product list and see pictures in our website. If you can’t find what you need, let us know and we will try to find it for you. Until our online shop is ready, drop us an email and we will help you. We are very happy to see that traffic on our website is increasing and more orders are coming from it. 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. You can contact us by email or phone, or through our website. We can send your requirements to you anywhere in South Africa. Our market activities We will be back at Long Beach Mall tomorrow, Friday, 30th March for our South Peninsula friends and we will be at the Old Biscuit Mill’s brilliant, exciting and atmospheric Neighbourgoods Market, as always, this Saturday and every Saturday between 09h00 and 14h00. 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 month for which we have information. To help you choose an event to visit, click on our list for March, April and beyond. 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. We have had a lot of enquiries from people who want to learn more about wine. Cathy Marston and The Cape Wine Academy both run courses, some very serious and others more geared to fun. You can see details here. Some restaurants have responded to our request for an update of their special offers and we have, therefore, updated our list of restaurant special offers. 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. Summer time is picnic time and several wine farms offer picnic facilities. We have put together a list of wine farms who can provide you with a picnic, We haven’t put in much detail, just where it is, phone number, email address and a link to the website. The latter is where you will find all the important information. Go and check it out. 29th March 2012
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.
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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