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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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A twilight view across Table Bay to the Tygerberg
In this week’s MENU:
Products Our market activities Tulbagh & Robertson at the Taj Hartenberg Shiraz & Charcuterie Tokara dinner Soup, Sip & Bread at De Grendel Events and Restaurant specials Wine courses & cooking classesProducts We have a new range of tangy French mustards, Cornichons (small French gherkins, and two delicious new French vinegars: Provence herbs and Shallot. We have other winter delights in stock, especially ready to heat and eat duck confit and traditional French cassoulets and pot au feu. For those and any other products you need, 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 Come and visit us at the Old Biscuit Mill’s brilliant, exciting and atmospheric Neighbourgoods Market, as always, this Saturday and every Saturday between 09h00 and 14h00. Tip: Some visitors tell us how they struggle to find parking. Click here for a map. We will be back at Long Beach Mall tomorrow, Friday 8th June from 09h00 to 16h00. We look forward to seeing you there.
We have had a marvellous week, if madly hectic, and have been very overfed.
Expressions of... at the Taj Hotel Thursday evening saw us at the Taj Hotel for the tasting of wines from the Robertson and Tulbagh areas and there were some gems. As usual, we started with whites and then moved on to the reds. Dewetshof was our starting point with their chardonnays, the star being the Bateleur. From there, we moved to Springfield Wild Yeast chardonnay, and Life from Stone sauvignon, both old favourites. There was a large number of very good wines and some of those we also enjoyed were Lemberg Pinotage from Tulbagh (it’s a rare event when Lynne likes a pinotage), Rijk’s Chenin blanc, Fraai Uitzicht Merlot, Graham Beck Brut blanc de blancs, Saronsberg’s Brut MCC and Dewetshof Pinot Noir. We then went through to Mint restaurant, where we had some of the wines paired with food from Fraai Uitzicht restaurant. See the blog for pictures and details of what we ate. They will be open this weekend for the Wacky Wine Weekend, which began today, but then they will close for a couple of weeks so they can go overseas. A great time was had by all; these very friendly food, wine and fun filled evenings are something you should not miss. The next one is on the 28th of June and the theme will be Expressions of Stellenbosch Berg, Banhoek & the Helderberg and the Guest Chef will be Janice Anderson of 96 Winery Road.
On Saturday we had a lovely Beef Bourguignon at a friend’s and the dessert was a wicked Black Forest cake from Cassis – these must be the best cakes in Cape Town. Do go and try one if you have a special occasion, or even if you don’t. They should come with a health warning though – quite amazing quality and full of all the most decadent ingredients.
Hartenberg Shiraz and Charcuterie Festival We packed up like mad demons at the Biscuit Mill on Saturday so we could rush through to Hartenberg for the tail-end of the Shiraz and Charcuterie Festival. We got the last dribble from many bottles, missed one or two and had some seriously good charcuterie from Richard Bosman, Steve Jeffery (The Charcuterie) and Neil Jewell from Bread & Wine at Moreson in Franschhoek – and, of course, could not resist buying a French cheese, an Amour de Brillat from Lodine Maske of Fromages de France in Franschhoek. Lynne re-tasted and fell in love all over again with Hartenberg’s The Stork and really liked the Tamboerskloof. We then sat outside with our friends and ate and tasted a few more of these lovely wines. This is a really great festival to visit in the middle of the winter. Photographs here.
Tokara As we were in Stellenbosch and had to drive back, Lynne decided to treat John to dinner at Tokara, always one of our favourite places. It was not very busy that evening - it seems most of you were at home watching the Stormers beat the Bulls (we recorded the match to watch later). Richard Carstens is a wizard with food, turning quite simple ingredients into superbly matched plates of food with texture, colour, flavour, counterpoint, surprise and excitement. We ordered our dishes and Richard sent us samples of others, so we left feeling very full and satisfied. See the photos and descriptions of the food we ate and then make a booking to go there soon, so you too can sample these dishes. He says he is over molecular gastronomy and is doing very interesting things like cooking with dry aged carrots so that they taste like roast meat.
Soup, Sip and Bread at De Grendel We overslept on Sunday because of all the charging around we had done the previous week, but made it to De Grendel for their Soup, Sip and Bread menu at 12h30. It was the most glorious Cape winter day, bright and sunny and warm with a tiny nip in the air and the air was like champagne, it almost bubbles – the sort of day people in the drab north don’t believe we have in winter. Today, we have the counterpoint: 40mm so far. We have said it before but the view from the terrace where we had lunch must be one of the best views found on any wine farm, taking in Robben Island, the bay and splendid Table Mountain, with the city at its feet. We watched the ships and yachts jostling for position in the bay and ate a lovely lunch. This is the first time we have eaten at their new restaurant; we have to return to try the normal, very varied, à la carte menu soon. Soup Sip and Bread is another “not to miss” festival each year and Durbanville is only half an hour’s drive from the city. Some of the farms did simple food at very affordable prices, others like De Grendel did a whole menu of “soups”. Pictures here.
How to make a winner There are a few competitions around which one can win with the best casserole or dish. If you want to make a winning dish, do what chefs do, try to build up layers and layers of flavour in your pot. Do use a mirepoix - a base of finely chopped onion, celery, and carrot which you then sweat off in some oil and/or butter. Do use a bouquet garni; a small parcel of fresh herbs, conventionally parsley leaves and stalks, thyme, rosemary or chervil all wrapped in a bay leaf or two and tied in some string so you can fish it out later when the dish is ready. Then it is essential to use good stock, not just flavour cubes that contain mostly MSG or hydrolysed vegetable protein and none of what they purport to be: Chicken stock must have chicken in it, ditto all the other flavours. Don’t forget to taste and adjust your seasoning at the end.
We have been asked many times recently for a recipe and, as John has a sore throat this week, Lynne decided to spoil him with one, but we didn’t have any duck. It is very easy to make once you have done your prep. This was made mostly from our store cupboard and freezer as we buy Toulouse sausages (soft and chunky pork, garlic and herb sausages) whenever we see them as they are like hens teeth. These came from Joostenberg, Rudi does some good ones and we do know other makers you can order from. We hear that they might soon appear in supermarkets, but we don’t know when. The courgettes are not traditional but Lynne was trying to cram in another healthy vegetable. You can soak and then cook your beans the day before but using tinned beans is easy and gives the lovely creamy texture cassoulet needs. Use white haricot, not butter beans, which impart a bitter taste to the cassoulet.
Cassoulet sans Quack
1 large onion, finely chopped – 1 carrot, finely chopped – 1 stick of celery, finely chopped – 2 courgettes, finely chopped - 1 T olive oil – ½ t salt - 2 leg pork chops, cut into cubes – 4 Toulouse sausages, cut into 3 to 4 cm pieces – 3 cloves of garlic, chopped – 1 bouquet garni - 500 ml good chicken stock – 2 tins of white haricot beans – 4 T tomato passata or chopped tomato
In an stovetop casserole (like le Creuset), fry the onion, celery, carrot and courgette in the oil and a little salt until soft, then add the meat and sausages and seal. Add the garlic, bouquet garni, stock and the beans and tomato passata. Bring to a simmer then cover with the lid and put into a slow oven at 160°C for at least three to four hours. Take out the bouquet garni and discard. Taste and adjust seasoning by adding pepper and more salt if necessary. For the luxury version, tuck in some confit of duck about an hour from the end. You can also add lamb, smoked or belly pork and/or chicken. It is the beans and the garlicky sausages that make it a cassoulet, all the others are optional and regional.
So if you want to try making your own cassoulet, we have duck confit in tins for you, whole legs (thigh and drumstick) preserved in duck fat, which you can then use for duck fat potatoes. Prices are: 2 legs R165 and 4/5 legs R300.
If you work out that buying and cooking a local duck would probably cost you nearly R95 to get the two legs, the duck fat included in the tin makes this quite a good price and saves you the effort. We can get you (on order) the correct dried white beans from France as well. If you don’t want to go to the trouble, we can help there as well. A jar of French ready-made cassoulet containing duck and all the above will cost you R190 for the 410g size and R300 for the 820g size
Taste of the Helderberg As this is being sent, we are on our way to the Lord Charles in Somerset West to enjoy the Taste of the Helderberg. We are very grateful to Annareth Bolton, CEO of the Stellenbosch Wine Routes for arranging transport for us and a few other wine and food people, allowing us to enjoy the tasting without guilt.
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 Events Calendar. All the events are listed in date order and we already have a large number of exciting events to entertain you right through the year. Click here to access the Calendar. You will need to be connected to the internet.
Learn about wine and cooking 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 wine education courses, some very serious and others more geared to fun. You can see details here.
Chez Gourmet in Claremont has a programme of cooking classes. A calendar of their classes can be seen here. Pete Ayub, who makes our very popular Prego sauce, runs evening cooking classes at Sense of Taste, his catering company in Maitland. We can recommend them very highly, having enjoyed his seafood course. Check his programme here.
Restaurant Special offers. Some more 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.
Winter is coming in with a bang, but we can still expect some wonderful clear and sunny days. Make the most of them and enjoy a picnic on a wine farm; 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.
7th May 2012
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.
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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