Southern double-collared sunbird hen
In this week’s MENU:
Products
Our
market activities
Computer
Crash
Busy,
doing nothing
Dangerous
food
2013
John Platter Guide launch
Pumpkin
and Red Pepper Soup with Cacao Cream
Problems
cooking Venison
Events
and Restaurant specials
Wine
courses & cooking classes
This week’s Product
menu November already. This year is disappearing far too
quickly. Soon Christmas will be upon us. Lynne has made delicious Christmas
puddings and mini Christmas cakes for several years and they have been very
popular. Send us a message if you wish to
order Chestnuts
are also enjoying a sudden spurt in popularity, probably in anticipation of
Christmas celebrations. We have more in stock in cans and jars, as well as
chestnut purées. We expect to have marrons glacées soon. We have a small
quantity of pickled walnuts, made by Yvonne Bayly whose husband Peter
makes the delicious Bayly’s Port. Have a look for these and other things
you need in our Product list.
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 wonderfully exciting, 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. It’s quite easy if you know how. Click here for a map which shows
where we park.
We will be back at Long Beach Mall on Friday
9th November and again on Friday 23rd from 09h00 to 16h00. We look forward to seeing you there. Please note that, in
December, we
will only be at Long Beach Mall on Friday the 7th, so that will be
the only convenient day for Christmas shopping at the Long Beach market if you
live in the “deep South”.
Computer Crash
A term that usually refers to a failure of the hard disk. In our case, it was a
foot hooking round the power cable of John’s laptop – the computer he usually
uses for his emails, editing photographs and almost everything. It travelled a
fair distance across the room and is now dead. Hopefully the newest data, which
had not been backed up, and the unanswered and unread emails can be retrieved.
Until then, if we haven’t answered a message or taken other requested action,
please resend and we’ll attend to you.
Events calendar.
We apologise for the bad link to our events calendar which some of you have
experienced. Interestingly, it still has the highest number of hits by some
margin compared with our other blogs. It has been fixed; somehow the link
dropped a digit, which is why it couldn’t connect.
Busy, doing
nothing
We have just had a lovely weekend, doing absolutely nothing. Our weekend starts
at 4 on Saturdays when we get home from the Biscuit Mill and usually we are
either rushing off somewhere special or doing some entertaining. The past few
weeks have been hectic and so we were delighted to find we could just STOP for
a day or two and gather ourselves together, eat some homely food and catch up
on all those things you love to do when you have time at home – which includes
cooking, gardening and computer games and watching recorded shows like
Masterchef in all its variations on TV for Lynne and, for John, working on
photos, reading and catching up on nature programmes and sport. Especially
watching Western Province take the Currie Cup, which was particularly sweet
because most of the pundits said they had no chance. The weekend didn’t go
quite as planned....
Dangerous food
As we have said before, being in the food business can be risky - one gets to
eat all sorts of interesting and unusual items, without knowing how they will
affect us, or whether we will like or enjoy them and whether we will have an
allergic reaction. However, this week it was something quite mundane that took
Lynne out, a fresh egg from the country gave her a very nasty dose of food
poisoning (it was the only thing John did not eat) and necessitated a dash to
our doctor, lots of pills, potions and injections. She is fine now, if a little
thinner. She thinks there might just be a better way to lose weight than this
very unpleasant route. No drinking in a week that features the Platter Guide
launch (where we get invited to taste all the top 5 star voted wines), The
Klink Awards, Caroline’s White Wine Review and the Expressions of Swartland and
Darling wine tasting and wine pairing dinner at the Taj hotel is a sacrifice and
a challenge. She went to Caroline’s and will go to the last two but will have
to spit when tasting wine and be very choosy about what she eats.
2013 John
Platter Guide launch Lynne’s ailment meant that John went to the
Platter launch at the Vineyard unaccompanied. The 2013 guide, with a bright
coral cover, has been printed in Paarl, rather than Singapore, where it
has been printed for the last few years. Local, as they say, is lekker. Andrew
McDowall, the publisher gave a typically amusing account of the preparation of
the Guide. In this edition, a record 62 wines earned five stars, with the
winery of the year, Cape Chamonix garnering four 5 star ratings. Three cellars
(Fairview, Mullineux Family and Nederburg) each earned three 5 stars, and Boschendal,
Fleur du Cap, Jordan, Raka, Sadie Family and Tokara were each awarded two 5
stars.
Of the 5 star awarded wines,
the reds and whites which receive the most votes from the judging panel are
named Platter’s Wines of the Year. This time the Red Wine Of The Year is
Mullineux Family Syrah 2010 (Wine of Origin Swartland), described in the guide
as “an icon in the making”, whilst the White Wine Of The Year is Paul Cluver
Noble Late Harvest 2011 (Wine of Origin Elgin), a botrytised riesling dessert
wine noted as “a thing of beauty”.
In an ongoing focus on value
for money, Platter's identifies a number of entry-level wines which are
exceptionally drinkable and well priced. The best of these, like the 5 star
candidates, go into a second round of “blind” tasting (without sight of the
label) to select the Superquaffer of the Year. For the first time since 2007,
the ultra-easy sipper of the year is a red wine – Melck’s Shiraz-Cabernet
Sauvignon 2011 by Muratie Estate (Wine of Origin Western Cape), noted in the
guide as “a model of lively drinkability”, showing “a curvaceous smoothness”.
We were especially pleased to
see some of the newer and smaller producers being awarded a 5 star rating for
their wines, notably, Adi Badenhorst (Secateurs), David Sadie (Lemberg) and Chris
Alheit (Cartology). Particularly thrilling was seeing Christopher Keet, who
made such brilliant wines at Cordoba being awarded five stars for his
classically elegant second vintage First Verse 2010. The full list of five star wines appears here.
Not only did he visit the
Vineyard Hotel, but also the vineyard at the Vineyard. On the bank of the
Liesbeek River, in the hotel grounds, there is a small sauvignon blanc
vineyard, with vines allocated to various people who are involved with wine and
who are supporters of the hotel. One of these vines has our name on it and GM
Roy Davies took John to visit it. You can see it and some photographs of the event here.
Do you have
problems cooking Venison? We had some beautiful venison
in the freezer that needed cooking this weekend and Lynne discovered a rather
interesting recipe in Nigella’s cookbook How to Eat. The venison was not
springbok, we think eland or gemsbok as it was a dark and heavy meat. So
marinating it in white wine with spices for 24 hours was definitely going to
improve the texture. Then cooking it, nestled between layers of onions which
had been almost caramelised, for 3 to 4 hours at 160°C would also seem to have
been designed to tenderise it. The flavour was amazing, but the texture of the
meat was like old rope. Can anyone explain why this happened? Lynne is always
keen to learn and make sure this tragedy doesn’t happen again with good meat.
The meat was not browned before it went into the casserole and was in plenty of
stock. We would love to know.
We have previously cooked
venison in various ways - marinated in port is a favourite - and we don’t like
the very soft texture of the meat after it has been marinated in buttermilk and
not encountered this problem before.
Checking facts Please be assured
that, where we can we always check our facts after an event, from a PR handout
or disc, the internet, other research or just plain talking to the people
concerned. We have had a couple of comments recently about the spelling of
BISTROT for Bizerca – if you check a good French dictionary or Larousse, you will see that it is
an alternative spelling for the same word. Check their web site, or the photos
on our blog: that is how it is spelt and that is how the chef and his wife want
it spelt. Ditto the phrase jus gras (lit. Fat juice or gravy) is well used –
check the Internet and is often the oil, scrapings and meat juices from the
bottom of the roasting tin and it came directly off their menu.
However we are human and
mistakes, which we always try to put right, can occasionally slip through the
cracks, especially because we sometimes have to write and edit and put Menu to
bed in the middle of the night on Thursdays, after an event. And sometimes,
just sometimes, it can happen, we are given the wrong information...
Happy Halloween
to those of you who are celebrating it.
Lynne thought you might like a
pumpkin recipe this week to use up the remains of yours. We haven’t tried it
yet, but it sounds delicious, and fairly quick and easy.
Pumpkin and Red
Pepper Soup with Cacao Cream from Willie Harcourt-Couze’s cookbook Willie’s
Chocolate Factory.
2 Kg pumpkin or
butternut, coarsely chopped and peeled – 2 t fresh rosemary, chopped - 80m
extra virgin olive oil – 2 red peppers, halved, seeds removed – 2 large onions,
roughly chopped – 4 garlic cloves, crushed – 1 litre vegetable or chicken stock
– 50 g cacao finely grated (good dark bitter chocolate, over 70% cocoa mass) –
crème fraiche to finish – cocoa nibs to finish (not essential - you can grate
over some more dark chocolate)
Preheat the oven to 220°C
(fan) Place the pumpkin in a large roasting tray, top with the rosemary and
drizzle over half the oil. Season with salt and grated black pepper then roast
for 30 minutes or until tender. Halfway through add the red pepper halves, cut
side down on a lightly oiled roasting tray. Meanwhile heat the remaining oil in
a large saucepan over a medium heat and fry the onion and garlic until soft.
Take the pumpkin and peppers from the oven. Put the peppers in a plastic bag,
seal and leave to steam and cool, this will make it easier to peel them.
Add the pumpkin to the onion
and garlic with the enough of the stock to cover and bring to the boil. Reduce
the heat to low, cover and simmer for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Peel
and chop the peppers and add them to the soup. Liquidise or blitz till smooth.
Adjust the seasoning and stir in the cacao or chocolate. Ladle the soup into
bowls and finish with a spoonful of crème fraiche and a scattering of cacoa
nibs or grating of chocolate.
TREKKING FOR
TRASH If you want to smile and be amazed at what Proudly
South African people are doing in this country for the environment and
communities - check out this wonderful website http://www.facebook.com/TrekkingForTrash From now on we
will always take a rubbish bag when we go for a walk on the beach and put what
we can into our recycling. What a great initiative by Michael and Camilla.
Superior Pots & Pans One
of our readers has a glorious 22-piece set of genuine, old, heavyweight copper
pots which she wants to sell. They are lined and in first-class
condition. She is looking for R22,000 for the set. If yowould like to see
them she can send you a photograph. We had it, but it’s in the crashed
computer. Contact MaaDee at: 021 685 9329, 073 526 2474, or sparki@holotropic.co.za
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.
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.
1st November 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.
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 and keep
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