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Thursday, September 13, 2012

Lunch at Groote Post, near Darling

A drift of spring daisies just inside the farm entrance

Golden and yellow heads on the hillside just before the winery

The wine cellar with two painters balancing on the roof – sprucing up for Spring

Enjoying the great wines In the tasting room

The front view of the manor house restaurant c 1704

The side entrance and gable

A superb collection of old kitchen equipment

The manageress asking us where we would like to sit.

The inside dining room

The walled terrace outside with the pergola, which will soon be covered in vine leaves

A beautiful sash window

The menu, which changes every day

Lynne’s roasted camembert and tomato tart with melt in the mouth pastry R58

Her second light starter of really excellent lean Springbok Carpaccio, with salad leaves, avocado and slices of good pretzel bread. This carpaccio is obtainable from the Darling butcher and is more like a good bresaola than a raw Carpaccio. Its flavour is very concentrated and the texture superb. All this needed was a light sprinkling of balsamic and olive oil. R58

The wines available on the farm, with cellar door prices at the table

John’s lunch, Mascarpone chicken with bean and bacon casserole R120

They have a really good collection of cycads on the farm

Photographs © John Ford, Adamastor & Bacchus 2012

Supper at Societi's new Cookhouse at the Josephine Mill

The historic Josephine Mill in Newlands

Cookhouse logo on a barrel top

The printed menu

and the specials on a blackboard

Juan Botha, newly qualified cabinet maker and part-time waiter,

who looked after us very well

The tidy serving area

The inside of the restaurant

The waiters' memo board above the pizza oven

The pizza chefs

A view of the outside terrace

John’s Bruschetta of roast aubergine, tomato and rocket served on paper

Ronnies Cauliflower cheese soufflé – different and a little dry

Lynne's very crispy squid with aoli. Far too much batter, very dry, no garlic in the aioli and the suspect of the evening

Loraine's Burrata - Local cow’s milk mozzarella with a creamy centre.

John’s hamburger, which he enjoyed, but the so called “crispy” chips were sloppy and coated with paprika to make them look as though they were crisp

Loraine’s main course of parpardelle pasta with dried mushroom, chilli and tomato sauce

Lynne’s main of baked semolina gnocchi in a brown butter sauce with sage leaves. Needed more sage and the butter needed to be brown and nutty. This is a very, very rich dish and, we were told, the most popular dish in the restaurant.

Ronnie had the large portion and regretted it, as it is rather heavy.

The old Mill boiler

Restaurant hams, sausages and salamis hanging in side rooms

Photographs © John Ford, Adamastor & Bacchus cc 2012

Thursday, September 06, 2012

30 August 2012 Main Ingredient's MENU - Masters of the Trade Routes, East South west travel, Klink awards etc

Main Ingredient’s weekly E-Journal

Gourmet Foods, Ingredients & Fine Wines

Eat In Guide’s Outstanding Outlet Award Winner from 2006 to 2010

www.mainingredient.biz - http://www.adamastorbacchus.com/

+27 21 439 3169 / +27 83 656 4169

Click here to Subscribe to MENU or to contact us

Mount Currie, viewed from Peacehaven farm near Kokstad in the early morning

In this week’s MENU:

Products

Our market activities

Masters of the Trade Routes

Travelling East to South West

Klink Awards

Events and Restaurant specials

Wine courses & cooking classes

To tell the whole story here would take too much space, so click on underlined and Bold words in the text to open links to pictures, blogs, websites or more information

This week’s Product menu We have a good range of tasters for you when you come to see us at the markets. The wonderful Prego sauce from Sense of Taste, Edmond Fallot’s strong Burgundian mustards, French sauces including Bearnaise and Bourguinon and the excellent Protea Hill Farm vinegars. The Nielsen Massey extracts are too strong to taste, but they smell wonderful and we have samples of those too. Come and taste them at Long Beach tomorrow and the Biscuit Mill on Saturday.. Not for tasting, but brilliant to make salad dressings, now that we are beginning to see signs of spring, we have a great range of oils and vinegars: not only the Protea Hill Farm raspberry and herb vinegars, but French shallot, tarragon, white truffle and Provencal herb vinegars, Italian white and red wine vinegars and balsamic and three Spanish sherry vinegars; oils include walnut, hazelnut, argan and truffle oils.

To see what else we have available for you, 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 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 tomorrow, Friday 31st August from 09h00 to 16h00. We look forward to seeing you there.

THE MASTERS OF THE TRADE ROUTES The V&A Waterfront has been running this culinary competition since the 1st of June to promote the Waterfront restaurants. It will be an annual competition in future. 27 of them took part and each had to serve a dish or meal which expressed the concept of the Master of the Trade Routes, showcasing the many international influences that have been infused into South African cuisine. We received a lovely hand-crafted spice cupboard at the beginning, filled with interesting spices and we told you about the competition and how you could take part in it. And then, last night, we were invited to the Gala finale and award ceremony, which was held on South Africa’s new Antarctic research ship SA Agulhas II, starting at 6 pm. What an impressive ship she is, even if boarding via the tall gangway staircase was almost a bridge too far for Vertigo Lynne.

We did treat ourselves to one of the restaurants in the intervening period and wrote about it here in MENU and were delighted to see that Den Anker made the top 8 restaurants. One of our readers won the award for voting for her favourite restaurant and meal.

We had been told to wear elegant dress with suitable shoes for the ship but, sensibly, most of us were dressed in layers against the cold. Sheltered under a canopy on deck, we were very glad to see space heaters as the wind was a bit piercing. The excellent bubbly and wine came from Groot Constantia and some canapés were served while we chatted, made new friends and waited for the announcements. We watched from a distance as the chefs prepared the dishes in a roped off area inside the ship. The judges were chef, Festival director of Taste SA shows and food stylist Justine Drake, CapeTalk’s John Maytham and Food24 editor Caro de Waal. While we were enjoying the wine, we watched them being served all of the 8 dishes so they could vote on them. At 8 o clock they let the hungry horde of guests and a few media loose on the food, in taste-sized portions, and we were told we had 45 minutes to try them all after which the awards would be announced. Well, we tried! Click here for the photos and descriptions of the dishes.

The judges felt that the winning restaurants would be those which really addressed the spice route theme. The second place went to Dash restaurant at the Victoria Hotel for their offering of pan-seared magret duck breast on a spiced Elgin pear purée with sage and quinoa - R98 (Chef Craig Paterson) while the overall winner was Signal restaurant at the Cape Grace Hotel with their tender, succulent and spicy De-constructed Bobotie - Bobotie spiced springbok loin, roasted parsnip, pickled mango purée, almond crumble and curried lentil jus, also R95 (Chef Malika van Reenen). Both dishes were excellent and fully addressed the spice criteria and the trade route past South Africa brief. There were other dishes the guests really loved like the sushi from Willoughby’s, the asparagus risotto with a scallop from Den Anker and the Guinness and steak pie from Reuben’s at One and Only which contained seriously good tender steak. Sadly, the cold and long wait did negatively affect some of the food, but the chefs worked tirelessly to produce lots of great hot food.

After the awards, a groaning dessert table was offered by Meloncino and good coffee was served before another hairy climb down the gangplank and home.

A VERY BIG ADVENTURE INDEED We have our replacement car at last. Thanks to friends Chirag Lakhani and Elaine and Angela of Food Fanatics we were able to continue to do business in the meantime with the loan of a Jeep and a bakkie, but we finally found our replacement car in Durban. It was going to cost R5500 to send the car to Cape Town and a clever friend suggested we go and fetch it and have a break driving it down. Well, not quite a break, as we have had to really push it to get back in four days of serious driving through some of the most beautiful scenery and some of the most scary driving we have ever seen. Our drive through the Transkei on the second of the four days gave new meaning to the concept of danger. Passing on double white lines with blind rises and corners is so commonplace that one could believe that the locals think a double line means it is safe to pass. We will be attaching blogs to the next MENU, so you can see the great places we stayed at on the way and some of the sights we saw.

Because we spent four days driving this marathon, we have had very little time to concentrate on writing, so this is a very short edition of MENU and there has been no time to research a recipe for you. We’ll have one next week.

VOTE NOW! The Klink Wine Tourism Award nominations have just been announced. Now YOU can vote for your favourites. We were part of the panel involved in choosing these category nominations. Click here to place your votes for your favourite nominated winery, wine farm experience, wine festival, tasting room, restaurant and many more categories. You stand a chance to win fabulous prizes for your participation.

Food and wine (and a few other) events for you to enjoy

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.

30th August 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.

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 our mailing list strictly confidential. 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.

23 August 2012 Main Ingredient's MENU - Function food – DGB trade tasting, CWG Auction tasting, Manuka at Southey’s, Taj Expressions of Franschhoek next week, Fish pie etc

Main Ingredient’s weekly E-Journal

Gourmet Foods, Ingredients & Fine Wines

Eat In Guide’s Outstanding Outlet Award Winner from 2006 to 2010

www.mainingredient.biz - http://www.adamastorbacchus.com/

+27 21 439 3169 / +27 83 656 4169

Click here to Subscribe to MENU or to contact us

Waterblomme – a traditional South African ingredient in dishes like Waterblommetjie bredie

In this week’s MENU:

Products

Our market activities

Function food – DGB trade tasting

CWG Auction tasting

Manuka at Southey’s

Taj Expressions of Franschhoek next week

Fish pie

Events and Restaurant specials

Wine courses & cooking classes

To tell the whole story here would take too much space, so click on underlined and Bold words in the text to open links to pictures, blogs, websites or more information

This week’s Product menu We have a good range of tasters when you come to see us at the markets. The wonderful Prego sauce from Sense of Taste, Edmond Fallot’s strong Burgundian mustards, French sauces including Bearnaise and Bourguinon and the excellent Protea Hill Farm vinegars. The Nielsen Massey extracts are too strong to taste, but they smell wonderful and we have samples of those too. Come and taste them at the Biscuit Mill on Saturday..

We will be back at Long Beach Mall on Friday 31st August from 09h00 to 16h00. We look forward to seeing you there.

FUNCTION FOOD We are invited to lots of functions and at many they provide food. It varies in quality and in quantity and some of it is matched specifically to the wine, some ‘sort of’ goes with wine, and some of it fights with wine – you might be surprised at how often we are served very hot chilli canapés which completely blow your mind and all your taste buds. We love to stop for a bite or two between bouts of tasting as it helps to absorb any wine John is inadvertently swallowing and lines the stomach against acid for Lynne who, because she doesn’t drive, does swallow. Occasionally we have to play “Chase the waiter/ess” with the rapidly diminishing platter of scarce bites. On Tuesday night at the Portswood Hotel, DGB tried a completely new tactic and it was so appreciated. They had a food station and the chef just kept on loading it up with very edible and freshly prepared food and you could help yourself. Click here to see the pictures. There were perfectly cooked lamb chops which you ate South African braai style with your fingers,(there were enough serviettes), really fresh ceviche of squid with salad served in tall glasses, amazing mussels, croissants crammed with smoked salmon and cream cheese, generous roast beef rolls, and some goujons of fish. Small plates were provided and you could nosh away when you felt you needed a pause. Well done DGB. Unpretentious, but great eating.

DGB has a very good portfolio of wines, which includes Bellingham, Boschendal, Brampton (formerly the Rustenberg second label), Graham Beck, Lourensford and Vergelegen, as well as a wide range of entry level wines. We started with the bubblies, which are well represented in the portfolio. Graham Beck is well known to nearly everyone, but this was our first taste of the Brut Zero, bone dry with less than 2gm of sugar, and with a delicious bready, yeasty character, reminding one of oven fresh ciabatta. Boschendal has a very good new MCC in the pipeline, Jean le Long Founder’s Reserve Cuvée Prestige 2007, which will be released in the last quarter of this year. We were also very impressed with the Steenberg 1682 Pinot Noir rosé MCC, which has a rich elegance.

At this tasting, we met Tinus Kruger the winemaker of the Brampton range of wines. DGB bought this brand from Rustenberg several years ago and we are very impressed indeed with what Tinus is doing. Each one of the wines under the label is a classic expression of what it says on the label, with no faults and we like them all. The Sauvignon blanc is full of elderflower and cat’s pee notes and is crisp, dry and true to the grape. The unwooded chardonnay’s grapes come from Bonnievale and is easy drinking and full of fruit. The peppery and spicy shiraz is full of juicy licorice fruit. The classic cabernet is full of violets and cassis and is very easy to quaff. The dry rosé, especially, is delicious and the price point is one everybody can afford.

Two other very good value wines were Bellingham’s Berry Bush a dry rosé which was bottled just 12 weeks ago and the Pear tree, a spicy blend of chenin and viognier, a definite food wine. These will retail around the R26 to R30 mark, very good value.

Everyone was impressed with Andre van Rensburg’s Vergelegen DNA 2006, a good Bordeaux blend. It was the wine drunk this week at Lord’s during the test match.

Bellingham’s top Bernard Series has a really impressive oaked Sauvignon Blanc 2007 from very old vines. This smoky Blanc Fumé is full of asparagus notes with a full mouth feel and is absolutely stunning. Sadly it looks as though it will not be made much longer, as this style of wine is not a big seller and the crop produced by the 20+ year old vines is too small to be economically viable. If you can find some do try it, we think it might change your perspective on what can be done with old vines and good Sauvignon that is wooded. All the wines in this range really impressed us.

CWG Auction tasting. Later today, we will be at one of the year’s highlights: The Cape Winemaker’s Guild Auction pre-tasting. The guided tasting in the afternoon is not open to the public, but the tasting this evening will be. It will be at the CTICC, Convention Centre. Jo’burgers can experience the tasting on Thursday 30th. Details of both are in our Events Calendar.

Manuka If you buy wine in a supermarket you are generally on your own; if you go to a specialised wine shop, they have the expertise to help you find something you like or are looking for, wines that go with what you are serving or wines that will add value to your collection. We have been promising to visit our friends and colleagues Alison and Steven Digby at their excellent wine shop Manuka at Southey’s in Somerset West for ages but, usually, we are driving though to get somewhere in a hurry or keen to get home after a trip. Yesterday, we went to Strand to see a car and afterwards needed some lunch, so it was the perfect opportunity to call in, chat, see the shop and have a bite to eat in their informal restaurant. The big child-friendly garden, filled with ducks and guinea fowl, looks a lovely place for an al fresco lunch on a sunny day but, instead, we sat inside in the restaurant in front of the warm wood burning stove and watched Bruwer Raats and his boys with a school friend eat delicious looking pizzas. We both ordered a slightly smaller version, grilled pitas filled with mozzarella, sundried tomatoes, bacon and avocado which hit the spot. The wine shop brought back fond memories of our shop and is very well stocked indeed with a huge variation of good wines and bubblies. Click here to see the photos.

Klink Awards – a new initiative to award excellence in service to tourism by the wine industry, will be receiving widespread publicity soon. We were fortunate enough to be invited to join the judging panel. Look out for more about this in the next few weeks. You can read more about it here.

Greg’s dog Our cousin Denver’s son Greg and his family are relocating to the UK. They have a lovely 6 year old pedigreed brown Doberman, who has to be left behind because they will not have large enough accommodation for him. If you have a home for this beautiful companion, please let us know and we will pass your details on to Greg and Liesel.

Taj Expressions of…. continues the journey through the world’s most beautiful winelands on Thursday 30th with a free tasting of Franschhoek wines from 5pm. We recommend completing the evening by booking for dinner. Four courses will be prepared by Guest Chef Michelle Theron from Pierneef à La Motte. Her dishes will be paired with regional wines which express the inherent character of the variety and their place of origin. The menu will then be incorporated into the MINT Restaurant Table d’hôte menu for the entire next month with selected paired regional wines as an option. Two of the Taj chefs will have spent time with the chef to ensure that his or her dishes are replicated correctly! R350 per person, including wine, mineral water and secure parking at Mandela Rhodes Place is extremely good value. We look forward to seeing you there. Email restaurants.capetown@tajhotels.com or telephone 021 819 2000 to make your reservation. There is also a chance to win one of many prizes, including an evening’s stay for 2 persons in a luxury room at Taj Cape Town, whenever you dine from this menu. Guest wines will feature on various Taj restaurant lists as well as in the new Wine Kiosk (off-consumption 7 days a week!) which is located in the hotel lobby. Wines ordered on the launch night will be available at cellar door prices. There will be a free wine tasting before the dinner, from 5pm and a weekly wine tasting at the hotel each Wednesday evening in the Lobby and every Thursday lunchtime outside on the mall whilst the Earth Fare Market is taking place. Taj Cape Town +27 21 819 2014, Fax: +27 21 819 2001. For more info, please click here.

Fish pie Julie Carter of Ocean Jewels at the Biscuit Mill has such good fish that she inspired Lynne to make a luxurious fish pie for a dinner party we had last week. Her smoked haddock is delicious and not coloured.

Fish pies can be a simple supper dish and consist of just one fish, chopped hard-boiled egg, a good thick sauce and can be topped either with good mashed potatoes or a flaky pastry topping. But as it was Lynne’s birthday that week she decided to go to town. We have found some very good red skinned potatoes in the market and these do make superb mash, yellow and creamy. You can vary your fish, but do make sure that they have different textures and flavours. Here is what you need

5 large potatoes – cream – butter - 200ml dry white wine – 200 ml good fish stock – a bay leaf – three sprigs of thyme – 2 sprigs of dill – 100g smoked haddock – 100g salmon – 100g kingklip or monk fish – 100g angelfish – 150g large headless prawns in their shells - 2 hard-boiled eggs, roughly chopped – 2 T plain flour – 2 T butter - 400ml milk – 2 T fresh chopped parsley – 2 T grated cheese – freshly ground black pepper and salt

First boil the potatoes in salted water then mash well and flavour with butter, cream and season. Add the wine to the stock and add the dill, bay leaf and thyme. Bring to a soft simmer. Put the haddock skin side up and poach gently till just cooked. Remove and flake into large pieces. Cut the rest of the fish into cubes and poach gently in the wine and stock. Put the prawns into the stock and simmer until just cooked. Cool them and remove the skins. Devein if necessary. Do not overcook anything, as it will continue to cook in the pie. Make a roux with butter and the flour, than strain the poaching liquid and add the same quantity of milk to it. Use this to make a fairly thick sauce. If you need more liquid, add extra milk. Taste and adjust the seasoning. Now mix all the fish, prawns, egg and parsley into the sauce and put into a deep pie dish. You can add a little more dill if you like. Top with the mashed potato, grate over the cheese. Put in the fridge for serving later. This needs about 25 to 30 minutes in a 180°C oven just before you serve it. Serves 6

What did we accompany the fish pie with? We like to start a dinner that might be quite solid and sustaining with something fresh so Lynne made Vietnamese rice paper rolls. Lots of fresh basil, rocket, watercress, baby spinach, mint and coriander mixed with finely sliced mange tout and green beans, baby corn, chillies or pepperdews according to your taste, grated carrots, and bean sprouts. Flavour this mix with fish sauce and Japanese sweet rice wine vinegar. Roll up in just softened rice pancakes and serve with dipping sauces of your choice. We used one of ponzu and another of mixed plum sauce and hoisin sauce. Quando Chenin Viognier 2009 was a perfect match for both dishes.

Our dessert was a fresh citrus jelly made with tangelos, oranges, lime and lemon containing litchis and sliced strawberries.

Food and wine (and a few other) events for you to enjoy

22nd August 2012

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

About us

MENU, our weekly email newsletter, started as an advertising medium for Main Ingredient, our specialist retail grocery business. We opened our Sea Point shop in December 2002 because realised that there was a place in South Africa for a grocer catering to people with sophisticated tastes and needs. We moved the shop on line in 2010, but discontinued it in 2015, having decided that it is time to “retire” and concentrate on our writing, photography and tour guiding. MENU has a wide circulation and is read nationally and internationally.

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