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The Sea Point
beachfront with a gathering storm and a “hat” on Lion’s Head – a sure sign of
turbulent weather
In
this week’s MENU:
Launch of a big
Chardonnay at De Grendel in Durbanville Tasting 10 vintages
of Saronsberg Shiraz Steenberg wines at
Bistro 1682 This week’s Recipe:
Poached chicken Food and wine (and
a few other) events for you to enjoy Learn about wine
and cooking
To get the whole of our story, please
click on READ ON..... at the end of each paragraph, which will
lead you to the related blog, with pictures and more words. At the end of each
blog, click on RETURN
TO MENU to come back to the blog version of MENU.
This week’s Product menu – The fourth season of The
Great British Bake Off starts this week. If you are inspired, we do stock Nielsen
Massey real extracts: Vanilla Bean paste, Vanilla, Orange, Lemon, Almond,
Chocolate, Coffee, Mint, Rose Water and Orange Blossom Water. .................
See them all here
We’ve enjoyed three completely
different wine tastings this week combined with three completely different
restaurant lunches
Launch of a big
Chardonnay at De Grendel in Durbanville De Grendel’s wines always impress, the
restaurant produces very good food and the farm has one of the best views of
Table Bay and the mountain in the country. On Tuesday we were invited to taste
the wine ‘Op die Berg’ 2013 Chardonnay, paired with a three course menu
prepared by chef Ian Bergh and his team who are all on show in their open
kitchen. READ ON....
Tasting 10
vintages of Saronsberg Shiraz We feel
very privileged when we are invited to this sort of tasting. Saronsberg
winemaker Dewaldt Heyns took us through the ten vintages of their Shiraz at
Auslese this week, followed by lunch with our favourites. To see the
progression of this wine on one table is amazing and very, very interesting. It
started out as a big, full on spicy, warm Shiraz and, as the vines have aged,
it has turned into a Northern Rhône style shiraz, full of minerality and
refined layers of flavours, but still recognisable as the same wine. Lynne had
two very different favourites, the award winning block buster from 2007 and the
elegant 2010. Hard to believe that they are from the same vines, but what a
marvellous progression. We have all asked if we can do this again in another 10
years so that we can taste 20 years of the wines progress! Here’s hoping we will
all still be around tasting wine. READ ON....
Steenberg wines
at Bistro 1682 Another one
of those terrible days. Storm sweeping an from the North West, we headed off to
Steenberg to meet Marketing manager Caroline van Schalkwyk in the tasting
lounge, where she warmly welcomed us with a glass of their new Sauvignon Blanc
bubbly. Not an MCC, not enough time on the lees, more of a Prosecco fresh and
crisp, a sparkly style. Then we sat down and tasted through some of their other
wines before going through to the restaurant for what turned out to be a very
long lunch indeed. Were we having a good time? Yes, you bet, or we might have
left at a decent hour. And we were captivated by Chef Brad Ball’s food from his
new Bistro style menu. READ ON....
Building a
Dynasty We do try to support our local Sea Point restaurants
as often as we can, despite being invited out to many others all over the Cape.
Dynasty is where we go the most, it is close to home, we know them well now and
if Lynne doesn’t feel like cooking or gets a longing for good sushi or
excellent authentic Chinese food, it is to Dynasty that we go. They are in the
Nedbank Building on the Corner of Kloof Road and Irwinton road. We thought you
might like to see their food. READ ON....
How to Poach a
Chook Not so much a recipe this week as a
cooking suggestion. Determined to recreate the really moist chicken at De
Grendel, Lynne happened to watch one of the closing episodes of Masterchef
Professional Australia, where they cooked a whole chicken in a very different
way. We are definitely going to try this out this weekend and thought you might
like to hear about the method and try it yourself. But we offer no guarantees
that it will work for us, or for you.
You need a huge pot of what
they call a Master Stock. Enviably, Brad at 1682 has one that is 8 years old.
Many other chefs have their own too. Ours will be as aged as it takes to
assemble it. Here is the recipe from the internet:
Masterchef Master Stock
600ml light soy
sauce – 1 litre good chicken stock - ½ bottle sake (or you can use Shao Xin
rice wine) - 1 tsp ground star anise – 1½ cinnamon sticks - 1 large knob
ginger, chopped - 4 garlic cloves, chopped - 2 cups caster sugar - ½ orange,
pared zest
And here is Matt Preston’s
recipe for poaching the chicken:
HOW TO POACH A WHOLE CHICKEN
HERE'S how to simply poach your chook for that delicate softer-set flesh
using a simpler version of the steps taught to me by Peter Gilmore of Quay in
Sydney.
Step 1) Buy a 1.5kg bird - the best you can afford. The quality of the
flesh will shine through with this form of poaching. First check the bird's
cavity and remove the giblets if included. Now rinse the bird inside and out
and dry using kitchen towel or a spotlessly clean tea towel.
Step 2) Pick a pot with a lid that will comfortably hold the bird
without swamping it. Now bring three litres of stock or a 2:1 ratio mixture of
stock and water with your choice aromatics to the boil. Have a kettle of
freshly boiled water handy. Slip the bird in breast side down into the pot so
the stock covers it. Add more boiling water from the kettle, if needed, to
cover the chook.
Step 3) Remove the pot from the heat, bang on the lid and leave for an
hour. Do not let the chook sit in the pot until the stock goes cold but remove
it from the stock after an hour and place in the fridge to cool. After an hour
or so the barely poached pink chook flesh will be ready to pull apart for
salads or popping in a pie. Just rub the chook all over with a little sesame
oil, cut into segments and serve with boiled rice and steamed bok choi for a
healthy meal. Served this way, the chook is perfect with my spring onion relish
or red chilli relish - see www.taste.com.au
It's not an exact science but, for a larger bird, I use more stock and
leave it in the stock 15 minutes longer.
As they say on The Great British Bake
Off,
“COOK!” That fabulous show’s third season is back this weekend and Lynne, who
rarely bakes, will be glued to the TV for the whole enjoyable series.
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 type of
event for which we have information. To see what’s happening in our world of food and wine (and a few other cultural events), visit
our list of wine and food
pairing dinners, list
of Special events with wine and/or food connections,
list of Wine Shows and Tastings and list of special dinner events.
All the events are listed in date order and we have a large number of exciting
events to entertain you right through the year. Events outside the Western Cape are listed here.
Learn about wine and cooking We receive 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 of Cathy’s WSET and other courses here
and here and the CWA courses here. Karen Glanfield has taken
over the UnWined
wine appreciation courses from Cathy. See the details here
The Hurst Campus, an accredited school for people who want to become professional
chefs, will soon start a new series of short courses in baking. Check the ad in
our blog page or see the details here
Chez Gourmet in Claremont has a programme of cooking classes. A calendar of their classes can be seen here.
In addition to the
new Sense
of Taste Culinary Arts School, Chef Peter Ayub runs a
four module course for keen home cooks at his Maitland complex. Details
here
Nadège Lepoittevin-Dasse has French cooking classes in Noordhoek
and conducts cooking tours to Normandy. You can see
more details here.
Emma Freddi runs
the Enrica Rocca cooking courses at her
home in Constantia.
Brett Nussey’s Stir Crazy courses are now being
run from Dish Food and Social’s premises in Main Road Observatory (opposite
Groote Schuur hospital).
Lynn Angel runs the Kitchen Angel
cooking school and does private dinners at her home. She holds hands-on cooking
classes for small groups on Monday and Thursday evenings and she has decided to
introduce LCHF (Banting classes). The Kitchen Confidence classes, which focus
on essential cooking skills and methods, have been expanded and are now taught
over 2 evenings. She continues to host private dining and culinary team
building events at her home. She trained with Raymond Blanc, and has been a
professional chef for 25 years. More info
here
24th July 2014
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 online shop 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 and standard 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 and our
blogs 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
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