Friday, November 15, 2019

This Week’s MENU. Neethlingshof; Champagne; Eden Project, Padstow, Port Isaac in Cornwall; Wine & Recipe of the Week


We are pretty dedicated omnivores. We eat a wide range of foods and endeavour to enjoy a very balanced diet – within the constraints imposed by frequent meals at events and in restaurants. So it was interesting to be offered a vegan three course meal at a wine estate restaurant last week, a restaurant which does have vegan dishes as part of their portfolio. So that is part of this week’s MENU, along with a Champagne event and more stories about Cornwall. We enjoyed it all and hope that you will enjoy our stories
Gauteng readers can enjoy Wade Bales Cap Classique & Gin Affair at the Southern Sun in Hyde Park Rooftop Terrace Bar, on  Saturday 23rd November from 3-7 pm and Sunday 24th November from 1-5 pm. Book your tickets today at QUICKET TICKETS
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Vintage launch and Vegan lunch at Neethlingshof, Stellenbosch
An invitation to visit Neethlingshof to taste their newly released white wines, some of their current red wines and some barrel samples followed by lunch was quickly accepted. It is rather a long time since we last visited and tasted the wines of winemaker De Wet Viljoen. Read on…

Wine Concepts French Champagne Festival was an even better success this year than in the past. Why? They changed it to a Saturday afternoon affair and it was much appreciated by the guests who came in their droves.  How special to spend an afternoon tasting the top Champagne marques and enjoying some canapes for R500 a person, cheaper than a bottle of a single Champagne marque. Read on…


Mevagissey is only a few miles away from the Eden Project, which is an educational charity.  Inside two massive connected biomes, covered in plastic, are plants that are collected from many diverse climates and environments, including South Africa. The project is located in a reclaimed china clay pit, located 5 km from the larger town of St Austell, which you go through to get to Mevagissey. It was started in 1998 and completed in 2001. Its purpose is to demonstrate the importance of plants to people and to promote sustainable use of plant resources. Read on… 
Even though he had visited Cornwall several times, John had never visited Padstow, so Lynne wanted to show it to him. She has spent many happy days there, walking along the cliffs and then finding a good pub to have a good beer with mates and a pasty from the Rock Bakery on the other side of the estuary. Padstow is a very popular town and is well known for having several Rick Stein restaurants. We love his cooking programmes and his recipes have become standards in our home. Read on…

On the MENU this week. Fennel and Pear Salad

It seems that we may be about to enjoy a period of warmer weather, so it is back to eating salads for us. This is something very easy to put together and rather unusual. We think you will like it. If you have a mandolin grater, it makes thinly shaving the fennel very easy. Read on...
which is full of green pepper pyrazines, fig leaves and granadilla on an intense nose. Crisp and round on the attractive palate with some sweetness mid palate, green peppers, lime and guava. We enjoyed this wine so much; it is an excellent example of a good Cape Sauvignon Blanc. It went so well with food too. And the price is affordable. R80 on the farm

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Posted by MENU at 6:47 pm 0 comments

On the MENU this week. Fennel and Pear Salad

It seems that we may be about to enjoy a period of warmer weather, so it is back to eating salads for us. This is something very easy to put together and rather unusual. We think you will like it. If you have a mandolin grater, it makes thinly shaving the fennel very easy
The original recipe has watercress instead of rocket in the dressing. We can no longer get watercress in South Africa as it is an invasive species and I found that peppery rocket works just as well. Do not overcook the potatoes, if you can get the waxy ones, they work well. 
175g fennel, thinly sliced - 2 ripe pears, peeled and diced – 225g diced cooked potato – 50g toasted almonds, roughly chopped
Combine the above ingredients
Dressing: 150ml soured cream – 15ml lemon juice – 30g rocket
6 spring onions, chopped – salt and pepper
Blend these in a liquidiser, then lightly toss the salad with the dressing, adjust seasoning and serve.
Posted by MENU at 5:23 pm 0 comments

MENU’s Wine of the Week is Neethlingshof Estate Sauvignon Blanc 2019


which is full of green pepper pyrazines, fig leaves and granadilla on an intense nose. Crisp and round on the attractive palate with some sweetness mid palate, green peppers, lime and guava

We enjoyed this wine so much, it is an excellent example of a good Cape Sauvignon Blanc. It went so well with food too. And the price is affordable. R80 on the farm
Posted by MENU at 3:01 pm 0 comments

MENU's UK Adventure 15. Chasing Rick Stein to Padstow; a visit to Port Isaac

Even though he had visited Cornwall several times, John had never visited Padstow, so Lynne wanted to show it to him
She has spent many happy days there, walking along the cliffs and then finding a good pub to have a good beer with mates.... 

and a pasty from the Rock Bakery on the other side of the estuary. The tide was out

Padstow is a very popular town and is well known for having several Rick Stein restaurants
We love his cooking programmes and his recipes have become standards in our home

Bold young kelp gulls are everywhere

Parking is along the front on the extreme right
So we walked into town trying to find the Rick Stein Fish and Chips restaurant

A long view of Rock, across the bay

We wandered around for ages, up hills and down many streets being misled (again) by our satnav
Eventually, we found Stein's Patisserie, selling all sorts of tempting things;
we asked them how to find the restaurant we wanted
They were very helpful, but we were not pleased by the answer
Just our luck. It was back along the quayside, near where we had parked the car!
Still, it meant we had seen quite a lot of Padstow

It’s in a huge old wooden warehouse building that has been modernised
The Seafood Bar & Fishmongers looked good, but we had set our sights on fish and chips

If only our local fish suppliers looked as fresh and good as this

Found it, further down in the same building
Lots of beers, wines and cider for sale as well as soft drinks and water

Prices above the 'bar'. We ordered one hake and one cod in batter with chips
And two local India Pale Ales, which came in the bottle! No glasses or cups
They apparently have gone green, so if you hate drinking beer out of a bottle, as we do, take your own glasses
John did manage to nick one last plastic cup from the counter (which, of course, being green ourselves, we recycled later)
The fish is all cooked in beef dripping; our SA doctor and “fishatarians” might have a fit at that, but it was very good batter
We could see seats to the right of the kitchen, but we were not permitted to sit there
"No", we were told, "that is separate, you have to eat round the back of the building in the open air"
We had obviously missed the fact that the take away and the sit down sections are separate,
even though they share a kitchen
It would have cost us £1 extra each to sit down in comfort
And rules is rules..., even though we’d offered to pay the extra pound

Thank heavens it wasn’t raining. Around the back of the building,
there are some picnic tables and we managed to find seats, eventually
We halved the fish, so each of us had a taste of each fish;
it was superbly fresh and pearly, just as it should be and had great flavour
The crisp batter is a little greasy and we got nice and messy, eating with our fingers
The chips could be crisper; we did ask for them to be crisp,
but they were not, and being packed beneath the steaming fish softens them more

The tide was coming in fast,

filling up the harbour. We decided to head up the coast to Port Isaac
(aka Portwenn, where Doc Martin and the movie Fisherman’s Friends have been filmed)

Lynne is a fan of Doc Martin, but that was not the purpose of our visit to this beautiful fishing village
A good friend of hers, Nick Farmer, had lived there with his mother for years. Nick, sadly, died last year
The view from the car park is superb; you can see a long way up the coast

and you see buildings that are familiar from TV shows

The wind was fresh and the gulls were having such fun catching the breeze off the cliffs

A Port Isaac scene many will recognise

You have to park quite a way out of town and then walk down the steep streets to the centre

A view of the town beach

Was this ever a chemist? We like the name "May Contain Nuts" on the bakery

Tiny narrow streets, we missed seeing the four laughing lasses

Stand back against the wall; cars passing in the narrow lane

A view from the beach. Nick had lived above the cliff to the right. We hope he had a happy life there

Even dogs like the Cornish ice cream, so rich and creamy

Lots of good long cliff walks in the area

There are many B&Bs in the area

Many make a pilgrimage to the Doc's house, the little one on the left
The big house on the right was a BnB in Fisherman's Friends
We had to head 'home' back to Mevagissey via Bodmin, having made our own pilgrimage to remember a good friend

Next: Falmouth and more Rick Stein; Fowey, then off to London

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Posted by MENU at 12:53 pm 0 comments

Thursday, November 14, 2019

MENU's UK Adventure 14. The Eden Project and Charlestown in Cornwall

Mevagissey is only a few miles away from the Eden Project, which is an educational charity. Inside two massive connected biomes, covered in plastic, are plants that have been collected from many diverse climates and environments, including South Africa. The project is located in a reclaimed china clay pit, located 5 km from the larger town of St Austell, which you go through to get to Mevagissey. It was started in 1998 and completed in 2001. Its purpose is to demonstrate the importance of plants to people and to promote sustainable use of plant resources. The massive Biomes, housing the largest rain forest in captivity, stunning plants, exhibitions and stories, serve as a backdrop to striking contemporary gardens, summer concerts and exciting year-round family events. Being plant lovers, it was top of our list of places to visit. You buy tickets on line and can join for a year for almost the same price as a once-off visit. You park your car at the top of the hill and are then taken by bus to the entrance. There are also arranged daily tours. You can take a one minute tour here

A view of the biomes in the former quarry

The Core, home to the Invisible Worlds exhibition, using natural forms (biomimicry) and sustainable construction
The Core was built in 2005 and re-imagined in 2017/18 with the new major exhibition
and substantial changes to the building. This included a new Exhibitions Gallery, Café, Laboratory and two play areas
in addition to a series of new art and exhibit installations

A friendly robin on the pathway down to the entrance to the biomes

A bee on Japanese anemones, Anemone hupehensis, which seemed to be in every Cornish garden at this time of the year

and, first, we entered the tropical zone, which has many plants which we see on a daily basis in Africa
In fact, we have similar strelitzia plants in our garden at home

The environment is so well controlled that the plants do fruit

and if you look very carefully you can see these small shy partridges known as Roul-rouls,
which are usually found in the Rain Forests in the Far East
They were introduced as part of natural pest control measures at the Eden project and have thrived

An indigenous blackbird had flown in to enjoy the ripening figs

and in the ponds, under the duckweed, are large tadpoles, soon to turn into frogs

Many of the plants were flowering and there were several species of ginger

Beautiful flowering Ixora plant, looks like a jasmine?

Huge elephant ears

No green leaves, growing straight out of the ground. They do have some of the rarest plants

Some clever sculptures in the trees

Another graceful beauty

A kind of frilly and frivolous hibiscus

Some plants are beautiful but look rather alien

Just beautiful

It almost resembled a Triffid!, but with an orchic face. It seems that this is a member of the ginger family

Salmon pink and slightly familiar. Is this an SA plant? If anyone knows the names of any of these plants,
we should be very grateful. Amateur botanists are always keen to learn
Lynne knows some of them and has trawled the Internet for others, but has not found many of them

Like white daffodils hanging from a bush
They reminded Lynne of Sand Lilies she has seen growing on the dunes in Greece, but these are different

A ripe cocoa pod

This is known as a Torch ginger

Flowering coffee bush

and morning glory

You can climb right to the top where the lianas and taller trees reach for the sun
Water cascades and there are misters to keep the warm air moist

Cocoa grows on the trunk of the tree

And here you can have rum cocktails made from baobab

After walking for hours, we so needed this tractor ride back to the top, where we caught the bus back to our car
Lynne's FitBit racked up thousands of steps that day

On our way back to Mevagissey, we spotted this butcher flying the SA flag and had to stop

and we found that he stocks lots of familiar South African meat products and other groceries

His name is Jeremy Rickard and he is not at all South African;
pure Cornish but, apparently, he has many, many expat South African customers
who have persuaded him to make our famous sausages and biltong
and have supplied him with the recipes and the essential spices!
He does also have very good local meat for sale
We're (only a little slightly) sad for him, but our team won the World Cup!

Lots of choice, but at UK prices

and South Africans will be amused at what is on the shelves to buy
"Essentials" like Mrs Ball's Chutney, Ouma’s Rusks, Steers Braai sauces, All Gold tomato ketchup,
Rajah curry spices and Black Cat peanut butter, amongst others
Do people really miss Royco soups and Frisco & Ricoffy instant coffee?
Have we started a stampede to Cornwall by all the SA expats living in the UK?
We can see someone getting that Coca-cola fridge for Christmas....

On our way back 'home' we spotted a sign pointing to Charlestown
Originally the small fishing village of West Polmear, it was developed by Charles Rashleigh
into a port with a dry dock in the late 18th century
He built the village and a gun battery was also built to the west of the harbour mouth,
as a defence against possible French attacks
The port was used to transport copper and, later, china clay from nearby mines
In 1799 the locals asked his permission to rename the place Charles's Town which became Charlestown
It remains little changed today

The dock

The old cellars on the dockside on the other side of the harbour

A view of the village, looking back over the harbour

The beach below the harbour

and a brave local lady swimming in the cold sea

A small sailboat and windsurfer race

A vintage dovecote

We thought we were seeing things; a Pirate, in Cornwall, in 2019?
We like the turned-up toes on his shoes

And another of those scary lanes with the very high sides and blind bends; our route home to Mevagissey

Posted by MENU at 11:44 pm 0 comments
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