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mMENU
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/
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A most interesting bug with huge antennae – can you identify it?
In this week’s MENU:
• Products
• Our market activities
• Do-it-yourself
• Mixed seafood curry recipe
• La Mouette autumn special
• Concha y Toro wine & food pairing in Durbanville
• Birthday dinner at home
• Dish butter chicken Tuesday special
• Events and Restaurant specials
• Wine courses & cooking classes,
Products Life in the markets has been a little quiet for many of our fellow traders,
but we are happy to have had a busy couple of weeks. Truffles are popular and we
have seen good movement of truffle oils and salt, in particular. The Protea Hill Farm
balsamic reductions are moving well and the wonderful 10 year old raspberry balsamic
is always popular, especially with visitors who want to take something South African
and special home with them. Prego sauce is a perennial favourite and is an ideal
component in a huge variety of warming winter dishes. Our potted French patés (in
two sizes) are an ideal easy lunch for two or four with a fresh baguette or ciabatta and

2. a good bottle of wine. We also have delicious French treats like duck confit and jars of
cassoulet, as well as Pot au feu and other delicacies. For these 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 on Friday 25th May from
09h00 to 16h00. We look forward to seeing you there.
DO IT YOURSELF? Something we see in supermarkets more and more is raw meat
and fish in prepared supermarket sauces – chicken pieces and whole spatchcocked
chickens, ribs, chops, steak and fish. We have tried one or two of these and we don’t
like them for two reasons. The sauces always tastes the same and we think we can do a
lot better ourselves with some fresh herbs, garlic, chilli and other varied ingredients,
including bottled sauces which we actually love, like our Prego sauce. Another reason is
that we suspect that some of the meat and fish might be little near their ‘use by’ date
and might have off flavours; the sauce covers these. We say “Buyer beware” but, we
suppose, if you are busy and haven’t got much time to prepare food, they might be an
aid.
We bought some frozen hake fillets recently covered in a herb and garlic layer which we
really didn’t like and Lynne has been looking for a way to use them. The cold weather
sends us to curries and that is how this week’s recipe came about. We defrosted the
hake, scraped off the topping and used them in our Seafood curry. We always have a
selection of frozen seafood in our freezer for just such an evening. Adjust the chillies to
your taste; using green chillies makes this nice and spicy. We use half a tin of coconut
cream and then freeze the rest for another time. This is very quick to cook, but needs
some pre-preparation, which you could do in the morning.
Mixed Seafood Curry
10ml peanut oil – 10g butter – 1 finely chopped onion – 2 cloves garlic, crushed – ¼ t salt
- 2 green chillies, finely chopped – ½ t saffron – half a tin of coconut cream – 1 small
green pepper, cut into strips – ½ cup peas – 1 t sugar – 1 T chopped fresh coriander or
parsley
Seafood: 2 hake fillets, sliced into chunks – 8 to 10 large peeled prawns – 300g Marinara
mix
Spices: Dry: 1t black mustard seed – 1 t kalanji/nigella seed – 1 t cumin seed – 1 t fennel
seed – ½ t mace – 3 green cardamom pods
Ground: 1 t turmeric – 1 t coriander – 1 t cumin – ½ t ground black peppercorns
Assemble your spices in two separate containers. Soak the saffron in 1 T of warmed
coconut cream.
Add the whole spices and fry in the oil butter for two minutes until they start to pop.
Add the onion, garlic and salt and fry till golden, then add the ground spices and fry for
one minute. Add the chilli, the coconut milk, sugar and the saffron and let simmer
gently for five minutes. Blanch the green pepper in boiling water; drain, then add to the
pot with the peas and all the seafood. Simmer for only 6 to 8 minutes until the fish and

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prawns are just cooked, then taste, adjust seasoning. Top with the coriander or parsley
and serve with basmati steamed rice, Nan, chutneys and sambals.
La Mouette Friday was one of those raw days, where the temperature is not
particularly low (9°C) but, because it is damp, the cold gets into your bones, so we were
so happy when Mari gave us a table right in front of the fire at La Mouette. This local
restaurant is going from strength to strength and was busy. They have opened up the top
floor and everyone is flocking there for the good food and the impressive winter special
- which was why we were there with friends for a catch-up evening. They always spoil
us, so we had a couple of extra treats and our friends, who don’t eat meat, were very
happy with their substituted dish. Thank you, Mari and Henry and all your wonderful
staff for a lovely warm evening. We started with a bottle of the Woolworths Cape Point
Sauvignon Blanc 2008. If you have any, drink now but it is still good with food. Our red
wine was a Solms Hegewisch Africana 2005, made from Shiraz grapes desiccated on the
vine by twisting the stems – rich and concentrated flavours. Both of these were from our
own cellar. Corkage is R60 per bottle. If you want to see what we ate and drank, click
here. The courses are all small portions but, by the end, you have had a full meal and
feel replete. And all this for R165 per person. However, everyone at the table must
order the special menu to qualify.
Concha y Toro Chilean wine and food pairing. Tuesday lunchtime at La Feta Fij
(the feta & fig) Eatery in the High Street shopping centre in Durbanville. We began the
tasting with a good Italian Bellstar Prosecco. The purpose of the tasting was to match
Concha y Toro wines with South African food. Concha y Toro is one of the largest
producers in Chile; their vineyards are in many different climatic and geographical areas
throughout the country. Chef Anneke Burger, using guidance from chef Ruth van
Waerebeek, in Chile, put this meal together adding a South African slant. Read our
comments, with pictures here. You, too, can go along and enjoy some wines and the
food of 25 wineries and 20 food stalls in the centre at the 8th Winter Wine Festival on
21st to 23rd June. See www.winterwinefestival.co.za.
Birthday meals For daughter Clare’s birthday, which was on Sunday, Lynne usually
cooks a special meal and this year was no different, see pictures. She did try to
replicate the Orzo and smoked salmon dish we had at the Vineyard for the starter, and
we had Life from Stone 2010 Sauvignon blanc from Springfield - fresh and lively and
wonderful - with it. She followed this with duck breasts, bought from Salvin the butcher
at the Biscuit Mill, and served them in the classic Duck à l’Orange sauce. Yes, of course,
we had duck fat potatoes with our duck and the obligatory green peas, and butternut
puree. This went down a treat with a bottle of Mary le Bow 2004, made by Bruce Jack at
Flagstone. Later vintages are still made by Bruce, but are made independently of
Flagstone for the Frater family trust. For dessert, she made chocolate fondants using the
Nomu boxed product which they gave us last week. We did add 50g of Willie Harcourt-
Cooze 70% dark chocolate (broken in pieces) to the batter and the recipe really works.
John, enjoying the treat of not having to drive, was able to enjoy a glass of De Krans
tawny port.
We don’t do a lot of take-aways, convenience foods, but we are very happy to take
advantage of an excellent resource Capetonians have for the times when one is too busy
or too tired, or even if one just needs a break from providing food for the family. Most
convenience foods are of the greasy spoon variety, filled with trans-fats and generally
nasty, but we have an alternative. Andrea Foulkes started her Dish Gourmet Garage a
few years ago, with a weekly menu of really good gourmet dishes at sensible prices. She
is good at this and the business grew into Dish, a successful catering company which has
catered for events like the Durban July, Nederburg Auction and the Loerie advertising
awards. She moved into larger premises opposite Groote Schuur Hospital last year, which
have the space she needs now to accommodate her business. Yesterday, after a
succession of busy days, she came to our rescue with her Tuesday Special butter
chicken - a deliciously spicy mild chicken curry, with more than enough basmati rice

4. and butter chicken and rotis for four people, priced at R120. Quite delicious and a good
match for a spice-friendly Van Loveren Viognier.
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. 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.
24th 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

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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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because someone you know has asked us to send it to you or forwarded it to you themselves.
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