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MENU
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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Click on underlined and Bold words to open links to pictures, blogs, websites or more
information
This Hartlaub’s gull was having a great time catching waves on Hout Bay beach
In this week’s MENU:
Products
Our market activities
Vanilla, leaf gelatin, Valrhona chocolate
Taste of Cape Town
Wine courses, Events and Restaurants
Products We have had numerous enquiries from people who read this newsletter,
asking which markets we attend and what products we sell. To make this information,
which has always been near the end, more easily accessible, we have moved these
paragraphs to the top. New this week is a range of Spanish sherry vinegars, solera aged
for four and eight years, in addition to the less expensive sherry vinegars we have
stocked before. These are still available, as are the real Spanish paella rice and smoked
paprika. For those 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.
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2. 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 We will be at Long Beach Mall tomorrow, lucky Friday 13th
April from 09h00 to 16h00, for our South Peninsula friends, and we will be back at at the
Old Biscuit Mill’s brilliant, exciting and atmospheric Neighbourgoods Market, as always,
this Saturday and every Saturday between 09h00 and 14h00.
When you live high up on the Atlantic Seaboard, the first North Westerly storm
that sweeps in is always ferocious. We normally expect them in May – this time it arrived
in early April, on the Easter weekend, and made life rather difficult for us while we
were loading our car for market early on Saturday morning. We got soaked! - but not as
soaked as the poor runners on the Two Oceans marathon. We measured 52 mm of rain
(about 2 inches for those who are still in the 19th century) over 2 days but, as John
points out, all of it is very gratefully received because the last year has been very dry
and dams are empty everywhere we go.
Despite the heavy rain, the market was full and buzzing and everyone was having a good
time. What else can you do on a rainy day but plan and shop for the perfect Easter
Sunday family celebration dinner? We were going to have smoked salmon, prawn and
avocado parcels and Kleftiko: long- and slow-cooked lamb in oregano. This was to be
followed by a surprise dessert for Clare, John’s daughter. But to quote Rabbie Burns:
The best laid schemes o' mice an' men, gang aft a-gley, [often go awry]. Clare came
down with very bad flu, Lynne woke up on Sunday with a sore throat, a temperature and
a cough and we had to cancel the whole thing. Luckily, our other guest understood and
had a good lunch. We have postponed till later in the month. Lynne is better, Clare is
still struggling. The diet went for a bit of a Burton this Easter, there is far too much
comfort eating and temptation with hot cross buns, Easter eggs and big meals but Lynne
is back on it and seeing a little difference in that some of her clothes are feeling a bit
looser. So she will continue to come up with low carb recipes for MENU. We did have the
lamb for supper on Monday. Lynne wanted a merlot with it and John found a 1994
Cordoba merlot in the cellar, which he thought had been there too long, bringing up a
1999 at the same time in case the ’04 was too tired. It surprised us. There was still an
abundance of rich, dark cherry fruit, although this had faded a bit when we finished the
bottle on Tuesday. Well-made wines, properly stored, can last.
How do you use..? We have had some lovely feedback from customers who are using
stock items they have bought from us. The leaf gelatine is so appreciated because it
makes such a nice wobbly, gentle jelly and is really easy to use. Lynne wants to
experiment with using it to make aspic. Perhaps even a chicken chaud froid – a really
retro 1960 Cordon Bleu dish of cold cooked chicken pieces covered in a white sauce,
decorated with coloured peppers and bits of truffle and mushroom and then enrobed in
aspic. She thinks it is time for this to be updated for special occasions, but with humour
and attitude. How about a leg with a truffle exclamation mark on it? And a breast with a
question mark?
We have a small amount of the Valrhona 70% dark chocolate pastels left and were
wondering whether at this price we should order some more. Well…. one of our really
keen and skilled home cooks bought some on Saturday, used 100g to make 5 chocolate
fondants (he has got his timing and method down pat) and he reports that they were the
absolutely the best fondants he has ever made, and all his guests and his wife agreed
with him, despite the cost. Putting this into context what would you pay for a dark
chocolate fondant in a top restaurant, R40 or even R60? That means that the chocolate
for the five is a bargain at R40.
Another product we are often asked to explain is the whole vanilla pods. Because they
are in a glass tube, they are soft and there are at least four, yes four, potential uses for
each bean. When using it the first time, scrape the bean seeds out of the bean and use
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them and the bean in your custard or sauce. Wipe off and replace in the tube. You can
use it one more time in another custard. Then you put the bean in a jar of caster sugar
and let it infuse the sugar with wonderful flavours and aromas. This will dry it out. You
can then throw it into your jam pot when you are making jam or sweets or fudge and it
will still be able to add good vanilla flavour. But if this is just too much effort for you,
buy a bottle of our Nielsen Massey Vanilla Bean Paste at R195 for a 120 ml bottle. You
will get much more use and see the tiny vanilla seeds in everything you cook. About a
teaspoon full is equal to one vanilla bean.
We are having some lovely fresh Norwegian salmon tonight that Lynne has had
marinating in 2 T Mirin (Japanese rice wine vinegar that has a little sugar added), 1 T
fish sauce – 1 T Ponzu soy (it is flavoured with a Japanese citrus) and 1 t sesame seeds.
She has discovered that our LG Wavedom Convection Microwave oven will go as low as
50°C so she is going to try to confit the salmon using Raymond Blanc’s method below. He
cooks it in 500 ml of olive oil. One piece will not need anything like that amount. We
will let you know next week how it went. We don’t have a probe but we do have an oven
thermometer. We quote:
“To confit the salmon: preheat the olive oil to 55C: drop in the four pieces of salmon
and cook for approximately 16-18 minutes at 45C. Probe temperature of the oil. The aim
here is not to cook the salmon but to change its texture and taste. Once you put the 4
fillets into the oil, the oil temperature will drop to approx 45ºC. It must be kept at this
temperature, so use a probe to check. The salmon will be uncooked yet creating a very
pleasing taste and texture. If over-cooked, the salmon fillet will leak white proteins
(albumen).”
We are having this with a stuffed baked sweet potato and a salad. Tomorrow night, we’ll
have kidneys, using a favourite recipe and serving them with roasted baby leeks and
fennel; the following night, Chicken Sate with a gado-gado salad. Happy low carb
eating.
Taste of Cape Town is an event which foodies in this part of the world look forward
to every year. This year, it will take place in the venue which was so successful last
year, next to the Stadium in Green Point. In earlier years, Taste of Cape Town was on
school sports fields, in Camps Bay, Tamboerskloof and in Mowbray, all of which had
advantages and some disadvantages. Camps Bay had the most wonderful views over the
Atlantic, Tamboerskloof was on the upper slopes of Signal Hill, with attendant
accessibility and parking problems and Mowbray was a good venue which, somehow,
lacked the pizzazz of the previous venues. Green Point, with its Stadium, parks and
other amenities is brilliantly situated, with its Fan Walk and access to public transport as
well as good parking facilities, so we are very happy to see it return. Click here to read
all about the fun you can have this here and here to get an idea of the fun we had in
the last few years.
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 list for April
and beyond. All the events are listed in date order and we already have exciting events
to entertain you right through the year. Click here to access the list. You will need to
be connected to the internet.
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 courses, some very serious and
others more geared to fun. You can see details here.
Some 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
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4. 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.
Summer time is picnic time and 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.
12th April 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.
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
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