120405 main ingredient’s menu products, our market activities, expressions dinner at the taj, vanilla, la mouette, a night at the chapmans peak hotel, wine courses, events and restaurants
120405 main ingredient’s menu products, our market activities, expressions dinner at the taj, vanilla, la mouette, a night at the chapmans peak hotel, wine courses, events and restaurants
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MENU
Main Ingredient’s weekly E-Journal
Gourmet Foods, Ingredients & Fine Wines
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The Sentinel & Hout Bay from the pool deck, Chapman’s Peak hotel
In this week’s MENU:
Products
Our market activities
Expressions dinner at the Taj
Vanilla
La Mouette
A night at the Chapmans Peak Hotel
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.
2. 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. Do contact us
if there is something you cant find, we may be able to help.
Our market activities We will be at the Old Biscuit Mill’s brilliant, exciting and
atmospheric Neighbourgoods Market, as always, this Saturday (Easter) and every
Saturday between 09h00 and 14h00, and we will be back at Long Beach Mall on lucky
Friday, 13th April for our South Peninsula friends.
Another of the Expressions of... regional wine and food tastings with dinner
was held last Thursday at the Taj hotel’s Mint restaurant, this time featuring the wines
of Elgin, Lamberts Bay & Cederberg, cooler climate areas, with the food of Gordon
Manuel from The Venue at South Hill wine estate in Elgin. We had a fairly rapid tasting
of the wines before dinner and especially liked the Elgin Vintners new release Sauvignon
Blanc Semillon blend, The Century 2011 – the perfect wine for celebrations. Paul
Cluver’s Riesling Close Encounter 2011 was very Germanic in style, attractive and full of
light honey and low in turpene flavours. South Hill’s very reasonable Cabernet rosé is
one we will be ordering this year and the Radford Dale Pinot Noir was knockout;
completely fruit driven and very Burgundian in style and not at all heavy and dark. Then
welcomed into dinner with a glass of Elgin Ridge Sauvignon blanc with great company as
the winemakers and markets join you, we ate very well. Pictures can be seen here.
Our first course of poached pears and gorgonzola, walnuts and candid beetroot puree
was served with Iona Viognier 09. The next course was truly magnificent and very
delicious. We don’t often eat chicken at restaurants but this Elgin free range chicken
cooked en Papillote was served on a wild mushroom and truffle risotto and had been
perfectly cooked: crisp skin on the outside and falling off the bone. We had two wines
paired with the lovely dish and there was much debate about which of them best
matched. We voted for the Thelema Sutherland Viognier Roussanne 09 but the Radford
Dale Freedom Pinot Noir 2010 was a very, very close second. The next course was Beef
fillet poached in red wine on a rather sweet smoked potato puree with vanilla infused
baby vegetables and a port wine jus. Well matched with Cederberg’s Shiraz 2008 but a
rather large helping after the chicken. The vanilla was intended as a component in the
baby vegetables, but a little too much had leached into the meat and the potato puree,
which rather overpowered the other flavours.
Dessert was a tiny apple mousse tart with strawberry compote, very good cardamom ice
cream with ginger and this was paired with the South Hill Rosé which picked up the
strawberry well. You can try these dishes on the Mint Restaurant menu for the whole
month of April, paired with the same wines.
The next Expressions of ... Greater Simonsberg, Stellenbosch Valley and Bottelary Hills
will be held on Thursday, 26th April with guest chef Christiaan Campbell of Delaire
Graff, so be sure to book soon; these dinners are becoming very popular. And remember
the Taj also has free regional wine tastings on from 5 to 8 pm on Wednesday evenings in
the hotel lobby.
Vanilla There is quite a debate about vanilla. It is quite a sophisticated flavour. One
first encounters it in vanilla ice cream and then in your mother’s or others’ baking. And
of course it is a prominent flavour in wines, as good oak often imparts this to wines like
Chardonnays and Chenins. Vanilla essence is a chemical compound that tries to capture
the flavours of the real vanilla bean, the fruit of a tropical orchid, but never quite
succeeds; extracts are the real thing. We think the difference is extreme and won’t use
anything else but real vanilla. But do you want vanilla in savoury food? We have been
offered truffle oil which contains vanilla and it appears fairly regularly on top
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restaurants’ menus in sauces for fish, seafood, meat and even vegetables. We find the
sweet, rather cloying flavour does nothing for us on savoury dishes, but we are open to
being persuaded. What do you think? You will, of course, find vanilla pods and the
excellent Nielsen Massey vanilla extract and paste in our product list.
Flying with Seagulls Before putting our Dutch friends on the plane on Saturday
night, they treated us to dinner at La Mouette, who have just introduced their very
reasonably priced Autumn six course menu. The portion sizes are, thankfully, not
gargantuan but you do feel you have had a substantial meal at the end of the evening.
Chef Henry Vigar has, you will be delighted to know, left the truffle and cheese
croquettes on the menu as the first course; these come with a bowl of smoked tomato
aioli. Next was a rather chewy round ravioli filled with butternut and covered with a
brown butter and crisply fried sage leaves, which much complimented the dish. Then
came a fresh piece of roasted yellowtail on a chickpea, tomato and spinach ragout. Do
whole chickpeas go with fish? The jury is out on that one. The next course was a Confit
shoulder of beef – tender and gentle; the beef was almost like something out of a stew
and, surprisingly for us as we are not usually fans, the sweet corn polenta was soft and
smooth with distinct notes of corn rather than the hard rubber-like starch you get in
other restaurants. A tomato gremolata and pea shoots accompanied it. Pictures here.
Then appeared a tiny treasure, a warm and airily light choux pastry doughnut with
lemon curd and filled with coffee Chantilly cream. Served on a Chinese spoon, it was far
too little – we all wanted a bowlful of them. Dessert was a gooey Chocolate orange
macaroon, a chocolate financier, an orange puree, a very good marmalade ice cream
with some lovely crusty scrapings of what tasted like Ovaltine around it and Cointreau
syrup. This menu costs a very reasonable R165 per person and R330 if you have the wine
pairings they suggest with each course. We had a bottle of Springfield Life from Stone,
and took a very special bottle from our cellar of Cordoba Cabernet Merlot 2002. Sadly the
Cordoba wine estate is no longer in production, but Christopher Keet, who made the wines, is
now producing under his own name.
La Mouette also has a 7 course Gourmand menu on offer at R395, R560 with the wine
pairings.
The perfect weekend away and only a few miles from home We were spoilt
rotten on Sunday night by Lydia Nobrega, who invited us to come and stay at the
Chapman’s Peak Hotel, which her family has owned for many years. Many of us have
lovely memories of the old hotel, which is still there, and the great calamari they serve
on the terrace, but they have built on a super modern addition and the rooms are very
tasteful and cleanly luxurious, all with wonderful views across Hout Bay beach and bay
towards the Sentinel and the harbour. Glass doors to the balcony completely block off
any traffic noise and you sleep in great comfort. First we treated ourselves to a great
dinner on the terrace. Fiery hot Peri peri chicken livers and calamari & chorizo were our
starters, followed by 5 fat sardines with very crisp chips for John and prawns and
calamari and a salad for Lynne. The food is freshly cooked and has always been of a very
high standard. We ordered a bottle of Adi Badenhorst’s lovely rich, fruity and crisp
Secateurs Chenin Blanc 2011, very reasonably priced at R99, and then opened a very
special bottle of Cape Point Semillon 2006 which we had brought with us in case Lydia
appeared. This wine just gets better and better in its fullness of flavour, depth and
elegance. We had the rest the following night and it was possibly even better. As we
were not going far, we were tempted by the chocolate tart and the crème brulée before
tottering off to bed for a reasonably early night. Dinner came to R530 including a
contribution for our great waiter Jethro. Breakfast in the dining room the next morning
was a sumptuous spread of everything you could possibly want - you can order a full
English breakfast or variations - which is freshly cooked for you. If the weather is great,
you can have it on the terrace. John stuck to his usual fruit and muesli, Lynne had a
cheese omelette and we both could not resist the freshly baked Belgian croissants with
our good black coffees. Many of you will remember them; we sold them frozen, ready-
to-bake from our shop. If you want to spoil your partner, book here for a very special