Chocolate dessert, great ham and weekend fun

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Chocolate dessert, great ham and weekend fun

02 October 2009	Food and Wine
The latest news from John & Lynne ford, owners of Main Ingredient, one of the many gems in Cape Town.

Salt Restaurant at the Ambassador Hotel has a new summer special. You can have 500g of Grilled crayfish with citrus dust, aioli, green salad & jasmine rice priced at R185 for 500g. They also offer free valet parking while there is space on their deck. Their new lunch menu is now available. Add a glass of their white wine special to the meal and it will cost you only R210. What a lovely way to spend a relaxing lunch or watch the sun go down. The restaurant is set into the cliff top and you’ll have one of the best views in Cape Town.

If you have ever tried making a chocolate fondant, got the timing wrong and ended up with cake instead of a gooey centre, this is the recipe for you. It is from an old American cookbook and, strangely, is called a Denver Pudding. Follow the instructions to the letter and you will have an amazing rich chocolate pudding with all the sticky sauce below. Visit us for the 70% Belgian couverture chocolate callets (pellets), which are essential. R40 for 200g, cheaper and better than any supermarket quality dark chocolate - and delicious. At the end you just throw on more sugar and a cup of water. Don’t stir, put it straight in the oven and it will work. You can halve the quantities but do adjust the cooking time downward to about 30 to 35 minutes.

DENVER CHOCOLATE PUDDING In a mixing bowl, sift together 3/4 cup of sugar, 1 cup flour, 2 t baking powder, pinch of salt. Melt 1 cup 70% chocolate with 2 T butter and add to above. Then mix half a cup of milk with one t vanilla extract and add to the mixing bowl. Put into a 23x23cm square deep Pyrex or oven proof bowl or similar sized round one. Pour over the top but do not mix in: ½ cup brown sugar, ½ cup white sugar, 4 T cocoa powder, 1 cup of water. Bake 40 minutes at 180 degrees C. Comes out like a sponge pudding with a sticky sauce below.
Reminder: t = teaspoon 5 g T = TABLE SPOON 15g

Acorn fed Pigs Lynne went to a lunch this week, at which Oak Valley Farm introduced their new ham, which resembles Jamón serrano (literally mountainham) from Spain. Anthony Rawbone Viljoen has been farming these free range pigs for several years and feeding them on his Oak Valley acorns and now the ham is ready to go into the market. It is sweet, nutty and salty and quite delicious. Sliced very thin, you can see the essential marbling of the sweet fat which gives it much of its flavour.

Marlene van der Westhuizen (author of Delectable and Sumptuous) produced a wonderful lunch to showcase the ham. We had small parmesan crisps topped with the ham and some onion marmalade. Then slices of the ham were served as another appetiser. We drank Oak Valley’s superb OV Sauvignon/Semillon blend with these after which a thick, unctuous, warm vichyssoise soup was topped with the ham, which had been crisped to the thinnest bacon you can imagine. It simply melted in the mouth. Our main course was half a baby chicken although Lynne's was practically full grown!

This was cooked as Coq au Vin with some of the ham added to it and to the lovely fine green beans that accompanied the dish. Marlene also used some of the wonderful fat (lardo) to brown the chicken and to enrich it. This was accompanied by Anthony's two award winning red wines, his incredible Pinot Noir and his deep red berried Oak Valley blend (69% Merlot, 27% Cabernet Franc & 4% Cabernet Sauvignon). Our dessert did not have ham in, on or with it and was a succulent pear in red wine served with a dollop of crème fraiche mixed with cottage cheese. Because one of us has to be in the shop and it was John’s turn to do this, Lynne made him a fennel and courgette risotto for his supper, which was topped with the ham. As the late Keith Floyd might have said, “b***** marvellous!”

At a trade wine tasting at the Mount Nelson this week, we were very pleasantly surprised to be given really good snacks - in fact the dim sum prawns, the tiny melt in the mouth custard and mushroom tarts and the shou mai dumplings were heavenly. Keep it up Nellie!

Nonna Lina After the tasting, we rushed off to one of our town favourites, Nonna Lina, (Italian with a Sardinian flavour) for a quick pizza to soak up the wine; Lynne tried a really different topping. Called a Patatina it consisted of slices of potato, blue cheese and pepperdrops with few fine slices of good salami on top. One she will definitely order again, different and the flavours really work.

Woolworths - Real fish pieces? Yes, we do sometimes have a quiet and quick dinner at home, but how would you feel if you bought a packet labelled 6 lightly seasoned portions of HAKE, to find that, when cooked, you had breaded fish cakes. This is really bad trade description labelling, Woolies. We have phoned to protest and ask for an explanation but, so far (1 week), no come-back at all. The packaging even warns you to look out for bones and says that Hake has a tender, flaky, white flesh - so that is what we were expecting, not fish mixed with potato, white sauce and bread and reformed to look like breadcrumbed pieces. We are trying to eat more fish, not starch!

New or back in stock - some really exciting things White Truffle butter - at last - real Dijon mustard, Jaggery (Indian palm sugar), Smoked salt and Smoked olive oil, Duck confit, assorted French patés, lots more biltong, Duck paté, dried and salted black olives (Troubes). The shop smells wonderful. New and replaced wines include Morgenhof magnums, Barista and Bellevue pinotages, De Grendel Rubaiyat red blend and KC Shiraz –offering you a wine from a top Constantia estate at a bargain price.

Cloof is well known for its selection of red blends, headed by the flagship Lynchpin, and with the likes of Platter four-star Inkspot, which so many of you have enjoyed, in the vanguard. They believe that, by blending, they achieve wines that are not only better balanced, but also more complex. Over the past month they've been selling a selection of 6 different red blends at a discount of over R200 on the normal cellar door price - effectively below their wholesale price, which means that we can’t compete. We like them, we’ll tell you that for R259 (plus R15 for delivery) you get a selection of six different wines which would normally cost R465. It's a "no-brainer" bargain that we'd be crazy not to grab. They've set up a dedicated website where you can place your orders - www.redblends.co.za.

For several years, we have enjoyed the huge privilege of being invited to a Jewish friend’s supper, at which she and her family and friends break the Fast. Quite aside from enjoying the company of good friends, we are treated to a wonderful feast which combines traditional dishes with a selection of classical dishes (keeping Kosher at the same time). We love being part of a multi-cultural society. Thank you Sharon!

Food and Wine entertainment for you:

Taste of Cape Town is one of our favourite foodie events and Johannesburg readers can experience Taste of Jo'burg right now. The Golden City’s internationally renowned gourmet food and drink festival brings you four days of Joburg’s finest restaurants, chefs, premium drinks, top class live entertainment and experiential exhibitors. Until Sunday 4th October at the Montecasino Outdoor Event Venue in Johannesburg. Book at Computicket or log onto the website.

The Cape Winemakers Guild Auction will take place at the Spier Conference Centre this Saturday, 3rd October and is open to the public. A very good way for enthusiasts to access some of the best wines for their cellars. The annual Durbanville Wine Valley Season of Sauvignon will be held from tomorrow to Sunday on wine farms in the picturesque Durbanville area. See you there. We’ll be at De Grendel, enjoying their music, cold platter and sauvignon blanc on Saturday evening.

Wine on the River Festival, Robertson: The best open air wine festival on the banks of the Breede River. Taste more than 300 wines from 42 wineries in one of the most beautiful places in the Cape winelands. Live music, food stalls, children’s activities, boat trips, tutored tastings. Tel 023 626 3167, manager@robertsonwinevalley.com

Join WINE magazine for an informative, seated tasting of 10 top-scoring wines from this year's Cap Classique Challenge. The tastings will be presented by leading winemaker Teddy Hall on Tuesday, 6th October at the Crowne Plaza, The Rosebank Hotel in Johannesburg and on Thursday, 22nd October at the Mount Nelson in Cape Town. Both tastings start at 18h30. To book, email subs@ramsaymedia.co.za, call 086 0100203 or fax 086 6704101. CLICK HERE to book online.

This weekend, from tomorrow to Sunday, at Bien Donne near Franschhoek, you can visit the Cape Outdoor Adventure and Travel Experience to enjoy learning about all the fun to be had in our great outdoors.

Picnic venues Our winter fireplace feature was so successful that we want to put together a list of places where you can picnic this summer - some will have food and/or you are obliged to buy, others will not. Do let us know your favourite. To kick off, Kronendal farm will celebrate Durbanville’s Season of Sauvignon with picnics on their lawn and a selection of boutique wines on Saturday 3rd October. Call Magdaleen Kroon at 082 499 0198 or email pmkroon@iafrica.com for details. Click on the highlighted hyperlinks to book for all these events or to learn more about them.

Weekend markets: Nelle and Jane will be on our pavement as usual on Saturday, with their delicious country goodies. They have shaved their heads in sympathy with a family member who has had an operation – they look great! Very courageous. Come and buy fresh farm eggs, fruit and vegetables, preserves and home baked breads, cakes and pastries from them and then come and visit us! We will be tasting wines, so do come in and have a chat and a taste and buy something great to cook with this weekend.

Regards,

John & Lynne
Main Ingredient

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