Tag Archives: Giggling Gourmet

WhaleTales Tourism, Food, and Wine news headlines: 27/28 July

WhaleTalesTourism, Food, and Wine news headlines

*  A beautiful and informative coffee table book about chocolate has been written by Di Burger, called ‘Chocolate’s African Odyssey‘,  reports WineStyle.

*   Eleven finalists of The Wines of South Africa (WOSA) Sommelier Cup, from a diversity of countries including China and Russia, have been shortlisted.

*   The Spur Corporation, which owns Spur Steak Ranches, Panarottis Pizza Pasta, and John Dory’s Fish & Grill, has grown sales by 16% in the past twelves months ending June, its advertising (by Haas) driving feet into their restaurants.

*   Chinese tourists are ‘smitten by the charms of Africa’.  Direct SAA flights between Johannesburg and Beijing as well as visa processing centres in Beijing and Shanghai have pushed China as a tourism source market for our country into fourth position! Continue reading →

WhaleTales Tourism, Food, and Wine: 11 July

WhaleTalesTourism, Food, and Wine news headlines

*   Heathrow’s role as a hub may be diminished it it is not allowed to expand, writes TravelMole.

*   A pan-European booking and information agency is to be created to streamline travel between European Union countries.

*   An international  restaurant review system Zomato has been launched in Johannesburg, and is to spread to Cape Town too, writes TechCentral.

*   Cooking shows such as MasterChef SA and Social Media have enhanced South Africans’ knowledge about (healthy) food and dining out, says the Capsicum Culinary Studio.

*   ‘Cabbages & Cannibals‘ is the theme of a 5-course 5-organic wine pairing ”top to tail’ dinner at Catharina’s Restaurant at Steenberg on 24 July.

*   Giggling Gourmet Chef Jenny Morris has inspired a jewellery range at freeRange Jewels in the Cape Quarter, made by Marelé Lamprecht.  Styling of the jewels was all food and very spicy, with chillis!

Chris von Ulmenstein, Whale Cottage Portfolio: www.whalecottage.com   Twitter: WhaleCottage

Good Food & Wine Show is a theatre of food! Gordon Ramsay star of the show!

This year the Good Food and Wine Show has new owners, Fiera Milano Exhibitions Africa, and in some respects little has changed, yet it felt as if most of the show consisted of theatre demonstrations, most of which has to be paid for in addition to the R110 entrance fee. Controversial Celebrity Chef Gordon Ramsay certainly is the main attraction of the Show.

At the entrance to the Show, where one buys the tickets, Ramsay’s poster attracts attention, the only visual that indicates that the Cape’s main food show is inside the doors of the Cape Town International Convention Centre, running until Sunday.  As one walks through the hall, one quickly gets to the ticket office selling tickets for Ramsay’s demos, as well as his books.  Thereafter one sees the queue, waiting patiently to get into his demo.  I asked a Capetonian how much she had paid and why she wanted to see Ramsay.  She said that she had paid R250 for the ‘cheap’ show (and not R950 for the VIP version, she said with derision) and that her son wanted to see Ramsay, costing her R720 for the tickets and entrance alone.  Where we walked, we saw stands set up for demonstrations, some larger, some smaller.  The Checkers Celebrity Chefs Theatre was curtained off, one hearing the cheering when Ramsay arrived to put on his show, and for many it was more of a comedy club than a serious cooking demonstration. Ramsay hosts the 11h00, 13h30, and 18h00 slots today, and 11h00, 13h30 and 16h30 slots on Sunday.  Other Celebrity Chefs on stage this weekend are Australian restaurateur Bill Granger, master pâtissier Eric Lanlard, and twins Isabella and Sofia Bliss of Junior MasterChef Australia.  ‘Giggling Gourmet’ Jenny Morris and Rooi Rose Food Editor Vickie de Beer will do presentations on ‘Decadent Desserts’ at the Häagen-Dasz and Pillsbury stand. Chef Eric Lanlard and a number of other local baking specialists will be on show at the Golden Cloud interactive theatre.  Spar has a Wine & Canapés Theatre, while Spekko sponsors a ‘Tafelpraatjies‘ Theatre with talks by leading Afrikaans food presenters.

Woolworths had set up a massive ‘Real Food Theatre’, stylishly decorated, attracting attention with its branding.  It was one of few stands that did not charge for attendance, accepting attendance on a first come first served basis.  At the time we came across the Theatre, Chef Christiaan Campbell from Delaire Graff was setting up to do his demo, and 12 volunteers from the audience were requested to prepare his menu of a starter of Cured eye of pasture-reared silverside with parmesan and radishes, and a main course of potato gnocchi and mushroom sauce.  Chef Christiaan described his menu as being terroir-driven, the silverside having come from grass fed pasture beef from Greenfields in KwaZulu-Natal, and the baby radishes from Farmer Angus at Spier, having grown in their compost heap, Chef Christiaan explained.  Lorraine Bourgogne, our intern from Reunion, volunteered to cook at one of six stations, and Chef Christiaan had his hands full to teach his new ‘students’ how to make his dishes, viewed by the audience. They were lucky to take their creations home with them. Chef Peter Tempelhoff of The Greenhouse, Bill Granger, Tamsin Snyman, award-winning food bloggers Anel Potgieter and Nina Timm, and Rebecca Hurst will do demos this weekend at the Woolworths stand.  The Woolworths Little Chefs Kitchen has hands-on workshops for children by Chefs Peter Tempelhoff, Christiaan Campbell, and Isabella and Sofia Bliss this weekend.

For the rest there were some interesting small stands, the Las Paletas artisan lollies stand attracting attention with its attractive stand design, despite its small size.  Jason Sandell’s wife Diana Chavarro is from Colombia (they met in London), and the name of their business is the Spanish for …’ice lolly’.  Diana has a marketing background, and it shows in the attractive design of the stand, and its marketing material.  The ‘business card’ is a lolly stick, which contains their contact details!  They are usually to be seen at the City Bowl Market on Saturday mornings.  What makes their lollies so special is the unusual taste combinations, e.g. strawberries and cream, guava and cheesecake,  pomegranate lemonade, strawberry sorbet, coconut lemonade, kiwi sorbet, raspberry, yogurt and kiwi, spiced mango, peanut butter and jam, roast banana, granadilla gelato, and brownie cheesecake.  An unusual design feature, and reflecting the green trend, was Moyo’s lettuce lattice screen, separating the food preparation and serving areas! Chocolates by Tomes is offering excellent Show prices, one of the best chocolate-makers in Cape Town.  Denise’s Delights sells delicious cupcakes at only R10.  The super friendly mother and daughter team of Erica and Ursula at the Puglia stand very kindly handed me a stracciatella mozzarella tub, knowing my weakness for their product.  The Lebkuchen stand connected with my German roots!  Paging through the Show booklet afterwards, we were surprised about how many stands we did not see, yet we felt we had walked up and down every aisle!

The alcoholic beverage section of the show is disappointing, and seems an unexciting side of the exhibition, tucked away at the far end, and not blending in nor ‘pairing’ with the food in the rest of the hall.  Graham Beck partnered its MCC with Bentley’s Oyster Bar & Bistro, the only such food and wine pairing we saw.

What was extremely odd was seeing a number of stands that had no relationship to food or wine: DStv could be understood to be there, as a sponsor of the Checkers Celebrity Chef’s Theatre, but looked like a massive decoder sales showroom. Even weirder was the rather large Ariel stand, marketing the washing powder! But oddest of all was ‘Café la Domestos’, an Eastern-style table setting low on a tile floor, to represent that Domestos is such a safe and good cleaner that one can literally eat off the floor!  Hence their taste treats (one could choose between salmon or labneh) were served on white tiles, a bizarre mental leap!

The Woolworths demo stand was the highlight of our visit, and is centrally located in the exhibition hall, allowing one to make a stop here to attend one of the demonstrations, or even better, to participate in one, without charge.  One should bring along enough cash to give into the temptations throughout the Good Food & Wine Show!

Good Food & Wine Show, Cape Town International Convention Centre, Cape Town.  Today and tomorrow. www.goodfoodandwineshow.co.za Twitter: @GoodfoodSA  R110 entrance fee (includes a goodie bag with a pack of sugar sticks and a 400ml bottle of OMO Auto Liquid Detergent valued at about R30).

Chris von Ulmenstein, Whale Cottage Portfolio: www.whalecottage.com Twitter: @WhaleCottage

Stellenbosch Hills and Freddy Hirsch seek SA’s Droëwors Maker of the Year 2013!

Dried meat lovers stand to win R60000 in prizes in an annual competition, which is offered by Stellenbosch Hills wine estate and leading spice supplier Freddy Hirsch, to find South Africa’s champion Droëwors Maker of the Year 2013.  Entries close on 2 September.

To launch the competition, and to demonstrate just how much planning and hard work goes into making droëwors, a number of food and wine writers (including TV star Jan Braai, whose programme is sponsored by Freddy Hirsch) was invited to the Freddy Hirsch factory last week.  PG Slabbert, Winemaker and Manager at Stellenbosch Hills, led a tasting of the winery’s 1707 Reserve, which is linked to the competition this year. The red wine is made with 56 % Shiraz, 25% Cabernet Sauvignon, 11% Merlot, and 11% Petit Verdot, and spent 24 months in new French and American oak barrels. The 2010 vintage red wine is full-bodied, with flavours of red berry, dark chocolate and cigar box, and sells for R82 at the tasting room. The 2012 white wine in this range is a blend of Chardonnay, Semillon, and Viognier.

Diane Nicolau, Group Marketing Manager of Freddy Hirsch, gave the background to the competition, given that red wine and biltong (last year’s challenge) and droëwors go well together. Stellenbosch Hills has a Biltong & Wine Adventure tasting option at its cellar.  Both the wine estate and the spice supplier have blending at the core of their businesses.  Slabbert said: ‘The art of spicing and drying meat nowadays is as specialised as the art of winemaking. Our aim was to create a competition where some of South Africa’s favourite products – wine and biltong – could be combined’. Nicolau said that it made sense to partner with Stellenbosch Hills in this competition, marrying wine and droëwors, two South African favourites.  Getaway magazine has also got involved in the competition, as a media sponsor, and justified its involvement on the basis of droëwors and biltong being ‘quintessential padkos for South Africans’.

Julie Strydom, the Quality Development Manager at Freddy Hirsch, told us that the spices they buy are all ASTA quality approved, yet they still do quality checks when they arrive, for volatile oil content, contaminants, colour, and various other aspects are tested. The spices go through irradiation treatment when they arrive, to ensure that they are of a perfect quality.  The perfect ingredient mix for boerewors and droëwors is ground black pepper, cloves, nutmeg, and coriander.   Every day Freddy Hirsch blends 75 tons of spices.  We experienced the company’s sensory facility, and we were put to the test, ten of us getting into a booth each, and tasting the droëwors samples and having to rank them in order of preference, and justify the first ranked choice.   The samples varied widely, two very dry and hard  with a spicy taste (we were told later that they had little fat), and one softer but with less taste.  South Africa does not have a sensory facility for wines.  We were left with the interesting statement that men are unable to taste bitterness.

Elize de Wit of Freddy Hirsch had prepared the ingredients to make the droëwors, and the trolley contained bowls of spices, including crushed chillies, ground pimento, ground and crushed coriander, and ground nutmeg.  Elize has a great sense of humour, and played a trick on us, in having a container with meat pieces she had labelled as donkey, horse, zebra, and beef, the colour of the meats looking very different, and some having a very strong smell.  Later on she admitted that all the meat samples were beef, but the ‘zebra’ was in fact pork!  She talked us through the essence of making droëwors, to prepare us for making our own.  We were allowed to add as many spices as we wanted to, and hinted that a few drops of Stellenbosch Hills red wine would add to the taste.  Each one of us received a cooler box with a 1 kg packet of meat and a small packet of fat. She explained that most droëwors is made with a 80% meat/20% fat ‘blend’.  She emphasised that the use of  ‘body fat’ is ideal, in preference to ‘kidney fat’, which gives one’s palate a furry feel. The meat (she recommended forequarter, and chuck specifically) and the fat is minced with an old-fashioned mincer, twice minced making it even finer.  One has the choice of two casings, a natural sheep’s intestine (which they sell at their shop downstairs), or artificial casings.  One must cut out the veins and glands before mincing the meat. Alternatively one can buy the ready-minced meat, and get a machine which gets the mince into the casing.  This can be quite a tricky and time-consuming job, as one person must turn the handle, and feed the mince into the casing, while another person must hold the machine so that it stands still on the surface.  Anel Grobler of Spit or Swallow had fun making her wors!  The end result looks less attractive than one is used to seeing when the droëwors has been air dried for three days, going dark in colour once dried.

We were served a light lunch in the staff canteen, and each dish (pizza slices, a cheese pie, bacon rolls, and paté sandwiches) had droëwors in it. The company feels less corporate than one would expect, and some of the passages are named after spices (e.g. Coriander Avenue), with attractive collages of spice photographs.

A number of the food and wine writers were so enthusiastic about their newly gained droëwors making skills that they decided that they themselves would enter the Stellenbosch Hills Freddy Hirsch Droëwors Maker of the Year 2013 competition.  Stellenbosch Hills and Freddy Hirsch will alternate the Biltong and Droëwors Maker of the Year competitions annually.

Competition entrants must complete and send in their entry form by 2 September, and send in their sample of 500 gram or more of any meat type by 27 September.  The judging will take place in October, and the panel of judges will include Giggling Gourmet Jenny Morris, MasterChef SA finalist Ilse Fourie, Jan Braai, and a representative each of Getaway magazine, Freddy Hirsch, and Stellenbosch Hills. The entrance pack costs R150, and this includes a bottle of Stellenbosch Hills 1707 Reserve, a Freddy Hirsch spice pack, as well as the delivery.

Disclosure:  We received two Freddy Hirsch spice packs and took the droëwors which we made home. We also received a bottle each of Stellenbosch Hills 1707 Reserve white 2012 and red 2010.

Stellenbosch Hills, Polkadraai Road, Stellenbosch.  Tel (021) 881-3828  www.stellenbosch-hills.co.za Twitter: @STBHills

Freddy Hirsch, corner 11th Avenue and Voortrekker Road, Maitland East, Cape Town. Tel (021) 507-4500 www.freddyhirsch.co.za Twitter: @FreddyHirsch

Chris von Ulmenstein, Whale Cottage Portfolio: www.whalecottage.com Twitter: @Whale Cottage