handtomouth

If my posts have been scarce my apologies are led by the time I am spending at restaurants as I eat to get Rossouw’s Restaurants 2007 to the printing press. It’s somewhat reshaped from the previous three in that I am taking many of the forgettable places out and concentrating on the interesting and notable spots. There is still time for you to assist me, by sending a review of your eating experience – you’ll find an easy-to-use feedback form on the site. Changes and closures are always the logistical challenge, and this year sees a few notable places undergoing changes.
Continue reading ‘Eating and more’

The weekend saw me return to the deep country – ostensibly to look at the wild flowers, but it happened to be the “Vleisfees” in Calvinia. So it had to be done.
Continue reading ‘Of bits and bites’

My brother has just launched a South African chapter of the international movement called The Brights. Bit of a naff name for me, but what it represents is worthwhile – an alternative to the superstition-led and -laden world that surrounds us. Check it out if you are passingly irritated by the New Age and think that George et al are leading us to a nasty dark corner of the forest… as for my brother and whether he can be trusted: he did tell me that the bottle of Lomond “Sugarbush” Sauvignon Blanc 2005 I gave him to try was too sweet and alcoholic. This wine is be-medaled, beautifully packaged, and comes from an allegedly cool growing area around Agulhas. The wine seems not to care, and his summary is spot on. So, to playfully mis-attribute trustworthiness (worse have been committed), I take this pronouncement over the wine as a form of a sign.

To begin with a sweeping generalisation, Australian wines are bigger and bolder than ours – higher in extract, which makes them full in the mouth, and full of super-ripe fruit flavours. They are often also flagrantly alcoholic. On all these counts, our wines are beginning to make serious inroads, though we used to be seen as a “middle ground” between the austere and leaner wines of Europe and the brawny Aussie wines. Continue reading ‘Aussie rules’

What is the most awful thing you have ever eaten? I tend to order or buy food when I haven’t tried it before – in the exercise of growing my repertoire of things to eat on this earth. A few weeks ago I had occasion to eat andouille guemenee, a thinly sliced cold meat. It smelled of shit and tasted pretty close. Turns out to be pig’s intestine. Any wine would go well with it, as long as the wine cloaks the taste.

How to write about a meal that never really happened? Say that the fillet mignon could have been great, or that the service was exemplary – had it happened? Continue reading ‘Beads, Stellenbosch. 07.08.06′

I’m not sure this has been done before for one wine – a cookbook dedicated to Vin de Constance, the famous sweet wine of Klein Constantia, with recipes by no other than Michel Roux Jr. It’s a handsome edition, more a brochure for the wine than a “real” cookbook, but the fact that pretty much all the recipes are desserts may lead some to consider it a fine addition to the rack. Foie gras also makes a repeat visit, of course that would be no-brainer with this rich, sumptuous wine. It retails for R193 and is published by Lannice Snyman.

Most winemakers would agree that we don’t practise extreme winemaking in the Cape. Our glorious sunshine and diverse soils offer bountiful opportunity to make good wine and it’s only in rare years when nature throws enough of a tantrum to rubbish most of our wines.

The onset of rain at the time when grapes are about to become fully ripe is a disaster, diluting flavour and encouraging rot to set in. Many French appellations wait in dread for this occurrence, since their harvest coincides with much cooler weather than ours. One French appellation in particular is so worried about the arrival of late rain that they have planted exclusively early-ripening varieties. Continue reading ‘Wines of Reunion, France’

Curiously, greater Cape Town has two restaurants that borrow this name from the depths of history. They differ subtly in how they spell it, and vastly in what they do with it. Beltha is full of brash confidence and branded merchandise (not only the patrons), while Belta, situated as it is in Muizenberg, would rarely be a stomping ground for the flash or upwardly flush.
Continue reading ‘Belthazar or Beltazar?’

I have often talked about the monster wines – those with extreme ripeness and huge extract. The necessary end result (unless further intervention in the form of reverse osmosis and other funnies is practised) is a wine with a huge alcohol. So pointing fingers is not much use unless there is a wine at the end of the finger: Stellenzicht Syrah 2001. At 16% (which may, under SA law be 16.4%) it is a fierce attack on sobriety cloaked under good tannins and mocha notes. The wolf in sheep’s clothing. Is it ok because it is “in balance”? In this case, as with all wines at this alcohol, balance is hard to find.

Although I couldn’t find anyone, even in the remote hill villages, that would sell me their home-made rum, Reunion is an island of rum drinkers. Flavoured rums are the order of the day as aperitifs or with coffee, and they call these “rhum arrange”. They take the white spirit (made in quantities on the island’s various commercial distilleries, like Charette) and by maceration infuse it with flavours of fruits, vanilla, ginger and cinnamon.

You can also sample very smooth wood aged rums, usually three years in oak, and I must say that my daily rum shot helped cure me of the mistrust and mild dread that labels like Red Heart and Captain Morgan instill. And no, there’s no smell on the skin the next day. I’m pretty sure this is the result of the flavourants and caramel colourants that the cheap stuff is laced with.

Vanilla is an important crop on the island, so here’s the “rhum vanille” recipe:
Take one litre rum and add 5 heaped teaspoons brown sugar. Now add 5 sticks of vanilla and keep your hands off it for two months.