6th February 2013 Main Ingredient's MENU - Foreign critics, The week that was, Cheese tasting, School night suppers, How to use ingredients, Recipe, Events & Valentine’s activities

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MENU
Main Ingredient’s weekly E-Journal
Gourmet Foods & Ingredients
Eat In Guide’s Five time Outstanding Outlet Award Winner
www.mainingredient.biz - http://www.adamastorbacchus.com/
+27 21 439 3169 / +27 83 229 1172
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A False Bay fishing boat brings home the catch
In this week’s MENU:
• On Line Shop
• This week’s Product menu
• Our market activities - Neighbourgoods, Long Beach
• Do foreign critics “get” our fine dining?
• The week that was
• Cheese tasting
• School night suppers
• How to use ingredients
• Recipe: Cous cous with attitude
• Wine and Food Events with Valentine’s activities
• Wine courses & cooking classes
To take a look at our Main Ingredient blogs, follow the link:
http://adamastorbacchus.blogspot.com/ because to tell our whole story here would
take too much space and you can also read earlier blogs. Click on underlined and Bold
words in the text of this edition to open links to pictures, blogs, pertinent websites or
more information. Follow us on Twitter: @mainingmenu

2. Main Ingredient's On Line Shop is performing very well. We are continuing to update
it with new products and with photographs of products. Please do not pay until we have
confirmed availability and invoiced you. When you make an eft payment, make sure
that it says who you are. Use the form on the website to email us your order and we will
send you the final invoice once we’ve made sure stock is available. Click here to see
the shop.
This week’s Product menu Morocco is all the rage, maybe because of Jenny
Morris, maybe because of the African Cup of Nations football, but Argan oil, Ras el
hanout, Orange Blossom Water (back in stock) and Rose Water are in demand. Perhaps it
is just a Mediterranean thing, because we are seeing steady sales of Za’atar and Sumac
from the eastern end and Hazelnut and Walnut oils, from the northern shore of the Med,
are also popular.
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 This Friday, February 8th, we will be back at the market in
Long Beach Mall, Sun Valley, Fish Hoek. You can also come and visit us at the Old Biscuit
Mill’s wonderfully exciting, atmospheric Neighbourgoods Market, as always, this
Saturday and every Saturday between 09h00 and 14h00. Tip: Some visitors tell us how
they struggle to find parking. It’s quite easy if you know how. Click here for a map
which shows where we park.
Do Foreign critics ‘get’ our Fine dining? If you want to see what an
International Food writer Bruce Palling thinks of South Africa’s top restaurants, click on
this link. He was the controversial critic invited by Abigail Donnelly to review the top 20
restaurants for Eat Out 2012. We actually agree with a lot of what he has written, but
not all. Yes, there are some misunderstandings re: seasons and how we like our food to
taste, including the preference for sweet flavours in main courses, but his comments
about tough beef and game that has not been hung long enough, overcomplicated
plates, and too many tastes in one dish are things we also experience often.
Restaurants, even top restaurants, have bad days and if those happen often, they fall by
the wayside. Overhyped restaurants also cannot survive if they don’t consistently
produce good food.
And when you have looked at his pages on South Africa, click once more to see what he
has writing about Yannick Alléno of 3 star Michelle Chez Maurice in Paris and his
approach to food at his two new restaurants. We think this very basic and down to earth
shift might change things a lot in the food world.
The week that was We have had a remarkably quiet eating and drinking week up
until now, but from today it starts to get hectic. Catching up on admin and accounts is
definitely not our favourite thing but, as the financial year comes to a close, it is
something that needs attending to and the offices do look a lot tidier afterwards. We
know you are probably all suffering in your own small hell with paperwork.
Cheese tasting Last week, we were on the panel of a very interesting cheese
tasting for Classic Wine magazine. You will have to wait till their April edition to see the
results. Tasting 24 cheeses one after the other on a Wednesday morning can be a great
pleasure when the cheeses are superb but a huge pain when they are not. We tasted
several local cheeses, all made on wine farms, and a similar number of commercial
foreign cheeses. Go and order your copy to see who the surprise winner was. And no, we
didn’t taste a single wine with any of them, we just had to recommend the wines with
which we thought they might go well. Just rice crackers (too flavoured), Ryvita (dry),
and good old water biscuits which work very well to clear the palate. Journalist and