CTG’s restaurant critic goes to Joburg: S1mz does DW eleven-13

19 May 2010, Posted by Cape Town Girl in BFFs, CTG, CTG recommends, characters, food, s1mz, 5 Comments

Writes S1mz:

“Johannesburg: land of the catalogue cafe, the restaurant of repeat, the duplicate diner, and I despair when I visit there for extended periods because, quite frankly, I find Doppio Zero insulting and Nino’s repugnant, and the thought of eating a chicken salad at News Cafe whilst IT project managers and property developers talk about being “shweet my bru” and “fucking off to Harties” gives me instant acid reflux.

Fortunately, things are looking up. Not since the days of Dario D’Angeli’s Yum in Greenside has there been an offering so un-Johannesburg and so promisingly good. The site of DW eleven-13 is a real destination. If you don’t know about this restaurant, you’ll miss it, and that might be good for people like me because I’ll be surprised to get in there without a week’s advance booking fairly soon.

Le Foie Gras

Tomato and goats cheese tart

The hostess read the specials off a scribbled note pad – Amateur! But I let it slide. I ordered the seared foie gras for starter which has to be one of the best servings I’ve ever had. It melted like butter in my mouth, no, it was even softer than butter, combining with the caramelized apple puree and the sour verjuice syrup which had soaked into a tangled pile of watercress to perfectly balance out the rich creaminess of the liver. My sister, my dining partner for the evening, ordered a beautifully simple confit tomato and goats cheese tart. I’m not a raving fan of goats cheese, I find it’s often powdery and bitter but this was a light, refreshing and fragrant morsel.

Warthog Pie

Mains continued the trend. Owner and chef Marthinus Ferrieria recommended the warthog pie, one of the daily specials which came with a thin, light and creamy potato puree. The meat was delicious, uniquely flavoured, light yet with a distinct trace of game. The pastry on the pie was nice and firm and with a creamy flavour. Overall, I found the entire dish a tad dry but would order it again simply because the flavours were so good. Roast chicken with pomme puree was set in front of Sister. Marthinus delivered a coup de grace on this dish. He served the best part of the chicken, in my opinion, the skin, as chicken crackling. It was so good I would order this dish again just to get the crackling!

I have to mention the exquisite plating of his dishes at this point. Tiny accenting dots of sauce drawing the eyes around the meal encouraging us to look before we eat. Rolls, twirls and little monuments of crackling, and tuille with chaotic wrestling green leaves. I’ve seen post-modern art like this sell for a fortune.

Duo of Chocolate

Dessert was a fitting end. Dark chocolate torte, a white and dark chocolate terrine with a milk ice cream and pistachio nut butter (all made in the kitchen, daily) and creme brulee prepared how it should be, custard, with a burnt sugar top with a white chocolate and ginger filled brandy snap. Both brilliant! The dark torte was almost black, and it was bitter! But it contrasted so wonderfully with the sweet heaven of the terrine and the smooth ice cream. Brulee was good too. Love it when you can see the little vanilla seeds punctuating the creamy yellow custard.

The Creme Brulee

Would I go back? In a heart beat! DW eleven-13 is what Johannesburg has been gagging for. In amongst the ubiquitous brands that insult us in almost every dreary, washed out and rapidly built shopping mall, this eatery is a haven, the attention to gastronomic detail, true hospitality and above all excellent food puts this spot up there with the best restaurants of South Africa. I wish Marthinus Ferreira only the very best, and I’ll be surprised if he doesn’t turn up on the best list very soon. Hang in there, please! Johannesburg has a tawdry reputation when it comes to supporting originality in the restaurant trade but we need more chefs like Marthinus, who’s vision and bloody mindedness will hopefully win over complacency and the mind numbing boredom that comes from simply not seeing the gold within our reach.”

Click here to follow @S1mz on twitter – he’s great for spot restaurant reccommendations – go on, give him a try!

Food Interrupted Chapter 2

07 May 2010, Posted by Cape Town Girl in BFFs, characters, food interrupted, 3 Comments

Darlings, let mummy tell you a secret. Don’t be afraid now, everything will be fine. Just breathe deeply, and if you feel faint, put your head between your knees and have another shot from the bottle in your bottom drawer. Ready?

I am not perfect. I know it’s completely unbelievable, but darlings it’s a lie fact. Sometimes the great among us must falter to teach us all that we are moving towards one common goal: sobriety equality. Darlings, naughty things sometimes happen, and when they do, it’s important to have someone to scrape you off the floor help you out. Do you have someone like that on speed-dial darlings? Do you? If you don’t, best you make a plan to find one because sure as I am drunk Frances Sauvage, naughty things will happen.

This past weekend was one such occasion, and Aunty Frances found herself in a right fucking mess pickle. While the details are blurry, I believe it involved a female barbershop quartet, Springfield Life from Stone and something to do with Mama Jolie’s remarks about Somalia. Regardless, I needed to make that sorry phone call, and true as Uncle Bob is now Aunty Bobbi, my Knight in Shining Toyota swept in to rehydrate rescue me. Putting a disorientated Frances up for the night is no mean feat – I demand certain luxuries – nothing too grandeous darlings, just little pleasures, like satin pillow slips, morning Juang Li Jet Su Kung Fu tea, a Dermalogica facial and an intravenous drip of saline and Evian. Little things. You can imagine then my darlings that this person needed to be thanked, and how do we thank people for facing almost certain jail time assisting us? Well we give them something sweet, don’t we darlings?
I mean, when someone helps you out you don’t hand them a sack of bloody T-Bones do we darlings? Or a bowl full of boerie? Or a sack full of bloody wheat chaff? No darlings. If we act like tarts, we apologize with tarts. Go on darlings, make Mummy’s Sorry-I’m- A -Bloody –Tart- Darling-Lemon-&-Ginger- Meringue-Humble-Pie, because you never know when next you might be naughty….

What on earth goes into that?

2 lemons – grated to produce a small heap of fine rind and squeezed to produce about ¾ cup of juice
A small section of fresh ginger root – grated to produce a small heap of fine rind
4 eggs – separated into 4 yolks and 4 whites in separate bowls
2 tablespoons corn flour
2 tablespoons all purpose flour
1 cup of white sugar
6 teaspoons of sugar
1 cup of water
2 tablespoons of butter
2 packs of ginger biscuits
Pinch of salt

How the bloody hell do you put it together?

Turn your oven on to 175 degrees. If you know you are going to take a bloody age putting this thing together though, you might want to hold off until you’re halfway close to actually baking the pie before turning it on. We don’t want your Humble Pie to turn into Bitter Revenge.
Haul out a fair sized casserole or oven-safe dish – sort of a medium sized one (if you flip the thing over it usually tells you on the underside if it can go into the oven without blowing your house up)
You need to crush the 2 packs of ginger biscuits now. Some people crush their biscuits by hand. Those same people probably whip their dogs and sleep with their grandpas. I am not in this for sado-masochism. Darlings get a clean dish cloth, fill it with biscuits, fold it into a sack like shape and either slam it against a wall or use one foot to stamp on it. Far quicker, with added stress release.
Once biscuits are crushed to a fairly small size, melt some butter (a tablespoon or two should do) and mix biscuits and butter together. Line your casserole dish with biscuit mix to form base. Put dish into fridge to chill.

In a saucepan, throw together the cup of sugar, the 2 tablespoons of corn flour, the 2 tablespoons of flour, the salt, the lemon zest, the lemon juice and the cup of water. Allow this to come to a SLOW and GENTLE boil. So like, if your oven goes up to 10, put it on a 6, but watch it closely while whisking it.
While this is happening, use the third arm that grows out of the middle of your back to melt the two tablespoons of butter. Add this to the saucepan.

Whisk your 4 egg yolks together and then with a ladle, scoop some of the hot saucepan mix into the egg mix. Just a ladle-full will do. Mix together. Then when mixed add this back into saucepan.
This is called ‘introducing’ the yolks to the hot sugar mix. Makes sense. I mean, think about it, wouldn’t you like to at least MEET the thing you’re about to become one with before you ‘go the whole way’?

Keep mix on soft boil and you’ll notice it becomes very thick and sort of gelatinous. Congratulations darlings you’ve made lemon curd!
Remove from heat. And pour into the biscuit-lined casserole dish.
In separate bowl (and I strongly recommend plastic) pour in your egg whites. The difficulty here is in getting them stiff. Heheh. There are 4 cardinal rules when beating eggs:
1.   The bowl in which they are beaten MUST be clean and dry with not a hint of grease
2.   The egg whites cannot have an IOTA of yolk in them
3.   If you are using an electric beater, be very careful not to over-beat, rather start on a low setting
4.   If you are using a hand whisk, ensure it is BONE DRY
Now. Scatter a pinch of salt into the whites (it helps a bit) and begin beating. Only when the colour becomes a runny white can you add the first teaspoon of the 6 teaspoons of sugar. Continue to beat until sugar is dissolved. Add next teaspoon. Beat again. Ad-bloody-infinitum until the sugar is gone, the egg whites are delightfully white and making little peaks and you have carpal tunnel syndrome.
Pour stiff whites over lemon curd and pop into the oven for ten minutes or until the meringue mix goes a light golden brown.

Remove from oven, pour stiff whiskey and possibly visit emergency room for Voltaren injection and strapping for wrist. If this much bloody effort doesn’t say “I’m truly bloody sorry darling” then I give up.

Frances

CTG presents Food, Interrupted: The Second Coming of an Old Trout

15 Apr 2010, Posted by Cape Town Girl in BFFs, CTG, cape town, characters, food, food interrupted, lifestyle, 6 Comments

Introducing CTG’s resident foodie, the infamous Frances Sauvage. Frances used to write a blog called Food Interrupted, and now she will be writing it as a column for CTG every Thursday. In her own words: “I do so love to cook with wine. Sometimes I even add it to the food.”

Without any further ado, I present to you Frances Sauvage’s fabulous recipe for Hot Trout Salad. Enjoy!

frances sauvage cape town girl food interrupted foodie
And so I’m back from outer space and I’m simply too thrilled to be here with you cherubs!
Hurrah for the gracious Cape Town Girl who plucked me from culinary obscurity. You see, after many moons of warbling about pots and pans, I felt I needed a sabbatical. There are only so many deflated soufflés and weary chocolate tortes one woman can handle. So I took time off from the pantry to try to find myself. And then luckily, one day, I went for a walk along the beach and there I was!
Darlings you have the misfortune pleasure of pondering my ramblings EVERY THURSDAY, for forever! And while there is much you need to know of me, as that old crone from that ghastly movie about the iceberg said, A Women’s Heart Is A Deep Ocean of Secrets so every Thursday when I have your undivided attention I shall extol one or two of my three pearls of wisdom.
But for now to the kitchen!

Darlings I bloody hate bloody Autumn, there’s zippo fabulous about it. Summer’s barely out the door in her Louboutins when Autumn comes thundering around the corner in a kaftan and trakkie-daks. It’s dreadful, is what it is, so we must cling, cling like Nag Apies to the remnants of the hot and happy season. There’s simply no better way to do this than to have a lunch. I LOVE a lunch.
Nothing says I’m barely alive quite like 3 bottles of Café Culture before 2:30 in the arvie, lounging about in the brown and decaying garden, gesticulating wildly whilst bemoaning your very existence celebrating life’s little pleasures. Like trout.

Darlings, not only is trout an excellent and fair name to call a woman who has not yet entertained the idea of plastic surgery but should have, it is also a source of great nutrition, taste and most importantly goes very bloody well with a G&T thank you very bloody much.
Darlings this weekend I urge you to throw together this Hot Trout Salad as a sort of sacrificial offering to the weather gods. It’s so easy you could go out and pay for lunch while allowing your cat to do it at home. Invite your friends darlings. They’ll love you for it, even if the last time you threw a lunch the chicken was like python and the wine the colour of morning pee. Go for it darlings!

Asparagus, celery and Buitenverwachting Buitenblanc

What you’ll need to ferret for:

1 fillet Rainbow trout, just bigger than the size of your outstretched hand and about an inch thick.
Carton of reduced fat cream (no one likes a fatty!)
Olive oil
2 onions
2 segments garlic
1 cup of white wine (for the pot darling, the pot, not you)
Seasoned flour
Pack of fresh asparagus spears
1 long celery stalk chopped into rounds
Black pepper
½ cup veg stock
Fresh rocket
1 or 2 satsumas or naartjies
Organic whole-wheat couscous (not the plain white one, the whole-wheat one. Because we care darlings, don’t we? We care about lunar farming and sustainable stilettos and overgrazed rivers and barefoot malnourished children in artsy black and white photos. We’re cool like that darlings, we care.)

What a perfect slab of salmon trout

WTF to do with it all

Turn a fairly deep pan (we’re thinking saucepan here, not a pancake number) on low-ish (if your heat dial goes up to 10 or so, then about 4 would be right)
While oil in pan heats, chop up onion and garlic. With a small sharp knife sommer rip shreds of trout off the thin silvery skin, whilst imagining it is the face of that bitch in PR.
When you have a pile of shredded fish, drizzle it in olive oil and then roll it in seasoned flour. All seasoned flour is, is a bunch of normal cake flour with loads of herbs and peppers and whatever-the-hell else you want in it.
Now chuck whole lot into pan and brown.
Meanwhile, sneakily, you will blanche the asparagus and celery in boiling water (with a bit of salt)
When soft (but not as soft as Snow Patrol) chuck ass (hahahah) and celery into the onion, garlic and fish pan.
Quick as Edith Venter to a photo opportunity, add a cup of veg stock and the cup of wine (I know it, was a sacrifice.)
Now stand over saucepan and grind enormous amounts of black pepper into it.
Allow to sort of, vibe for a while.

Boil a small pot of water (about 4 cups) with olive oil and salt. When boiling toss in the I’m Wearing Linen And Am A Responsible Earth Citizen couscous. Take off the heat and allow to expand.
Meanwhile chuck the cream into the sauce mix and stir well.
Once the couscous has sucked up most of the water you can drain the excess.
Set a heap of it on a plate; add rocket and a dollop of the trout sauce. You can then either squeeze a Satsuma over the sauce itself or peel the bloody thing and let people do the squeezing themselves the lazy bastards. Citrus is a must with fish darlings. Unexpected, but inseparable. Kind of like Woody Allen and that Asian daughter of his. Grind some pepper on the plate and…

Ta-da! Or rather as we say it here at Food Interrupted,

Pra-da!