Wine & Food
My husband, Travis, and I went on our first date to the “vibey” and novel Fire & Ice for a sizzling cocktail before we popped across the road, to the then “Award-winning chef Richard Carstens finally has a home in the Cape with the November 2008 launch of his new restaurant Nova”, for dinner. Needless to say, between the ooh’s and aaah’s over the bubbly and “degustation (tasting) menu created to attract a more adventurous diner” that arrived thereafter we realised we both loved “food and wine” and all the complexities and magic that it offers. It was not only the start of our fairytale relationship but also the beginning of our eating and drinking our way through the restaurants of the Western Cape and beyond.
Whilst eating out and continuing to find some great gems we set ourselves a different challenge. The challenge involves cooking a new recipe each week. For about a year we have alternated, between Trav and myself, the “unique recipe surprise” and been pretty dedicated about sticking to our challenge. It began with some amazing single course dishes of seared salmon, Parmesan lamb pie, gazpacho and has grown into a full day in the kitchen for a three course meal including home made stocks, towers, jus, puree and froth:) On a plate with 4 elements, each element itself contains at least 8 ingredients. I then pair each course with a lip-smacking South African wine. We are having the greatest fun, are delighted to have a list of friends and colleagues banging on the door to attend one of our food and wine dinners and are loving every minute of our adventure!
Whilst there are already many people blogging about the delights of food and wine we are going to add ourselves to this list. However, we do not for one moment see ourselves as restaurant reviewers. We would like to share our personal experiences and opinions but that is exactly all it is – an opinion and report back on our “once off experience”. I thus refer to our comments about the restaurants as “Restaurant Experience”. We will also be writing about our home cooking adventures – there is always a story to tell!
