Celebrating its recent appointment as the Drinks International Wine Tourism Awards Best Food and Wine Matching Experience for 2015, La Motte Wine Estate’s Pierneef à La Motte Restaurant presents a late summer menu reflecting the flavours and abundance of summer in the Winelands.
Few things say summer more than fruit. And with Cape Winelands Cuisine traditions in place, the new menu uses fruit creatively in an array of dishes – from the watermelon and pimento ice with soy pearls, olive caramel and potato wafers on the starters menu to the very trendy Fruit jellies for dessert.
Chef Michelle Theron uses the classic flavour combinations of the Winelands with sweet, savoury and sour elements such as a peach-and-sage chutney served alongside a surprisingly summery pulled oxtail with mushroom salt and smoked Cape emulsion, roasted quail galantine with a spiced fruit tart fine and *bacon-and-beer confit as well as slow-cooked pasture pork terrine with crisp quail egg, egg-yolk puree, ginger and soy-and-apricot jelly.
Roasted quail galantine
Carrots were one of the staple vegetables in the Company Gardens and Jan van Riebeeck’s Journal mentions that carrots of all types and colours were planted right from the beginning. With a feast of carrots currently available in La Motte’s garden, not only do they appear as a deconstructed carrot cake on the dessert menu, but also as a raw carrot “pasta” with parsley pesto, black sesame seed and garlic fondue for vegans. Another interesting vegetarian alternative comes in the form of gluten-free brown butter and pumpkin waffles with poached egg, home-made black pepper and honey whipped cream cheese and pistachios.
Gluten-free brown butter and pumpkin waffle
Based on an age-old medieval tradition for savoury cheese tart slightly sweetened with apple juice, the dessert menu offers an individual cheese tart as a creative substitute for the conventional cheese board. From a recipe published by **Thomas van der Noot, the tart is served with a salt-baked fig – a beautiful combination with the intense aromas of La Motte’s Straw Wine (see featured image). Other dessert favourites include the chocolate feast and baked meringue with seasonal berries.
Baked Meringue with seasonal berries, honey and elderflower
Pierneef à La Motte’s new menu presents a wonderful serving of late summer flavours innovatively presented within the guidelines of traditional Cape Winelands Cuisine.
*Six months before the first wine was made in South Africa, the first beers were brewed on the banks of the Liesbeeck River – where Newlands is today. Craft beer and using beer in cooking are currently very trendy.
**Thomas van der Noot (c. 1475- c. 1525) was a publisher and author of the early 16th century, from a prominent family from Brussels. He was credited with publishing the earliest printed cookbook in the Dutch language, Een notabel boecxken van cokeryen (A Remarkable Book on Cooking), published around 1514.[1][2] (WIKIPEDIA)
