Out & About in Stellenbosch

Here's where to eat, stay and play when you visit the beautiful Town of Oaks (Eikestad)...

TREAT YOUR TASTEBUDS

Where’s there’s good wine, there’s always good food. The Stellenbosch food scene is thriving, with new hotspots popping up all the time. Don’t go on a historical walking tour without first carbo-loading at De Oude Bank Bakkerij (021 883 2187). Pair their dark rye or sourdough bread with a local produce platter and their quinoa fritter seasonal salad, and indulge. Just down the road in Church Street is the popular Best Bistro (021 883 3629) which possibly makes the best gourmet burgers in town (044 386 0005).

LAP UP THE LUXURY

From historic Cape Dutch homesteads to Victorian villas and five-star hotels, Stellenbosch visitors are spoiled for choice when it comes to accommodation. If you’re looking for an authentic experience in the thick of town, try De Oude Werf Hotel (021 887 4608). Established in 1803, it’s said to be South Africa’s oldest hotel and the modern touches to its Georgian style add to its understated elegance. You could also stay on the edge of town on a working wine farm at Kleine Zalze Lodge (021 880 0740), where their tasting cellar and the award-winning restaurant Terroir is just a scenic stroll down the road. Play a round of golf or hop on one of the lodge bicycles for a bit of exercise before dinner.

TRACK DOWN TREASURES

If it’s luxurious, trendy or proudly South African, the shops of Stellenbosch are bound to stock it. Relish the opportunity to do some sidewalk shopping far away from anything resembling a shopping mall, and enjoy exploring some of the gems to be found in the little side streets. Be sure to browse the range of products hand-woven from mopani worm cocoons at Africa Silks (021 882 9839) for a unique gift that supports a job creation project in the North West. There’s also Arabesque (079 200 1003) in Plein Street for gorgeous scarves, jewellery, decor items and wooden furniture, and the sparkly Fidders Lights & Gifts (021 886 4655) for handmade crockery, chandeliers and glassware.

SOAK UP THE HISTORY

There are almost as many historical sites in and around Stellenbosch as there are wine farms. A good way to orientate yourself and form a mental overview of the town’s design is on a guided walking tour by the Stellenbosch 360 Tourism Information Bureau (021 883 3584). The locals who take you on these tours are strict with their watches, be warned, but they are very informative and have wonderful anecdotes and personal memories to share along the way. Highlights include the Burgher House (today the central office of the Historical Homes foundation in South Africa), the NG Moederkerk and Stellenbosch Village Museum.

BROWSE THE ART GALLERIES 

A walking tour of Stellenbosch will take you past numerous art galleries and an extraordinary amount of outdoor street art. Home to renowned galleries such as The Rupert Museum (021 888 3344), which is set on the banks of the Eerste River and houses industrialist Anton and Huberte Rupert’s private art collection, the Stellenbosch art scene is well respected for its innovation and is often at the forefront of trends. Also worth a visit is the Vincent Da Silva Gallery (021 855 0583) in Church Street, Stephen Rautenbach’s The Studio Gallery (021 886 7005) just down the road and the SMAC Art Gallery (021 887 3607)  in the De Wet Centre.  

DRINK THE FRUIT OF THE GRAPE

With well over one hundred members, the Stellenbosch American Express® Wine Routes (021 886 4310) is a formidable yet delightful challenge for avid wine tasters. Your best bet is to visit www.wineroute.co.za to see what the different routes offer. There’s information on private wine tours, child-friendly wine farms, wine walks, wine blending, wine and food pairing and much more. 

*Article first published in the August 2013 issue of SA Country Life magazine.

*Article and photos by Natalie Bosman.

Flavour First

Read her great new cookbook Jackie Cameron Cooks At Home and learn how to  create extraordinary dishes from traditional favourites

Food has been a passion of Jackie Cameron’s ever since she can remember. Certainly long before the likes of programmes such as MasterChef came onto the scene and fuelled the dreams of many an amateur chef looking for a slice of the action.

“All I had on TV was Floyd and Two Fat Ladies. And Jamie Oliver had only just come onto the scene,” she admits with a chuckle. “I think I entered this industry at the perfect time. I really started this career because I love cooking, not because of a quick walk to fame, and I think a lot of young chefs are doing that.”

Jackie was brought up to believe that hard work would get her anywhere in life. She arrived at Hartford House in KwaZulu-Natal in 2002 and has filled the position of head chef ever since. In the last ten years she has worked hard to elevate culinary standards at the five-star boutique hotel, and ensure that the dishes coming out of her kitchen retain a consistently high standard.

Much to the delight of her fans, the 30-year-old chef recently released her cookbook, Jackie Cameron Cooks At Home. If you’ve ever eaten Jackie’s food at Hartford you’ll know that she prioritises flavours, freshness, technique and quality ingredients above all else. The recipes in her cookbook do the same. They’re a collection of some of her favourite recipes that are simple enough to try at home, yet still teach home cooks how to master the basics – make a home-made mayonnaise or give a simple dish a restaurant-style tweak, like a pear custard ice cream to top a roasted butternut soup.

Of all the recipes in the book, the grandfather’s brawn with mustard and gherkins probably holds the fondest memories for Jackie. Her grandfather was a well-known local butcher, owner of A & D Butchery in Pietermaritzburg. He passed away in the December that Jackie graduated, but she remembered her mother raving about his brawn recipe and decided to track it down via a butcher who had been trained by her grandfather.

“When I met Peter Spiers he said he wondered when I was going to start calling him – and I don’t think I’ve stopped calling him since.  He told me that my grandfather always kept things very simple, just highlighting the main flavour, and I actually got a lump in my throat because that’s exactly what I do.”

Jackie’s chuffed at having a first cookbook at such a young age, but is even more excited at the thought of sharing her recipes with a wider audience.

“At Hartford I can only ever reach a certain number of people on a day to day basis but, with the release of the book, happiness is flowing into other houses, and people are going back to the basics of proper cooking. My love of food really is about the happiness it brings and the memories. Everything always happened around the kitchen and dining room table at home, so a large part of the book is about trying to rekindle that.”

* All photos are supplied.

*Article first published in the August 2013 issue of SA Country Life magazine.

*Jackie Cameron’s cookbook Jackie Cameron Cooks At Home is published by Penguin.

Nibbling at nostalgia

Andrea Burgener’s cookbook Lampedusa Pie is a feast for the senses

Walking into Joburg chef Andrea Burgener’s Melville restaurant,
The Leopard, is a little bit like stumbling into any of the beautiful pages in her newly released cookbook Lampedusa Pie. The charmingly mismatched old furniture and paintings in the restaurant mimic the playfully retro style in which her dishes have been styled for the cookbook. Paintings readily flow between her house and her restaurant, as needed, and most of the trays, cups and quaint knick-knacks used as props in the book’s photographs had been found by photographer Theana Breugem in Andrea’s home.

It’s quirky and it’s one hundred per cent Andrea, who quickly says she has always found it hard to stick to one specific style or genre. She’s a self-confessed ‘magpie chef’, drawing inspiration from old and new recipes, the city she lives in, literature and art to inform the dishes she creates. She finds it impossible to stick to one particular style of cooking, and she refuses to be boxed in. But there is one common ingredient flavouring the pages of Lampedusa Pie and that’s nostalgia.

“I wanted the book to feel slightly dated because so many of the recipes were old recipes,” she says over a welcome cup of coffee before the dinner shift starts to gain momentum. “I love the eclecticism of all of the different plates and fabrics I have at home; it somehow just felt right to do it that way.”

Andrea’s the first to admit that Lampedusa Pie is a tricky cookbook to define, and unless you’re familiar with a certain macaroni and chicken pie, described in delicious detail in Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s historical classic The Leopard, the title isn’t going to give you much guidance either.

But there’s an undeniable sense of familiarity in many of her dishes and few South Africans would be able to resist recipes like pumpkin fritters, roast chicken with bread sauce, mielie bread and ‘best-ever melktert’.

She has a refreshingly laid-back and unpretentious approach to cooking that comes across strongly throughout the book, whether it’s in the little cheats she offers (as a mom to three kids she needs these cheats as much as her readers do), or the tongue-in-cheek promises not to confront her readers with the likes of ‘pickled duck embryos’ and ‘fusion sushi’.

Besides being a treasure trove of wonderful recipes, Lampedusa Pie is beautiful to behold. Dishes are arranged on colourful plates that look delightfully well loved and used, watermelon slices have playful stolen bites in them, and the more indulgent child-like dishes in the Play With Your Food chapter have fun toys and figurines sticking out of them.

The fact that each dish in Andrea’s cookbook looks like a miniature still-life ready to be framed probably has something to do with her Honours degree in fine art and Masters in painting theory and practice. She worked in various restaurants while studying and even dabbled in TV production, but it wasn’t long before her obsession with food overpowered the allure of bright lights and blank canvases.

“I’ve always loved food,” she says. “And ever since I can remember, I’ve always loved the idea of having a restaurant and feeding people in a particular kind of space.”

Chicken baked with Cream, Garlic, Mustard and Thyme

Serves 6 

    8 garlic cloves, roughly crushed

    2 tbs fresh thyme leaves

    8 bay leaves

    4 tbs Dijon mustard

    1 tbs olive oil

    1 heaped tsp salt

    12 skinned chicken thighs and drumsticks

    2 onions, thinly sliced

    100ml white wine or chicken stock

    300ml cream

    1 tsp sugar

Method
Preheat the oven to 190 °C. In a bowl, mix together the garlic, herbs, mustard, olive oil and salt. Rub the mix over the chicken. Add the onions, and lay the chicken and onions in a roasting pan large enough for the chicken to form a single layer. Bake uncovered for 20 minutes. Mix together the wine or stock, cream and sugar, and pour over the chicken. Bake for another 20 minutes, after which time the cream should be golden brown in places.

*Article first published in the June 2013 issue of SA Country Life magazine.

*All photos by Theana Breugem.

*Andrea Burgener’s cookbook Lampedusa Pie is published by Pan Macmillan.