A Cheese and Wine is often used to describe a cocktail party where a glass of wine and an array of canapés or a buffet of snacks – and usually a wide variety of cheese – are served. And while your favourite glass of wine and a few delicious cheeses on a platter, may sound...

This weekend, the Franschhoek Valley is dressed in the colours of the French flag for our annual Bastille festivities. At La Motte, we celebrate with beautiful wine, a French-inspired menu at Pierneef à La Motte restaurant, a classical music concert with a French flavour and delightful gifts and confectionery in our Farm Shop. One of...

The winter holidays is the perfect time to bake some traditional Soetkoekies (sweet biscuits). A delightful treat for the family and easy enough for children to try when they need entertainment on a rainy day. Soetkoekies 4 cups cake flour ½ tsp salt 1 tsp ground cinnamon 1 tsp ground cloves 1 tsp ground ginger...

Try this delicious recipe for chicken with sorrel and lemon. Not only is it perfect for winter, but it is more than 300 years old! It comes from a cookbook titled De Verstandige Kock (ca. 1668) and has basically stayed unchanged. If you are an experienced cook, you can try to preserve lemons yourself. The...

Apple Tart Recipe (Page 211 of the Cape Winelands Cuisine Cookbook) Good-quality tarts didn’t need raising agents and, as with the Netherlands, the Cape was famous for its fresh and dried fruit tarts. In the Netherlands, apple tart was the favourite, but at the Cape apricot jam tarts and melktert (milk tart) became popular. There...

According to the old Dutch cookbook De Verstandige Kock (1668), warmoes is a variety of stewed or cooked vegetable leaves. Jan van Riebeeck and later C. Louis Leipoldt referred to warmoes in their writings, and the latter was of the opinion that beetroot leaves added something special to this stew. During Jan van Riebeeck’s time,...

The history of the development of mayonnaise is uncertain. Anne Willan gives a plausible explanation for the origins of mayonnaise in her book, Great Cooks and Their Recipes, where she reasons that it originated in France as the name could have come from the Old French for egg yolk (moyeu). Homemade mayonnaise is delicious and...

Vegetable soup has been part of Cape cuisine since the first Dutch settlers arrived here in 1652. Different vegetables, sometimes with and often without meat or bacon, were used to prepare this soup. As was the custom 300 years ago when meat was omitted from soup, olive oil is used and the soup is thickened with finely...

Try this quick and delicious recipe from our Cape Winelands Cuisine cookbook – it is perfect for breakfast, brunch or lunch! Many versions of bacon tart appear in old cookbooks. All the recipes are basically a variation on a salty ‘bread pudding’ made from egg custard, bread and breakfast bacon or ham. This recipe is...

Lamb is such a core ingredient in South Africa and it has been so since the earliest days. Within a few years of Jan van Riebeeck’s arrival at the Cape, there were enough sheep to supply the population with all the mutton they needed. O.F. Mentzel, a German soldier who came to the Cape in...