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A report back on fabulous fig picking at Hoogwater

Michelle Matthews — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 20:21:59 +0000

Raining? In February? We had to risk it – the fig season is over by the end of the month. So a bunch of Slow Foodies trekked out to Hoogwater farm in Wolseley. Hoogwater has an old, rather wild fig orchard, as well as peach and pomegranate orchards, a handful of cows and a donkey called Bubbles. On this small farm Charles Ochse indulges his real passion in a converted garage – wine making. We were directed straight to the little cellar, where we could keep out of the rain and warm ourselves with his Ladera wines.

Charles has made wine everywhere from DGB to Parras de la Fuente in Mexico, the oldest winery in the Americas. It was one tipsy night in Spain that a friend suggested Ladera for his own dream wine range. Ladera means hillside in Catalan – for Charles it had a special resonance; his grandfather’s first farm was called Die Heuwel (the hill). The wine tasting started with his Blanc de Noir, made with pinotage grapes (we also had a chance to taste the mos, or just-fermented juice, of this wine) followed by what he describes as his ‘most stressful wine’, the Wild Child Chardonnay. Charles intervenes as little as possible with his wine, adding just a dash of sulphur. Once the chardonnay goes into the barrel, he has no control over it or how it turns out – hence, the Wild Child. The final wine we tried was his shiraz. Charles became so enthused that we ended up doing a vertical tasting, starting with the 2009 (with grapes sourced from four bush-vine vineyards in Malmesbury and trellised-vine in Paarl) to 2010 (where the vineyards were whittled down to two) to 2011 (made purely from the block Charles considers the best of the four). We were definitely warm by then!

With our appetites whetted, and the rain still coming down, we went straight to lunch. Madri, Charles’ wife, had prepared a gorgeous farmstyle feast. Fresh figs and grapes, nestled with roasted plums and cinnamon-crusted pears, fresh breads with a variety of cheeses and cold meats, groenvye konfyt, a zesty broccoli and pecan-nut salad, Italian potato salad, homemade chicken liver pate, caramalised onion spread… all washed down with lemonade and Ladera wines.

If you’d like to organise your own day-trip out to Wolseley, Madri can make up a picnic basket for you to take out into the orchards. Call Charles on 072 536 0055 or Madri on 083 726 2803 to order your basket and book your fig picking. Co-ordinates are 33″28’20.66S & 19″11’27.45E. But you’ll have to wait until next season!

Finally, the skies cleared, the sun started sparkling off the trees and we got out into the orchards.

As soon as you step into the orchard you smell the sweet dustiness of the sun-warmed figs. The fig trees are endearingly characterful, gnarled with large, blowsy leaves.

The figs were abundant – “There are so many even the birds have hardly made a dent!” one Slow Fooder was heard exclaiming – and we quickly filled our punnets with juicy ripe figs and hard green ones for preserving. At R5 a punnet (about 700g) some people got very excited, taking up to six punnets – they must have had plans for them! At least two of us made this salad: http://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/salad-recipes/the-easiest-sexiest-salad-in-the-world.

Selecting the best figs (about the size of a child’s fist, slightly yellow with a bursting pink ‘star’ at the base) kept us happily busy for about half an hour. The kids loved it too!

Then it was back to the farmhouse for koffie, koeksusters and a bit of a kuier, before weaving our way back home through some of the Western Cape’s most breathtaking scenery. What a day!

Hoogwater fig-picking: 11 February 2012

Michelle Matthews — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 19:11:49 +0000

Join us for a convivial lunch in the shade of the peach trees at Hoogwater
Farm in Wolsely, followed by a stroll through the fig orchards where you can
chose the juiciest fruit for yourself.

Hoogwater farmer Charles Osche also makes wine, and will give us an
introduction to them in the cellars before we move to the peach orchards for
lunch. Lunch will be a table spread with homemade breads, pate, cheeses,
preserves and salads (fig, blue cheese and rocket, for example), with
something sweet for dessert. Then we’ll pick: The Mediterranean figs -
small, plump and sweet – will be at their best when we visit.

Children are very welcome (make sure that they have water, sunscreen and
hats).

**This event is now FULLY BOOKED**

Event Details:

Date: Saturday 11 February 2012

Time: 11.30am to approximately 4pm

Venue: Hoogwater Farm, Wolseley; about an hour-and-a-half from Cape Town
(directions will be sent to attendees).

Cost: R140 per person (R60 for kids under 10). Includes a picnic-style
sit-down lunch plus soft drinks, and a wine-tasting (wine available to buy).
Figs, R5 per punnet (which holds six figs).

Fungi Foray

Michelle Matthews — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 18:08:58 +0000

Father’s Day dawned gloriously with perfect mushrooming weather – a crisp, clear morning after half a week of soaking rains. More than thirty slowfooders of all ages joined us to forage for fungi at the Tokai Arboretum in Cape Town’s Southern Suburbs. We were lead by the knowledgeable Dr Nicky Allsopp, who has a background in ecology and plant ecophysiology, and is a mushroom expert and enthusiast.

Dr Nicky Allsopp tells us that pretty much all of these mushrooms are inedible...

Instead of simply searching for mushrooms to eat, we were dispatched to go and find samples of as many different mushrooms as we could, which we would then bring back to Nicky for identification. The Arboretum is the perfect place to find a variety of fungi – it was established as a nursery to test the viability of various trees in our climate. The saplings that were planted were usually brought from overseas in the clump of soil they were growing in, soil full of different spores.

Exciting finds for kids of all ages!

Off we tramped into the forest… Some people were lucky within minutes; some got competitive; some wandered aimlessly, questioning their eyesight; others became engrossed in one mushroom through their camera lenses; and a few ran wild, screaming “Mushrooms! Mushrooms!” (the little ones, you’ll be relieved to know).

Look sharp - it can be easy to miss perfect specimens

We brought back a wide range of fungi, ranging in colour from bright orange to purple to white; in shape from “Smurf houses” to flat-topped to puffballs. The truth is, mushrooming is not for sissies. Quite a few were poisonous, with effects ranging from hallucinations to vomiting to liquefying of internal organs (hmmmm…). Books can help you identify these toadstool terrors. If you find a copy of this pick it up, it’s a classic:

RandomHouseStruik publishers will be releasing a new Pocket Guide to Mushrooms that will cover about 100 species in late 2010.

White gills - be afraid...

Tips for newbies: In the Western Cape, most mushrooms with white gills are poisonous. Also look out for a ‘veil’ on the stem and large bulge at the root of the stem – also signs that a mushroom is probably toxic.

Rainbow fungi nation!

A few were not poisonous, but not nice to eat, such as the purple-topped russula. Porcupines love it, but the few people who dared to taste a sliver of russula-gill declared it “more hectic than wasabi”!

Yum! Yes, you can eat pine rings.

However, a couple of Tokai mushrooms are delicious to eat. The porcinis (also called ceps or boletus) with their easily identifiable yellow spongy pores (instead of gills) and the orange pine rings with their distinctive green patina and indents on the stem, are the two most common. The best way to eat them, as with most mushrooms, is to slice them, fry them in some butter (maybe with some garlic and a few herbs), season them and eat them on toast. Their meaty umami flavor also goes well with the buttery nuttiness of avocado, also in season in June.

Mushroom soup - hot from the boot!

We rounded off an informative and invigorating morning with mushroom soup served in the parking lot. (Hot boxes are awesome, by the way.) Slowfooders loved the day. Alice and Pat said: “Many thanks for organising such an enjoyable fungal foray today! We just loved it, and the good company.”

Mushrooming meets high fashion

And, as Slow Food Mother City committee member Pia Taylor points out on her blog post on the event: “As long as those who forage do so without having to take everything all at once (or destroying the things they don’t like), we should (in theory) be able to share this incredible natural resource indefinitely.” That’s truly sustainable eating.

If you’d like Dr Nicky Allsopp to help you identify a mushroom you’ve found, e-mail a photo of it to her.

Mushroom soup recipe

Serves 4

25g butter
1 large leek, white part only, sliced
400g brown and/or Portobello mushrooms, chopped
2 tbls flour (or brown lentils)
100ml red wine, sherry or brandy
Squeeze of lemon juice (about ¼ of a lemon)
½ tsp dried thyme and/or rosemary
10g dried porcini mushrooms, soaked in 250ml warm water
750ml vegetable stock
Salt and pepper
50ml sour cream (optional)

1. Soak the dried porcini mushrooms in 250ml warm water for about half an hour.
2. Fry the leek gently in the butter until soft, then add the mushrooms and allow to cook down for a few minutes.
3. Add the flour. You can also use brown lentils to thicken the soup, and they’ll enhance the mushrooms’ nutty flavor.
4. Add the booze and cook for a few minutes to evaporate the alcohol.
5. Add a large squeeze of lemon and the herbs, and stir for a minute or two, then add the porcini mushrooms with their liquid.
6. Add the stock, bring soup to the boil, turn the heat down, and then simmer for 20 minutes.
7. Take the soup off the heat, puree until smooth and season with salt and pepper.
8. Stir in the cream, if using (you can also substitute milk for some of the stock if you want a creamier soup). Gently reheat the soup. Serve with buttered seed bread.

A ruffled mushroom (not poisonous!) popping up from the leaf litter