This past Wednesday we went along with some friends to a restaurant called the Food Barn in Noordhoek, about 20 minutes from here near the ocean. The chef at the Food Barn is Franck Dangereux, I kid you not, and he does a wintry thing of weekly cooking demonstrations that one is welcome to attend if you are dining there. Michael and I attended one last winter: it was such fun that I've been waiting for the cool weather to return with Franck behind the cooking arena.
Franck is an award winning French chef who used to lead the kitchen at a restaurant called La Colombe, one of the best French restaurants in Cape Town. (Actually La Colombe is around the corner from us at Constantia Uitsig, an old established wine farm in Constantia and one of Michael's boyhood haunts.) A few years ago, he left there and then started up this little Bistro and deli with less formal but equally delicious food.
When I saw that Franck was demonstrating all things with eggplant I immediately thought of our new young American friend and Rotary Ambassadorial scholar Toni who is a vegetarian and loves to cook. So off we went, Toni, Michael and I as well as Lloyd and Penny (yes another one)- friends we have made in Rotary. I knew we would all enjoy watching Franck cook and learning a few tips.
Franck makes it all look so easy. He made seared tuna served on a bed of baba ganoush, an eggplant tartlet and grilled aubergine slices as part of a salad with Haloumi cheese. He even showed us how to make a basic mayonnaise which is pretty funny for we Americans who have Hellmann's. Here, all my foodie friends know how and, with some regularity, make their own mayonnaise - so far I've resisted but with Franck's helpful hints I'm now going to give it a try.
The food picture is a rather poor shot of the finished dishes taken in the mirror which hangs over the cooking area. One of the most interesting discoveries of the night were a cinnamon oil that Franck makes for drizzling on the tuna and the other was a simple balsamic syrup which he uses for many things. Franck moves quickly but fortunately Toni was there with her iPhone and took notes on her little screen which she has already sent to us.
When we sat down for dinner after the demonstration, we all ordered the exact dishes we had seen him make - they were so yummy! We left well fed and amused. We shall definitely return and we shall try out some of the recipes ourselves!
