ok, my last post on some of the winners of this year’s RMB Private Bank Eat In South African Produce Awards. i also sampled Dalewood Fromage’s Six Month Matured Huguenot (which won the Small Producer Cheese awards. personally i don’t like hard cheeses very much, i’m more a Brie and Camembert person. i did grate some over pasta we had the other night (with some Ragu a friend brought back from Italy). that was really good. it’s a hard cheese with a fairly mild flavour. i see from their website though that Dalewood makes a range of award-winning Bries and Camemberts with interesting things like olives and chilli added. AND even better, the cows are pretty free range and they try to be as organic as possible. they believe happy cows equals good milk… sounds nice and ethical to me i’d love to go visit them but it says on their website that they aren’t open for visitors yet – boo hoo

then I also tasted the winner of the Small Producer Grocery and Condiment winner, Quality Pickles. Justine Drake commented that the Quality Pickles people should consider new packaging as their current packaging is very basic (plastic bottles with a nondescript label). it seemed justine was worried that the packaging was not doing them justice and that their product may be overlooked! i am not the biggest pickle fan, but my boyfriend is and he loved it so much i gave him the whole bottle.

ever seen a black potato?

one of the courses we had at the awards lunch was the most delicious potato salad (not your basic tons-of-mayo version) but a classy potato with beans and asparagus and peas…. SO good. and the potatoes were not just ANY potatoes, they were HEIRLOOM potatoes. Salvin Hirschfield, the man behind Earth Apples (winner of Small Producer Earth Award), told me that he imported these old varieties from Scotland. they have been almost forgotten as more and more small seed companies have been gobbled up into the massive transnational seed companies who have concentrated on a few varieties of potatoes for ‘improvement’. it’s amazing how different a potato can taste – i only know two kinds of potato: normal potato and sweet potato. Earth Apples introduces a whole new spectrum of taste.

i also want to congratulate Soil for Life who won an Innovation Merit Award for the organic produce they brought to the judging grown by the kitchen gardeners. i have mentioned Soil for Life a few times on this blog. they do amazing work helping people from poor communities around Cape Town to grow their own produce – most of it for home consumption, but where possible to sell. you can buy it at Soil for Life’s base in Constantia or at Sage Organics or Portobello Cafe (both in town).

and that’s about it. i devoured my magazine. it’s got some delicious looking recipes i can’t wait to try. and i’m itching to go missioning about to all the stores/delis/cheeseries listed in there. Eat In 2009. get it now! if you love food and if you want to eat more locally.