Back to Basics

Text: Diana Wemyss. Pictures: Anthony Johnson. Article from the June 2013 issue of Country Life Magazine.

A day in the country learning to make pasta can be just the tonic for city boredom

Jaco Brand was feeling pretty low. Three years ago the recession had hit his Cape Town landscaping business and he was battling to make ends meet. “I am generally a very optimistic person,” he says, “but I was sitting out here, on my two-acre smallholding, PicardiPlace, in Rawsonville, growing a few plants and feeling very down and it suddenly came to me that I should bake. So I started to bake bread, delivering loaves as gifts to my neighbours every day.

“My spirits lifted almost instantly,” he says. “The whole process of kneading was therapeutic. From there I went to Florence, Italy, where I learnt how to make pasta. While I was there I stood in a market, where we had gone to buy produce for our lessons, and I thought why not take something of this home? I decided I had to share the process of pasta-making with South Africans.”

In this prosaic way, Jaco’s life in the country took on a completely new direction. The rather ordinary farmhouse, which sat in the middle of a hectare of flat land in the vineyards of Rawsonville, started to undergo a transformation as dramatic as that of Jaco’s mindset. Beds of lavender, neat clipped hedges of eugenia, coats of paint, new windows, new furnishings. He called up his friend Kobus Kritzinger and said, “Come and make a veggie garden here at PicardiPlace, so that we can use the produce for our courses and you can introduce people to permaculture.”

Jaco had hardly set up his long, bleached wooden tables before his first pasta-making students arrived – a group of corporates on a team-building exercise.”It just took off from there,” he says. “I don’t think there is anywhere else in the country where it is done as we do it here, completely by hand, without a machine.”

Day students are welcomed under a large, shady tree, with iced mint water and bowls of seasonal fruit. From there it is across the lawn to another large patch of shade to meet Kobus, who introduces them to the idea of permaculture and takes students around the vegetable garden. Great big bowls of salad leaves and herbs are picked for lunch and warm, brown eggs collected for the pasta.

Then it’s back to the house where organic wine farmer and author Christine Stevens conducts a tasting of her Mountain Oaks wines, including a delicious wooded Chardonnay and a light Pinotage. Glasses in hand, the students drift into the house to gather around two enormous wooden tables where they each prepare their own pasta, creating walls of flour to contain the eggs and oil. Jaco enthusiastically demonstrates the gradual mixing process. Then, when it’s done and the dough is resting for half an hour in oiled wrapping, Jaco leads everyone into the kitchen to prepare the bolognaise sauce. It’s all very informal; the food plain and simple. “You have to taste the tomatoes, taste the basil,” insists Jaco.

Lunch at a long table is rounded off with a tiramisu or some other delicious sweet treat and coffee. Everyone leaves having rediscovered, as author Barbara Kingsolver describes it, a “vanishing honesty”.

Jaco is assisted on the farm by a couple from Zimbabwe – Thandi Hanyire who helps in the kitchen and Tich Makichi, a carpenter who makes furniture from old, recycled wood for Tuka, the shop Jaco set up with his sister Theresa in Woodstock, Cape Town, and which will be moving to a barn on Jaco’s farm. Before the pasta-making courses, as a means of keeping going in tough times, Jaco had discovered a talent for photography and started selling photographs at craft markets. That’s where he met Tich, who he contracted to make the simple rustic frames in which the photographs were sold. The furniture venture progressed from there.

Jaco has also turned part of the farmhouse into a guest house, and a new weekly set dinner menu with the delightful name of Die Houttafel, plus the regular pasta-making courses are ensuring that life is successful and energetic. Students and visitors to PicardiPlace also get to shop for vintage shabby-chic furniture or a range of delicious preserves, or simply enjoy a cup of coffee beneath the trees. A truly special country experience.

 Basic Pasta Recipe

Serves one

• 100g white bread flour
• 1 free-range egg
• tsp extra-virgin olive oil

Method

Pour the flour onto a clean work surface and make a well. Break the eggs into the well. Mix the olive oil with the eggs using a fork. Slowly mix in the flour from the sides of the well, ensuring that no lumps form. When the mixture becomes too thick to use the fork, use your hands to knead the dough. Knead for 15 minutes until smooth. Cut a 30cm length of wax paper and coat it with olive oil on one side. Place the dough onto the middle of the paper and wrap it. Let it rest for 30 – 60 minutes. Divide the dough into 4 equal pieces. Roll out the dough until almost transparent.

For tagliatelle / pappardelle fold up lengthwise and cut into strips. Bring water to the boil. Add strips and cook for 2 minutes. For lasagne sheets cut to the size of your dish.

Bolognaise Sauce

Serves 5

• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 1 medium-sized onion
• 5 garlic gloves
• 2 tsp dried chillies (or 2 fresh chillies)
• 1 tsp sea salt
• 1 tsp black pepper
• 500g pork mince
• 500g lean beef mince
• 500g peeled tomatoes in sauce
• 1 cup red wine
• 1 handful fresh basil leaves

Method

Heat the olive oil in a saucepan. Fry the chopped onions, garlic and chillies. Add meat and brown. Season to taste with sea salt and black pepper. Add peeled tomatoes and red wine. Add fresh basil leaves and let it simmer for one hour. Serve with homemade pasta of your choice.

Wine Suggestion: Mountain Oaks Rouge 2011

Aubergine Caprese

Serves 4

• 2 medium aubergines
• 2 large tomatoes
• 150g buffalo mozzarella cheese
• 8 large basil leaves
• 1 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
• salt and ground pepper to taste
• balsamic reduction

Method

Heat oil in a large saucepan (a griddle pan also works well). Slice the aubergines crosswise into rounds, about 1 cm thick. Fry the slices until brown on both sides. Place slices on a sheet of paper towel to absorb the oil before plating. Cut tomatoes and mozzarella into thin slices. Place the tomato slice on the aubergine and dress with salt and pepper to taste. Layer mozzarella and the basil leaf on top of the tomato. Finally place another slice of aubergine on top and drizzle with balsamic reduction.

Wine Suggestion: Mountain Oaks White Blend

Purple Potato, Dill and Avocado Salad

Serves 6 to 8

• 1 kg purple potatoes (or baby potatoes)
• 60g fresh dill
• salt and black pepper to taste
• 125ml extra-virgin olive oil
• 50ml white spirit vinegar
• 2 avocados

Method

Cut potatoes into thick slices and parboil. While potatoes are boiling, prepare a dressing of the chopped fresh dill, olive oil, vinegar, salt and pepper. Drain the potatoes and add the dressing to the pot. Cover and let the potatoes sit in the dressing for 20 minutes. Slice the avocado and toss with the potato. Serve in a beautiful salad bowl.

Tiramisu

Serves 5

• 500g mascarpone cheese
• 4 free-range eggs
• 5 tbsp castor sugar
• 5 tbsp cocoa, unsweetened
• 10 Boudoir biscuits
• 2 cups cold black coffee
• 1 tbsp Baileys Irish Cream (optional)
• 5 sprigs peppermint

Method

Separate the egg yolks and whites. Using a fork, beat the castor sugar and egg yolks together. Add the mascarpone and mix thoroughly. In a separate bowl whisk the egg whites until they form peaks. Fold the egg whites into the mixture and add the Baileys. Put the mixture into the fridge for 30 minutes. Sift a thin layer of cocoa into 5 serving bowls. Pour a thin layer of the custard into each bowl. Quickly dip each biscuit into the cold coffee and lay two biscuits on top of the mixture in each bowl. Repeat alternate layers of cocoa and custard and top off with a thin layer of cocoa and a sprig of mint. Leave in the fridge for at least five hours before serving.

Visit www.countrylife.co.za for Jaco’s delicious lasagne recipe

PicardiPlace 082 788 9019. jaco@picardiplace.co.za. www.picardiplace.co.za