Tag Archives: Retail spot

Sunday Times Travel&Food

Wild and woolly on the mohair route

Mrs Ball, you have been outdone. For all the fact that you have recently extended your range of chutneys (from the Hindi catni, a condiment), you cannot come close to the range of blatjang (from the Malay belachan, a condiment) available at the Noorsveld Farmstall.

They’ve got Beet Chutney, Citrus Chutney, Tomato, Sweet Tomato, Fig, Strong Tomato, Sweet Chilli Fig, and Chilli Tomato Chutney. If it can be chutnied, they’ve chutnied it. If it can be pickled, they’ve pickled it. If it can be jammed, they’ve jammed it too, including kumquats and ghokums and all manner of other strange things. You need an etymological dictionary just to understand the basic ingredients and a dentist’s appointment to clean you up after you’ve ploughed your way through the koeksisters, the pineapple marmalade and the prickly pear syrup.
Noorsveld is also the home of the kudu salami and the best game pasty in the land. You can wrap everything up in a mohair blanket with some Wallacedale marinated olives, a jar of garlic soaked in mustard and mint, a slab of dripping, some home-made bread, some biltong and a packet of kuduwiele (particularly toothsome slices of kudu droewors) and life’s a picnic.

Do NOT miss this place. Even if the flags outside look a bit worn, the range of lekker goodies inside is unbeatable.

Noorsveld Farmstall, Jansenville, E. Cape 049 836 0339

Sunday Times Travel&Food

A farm so fare

FARM FARE
Church Street, Graaff-Reinet,
Tel (049) 892 3212

I scoured the area around Graaff-Reinet for a padstal. There had to be one. I drove in every direction on the roads to Pearston, to Jansenville, to Goliatskloof, all place-names with stories attached (especially Goliatskloof). Graaff-Reinet was, it appeared, a giant of a place, but no padstal.

Of course, there was a reason. The people of the Karoo are a friendly, cooperative bunch and after the 1971 drought, more than forty ladies got together and opened an outlet in the town. Obvious, really, in a place where more than half the vehicles on the road are passing traffic, concentrate your efforts into supplying one shop at the bottom of Church St, the one street that everybody travels.
The result is an absolute delight. A wider, fresher range of biscuits, jams, chutneys, breads, cakes, game meat, quiches and koeksisters than Fortnum and Mason. (I suspect that Fortum’s doesn’t sell koeksisters at all). And you’ve got to love a shop that has a sketch of a dachshund on the notice showing the whereabouts the wors’

Try Koperpennie Wortelslaai or Beetroot Chutney. There are pickles you’d never have thought of, each labelled with suggestions as to what it might accompany. There are even Muffins in a Jar, with contents layered like a Namibian sand-bottle and instructions for converting the dry ingredients to make 12 muffins. And there’s lekker Ginger Beer.

Farm Fare is butcher, baker and condiment-maker. So wherever you are coming from, visit these ladies, and kill many Goliats with one stone.