Katinka offers a taste of the good life
AS a young diplomat’s wife based in New York, Katinka van Niekerk just could not come to terms with the most fashionable food combination of the time — chocolate mousse and champagne.
She thought the mousse made the champagne taste like vinegar. Her husband urged her not to make waves. Just do what the others do, was his advice.
But when she received an invitation to a New York cookery school, she felt vindicated. “I discovered that it had nothing to do with my unsophisticated Cape upbringing. The way that food and wine is paired is critical.”
After years in the US, the UK and Germany, she and her husband returned to settle in Cape Town and Van Niekerk taught at the Cape Wine Academy where she developed a food and wine pairing course.
She then moved to Nederberg and ran a workshop called The Incredible Journey of Taste. Although she loved, it she found she was teaching mainly tourists.
“I wanted to meet the broader South African public, so I went on my own.”
She is greatly in demand, teaching at hotel schools, consulting to restaurants and running workshops for food lovers.
“It’s only in the past 10 years that the world has really started taking an interest in what you drink with what,” she says.
“I can see the interior decorating value of red wine with red meat and red flowers on the table, but colour has nothing to do with selecting the correct wine for a dish. If it did, what would happen to the poor vegetarians? Would they never be allowed to drink a good red with their mushrooms?”
Last week Van Niekerk ran a food and wine pairing at Jeera, an Indian restaurant at Durban’s Suncoast Towers. For years, people have been told that the only thing to drink with curry is a lager.
“If you had to have wine you were told to chill it to within an inch of its life to blot out the taste,” she says.
We have been doing ourselves a disservice, according to Van Niekerk.
“We deprived ourselves of the beautiful matches between curries and wines. You want flavourful wines to accompany these dishes. Instinctively I reach for a cabernet; it doesn’t blink an eye, not even with a red-hot Madras curry. A creamy chardonnay is the perfect match for a butter chicken.”
Three years ago, together with foodie Brian Burke, Van Niekerk produced The Food and Wine Pairing Guide.
“I wanted to get the word out. I wanted ordinary people to be able to stand in the supermarket, grab a leg of lamb and grab a cabernet to go with it instead of a chenin blanc.
“At the same time I don’t want people to become obsessed and pretentious — just know the basic principles and have fun.”
The guide is available through Exclusive Books.
For more information: www.katinkafoodwine.co.za