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LIFE
THE AUSTRALIAN, MONDAY, OCTOBER 30, 2017 theaustralian.com.au/life
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Tuna salad based on classic combo Southern bluefin tuna with chicken liver parfait, cured egg yolk, sunflower seed brown butter and iceberg lettuce, by Lachlan Colwill of Hentley Farm, Seppeltsfield JOHN LETHLEAN FLAVOUR OF THE MONTH
On a beautiful property in the Barossa at Seppeltsfield, South Australia, Lachlan Colwill has made the Hentley Farm restaurant his own. The chef has persevered, matured, gained confidence and been part of continuing improvements, to the point that this year, for the first time, we included the restaurant in The Australian’s Hot 50 Restaurants. It’s that good. And an important part of the Hentley Farm experience is connection with the region. Colwill and his kitchen are the conduits. He did his time in Adelaide but this appears to be the place that allows him to properly express, as chef, his culinary priorities. Colwill grew up on the outskirts of the Barossa in the small farming town of Freeling. “I dreamt of being a musician or writer or both but over anything else I just loved the act of eating, and it was the only thing I truly gave my full attention to,” he says. “I would pull sickies from school and convince my younger brother Stuart to do the same so we could put our money together (or mum’s stashed emergency money) and have indulgent feasts.” The brothers mastered Family Circle’s Best of Kids Cooking circa 1996, he reckons. “Becoming a chef seemed fitting … and mum is a skilled cook herself and basically encouraged and inspired the dream.” THE BACKSTORY This dish of tuna with chicken liver parfait, or versions of it, have been menu staples at Hentley Farm since the restaurant opened in 2012. “In a way it’s just a tuna salad with what I feel is a fairly classic combo of tuna, egg, iceberg and dressing,” Colwill says. “The difference, I guess, is the addition of chicken liver parfait, which can turn some people off when reading it on a menu, but I feel it adds a umami richness to the whole combination just like the pate does in a Vietnamese pork roll, which is kinda where this idea sparked from.” THE PRODUCE This dish ticks many South Aussie produce boxes but Colwill says it also makes a lot of sense from a produce utilisation point of view. “Making liver parfait or pate seems to be a very Barossan thing to do, and having neighbours like Barossa Birds means we get to cook with extremely fresh livers, which is vital to get that clean, non-metallic parfait flavour.” Curing yolks came from surfeit eggs each day from the poultry on Hentley Farm or the property next door. “We were continuously finding we could use all the whites but often had excess yolks. This simple 50/50 sugar and salt cure on the egg yolks solved this issue and meant we always had these yolks on hand as a pantry item.” The tuna is farmed by the Moriarty family in Port Lincoln. The Mori-brand belly mid-season (June/July) is excellent, according to the chef, whose secret pleasure is the fish lightly cured in treacle and salt, served with warm rice. THE METHOD The dish contains some good techniques, says Colwill, but nothing that isn’t achievable at home, “and the individual components in this recipe are great to add to your personal repertoire”. Curing eggs is something everybody should try: equal parts caster sugar and table salt, gently burying the yolks in the mixture and covering with cling wrap before refrigerating for two weeks. “Wash the cure mixture off and shave away. “To get the parfait flavour right, you want to really focus on a tasty wine reduction: saute about four shallots and a few cloves of garlic until lightly caramelised, splash in a generous amount of Port wine, and add bay leaf and thyme, then let it reduce to intensify.” You’re looking for “that slightly jammy sweet onion and wine flavour and texture”, Colwill says. “We just blitz the livers raw in a blender then add the jammy onion stuff and blitz some more until smooth, then add eggs, butter — slowly — similar to how you would with the oil in a mayonnaise, then season with salt, and steam for about eight minutes, then chill.” Sunflower seed brown butter is simple. Crush some sunflower seeds into foaming butter, continue to cook until the seeds and butter both start to brown, and just as you can really smell those punchy browning aromas, hit it with a little lemon juice to stop the cooking process and remove the pan from the heat. Sear some tuna in a bit of this butter. “We cut the iceberg lettuce into a fancy little dome to cover the whole dish,” says the chef, “but, honestly, at home just chop the thing up and cover it in lots of egg and brown butter and you’re done.” THE TWIST “The combination of liver parfait and seared tuna raises the odd concerned eyebrow,” concedes Colwill, “but we feel it works. We also match this dish with red wine, which often freaks people out more. “The egg yolk and brown butter really add to the overall umami flavours, so red wine (a light GSM, for example) can surprisingly work, which is pretty handy for us considering the restaurant is located smack-bang in red grape-growing country.” THE PRICE High quality tuna isn’t cheap. Fish such as mackerel or salmon could substitute, says the chef. With roughly 100gm per portion of fish, the whole dish should cost about $6-7 per person to make. At Hentley Farm, the dish is part of a tasting menu: $115 or $190, depending on how hungry you are and how much time you have. For the full recipe go to www.theaustralian.com.au
A
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An Israeli movement unites those with special needs and those who can help CARLI PHILIPS What do cherry tomatoes, USB keys, e-readers and digital printing technology, drip irrigation, antivirus software and SodaStream have in common? All are inventions from Israel, a country ranked number two for innovation according to the World Economic Forum’s 2016-17 Global Competitiveness Report. With more than 6000 active start-ups, entrepreneurs regularly praise the business culture of this buzzing hub as a collaborative and transparent one where “knowledge sharing is the norm”, says Nir Zohar of cloudbased web development platform Wix.com. “We think of competitors as colleagues.” It’s this philosophy that’s at the core of Tikkun Olam Makers. Directly translating to Repairing the World in Hebrew, it is a global non-partisan, non-profit movement that unites “need knowers” (people affected by disabilities) with volunteer “makers” such as industrial designers, engineers, hardware developers, coders, programmers, woodworkers and health professionals with the goal of developing assistive technology that addresses their specific needs. Founded by Arnon Zamir and Josh Gottesman of the Reut Group, it was granted $70,000 by Google last year. TOM runs as a 72-hour makeathon where inventors have modern tools such as laser cutters, 3D printers, metal cutters, grinders, soldering irons and lathe machining at their disposal. It’s been called the TedX of social action,
structured similarly to the speaker series that is highly localised yet supported by the organisation’s framework. Branding and sponsors are provided but makeathons in each city are planned by the community, with both parties vetted before being paired. Pre-TOM occurs a month before with offline communication leading up to the event. Australian quad amputee Mandy McCracken, 43, had exhausted all options before approaching TOM to create a bike so she could ride with her children. It put her in touch with Melbournebased mechanical engineer David Jennings and his group Team ReCycle. “A regular bike didn’t suit me,” McCracken says. “We had tried retrofitting, and a custom design can cost thousands. I researched extensively but just couldn’t find anything. TOM put together a team of engineers and designers with an appropriate skill set and three days later I had a bicycle.” Increasing in popularity, modern hackathons run as marathon sessions where great minds pool talent to collaborate on new ideas. They have been held regularly over the past decade. Facebook is famous for its overnighters and hundreds run throughout Australia, ranging from Hackoffeethon (applying tech to bring about sustainable change to the coffee industry) to the coming Energy Hack that will unite academics, professionals and start-ups in seeking solutions to Australia’s energy problems. The first TOM was
Quad amputee Mandy McCracken with David Jennings and other members of Team ReCycle hosted in Nazareth in 2014 and is now active in 33 locations worldwide, with Queensland set to come in next month. Events have been held everywhere from Colombia to Vietnam, Bulgaria, Mexico, San Francisco and Kazakhstan, where students designed a full-body rehabilitative exoskeleton using readily available orthotics and which allowed a 40-year-old woman to walk unassisted for the first time in 15 years. Other success stories include a “page turner” for a quadriplegic and intuitive software for the visually impaired to assess and recognise the surrounding environment with virtual audible cues. Last year David Jennings and Team ReCycle were challenged to create the bicycle for Mandy McCracken. It included brakes functional by means other than hand operation (because of slow reaction times of prosthetic wrists) and was supplemented with an electric motor to reduce pedalling effort. “It needed to look normal and be a finished and presentable tricycle, not a rough prototype,” says Jen-
HELPING HAND
‘It’s a challenge to try to design and develop the impossible in such a limited time frame’ DAVID JENNINGS TEAM RECYCLE
Oarsome chat
PIA AKER MAN
Is the Turnbull government all at sea? Pish-posh, declared the Prime Minister on Saturday, fresh from a paddle on Sydney Harbour. “It was a good and tranquil environment to be discussing important political issues,” Malcolm Turnbull said after Barnaby Joyce revealed they’d had a chat while the PM was afloat. And thanks to Joyce, here’s a detailed account of that conversation: “He said, ‘Good morning, Barnaby’, and I said ‘How are you, Malcolm?’ He went ‘All right.’ I said, ‘What are you doing’, he said he was in his kayak. I said, ‘Malcolm, I can’t quite hear you mate’, because I keep on hearing splashes. We went through a few other things, then he dropped out — I called him back … we sort of just got bored, the conversation stopped.” Yes, it is pretty dull, this whole government-just-one-dodgytakeaway-from-falling business.
Cameron was hooked The parlous state of prime ministerial telecommunication standards aboard the official
nings. “It’s a challenge to try to design and develop the impossible in such a limited time frame but we had a great team and worked really well together, which helps. Mandy’s tricycle was a very large and complex mechanical device to be built in only 72 hours … (but) the adrenaline, time pressure and the positivity you get from helping change someone’s life definitely helps keep you motivated and inspired.” Other Australian inventions include TechNeck, a mountable robotic wheelchair headrest that pivots with the movement of the head to provide continuous lateral support, and crutches that convert into a seat for a cerebral palsy sufferer. For Stacey Christie, who has muscular dystrophy and uses an electric wheelchair, a portable wedge ramp was devised using biomechanics, helping her overcome inaccessible environments and travel more independently. The Maker Movement isn’t a new phenomenon but grassroots communities of independent hobbyists, tinkerers, students and techies have become more prevalent as materials become increasingly accessible. An aversion to mass manufacture is at the heart of the international Maker Faire, launched in 2005. The biggest of its kind, it spotlights projects unavailable commercially. It will be held in Melbourne in December at Swinburne University’s Advanced Technologies Centre. McCracken is working with TOM to develop a bottle-pouring device. “For me, as someone with two prosthetic hands, it’s very hard to pour a bottle,” she says. “Anyone with cerebral palsy or anyone that needed a grip would benefit from it.” McCracken believes there is a market for such products but development is thwarted by
financial limitations. “When I told some fellow quad amputees that I had a bike they were excited and desperate to get the plan so they could have one. There’s definitely a gap in the community but anyone building a custom tricycle would expect to be paid in return. The beauty of TOM is that volunteers are doing it from the love and kindness of their hearts.” Everything at TOM is opensource and freely available to replicate under a creative commons licence. An open makers market will launch next March, enabling users to connect directly with original teams to download a DIY instruction kit with assisted adaptations and flexible derivatives. “When a user has a unique need or the product is too expensive, alternative options to create an affordable custom-made solution remain elusive,” says Rebecca Fuhrman, director of communications at TOM: Tikkun Olam Makers Global. “We have built a powerful model to address the market failure.” According to the Australian Network on Disability, more than four million people live with some form of a disability in Australia alone. The World Health Organisation estimates 1.1 billion people live with disabilities worldwide, and many experience daily obstacles and financial burdens. David Jennings says TOM fills a necessary gap in the market. “(TOM) is a great opportunity to develop products that would not normally be developed because the market is so small and not commercially attractive for companies. TOM enables people with disabilities to be heard.”
of the six most powerful people in Australia — and won’t I be enjoying it”. Katter struggled to restrain his guffaws as he rejoiced in the High Court’s findings on Friday night. “Malcolm Turnbull, I felt, was not only offensive but insulting to me in our last meeting, but I think there will be a change of attitude,” he chortled. “Too bad, so sad, Mr LNP.”
on Pauline Hanson, who had already tweeted: “Seems a cowardly Anna Palaszczuk decided to wait until I was out of the country to cancel on her grandma and call a snap election.” Palaszczuk tweeted a photo of herself and Nanna to make her point, as well as a rare snap of her groodle Winton. Nothing like pets and babies during an election.
Doing the rounds
Anna and Nanna on a busy day for the Queensland Premier kayak put us in mind of this wonderful story from former New Zealand prime minister John Key, who once took an important call from then British PM David Cameron via satellite phone while tuna fishing off the Marshall Islands. “Just as I had hooked a big one and was hauling it on board, the phone rang,” Key told parliament in his farewell speech. “I handed the rod to my diplomatic protection officer, who found some implement to finish off the tuna, which was flapping mightily in the boat. It is fair to say there was a huge amount of
noise in the background, and Cameron, who was used to taking calls on secure phones and in quiet offices, said to me: ‘What the hell is going on there?’ ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘don’t be alarmed. It’s just that we’re on a fishing boat about a mile out to sea in the Marshall Islands, and I’ve landed a big tuna.’ There was this long silence, and then he wistfully said: ‘God, I wish I ran a small country.’ ”
Bowing to his Bobness Up north, Bob Katter is laughing like he is, as he describes it, “one
Yesterday was National Grandparents Day (shame on those of you who forgot). On Friday and Saturday, Annastacia Palaszczuk coyly deflected questions about whether she would see the Queensland governor on Sunday to request an election by highlighting the significance of this national event and suggesting her only planned visit was one with her nanna. We now know she was being a little cute, but Nanna still got a bunch of flowers and a quick hug before Palaszczuk ducked off to see the acting governor, Chief Justice Catherine Holmes (the Premier whizzing out of her cream trousers into a floral dress en route to Government House). The touching moment was lost
http://tomglobal.org http://aus.tomglobal.org Tikkun Olam Makers takes place in Melbourne from December 1-3
Inconvenienced? And where has Hanson gone as her eponymous party moves into position for kingmaker status in the Sunshine State? To India with a parliamentary delegation. They love her over there. Why, it was only last year that she made headlines in the Indian press by taking on the issue of squat toilets being installed for staff in an Australian Taxation Office in Melbourne. “Australian politician thinks Indian-style toilets could pose a threat to their way of life,” said the Times of India, labelling her “rant” as “bizarre”. We trust the Queensland senator will enjoy the local amenities during her travels. strewth@theaustralian.com.au