A 12-Day Small Group Journey 28 August – 8 September 2018
BRITISH COLUMBIA BEARS & LODGES
Departing 28 August 2018. Numbers Limited. Enquire Now. 1300 163 517 captainschoice.com.au
On this intimate adventure, we reach remote enclaves by private floatplane, relish the finest seasonal fare prepared by local heroes and witness rare creatures in a profusion uncommon elsewhere in the world.
VICTORIA CLAYOQUOT SOUND WHISTLER OKANAGAN VALLEY VANCOUVER
ECLIPSE
THE WORLD’S FIRST DISCOVERY YACHT
TM
Inaugural Transatlantic crossing 14 Day Cruise
Miami > Barcelona
USA
Barcelona
Miami Bahamas
Spain 13
Gibraltar
Rediscover your tastebuds during a 14 day Transatlantic crossing on Scenic Eclipse. With plenty of days at sea to explore the 10 exceptional on board dining experiences, there will be something for all appetites. Inspired by all four corners of the globe, Scenic Eclipse’s culinary creations range from casual to fine-dining. Enjoy contemporary French fine dining in Lumière, sushi and sake at Asian-fusion venue Koko’s, a casual meal in the Azure Bar & Café, a perfectly cooked fillet steak in Scenic Eclipse’s elegant Elements main restaurant, or relax at the Yacht Club’s poolside grill.
Scenic Eclipse
Teppanyaki @ Koko’s
Yacht Club, Scenic Eclipse
Complementing the on board dining experience will be eight spacious bars and lounges, offering an extensive selection of beverages from top-shelf tipples, fine wine and cocktails, to freshly-squeezed juices, all included as part of Scenic’s signature all-inclusive promise. Verandah Suite from $7,470*pp
Verandah Suite
2018/2019 BROCHURES OUT NOW SCENIC ECLIPSE POLAR VOYAGES DISCOVERY VOYAGES
138 128 | SCENIC.COM.AU/ECLIPSE or visit scenic.com.au/agents for your nearest Scenic agent
Culinary art starts with the first course. Culinary culture starts sooner than that.
The difference is Gaggenau. The ambitious kitchen is a place of exacting demands for equipment, ingredients and techniques. The Vario cooktops 400 series have been meeting these demands from the beginning, with appliances developed to meet any challenge. Energy efficient, our steel-framed induction cooktops direct heat quickly to the pan with the power to sear as well as the control for long, gentle simmering. These cooktops free the imagination; a tribute to boundless cuisine. Whatever combination you choose, you can look forward to exceptional freedom for decades to come. For more information, please visit www.gaggenau.com/au
Food
Restaurant awards
SPRING LOADED
LIFE IS SWEET
PLAYING WITH FIRE
POKE
Tasmania’s Agrarian Kitchen has branched out from cooking school to restaurant – with very tasty results.
Sweet Envy is an apt name for Alistair Wise’s bakery. Be envious no more. We bring you a taste of his best.
Dave Pynt, Aussie chef at Singapore’s Burnt Ends, lights up the barbie for a coal-fired menu made for spring.
Hawaii’s Asianinflected bowl of raw-fish salad on rice makes for smart-casual spring meals.
CHEFS’ TABLES
UP IN SMOKE
LUCKY STREAK
MARCO ON MARCO
TOP OF THE CLASS
We visit restaurants in Sydney and Melbourne before service to see what’s on the menu for staff dinner.
In his new book, chef Aaron Turner chronicles the fall of his restaurant Loam, and his return to cooking at Igni.
David Chang’s food magazine, Lucky Peach, burned bright and strong. As it closes, Amelia Lester weighs it up.
Reading White Heat with Marco Pierre White: how does the epoch-defining cookbook of the ’80s stand up today?
Pull up a chair with fork at the ready and dig in to the 2018 Gourmet Traveller Restaurant Awards.
106
114 124 Features
74
80
SAPPHIRE AND GOLD
DUE SOUTH
HONG KONG FOR ONE
Jennifer Byrne takes the Silk Road and discovers the vivid history of Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan.
For a taste of extreme wilderness in extreme comfort, Helen Anderson takes a hike in South Australia.
Flying solo on your next trip to Hong Kong? A tradition of table-sharing makes the city a haven for lone rangers.
Travel PHOTOGRAPHY BEN DEARNLEY. STYLING EMMA KNOWLES
SEP
144
154
134
86
90
94
162
p
114
Alistair Wise’s Jatz pie.
SEP
144
p
Kukeldash Madrasah in Tashkent, Uzbekistan.
Regulars EDITOR’S LETTER
NEWS
OBJECTS OF DESIRE
47
HOW I EAT Annabel Crabb on grilling politicians and the art of kitchen diplomacy.
37
HOW I TRAVEL English actor and comedian Steve Coogan on travelling with Judi Dench and running shoes.
39
48
41
50 52
Max Allen on the wines that define right now.
55 57
MASTERCLASS
12
G O U R M E T T R AV E L L E R
SYDNEY REVIEW
60
174 175
Jatz pie (recipe page 118)
CITY HITLIST
TRAVEL MEMOIR Mankinis, Che Guevara and Mojitos in Cuba.
176
STYLE Heading East.
MELBOURNE REVIEW
185 186
A new wave of drinking and dining in Albany.
COOK THE COVER
Munich brims with energy, globetrotting cooking and hip ’hoods.
182
EAT OUT
DESIGN Pop-up pods in the Welsh countryside capture the tiny-house ethos in style.
The Bodega line-up is back rocking a tiny bar space. Welcome to Wyno.
It’s double the fun with the opening of Tipo 00’s sibling, Osteria Ilaria.
FIVE OF A KIND
Filleting a fish.
170
PRODUCE
DRINKS
QUICK MEALS Midweek meals made in no time.
ANATOMY OF A DISH
Paulette Whitney grows proper pinkeye potatoes.
Cultured butter.
42
THE EXPLAINER
Taking apart the katsu sando.
FOUR DISHES Our favourite plates this month.
65
Karkalla.
Scandi accoutrements.
34
EATING CLEAN Light broths made with spring ingredients.
CONTRIBUTORS The latest from the food and travel scenes.
32
44
STOCKISTS Plus our cook’s notes and privacy notice.
RECIPE INDEX FARE EXCHANGE Chefs’ recipes you’ve requested.
Recipe Alistair Wise Photography Ben Dearnley Styling Emma Knowles Merchandising Rhianne Contreras
SUBSCRIBE magshop.com.au/ australian-gourmet-traveller
PHOTOGRAPHY JOHN LAURIE (KUKELDASH MADRASAH). PROPS PREVIOUS PAGE & ON THE COVER: BLACK TIE PLATE FROM MH CERAMICS. ALL OTHER PROPS STYLIST’S OWN. STOCKISTS P182.
18 20 23
SETTING THE STANDARD, YET AGAIN.
OLD WORLD SHIRAZ 6449/41
CABERNET/MERLOT 6449/0
RIEDEL.COM
OLD WORLD PINOT NOIR 6449/07
Slug
Cellaring doesn’t have to be complicated.
a new podcast from Gourmet Traveller In our first episode: a role reversal for our chief restaurant critic, Pat Nourse, whose work gets critiqued by award-winning chef Mark Best. We join the line at Lune to secure the most covetable croissant in the country, and we set chef Danielle Alvarez and sommelier Caitlyn Rees (above) from Fred’s in Sydney the task of interviewing each other. Vintec ‘NOIR’ 170-Bottle Wine Cellar V190SG2E-BK
Protect your investment. Discover the full range of Vintec climate-controlled cellars at vintec.com.au
Available on iTunes or wherever you listen to podcasts. 14
G O U R M E T T R AV E L L E R
EXPERIENCE THE CREAMY SENSATION of Castello® Double Cream Brie
Matured from the centre for a mild taste and soft, creamy texture castellocheese.com
Slug
Editor Managing Editor Creative Director Travel Editor
Sarah Oakes Pat Nourse Liz Elton Helen Anderson
Food
Food & Style Director Emma Knowles Senior Food Editor Lisa Featherby
Art
Deputy Art Director Brooke Donaldson Designer Emma Chu
Words
Chief Subeditor Deputy Chief Subeditor Subeditor Staff Writer Editorial Coordinator Digital Managing Editor Digital Writer
Toni Mason Krishna Mathrubutham David Matthews Maggie Scardifield Samantha Teague Amber Manto Emma Breheny
Contributors
Max Allen, Fiona Donnelly, Sue Dyson & Roger McShane, Michael Harden, Kendall Hill, Gareth Meyer, Emma Sloley, David Sly, Will Studd, Max Veenhuyzen, Paulette Whitney Interns Harriet Davidson, Georgia Fullerton, Giulia McCool, Laksha Prasad, Carly Zinga
Advertising
ORAMA Collection by Newform
Group Brand Manager, Homes Advertising Production Manager Senior Events Manager Brand Executive NSW Head of Direct Sale Director of Sales – Vic, SA, WA Victoria Head of Direct Sales Queensland Head of Sales Creative Director Title Controller Advertising Production Coordinator
Abby Cohen (02) 9282 8935 Kate Orsborn (02) 9282 8364 Cate Gazal (02) 8116 9342 Jennifer Burke (02) 9288 9145 Brigitte Guerin (02) 9282 8249 Jaclyn Clements (03) 9823 6341 Christine Lester (03) 9823 6382 Judy Taylor (07) 3101 6636 Clare Catt (02) 8116 9341 Rachel Rae (02) 8114 9451 Dominic Roy (02) 9282 8691
Marketing, Research & Circulation
PARISI.com.au
Commercial Analyst Associate Publisher/Marketing Circulation Intelligence Manage Research Analyst Subscriptions Campaign Manager Syndication inquiries
Marisa Spasich Sally Eagle Sarah Ossitt Ania Falenciak Lauren Flinn syndication@bauer-media.com.au
Bauer Media
Chief Executive Officer General Manager – Homes & Food Director of Sales Director of Brands & Categories Director of Media Solutions Group Social Media Manager Research Director
Paul Dykzeul Cornelia Schulze Fiorella Di Santo Jane Serember Warwick Taylor Sean McLintock Miriam Condon
Editorial office GPO Box 4088, Sydney, NSW 2001, Australia, phone +61 2 9282 8758, email askgourmet@bauer-media.com.au, website gourmettraveller.com.au, Instagram @gourmettraveller Published by Bauer Media Pty Limited. ABN 18 053 273 546. 54-58 Park St, Sydney, NSW 2000, (02) 9282 8000. The trade mark Gourmet Traveller is the property of Bauer Media Pty Limited and is used under licence. ©2017 All rights reserved. Printed by PMP Print, 31-37 Heathcote Rd, Moorebank, NSW, 2170. National distribution by Gordon and Gotch Australia Pty Ltd. 1300 650 666. Gourmet Traveller cannot accept unsolicited manuscripts or photographs. If such materials are sent to the magazine, they will not be returned. Price in Australia, $9.95; in New Zealand, NZ$10.70; digital edition, $3.99. Subscription rates: 1 year (12 issues) $69.99 via automatic renewal; 1 year (12 issues) $79.99 via credit card or cheque; 2 years (24 issues) $149.99; NZ (airspeed) 1 year, $120; overseas (airspeed) 1 year, $180; digital edition monthly, $2.99; 6 months, $9.99; 1 year, $19.99. Vol 17 No 9 ISSN 1034-9006
Subscriptions Gourmet Traveller, Reply Paid 5252, Sydney, NSW 2001, Australia, phone 136 116, email magshop@magshop.com.au
16
G O U R M E T T R AV E L L E R
ALL EXCLUSIVE M E A N S F I N D I N G B E A U T Y A L O N G E V E R Y W A T E R W AY.
INTRODUCING CRYSTAL RIVER CRUISES, WHERE ALL INCLUSIVE IS ALL EXCLUSIVE. From The World’s Most Awarded Luxury Cruise Line comes an entirely new way to travel. Experience the unrivalled standard in all-inclusive luxury, while exploring the timeless waterways of Europe with unforgettable overnight stays aboard five spacious, all-suite river yachts. Indulge in ever-changing scenery and lush landscapes with uniquely curated shoreside discoveries designed to surprise, enrich and fascinate. And complimentary butler service in each and every suite will make you feel like royalty each and every day. Sail Europe’s Danube, Rhine, Moselle and Main rivers with 7 to 16 day voyages from US$3,970 per person*. Welcome to the new Crystal®, where all inclusive is All Exclusive.
FOR MORE INFORMATION OR TO RECEIVE A BROCHURE, CONTACT YOUR TRAVEL PROFESSIONAL OR CRYSTAL.
ALL TAKEN CARE OF All-suite with butler service Acclaimed dining† Unlimited select fine wines, champagne and spirits Complimentary Crystal Adventures in every port Gratuities for housekeeping, dining and bar staf Complimentary WiFi Complimentary transfers^
1300 059 262 CRYSTALRIVERCRUISES.COM
TERMS & CONDITIONS: *Book Now Fares are cruise-only, per person, in U.S. dollars, based on double occupancy, apply to new bookings only, and include taxes, fees and port charges. Fares shown apply to category S5 on voyage 8F20R, vary by stateroom category and are correct at time of printing. Solo Fares are available upon request. ^Complimentary transfers between airport and river yacht on embark/disembark days. †Optional dining in the Vintage Room attracts an additional fee. All ofers may not be combinable with other promotions, apply to first two full-fare guests in stateroom or suite, are capacity-controlled and subject to availability and may be withdrawn or changed at any time without notice. All fares, itineraries, programs, policies and shore excursions are subject to change. Restrictions apply. For complete Terms & Conditions, visit crystalcruises.com/legal. ©2017 Crystal Cruises, LLC. Ships’ registry: Amsterdam. Malta.
Editor’s letter
Where we’ve been Fare exchange
186
p
Kendall Hill, senior writer; La Baie des Singes, France At the end of three weeks in Europe I visited my friend Francesco in Marseille. We went to Baie des Singes, then Le Grand Bar des Goudes for seafood (and wine) overlooking the port. @misterkendallhill
What we hope we’ve achieved is a finesse of the things you love most about the magazine, and the introduction of some new pages, sections and voices that you’ll look forward to reading each month. One thing that will never change is our commitment to finding the best restaurants in Australia. Congratulations to our new Restaurant of the Year Orana, and to all the worthy winners, revealed on page 94. Enjoy the new-look Gourmet Traveller,
Samantha Teague, editorial coordinator; Pindimar, NSW My partner Tim and I often recharge at Pindimar, north of Newcastle. Here we’re driving up the coast to explore antique shops, eat fish and chips and hike to the top of Mount Tomaree. @teaguese
Follow
@ SARAHALICEOAKES
Emma Chu, designer; Yunnan, China My mum and I travelled to Yunnan as a getaway to celebrate a milestone birthday. Our guide, Méi Duoˇ Zhuō Ma,ˇ took this en route to Napa Lake grass fields in Shangri-La. I even have it printed on matching shirts! @emmadotchu
EMAIL ASKGOURMET@BAUER-MEDIA.COM.AU // FOLLOW @ GOURMETTRAVELLER // ONLINE GOURMETTRAVELLER.COM.AU 18
G O U R M E T T R AV E L L E R
PHOTOGRAPHY ALANA LANDSBERRY (PORTRAIT)
W
hen Annabel Crabb arrived at Gourmet Traveller this month our baking issue had only been on sale for two days, but as a dedicated subscriber, she had already cooked the luxurious apple-caramel pudding from the cover. The result, as she later posted on social media, was an enormous success. Annabel was in the office for a photo shoot and interview (page 34) but as a long-time reader and hard-nosed journalist, the first questions were for us. “What exactly are you planning to change about Gourmet Traveller?” she asked. “Give it to me straight – what’s happening with Fare Exchange?” Making changes to a magazine like Gourmet Traveller is significant, and it’s been almost five years since we’ve had a thorough refresh. We haven’t gone the full Marie Kondo, though, and all of your favourite contributors are still here: Emma Knowles, Pat Nourse, Kendall Hill and Max Allen among them. As are the pages dedicated to seriously tasty food and luxury travel. Fare Exchange, as we promised Annabel, is still present and accounted for (albeit as a more compact version on page 186). Consider it more of an evolution than a revolution.
THE CHOICE OF AWARD WINNING RESTAURANTS 2018 AUSTRALIAN RESTAURANT GUIDE Congratulations to the award winning restaurants who choose to serve Vi oria Coffee.
Restaurant Orana, Adelaide
RESTAURANT OF THE YEAR Restaurant Orana, Adelaide
NEW RESTAURANT OF THE YEAR Fred’s, Sydney
SOMMELIER OF THE YEAR Caitlyn Rees, Fred’s, Sydney
Bentley Restaurant + Bar, Sydney Cirrus, Sydney est., Sydney Fred’s, Sydney Icebergs Dining Room & Bar, Sydney Monopole, Sydney Mr Wong, Sydney Esquire, Brisbane Urbane, Brisbane Wasabi, Noosa Botanic Gardens Restaurant, Adelaide Estelle by Sco Picke , Melbourne Flower Drum, Melbourne Lake House, Daylesford
Bodega, Sydney Bodega 1904, Sydney Catalina, Sydney Cho Cho San, Sydney Co age Point Inn, Sydney The Dolphin Hotel, Sydney Felix, Sydney Long Chim, Sydney Mercado, Sydney Muse, Pokolbin Porteño, Sydney Sokyo, Sydney Stanbuli, Sydney Subo, Newcastle Yellow, Sydney E’cco Bistro, Brisbane The Euro, Brisbane Kiyomi, Broadbeach Montrachet, Brisbane Tartufo, Brisbane Ten Japanese Restaurant, Broadbeach Ezard, Melbourne Kenzan, Melbourne The Press Club, Melbourne Co-op Dining, Perth Lulu La Delizia, Perth
www.vittoriacoffee.com
Contributors
The Hawker airstrip in the Flinders Ranges.
20
AMELIA LESTER, journalist
ROBERT DREWE, novelist
JAMES GEER, photographer
JENNIFER BYRNE, journalist
Lucky streak, p84
Unpacking: Cuba, p175
Due south, p154
Cities of sapphire and gold, p144
Australian journalist Amelia Lester spent a decade eating her way around the Big Apple as an editor and writer at The New Yorker. She remembers the first time Lucky Peach magazine, which she writes about in this issue, arrived at her Times Square office in 2011. “It was a print publication which, against all odds, defined the times,” says Lester, who recently moved from the US to Japan. “Just when restaurateurs became rock stars, Lucky Peach was the new Rolling Stone.”
The writer always wondered what it was about Cuba that attracted and intrigued the likes of Ernest Hemingway and Graham Greene, Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner, Errol Flynn and Al Capone. “Sure, Havana is a sensual treat,” Drewe says, “but in the coastal resort town of Varadero, everything came together in the Hotel Internacional: 24-hour Mojitos, bristly pork chunks, mankinis – and a bullet hole in our bedroom window.” He describes the experience in our new travel column, Unpacking.
A hiking trip in the geographic extremes of South Australia is a thrill for Melbourne photographer James Geer. “Capturing the light and landscapes of the Flinders Ranges and Kangaroo Island – classic visions of the Australian outback and ocean – is a photographic dream assignment,” says Geer. “Even better with luxe lodgings, great food and world-class hiking along the way.” Geer is currently shooting more wild landscapes on a long driving adventure around Australia with his family.
Monsters, marvels, shining blue towers and fabulous hats – writer and broadcaster Jennifer Byrne finds them all on a magic-carpet ride along the Central Asia stretch of the Silk Road. “No camels, okay, but it was a real old-school journey through the desert, travelling the length of Uzbekistan into Turkmenistan,” she says. “Much more than a network of trade routes, the Silk Road was a highway for faiths and ideas linking East and West – and supporting vast empires between.”
G O U R M E T T R AV E L L E R
PHOTOGRAPHY JOHN LAURIE (BYRNE) & PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE (DREWE)
154
Krosno Vinoteca | European Glassware
Available at leading department and homewares stores nationally | www.krosno.com.au
WOL GA N R ET R E AT Unforgettable adventures, world-class culinary experiences, luxurious accommodation and serene privacy awaits at Emirates One&Only Wolgan Valley.
Enjoy ultra-luxury Heritage Villa with private pool, daily gourmet breakfast, lunch and dinner, select range of local wines and beers with meals, non-alcoholic beverages and two nature-based activities per day, plus a $100 One&Only Spa treatment credit. $1,890 per villa per night for two guests (Sunday to Thursday) | $2,090 per villa per night for two guests (Friday to Saturday) For travel until 30 November 2017. Minimum two-night stay applies. Other terms and conditions apply.
T: +61 2 9199 1811 | E: RESERVATIONS@ONEANDONLYWOLGANVALLEY.COM | OR CONTACT YOUR PREFERRED TRAVEL PROFESSIONAL
oneandonlywolganvalley.com
NEWS SEPTEMBER
Edited by HELEN ANDERSON & MAGGIE SCARDIFIELD
Manhattan project
PHOTOGRAPHY JAMES BAIGRIE
Hand your wheels to the bicycle valet, pass the farm produce stand and a towering green wall in the lobby, and ascend to the newest view of Manhattan: an eye-popping panorama of the city skyline and nearby Brooklyn Bridge from the rooftop bar at 1 Hotel Brooklyn Bridge. Stand by for dark-sky ceremonies and full-moon parties by the pool and firepits. The “nature-led” hotel is powered solely by wind, has a fleet of electric cars for guest use and its 194 rooms feature hemp-blend bedding, plant installations and hour-glass timers in the showers. 60 Furman St, Brooklyn, New York, 1hotels.com
Seedlip Garden 108 and Seedlip Spice 94. Right: Seedlip founder Ben Branson on his farm.
NEWS
Levelling the bar The question of what to drink when you’re not having a drink just got easier. A soda and lime? A concoction of fruit juices? For the most part, the question of what to drink when you’re not drinking alcohol can be pretty uninspiring when you get to the bar. But former creative strategist Ben Branson is doing his bit to change that with Seedlip, the world’s first non-alcoholic distilled spirit. “If you’re not drinking alcohol for whatever reason, the options are poor,” he says. “It’s fruity, sweet or standard, rather than grown-up and great-tasting.” Launched in London in 2015, Seedlip’s non-alcoholic spirits can now be found at some of the world’s best bars including The Dead Rabbit in New York, and Dandelyan and The Clove Club in London, along with restaurants such as Eleven Madison Park and The Fat Duck. And they’ve just hit Australian shores.
24
G O U R M E T T R AV E L L E R
Branson farms ingredients in the Lincolnshire countryside, where his family has worked the land for 320 years. He began experimenting with distilling after reading The Art of Distillation, a volume published in 1651, which contains a number of non-alcoholic herbal remedies. “I started playing around in my kitchen,” he says. “It kicked off a two-year process of working with historians, distillers, botanists and farmers to try to solve this modern drinking problem.” There are two expressions of Seedlip: Spice 94 and Garden 108. Spice is an earthy mix of cardamom, Jamaican allspice berries and American oak (“for a bit more nuttiness”) with lemon and grapefruit peel. The more herbaceous
Garden combines spearmint, rosemary and thyme with hay and green peas from Branson’s farm. “We’ve been growing peas for 70 years,” he says. “What Hendrick’s did with the cucumber, we’re going to do that with the pea.” Each ingredient is distilled separately in copper stills before the alcohol is removed from each, and the distillates are blended, diluted and bottled – and there are no additives or sweeteners. Seedlip is typically served in a tall glass with tonic and a citrus garnish – fresh peas optional. “There’s no theatre, no ritual and nothing to talk about when you’re forced to order something so boring as a soda,” Branson says. “We want to change that.” Seedlip, $49.99 for 700ml, seedlipdrinks.com
PHOTOGRAPHY ROB SHAW (SEEDLIP & VANITY CASE), RICK STOVALL (GAME CREEK), GETTY IMAGES (MARQUESAS & AIRPLANE). STYLING AIMEE JONES (SEEDLIP). MERCHANDISING ANNA LAVDARAS (VANITY CASE). PORTER’S PAINTS EGGSHELL ACRYLIC IN AGAVE. STOCKISTS P182
The upcoming Gourmet Institute program is about fuss-free meals: Vue de Monde chef Shannon Bennett masters the perfect omelette in Melbourne (11 October), while in Sydney, James Viles of Biota supercharges salads (18 October). Tickets are $60. hn.com.au/gourmet-institute
News
3 OF THE BEST
Snow patrol Heading to the northern slopes? Here’s the pick of ski lodges in Colorado.
Designed for globetrotters, Louis Vuitton’s smartwatch displays flight times, gate changes, delays and inflight details, and, on the ground, the real-time location of nearby hotspots listed in LV’s city guides. Choose from a range of 60 detachable straps. Louis Vuitton Tambour Horizon monogram; $3,450. au.louisvuitton.com
Dunton Hot Springs, Telluride An abandoned mining town lives again as a private playground of natural hot springs and luxe log cabins for 44 guests, who can go heli-skiing or ice-climbing, then retire to the town’s saloon, dance hall and bathhouse. A sister property, Dunton River Camp, offers glam backcountry camping, and the Victorian-era Dunton Town House opened last northern winter in downtown Telluride, with Tyroleanthemed interiors and five guestrooms. duntonhotsprings.com
Trappers Cabin, Beaver Creek This is the only on-mountain lodge at Beaver Creek, arguably the most luxurious ski resort in the US. Once the lifts close, the mountain and first tracks next morning can be entirely yours. This log cabin at 2,900 metres sleeps a single party of up to 10, who can frolic in an outdoor hot-tub, shoot pool and lounge on decks or by fireplaces. A cabin-keeper is on hand to arrange ski coaching, gear hire, spa treatments and private dinners. beavercreekresortproperties.com
Scarp Ridge Lodge, Crested Butte Chief among the toys at Scarp Ridge Lodge is a fleet of snowcats that deliver guests to the deep snowdrifts of Irwin, where adventure operator Eleven Experiences has another two cabins and exclusive access to 400 hectares of lift-free terrain. Once a dance hall for silver miners, the lodge sleeps up to 20 (only in winter) with a saltwater lap pool, saunas, hot-tubs and a team to stage adventures from ice-climbing to dog-sledding. elevenexperience.com
VANITY CASE These compact foundations are perfect for touchups on the go. CLOCKWISE FROM TOP Stila Stay All Day foundation and concealer, $58, mecca.com.au; Napoleon Perdis Total Bae Perfect It! concealer and foundation, $49, napoleonperdis.com; Yves Saint Laurent Touche Éclat Le Cushion, $89, davidjones. com.au; BareMinerals BarePro Performance Wear powder foundation, $44, mecca.com.au; Lancôme Absolue cushion compact SPF 50+, $150, myer.com.au.
Qantas adds Osaka to its network later this year. In a new seasonal service, three direct flights a week between Sydney and the Japanese city will launch in December and continue until late March.
Marquesas Islands
ARTS & CRAFT
For famed adventurers and artists – Herman Melville, Jack London and Paul Gauguin among them – the remote French Polynesian archipelago of the Marquesas Islands was a fabled land of exile and inspiration. To Polynesians, it has always been a place of high culture, and the islands’ biennial arts festival remains one of the world’s most spectacular. On 14 December the Tahitian cruise line Aranui dispatches its mixed cargo and passenger ship Aranui 5 on a 14-day round trip from Papeete to the far-flung Marquesas for four days of Polynesian performance and feasting. aranuicruises.com.au
G O U R M E T T R AV E L L E R
25
News
SWELL TIME
The distance between bed and a surf break is an easy paddle at Niyama Private Islands, which claims to be the only resort in the Maldives with surfable waves that break directly onto its shore. Niyama’s 134 suites are dotted across twin islets in the Dhaalu atoll, with a left-hand ride breaking directly onto one. Surf Beach Suites have board racks and live video streams of nearby breaks, and guests can take lessons with resident Australian surf coach Zach Zocher. True luxury, however, is access to a private seaplane from which surfers can spot and ride the break of their dreams. niyama.com Surfing at Niyama
ON THE PASS
Tim Goegan SUPERNORMAL CANTEEN, MELBOURNE
Tiger Buck air-dried beef jerky is made in Melbourne from 100 per cent Australian beef that’s never been frozen. It’s supple with just a hint of sugar and spice. The playful playing-card packet is also a winning bet. $8.99 for 40gm. tigerbuck.com.au
26
G O U R M E T T R AV E L L E R
How is Supernormal Canteen different to Supernormal, Tim? Supernormal Canteen is the rebellious little sister. The city venue can be a bit more formal in terms of service, but at Canteen we have a pictographic drinks list and mark-a-box menus. We want it to be relaxed and casual with not too many rules – you can come in, grab a couple of yakitori sticks and a beer while you wait for your takeaway. What are the standout dishes at Supernomal Canteen? The typhoon-shelter school prawns. We brine them, fry them and top them with lots of chilli, fried garlic, garlic-infused breadcrumbs and octo vinaigrette. They’re served on top of iceberg; all the goodness drips off the prawns and is caught by the lettuce. The northern style lamb fits our vibe, too – it’s messy. You get a big plate of meat and steamed pancakes, and you make your own wraps.
The lobster roll is a cult favourite at Supernormal. How is it going at Canteen? We steam the lobster in its shell and serve it with a house-made Kewpie-style mayo, shallots and watercress on a brioche bun. In the city we go through about 2,200 a week. I think that number will be scaled back a bit at Canteen, but judging by the feedback on social media, people are excited that the rolls are at St Kilda. What’s the key to running a great restaurant? Produce is number one, of course, but creating an environment that chefs and front-of-house staff want to come to is also really important. If you look after the staff and make sure their needs are being met, it’s reflected to the customer, and they’re in turn looked after, too. Supernormal Canteen, 2/157 Fitzroy St, St Kilda, Vic, (03) 9525 4488, supernormal.net.au BY SAMANTHA TEAGUE
Perfect for frequent travellers, Sony’s latest wireless noise-cancelling headphones deliver superior sound and a swag of features: 20-hour battery life; a “quick attention” mode activated by a simple hand gesture to turn the sound down; the ability to tailor noise-cancelling and ambient sound to suit personal tastes and head shape. Sony MDR-1000X headphones, $699.95. sony.com.au THE PRODUCERS
SRECUDORP EHT
Fawk Foods
PHOTOGRAPHY ANDREW FINLAYSON (CHANEL & JERKY), ROB SHAW (PRODUCERS), NIKKI TO (GOEGAN), RYAN WILLIAMS (NIYAMA). STYLING AIMEE JONES (PRODUCERS). PORTER’S PAINTS EGGSHELL ACRYLIC IN AGAVE. ALL OTHER PROPS STYLIST’S OWN. STOCKISTS P182.
Rich caramelised Black G garlic enriches stir-fries, risotto and even dessert.
WHO Chef Frank Fawkner began experimenting with black garlic more than five years ago, when he headed up the kitchen at Muse Restaurant in the Hunter Valley. “We made a black garlic and olive oil butter that was very popular,” he says, “but the garlic was so expensive that I started making it in-house.” Fawkner became so addicted to the process that in March he launched Fawk Foods, a company specialising in bulbs of black garlic and ready-made black garlic paste. HOW Fawkner sources young dried bulbs from farms in Victoria and New South Wales, and slow-roasts them over five to six weeks at his restaurant, EXP. The temperature is kept between 60°C and 90°C so that the flesh slowly begins to caramelise “much like steaks do when they’re seared”, he says. Many producers use beer to expedite the caramelisation, but Fawkner prefers to draw out the process to add a greater depth of flavour, leaving the bulbs to caramelise in their own sugar.
Chanel’s first new fragrance in 15 years is named after the free-spirited founder of the house, Gabrielle, aka Coco. Chanel’s nose, Olivier Polge, describes the scent as an “abstract floral”. Gabrielle, EDP, $174 for 50ml. chanel.com
WHY The garlic’s balsamic-like sweetness, soy and umami characteristics lend themselves to a range of dishes, says Fawkner. “We use it in our frozen mousse at the restaurant. The flavour goes really well with dark chocolate.” The chef also suggests replacing palm sugar with some chopped black garlic in stir-fries, or mixing the paste into your next risotto. “It’s so versatile and adds another level to any dish.” Fawk Foods Black G Paste, $11 for 40gm; Black G bulbs, $14 for 100gm, fawkfoods.com BY LAKSHA PRASAD
G O U R M E T T R AV E L L E R
27
World view
Weligama Bay, Sri Lanka TOM PARKER, PHOTOGRAPHER
“Weligama is a fishing village on the southern coast of Sri Lanka, about 45 minutes’ drive east of Galle. In the mornings and evenings when the boats come in, little market stores lining the road behind the beach sell the freshest tuna, seer and snapper. “I was in a helicopter taking some test shots for a project when I saw these fishing boats ahead and asked the pilot to hover. It was a stormy morning but Weligama Bay is sheltered and there was still some clarity in the water. “Sri Lanka is a magical place. I first visited in 1999, and moved there to live and work in 2004, a few months before the Boxing Day tsunami. I’ve spent close to three years in the country, and return a couple of times a year. To me it feels like the Garden of Eden.”
28
G O U R M E T T R AV E L L E R
News
G O U R M E T T R AV E L L E R
29
News
RESTAURANT NEWS
Scallop with anchovy, fried leek root, dried shiitake and matcha at Serge et le Phoque, London.
GARDEN PARTY
We’ve long been fans of Adriana Picker’s detailed botanical illustrations (bold begonias! Pink waratahs! Paper daisies!). For her third book she’s turned her hand to another love – seasonal cocktails – and has enlisted bartender Ed Loveday, of Sydney’s Acme and Bar Brosé restaurants, to wield the shaker. Does your garden party call for pear and green tea Bellinis or a honeysuckle twist on the French 75? The Cocktail Garden ($24.99, hbk, Hardie Grant)
LONDON Hong Kong’s Serge et le Phoque, the inventive French bistro from former Le Chateaubriand and Le Dauphin staffers, has arrived in London. The second outpost is in the independent Mandrake Hotel, a luxe 34-room property that opened last month in the West End. The menu follows a similar spirit to Hong Kong: octopus with century egg and ginger, say, or scallop with anchovy, fried leek root, dried shiitake and matcha tea. The wine, overseen by sommelier Albert Blaize (formerly of The Clove Club), leans to the organic, biodynamic and natural. The Serge team will also look after the snacks in the hotel minibar. MELBOURNE Annam is the new restaurant from Jerry Mai, of Pho Nom, at the old Kuni’s site on Little Bourke Street. The 100-seat eatery, expected to open this month, will feature an open kitchen with a char-grill where whole fish, both salt-baked and grilled, and other seafood will be the main attraction. You can also expect rolled-to-order rice-paper rolls with fillings such as char-grilled lobster and salmon roe and lightly torched toro, plus Cambodian-style curries.
GOLD COAST The likes of pork belly, tsukune, miso eggplant and more are hitting the binchotan at Yamagen, the recently revamped in-house eatery at QT Gold Coast in Surfers Paradise. Adam Lane, late of Kiyomi, has put together a modern izakaya-style menu
30
G O U R M E T T R AV E L L E R
that includes revamped classics such as teriyaki chicken with warrigal greens, and crisp pork belly with watermelon, radish and nashi pear.
SYDNEY Regional Italian cooking is back on the radar in Sydney with the imminent arrival of Marta, a neighbourhood osteria opening in Rushcutters Bay this month. The food of Rome is its focus: anchovies feature in everything from buttered bruschetta to alici arraganate, and Amatriciana (done with bombolotti, little rigatoni-like tubes) and cacio e pepe (pecorino and black pepper) are present and correct. Marta is the brainchild of Popolo owner, Flavio Carnevale, and to make way for it, he has closed Popolo ahead of plans to move the southern-themed restaurant to new CBD digs. COPENHAGEN As the Noma Under the Bridge pop-up comes to a close, PMY is just getting started. The casual Latin-American restaurant comes from Venezuelan chef Karlos Ponte (Restaurant Taller), and Emilio Macías and Diego Muñoz, who’ve both clocked time at Astrid y Gastón in Lima. While the verdict on the name is still out – PMY stands for the staple crops of the chefs’ native countries: papa (potato), maíz (corn) and yuca (cassava) – the familyfriendly menu is more likeable, with a pickled crab tostada, baked tortillas with avocado, and arepas with pulled beef and cheese. Pisco, mezcal and rum are on pour.
Casa moda Gucci Décor launches this month during New York Fashion Week and – in true Gucci style – more is more. Geometric, floral and eye motifs, and 3-D butterflies, bees and beetles are splashed across furniture, textiles and porcelain tableware. No news yet when the collection will be available in Australia, but we’ll take a set of the tiger plates, per favore. gucci.com
Must see
Talking shop
Far left: Idylle and Paul Lee. Above, from left: two-year aged fish and meat soy ($80), 10-year aged soy ($95), four-year aged black bean soy ($75) and two-year aged double-brewed soy ($65).
PHOTOGRAPHY ANDREW FINLAYSON (BOOK), ROB SHAW (RIEDEL) & WILL HORNER (TABLE 181)
A Korean purveyor of fine food has your toasted rock laver needs and more sorted. For the past five years Table 181 has quietly supplied top restaurants such as MoVida and Momofuku Seiobo with high-end, artisanal Korean ingredients. Korean-born Paul Lee and his wife, Idylle, launched the business in Melbourne, but relocated to Sydney last year to be closer to the bulk of the demand. Now a move to Banksmeadow sees the addition of a shopfront and tasting room. Opened in July, the new retail space marks the first time the public has had access to the boutique goods. “It’s somewhere we can invite anyone who’s interested to come and see and taste the products,” says Lee. “I can explain how they’re grown, made or fermented, and
people can take them away and experiment.” While most Asian ingredients you’d find in grocery stores are made in large quantities, Table 181 imports only Korean products made in small batches or with traditional methods. The products fall into four key categories: seaweed, savouries, dry and semi-dried goods, and sauces, called jang in Korean. There are numerous jangs at the new tasting room – “all of them living,” says Lee – from soy, chilli and fish sauces to sweet varieties made with fermented berries. These are typically fermented in Korean earthenware, called onggi, a process that goes back more than two thousand years.“Onggi breathes during
fermentation, which is key,” he says. Also key is the flavour: “In Korean, there’s a word called ‘gamchilmat’ – it’s equivalent to umami in Japanese – and commercial products just don’t have it.” Peter Gilmore, of Sydney’s Quay, was Table 181’s first customer. He’ll go to 181 for hand-harvested seaweed, say, the kind that can only be collected for one month of the year. “Koreans eat it as a salad with a little vinegar and oil,” says Lee. “Peter applies vinegar, dries it again, cooks it back and uses it with lamb.” Table 181 supplied The Fat Duck and Noma Australia when they were in town, and other restaurants including The Bridge Room, Bentley and Hubert are regulars, too.
You don’t have to go vintage to bring a mismatched look to the table. Riedel’s Fatto a Mano glassware have stems in a full rainbow of colours, and are available in cabernet, pinot noir, shiraz, chardonnay, riesling and Champagne glass styles, $129.95 per glass, or six assorted colours for $599.95. riedelglass.com.au
That calibre of customer comes as no surprise when you browse the shelves. Table 181’s tuna soy, for instance (which retails for $75), is made using tuna that’s been air-dried for six months (rather than frozen fish), and has kombu, shiitake and citrus peel in the ferment. “Most other stuff in stores would take three or four weeks to make,” says Lee. “This takes 12 months.” “It’s like comparing wine fermented in steel tanks for a short amount of time to a properly oak-aged wine given time to develop character,” says Lee. “There’s no comparison.” Table 181, Unit 5, 17-19 Green St, Banksmeadow, NSW, table181australia.com; open Fri-Sat by appointment, 10am-4pm, (02) 9695 7111
Objects of desire
1 Maple chopping board, $179.50, from The Essential Ingredient. 2 Kaico enamel kettle, $219, from Ginkgo Leaf. 3 Field curved breadboard in natural beech, $107, from Hay. 4 Beech mini tongs, $1.95, from The Essential Ingredient. 5 House Doctor porcelain saucepans with wooden handles, $24.95 (small), and $39.95 (medium), from Telegram Co. 6 Normann Copenhagen trivet, $50, from Nordic Fusion. 7 Normann Copenhagen Craft salt mill in oak and marble, $215, from Top3 by Design. 8 Turari cups in cherry birch, $95 each, from Ginkgo Leaf. 9 Areaware coasters, $29.90 for a set of six, from Top3 by Design. 10 Beech coffee scoop, $3.95, from The Essential Ingredient. 11 Normann Copenhagen Craft oak mortar and marble pestle, $165, from Top3 by Design. 12 Rivsalt grater, board and salt, $89, from Nordic Fusion. Stockists p182.
2
1
3
5 4
12
11
7
For effortlessly chic kitchenware, jump on the Scandi-wagon with honey-toned wooden accoutrements. 8
9
32
G O U R M E T T R AV E L L E R
PHOTOGRAPHY ROB SHAW. STYLING AIMEE JONES
Blonde ambition
10
6
More Space for Long-Lasting Freshness Extra Big Refrigerators for Extra Freshness
CNPef 4516 - NEW SERIES
home.liebherr.com.au
Annabel Crabb EATING WITH
The political journalist and commentator on grilling politicians and the art of kitchen diplomacy.
How I eat
You would’ve eaten some interesting meals over six seasons of Kitchen Cabinet. What’s been your most memorable? I think
dining with [Minister for Indigenous Affairs] Nigel Scullion in Darwin still holds an edge. He’s an outdoors guy who has been known to go rabbit trapping in Canberra. He took me out on a boat to get mud crabs and we nearly got marooned in a croc-infested tidal creek. While we were imprisoned on our flimsy craft, he regaled me with the tale of how he once shot a muddie off his thumb with a gun. Nigel cooked sticky chilli crab in the open air and had also prepared some incredible yabby curry puffs. There must have been some kitchen mishaps, too. I’m not gonna lie: having
INTERVIEW MAGGIE SCARDIFIELD. PHOTOGRAPHY ANDREW FINLAYSON. PROP STYLING ROSIE MEEHAN
Clive Palmer nearly set me alight was unexpected. He was grilling our lunch on a giant gas range (salmon for me, what appeared to be a brontosaurus T-bone for him) and he enthusiastically squirted some cooking spray towards the inferno. It ignited, and I was lucky to escape with my eyebrows.
“While we were imprisoned on our flimsy craft, he regaled me with the tale of how he once shot a muddie off his thumb with a gun.”
Who taught you how to cook? My mum, Christobel, when I was a kid. She’s one of those curious cooks who’s always doing something interesting with quandongs and so on. I remember one period where she was cooking a different cuisine each night to broaden our horizons. What does a midweek meal look like for your family? Sometimes there are up to
10 kids around the table because we live in that kind of street. My high-rotation kids’ dishes are minestrone (always add a parmesan rind to make it unforgettable), honey soy salmon with broccoli and rice, and egg noodles with tofu. The one thing you’d like your children to understand about food? Chips are potatoes. Who have you interviewed who completely surprised you? Filming our new series,
Carafe from Hay. Bowls and mug from The DEA Store. Teapot from Ginkgo Leaf. All other props stylist’s own. Stockists p182.
The House, I sat down with the [recently retired] Clerk of the Senate, Dr Rosemary Laing. She’s a rather commanding (read: terrifying) figure who worked in Parliament House for a quarter of a century. I didn’t know her personally when we began the
series, but I was just charmed by her. She has a PhD in 17th-century English poetry and bursts into tears when recounting great legislative moments in the Senate. She’s brilliant and a bit bonkers. If we lined up the current G20 world leaders and entered them into a lightningfast round of MasterChef, who would win?
Angela Merkel would wipe the floor with the lot of them; she’s a sneaky baker, I’ve read. Donald Trump apparently prefers to eat at McDonald’s because there’s low risk of food contamination. This suggests to me that he would have neither the skills nor the judgement to compete. Vladimir Putin would almost certainly have someone else make some snow egg-type creation and pretend it was his own work. Curiously enough, this was also Clive Palmer’s technique on Kitchen Cabinet. And you’re the wildcard. What would you cook? I would make a pavlova, because
it’s the ultimate dessert of diplomacy. It’s gluten-free, and you can decorate it with the recipient’s favourite things. I once employed pavlova diplomacy when I cooked with Tony Abbott and Kevin Rudd during the 2013 election campaign. I separated four eggs and made custard for Tony out of the yolks, and pavlova for Kevin out of the whites. Neither was very thrilled by this gesture, I must admit. When is your favourite time of the year for eating? January. There’s absolutely
nothing like a perfectly ripe white peach. You can’t really preserve a white peach. You’ve just got to eat as many as you can while they’re around. It’s very hedonistic. What makes a great restaurant? Generosity. When I first went to Sixpenny (a little Sydney restaurant near me that charmed its way to the top), it wasn’t just the food that made the place brilliant – it was the little touches: complimentary sparkling water, a warm loaf of bread to take home. A place that is welcoming, with waitstaff who smile, will always pull me back. Your advice to a total kitchen novice? You
will need more butter than you think. ● The House with Annabel Crabb is on Tuesdays at 8pm on ABC. G O U R M E T T R AV E L L E R
35
AN AUSTRALIAN GOURMET TRAVELLER PROMOTION
SCALLOPS, PEBRE, JAMÓN, JALAPEÑO SAUCE
IN TH
E
ZO
PORK BELLY, BEETROOT, KASUNDI, LENTILS, PEAR AND BURNT BUTTER
NE
Great restaurants don’t just happen. After working with Australia’s best chefs and running his own kitchens, Sam Pinzone shares his lessons.
SAM PINZONE
KITCHEN CONSULTANT Sam Pinzone is executive chef and part-owner of The Longroom in Melbourne. Having started cooking as a teenager, Pinzone has worked under some of Australia’s most respected chefs and restaurateurs, including Neil Perry and Jacques Reymond. During his time as executive chef at The Rose Upstairs, the restaurant was awarded two hats by Gault & Millau. Pinzone continues to consult on various restaurants around Victoria.
“F
ood, for me, is everything.” When Sam Pinzone talks about food, he isn’t kidding around. From watching Neil Perry on TV as a child to pursuing his goal of working for him, running his own kitchen and now publishing his first cookbook (Great Produce, Real Food – due out at the end of the year), life is, and always has been, about food. Now, he’s taking the knowledge he’s gained throughout his career and offering his advice to others as a kitchen consultant. But with a successful restaurant to his name – The Longroom, in Melbourne, where he is a part-owner and executive chef – and after having won hats with Gault & Millau during his
time at The Rose Upstairs, why consult? “I’ve studied food my entire life,” says Pinzone, who continued his early development under acclaimed chef Jacques Reymond. “I wanted to be a consultant who helps chefs by working with them. Not just by coming in and giving them a menu and recipes, but by actually developing a menu around the business and the chef without being pushy.” According to Pinzone it’s not just about having a great menu, it’s about proper food costing, value for money, sourcing great produce, marketing, PR and social media. “It’s not about the lights and glamour,” he says. “It’s about being real and making a business successful.”
FOR MORE ON SAM PINZONE CONSULTING, VISIT SAM-PINZONE.COM
How I travel
prepare because I like low stress. I need things to be serene, ordered and civilised. I try to go running everywhere I go. I never
travel without my gym gear. I like to run and get a sense of the place where I am. It’s the closest I get to meditation. I don’t run with music; I let the silence consume me. The best travelling companion I ever had was Judi Dench. It was a bit like a scene
from Philomena as I became her escort, except when we arrived in America – we were whisked through passport control so fast my head was spinning. She was treated like royalty and all I had to do was hang on to her coat-tails. That ended up being my modus operandi for the whole movie. I once swam in hot springs with Björk near Reykjavik. I saw her swimming towards
me through these clouds of steam. It was 20 years ago and I remember thinking that I was leading quite an interesting life. TRAVELLING WITH
Steve Coogan INTERVIEW JOE WARWICK. PHOTOGRAPHY HARRY BORDEN/CONTOUR BY GETTY IMAGES
The English actor and comedian on travelling with Judi Dench and running shoes.
Just back from… the Berlin Film Festival with Richard Gere, Laura Linney and Rebecca Hall to promote The Dinner, directed by Oren Moverman.
Next up… New York to shoot the film Hot Air, directed by The Wedding Singer’s Frank Coraci, about a right-wing shock jock.
My first trip abroad was to Lourdes, France, on a pilgrimage with my Catholic school.
It was supposed to be about seeing the basilica where the Virgin Mary appeared to Saint Bernadette, but I only remember buying a sheath knife and drinking cider.
Rob Brydon has been to stay at my little retreat in the Lake District and offered me his little retreat in France. So potentially,
I’ll holiday at his holiday home and he has holidayed at my holiday home, but we’ve never been at either place with each other. That might be deliberate. Rob and I were flown to Italy for Vogue by Anna Wintour. She loved The Trip
to Italy so much she got photographer Anton Corbijn to take photos of us at Villa Cimbrone in Ravello on the Amalfi Coast. When we went to the restaurant there were at least two couples that were there because they’d seen The Trip, and there’s Rob and me eating at the next table. To them it was like we were always there on the Amalfi Coast eating.
My mother was born in the west of Ireland
and so every year we’d stay with her family in a farmhouse in County Mayo, where I spent most of my summers as a child digging turf, sharpening sticks with a penknife and dodging the rain. When I travel, I like to be organised. I like
things to be folded neatly. I used to throw everything into a case and get on the plane at the last minute, but I can’t live my life like that any more. I like to
I think almost inevitably we’ll do The Trip again. I like the idea of doing it in Ireland
so I can milk my Irish credentials. There’s also the possibility of going to America, but that feels a bit obvious. I think we can put the kibosh on Wales, but who knows? Anything is possible. ● Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon star in The Trip to Spain, the third instalment in the series following The Trip and The Trip to Italy, screening in cinemas now. G O U R M E T T R AV E L L E R
37
Four dishes
What we’re eating Our editors share their favourite plates of the moment. FERMENTED POTATO BREAD WITH DASHI JELLY AND SALMON ROE, Ester Hot bread, cool kefir-cultured cream, dashi jelly, the pop of salmon roe. Tear, schmear, bite, repeat. It’s like Devonshire tea gone savoury in the best of ways. Add some brownrice sake (somm Julien Dromgool’s pick) and see your doctor if pain persists. Ester, 46-52 Meagher St, Chippendale, NSW, (02) 8068 8279 PAT NOURSE, MANAGING EDITOR
TAJ EL MALEK, Balha’s Pastry Baklava is present in all its sticky-sweet variety here, but the hot pick is taj el malek. Kataifi pastry shaped into little baskets is filled with roasted pistachio nuts drenched in rosewater sugar syrup: satisfying shattery crunch, restrained perfumed sweetness, delicate good looks. Order more than you think you’ll need. Balha’s Pastry, 761-763 Sydney Rd, Brunswick, Vic, (03) 9383 3944
PHOTOGRAPHY AYMAN KAAKE (BALHA’S) & RYAN NOREIKS (THE POT)
MICHAEL HARDEN, VICTORIA EDITOR
MOOLOOLABA PRAWN ROLL WITH TOM YUM MAYONNAISE, Hong Sa Bar
FENUGREEK CHICKEN WITH SALT-BAKED CELERIAC, The Pot by Emma McCaskill
Spirit House has been a go-to for great Thai for two decades and the introduction of glam Hong Sa Bar has added another reason to drop by. Kick back on the deck with a glass of Marc Brédif Vouvray and order a brioche roll stacked with king prawns caught less than half an hour away. Slivers of chilli, Spanish onion, coriander cress and a hot-sour tom yum mayonnaise make it a party. Hong Sa Bar, Spirit House, 20 Ninderry Rd, Yandina, Qld, (07) 5446 8994
Making this dining landmark her own, Emma McCaskill takes the familiar and brightens it with finesse. Chicken cutlets spiced boldly with fenugreek sit on celeriac purée and pieces of salt-baked celeriac and celery leaves cap it off. The combination of juicy flesh, nuttiness, spice and vegetal crunch proves more than satisfying. The Pot by Emma McCaskill, 160 King William Rd, Hyde Park, SA, (08) 8373 2044
FIONA DONNELLY, QUEENSLAND EDITOR
DAVID SLY, SOUTH AUSTRALIA EDITOR ● G O U R M E T T R AV E L L E R
39
LEASING NOW
G O L D
C O A S T
D I N I N G , E N T E R TA I N M E N T A N D R E TA I L V I L L A G E C O M I N G S O O N IN F O @ T H E L A N E S G C. C O M . A U
1800 054 610
T H E L A N E S G C. C O M . A U
Most wanted
1
KING VALLEY DAIRY This slightly acidic butter is as wonderful spread on baguette as it is for making pastry. Available salted and unsalted. $8.50 for 250gm. kingvalleydairy.com.au
3
PEPE SAYA Pepe Saya is Australia’s king of cultured butter for a reason: it’s one of the richest on the market. $8.50 for 225gm. pepesaya.com.au
2
MEANDER VALLEY DAIRY
WORDS MAGGIE SCARDIFIELD. PHOTOGRAPHY BEN DEARNLEY. STYLING LISA FEATHERBY. KING VALLEY & SAINT DAVID BUTTERS FROM TWO PROVIDORES
Sydney’s Bennelong and The Boathouse on Blackwattle Bay are fans of Meander Valley’s mild Tasmanian butter. Available salted and unsalted. $7.99 for 250gm. meandervalleydairy.com.au
4
SAINT DAVID DAIRY Melbourne’s only inner-city micro-dairy makes this rich butter with slow-fermented fresh Gippsland cream. Available salted and unsalted. $6.25 for 190gm. stdavid.com.au
5
LE CONQUÉRANT BEURRE DE BARATTE Will Studd, GT’s cheese expert, knows his butter, too. This French beurre, churned in an oldfashioned baratte in Normandy, is his favourite. Available lightly salted and unsalted. $4.95 for 125gm. willstudd.com
FIVE OF A KIND
Cultured butter
Butter’s good. But cultured butter, churned with aged cream for more tang and flavour, is even better. Here are our favourites.
G O U R M E T T R AV E L L E R
41
Filleting fish
The best fillets are those you cut yourself. Here, seafood savant JOSH NILAND shows you how it’s done.
1
Board from The Essential Ingredient. Knife see Toolkit opposite. All other props stylist’s own. Stockists p182.
42
G O U R M E T T R AV E L L E R
Masterclass
To o l k i t Niland uses a Sabatier carving knife without flex to fillet larger fish or a 15cm flexible filleting knife for smaller fish ($78 and $65, from Peter’s of Kensington). If he wanted to splash out, he says, he’d quite like a Japanese filleting knife (deba) forged from blue ($406, from Chef’s Armoury) or carbon steel ($736, from Chef’s Armoury). Stockists p182.
J
osh Niland, chef and owner of Sydney seafood restaurant Saint Peter and our freshly minted Best New Talent awardee (see page 100), knows his fish, and for serious quality he says there’s no substitute for buying fish whole and cleaning them yourself. “If the fish is already cleaned, it’s been handled in a lot of water, which affects its quality,” he says. Look for firm fish with bright eyes, clear scales and a smell of the ocean, not of fish. Niland’s other advice? “Ask for ikejime-spiked fish,” he says. “That means it’s been caught and killed quickly.”
5
2
3 Step by step
PHOTOGRAPHY BEN HANSEN. STYLING ROSIE MEEHAN
1
For the first cuts, place the fish with the belly facing you and the head to the left (or the right if you are left-handed). Pull the pelvic (base) fin outwards and make a cut behind the fins to separate them from the fillet, then cut around behind the head until you hit bone.
2
Rotate the fish so the belly is facing away from you, then, starting from the cut at the top of the head, cut along the backbone from head to tail, cutting smoothly along the length of the fillet. Angling your knife towards the bones, keep running your knife along where the flesh meets the bones to open out the fillet until you feel your knife reach the raised spine in the middle.
3
Halfway along the fish, hold the knife flat against the backbone and push the point through to the other side of the fillet. With the knife protruding out the other side and pressing against the spine, cut all the way to the tail to separate the tail section. Turn the fish so the belly faces you, and lift the tail section to expose the ribs. Snip through the ribs with scissors up to the first cut. You can now remove the first fillet.
4
Flip the fish so the belly faces away from you and the head points left. Hang the head off the edge of the board so the fish lies flat; this way you’ll be able to cut evenly and preserve more flesh. Repeat the first cut, then cut along the back
to open out the fillet as before (the technique here is similar to the first side, except reversed). Separate the tail end, then use scissors to cut through the ribs and remove the second fillet.
5
To clean the fillets, place the tip of a small knife under the rib bones and, guiding the knife by pressing it against the ribs, cut towards the pin bones, then
through them to free the ribs. Turn the knife the other way and, using the bones as a guide, cut up and against the ribs, gently peeling away and slicing.
6
Remove the pin bones, then trim the edges of the fillets. Your fish is ready to rock. Refrigerate skin-side up topped with a piece of Go Between and use it within two days.
Cleaning the fish You can get your fishmonger to scale and gut the fish for you before you do your filleting, but doing it yourself isn’t hard. Josh Niland cuts the scales off with a knife, but scraping them off with a spoon also works well; do it in a plastic bag to keep the mess under control, then wipe the fish with paper towel. To gut the fish, insert a knife 1.5cm into the anal vent and cut along the belly to the mouth. Open the cheeks to expose the gills, then cut the gill joint with scissors and cut the gills free from the head. Using paper towel, hold the gills tight and pull them towards the tail to remove the innards. ● G O U R M E T T R AV E L L E R
43
Light, clear broths are the ideal vehicle for showcasing spring ingredients.
W
e think of September as spring, but while flowers are in the air and greens are coming to the market, winter is still reluctant to loosen its grasp. Light broths are perfect bridging dishes this time of year, the basis of bright and speedy meals-in-one packed with flavour, ready for the last-minute addition of seasonal bounty. While the initial preparation of broth can take a little time – the miso version here is a speedy alternative – once you have a few jars on hand or a stockpile in the freezer, the pay-off comes in quick-to-prepare meals at any time. Go light with artichokes, beans and greens, or bolster your soup with eggs, tofu or a scattering of grains or pulses. A clear win all round.
44
G O U R M E T T R AV E L L E R
Miso broth with spring vegetables and tofu SERVES 4 // PREP TIME 15 MINS // COOK 10 MINS
Miso makes a vegetarian umami-laden broth that’s quick to prepare. It’s been said that miso is as diverse in variety as wine or cheese; you may need to up the quantity here, depending on the type.
70 gm miso 5 gm (2 tsp) dried wakame (optional) Light soy sauce, to season 510 gm (3 bunches) asparagus, trimmed and thinly sliced, tips left whole 300 gm broad beans, blanched and peeled 600 gm silken tofu, at room temperature, broken or cut into bite-sized pieces Roasted sesame oil and roasted sesame seeds, to serve
1 Stir miso into 1 litre water in a saucepan and bring to a simmer. Add wakame and simmer until softened (1-2 minutes). Season to taste with soy sauce. Add asparagus and broad beans and simmer until just tender (2-3 minutes). 2 Divide tofu among four serving bowls. Ladle broth and vegetables over tofu, drizzle with sesame oil and serve topped with a pinch of roasted sesame seeds.
RECIPES & STYLING LISA FEATHERBY. PHOTOGRAPHY BEN HANSEN. STYLIST’S ASSISTANT ROSIE MEEHAN.
Stocks rally
Eating clean
Chicken broth with ginger, turmeric and lemongrass SERVES 4 // PREP TIME 20 MINS // COOK 10 MINS (PLUS RESTING)
Making your own chicken broth using chicken bones is easy; cooking a whole chicken, though, gives you both a light broth and some chicken to go with it.
Chicken thighs take longer to cook than breast meat; for even cooking separate the legs from the bird.
1 chicken (about 1.4kg), legs removed 60 gm ginger, cut into julienne 15 gm fresh turmeric, finely chopped 1 lemongrass stalk (white part only), very thinly sliced Thinly sliced spring onion, coriander, leafy greens (we used chrysanthemum leaves; see note) and lime wedges, to serve
1 Bring 3 litres of water to the boil in a large saucepan. Add chicken and legs, season lightly with salt and bring back to the boil. Boil for 2 minutes, then turn off the heat and set aside to cool completely in stock (4 hours). Remove chicken and discard skin. Remove meat from bones and coarsely chop. 2 Return stock to the heat, add ginger, turmeric and lemongrass, bring to the boil and season to taste. 3 Divide chicken among bowls, top up with stock, scatter with spring onion, coriander and chrysanthemum leaves, and serve with lime wedges. Note Chrysanthemum leaves, also known as tong ho, are available from Asian grocers. Baby spinach works nicely instead. â—?
Chicken & tofu broths Robert Gordon Australia bowl (chicken broth) from The DEA Store. Small dishes (sesame seeds & ginger) from Little White Dish. Napkin from In Bed Store. All other props stylist’s own. Stockists p182.
The Explainer
Karkalla
Beach banana, pigface – whatever you call it, this native succulent adds a welcome salty hit and juicy crunch to fish dishes, salads and stir-fries. WHAT IS IT? Karkalla – also known as pigface and beach banana – is a succulent most commonly found among sand dunes and on cliff faces around the Australian coastline. One species, Disphyma crassifolia, has slender leaves that are plump, juicy, and more palatable than others. It grows further inland on salt flats and in clay.
WORDS, RECIPE & STYLING EMMA KNOWLES. PHOTOGRAPHY WILLIAM MEPPEM
WHY DO WE CARE? With an increased focus on indigenous ingredients, karkalla has come to the fore thanks to its unique fleshy texture and light salty flavour. Kylie Kwong uses it in elegant stir-fries, while it has also been spotted on the menus at Cirrus and Quay among other fine-diners. The briny flavour of karkalla makes it a no-brainer for fish dishes or raw in salads for added texture. WHERE CAN I GET IT? Although karkalla is common in the wild, foraging for it is illegal. Cultivated karkalla is of better quality, and can be found at growers’ markets, select greengrocers and Outback Pride Fresh (outbackpridefresh.com.au).
Pan-fried ocean trout with miso butter and karkalla SERVES 4 Heat 1 tbsp olive oil in a large frying pan over medium-high heat, add four pin-boned 160gm skinless ocean trout fillets and cook, turning once, until browned and cooked to your liking (1-2 minutes each side for medium-rare). Transfer to a tray, cover with foil and leave to rest while you make the sauce. Wipe out the pan with paper towels, add 80ml sake, 1 tbsp soy sauce and 2 tsp finely grated ginger, and simmer over medium-high heat until reduced by half (1-2 minutes). Add 100gm diced chilled butter a cube at a time, whisking until emulsified, then remove from heat and whisk in 1 tbsp shiro miso to combine. Season to taste, add 50gm karkalla and toss to coat. Spoon sauce over trout and serve. ● G O U R M E T T R AV E L L E R
47
Anatomy of a dish
Katsu sando
T
he katsu sando is one of the most delicious highlights in Japan’s storied history of adapting Western foods. A glorious union of Portuguese technique, Central European tradition, a beautiful Japanese misunderstanding of the purpose of Worcestershire sauce and a taste for bread developed during US occupation, the katsu sando takes a crumbed pork cutlet (or chicken), mayo and tonkatsu sauce and piles it all together between sliced white. A true international superstar.
Japan did the world a favour when it invented panko; there’s no excuse for using anything else. Dip and dredge like usual, then press the meat into the crumbs and fry for an extra crisp golden crust. 170°C is the sweet spot.
THE MEAT The pork version, made with loin or tenderloin, is straight-up tonkatsu (‘ton’ means pork), but chicken katsu is common and prawn is popular, as are eggplant or even cheese. Score the meat to stop it curling; an evenly cooked slab is the goal. Brining, as well as using rare-breed pork, such as kurobuta (which has a high fat content), will give the juiciest results.
THE CABBAGE Thinly sliced white cabbage is often included in the sando or it might be served on the side, providing a counterbalance to the rich fried meat. A Japanese mandolin (another great invention) will help get it extra fine.
THE BREAD Japanese white bread is as good as it gets: pillowy, slightly sweet, springy, and usually enriched with butter and sometimes milk. Bakery chain Breadtop sells it, but a supermarket white works, too. And the crusts? Cut them off.
THE SAUCES Tonkatsu sauce was made to imitate Worcestershire sauce, believed to be the Western version of soy sauce. Made with fruits, vegetables, vinegar and spices, it’s sweeter and more viscous than the original, and adds piquancy to the sando. Look for the Bull-Dog brand. Japanese mayo (try Kewpie or Kenko) caps it off.
48
G O U R M E T T R AV E L L E R
Find one
In Sydney, Devon Cafe and Oratnek stay classic, while Rising Sun Workshop does fried eggplant in a bun. Melbourne’s Cutler & Co does an abalone version, or try pork meatball at Adelaide’s Shobosho.
WORDS & STYLING LISA FEATHERBY. PHOTOGRAPHY BEN HANSEN. MERCHANDISING ROSIE MEEHAN. BISUKETTO PLATE FROM KOSKELA. STOCKISTS P182.
The katsu sando is turning up on menus everywhere. But what are its essential elements? We take it apart.
THE CRUMBING
Gun spuds Pinkeye potatoes, writes PAULETTE WHITNEY, just aren’t the real deal unless they’re grown in South Arm.
I
t’s time to plant potatoes and I’m committing sacrilege. There’s no problem with the rows of dainty, French pink fir apples, knobbly kipflers or stalwart King Edwards. Those are all free from the shackles of Tasmanian tradition. My sacrilege is this: I am, against all that I know to be right and proper, seeding a row of pinkeye. Any true Tasmanian – that is, my mum – will tell you that the only proper pinkeye potato comes from where she grew up: South Arm. A little peninsula near the mouth of the River Derwent where the soil is black and sandy, and the proximity of the sea protects the land from frosts, meaning the earliest of early potatoes are at their peak from October until just before Christmas. In the garden of Mum’s childhood, my chook-farming grandad grew pinkeye, the sandiness of the soil meaning he could pull the whole plant with barely the need for a fork, shake off the loose earth and fill a box with little potatoes – the proper
50
G O U R M E T T R AV E L L E R
size for a pinkeye being around that of a ping-pong ball, certainly never as large as a tennis ball. The tiny chats he plucked from the roots of each plant were a delicacy. Mum tells a tale of racing for an Ansett flight in the 1960s – a time when poor mainlanders could only buy generic “potatoes”, lacking the Tasmanian sophistication of having named, seasonal spuds – with a precious half-case of pinkeye for her Aunty Violie in Melbourne. She was too late to stow them in the hold, so she had to board with the grubby box tucked under her arm, sullying her attempt to look like a city girl as she blushingly found her seat. The first thing you notice about a pinkeye is the fine-grained, grey South Arm dirt. If the sand is still damp, you’re on a freshly dug winner. Rinsed under the tap, the skin slips off like tissue paper, revealing those lurid violet-pink eyes. The only correct way to cook a pinkeye is to boil it. Chips, roasting and gnocchi are all as sacrilegious as my attempts to grow them here on the mountainside.
“If the sand on the pinkeye is still slightly damp, you’ll know you’re onto a freshly dug winner.”
In fact, the distinction between the pinkeye and other potatoes is so vast that on many Tasmanian tables you’ll find bowls of boiled, buttery pinkeye alongside trays of roast potatoes, the two being considered utterly different classes of vegetable. There’s a sweetness to the pinkeye you’ll not find in other potatoes. And the texture, oh! I’ve often heard other potatoes described as buttery, but none hold a candle to the butteriness of the handsome pinkeye – its pale- gold, fine-textured flesh is firm yet magnificently tender. Later, as an adult transplanted to the suburbs, Mum would look for the sign outside the corner shop announcing “Fresh South Arm Pinkeye”. When it appeared, she’d slam on the brakes and we’d instantly know what was for dinner. Always boiled with mint, and topped with butter and salt, they were a treat. That first bowl of the season was our signal to hop in the station wagon and drive south to a place by the highway where the farmer parked his ute and sold them by the half-case. Proper seasonal food demands to be gorged, and gorge we did, but never changing the pattern of mint, salt and butter. There are many impostors – I’m guilty myself, as you now know – because anyone can plant pinkeye seed spuds and dig a tasty crop. You can even plant them late to extend the season or, heaven forbid, store them in a dark, airy place. But here in the hills my pinkeyes’ flesh is too yellow, the skin too firm. The flavour is good, but not quite right. Planted late in the season, they suffer a loss of flavour, and storage is a disaster. I’ve inherited my mum’s eyes and, although I have that row of my own, I’ll be looking out for those blackboards and heading to that black sandy peninsula in October hoping to buy a case of memories from the earth-stained hands that grew them. l
ILLUSTRATION DAWN TAN (MAIN) & LAUREN HAIRE (PAULETTE)
Produce
Drink this now
From pale rosé to red vermouth, MAX ALLEN rounds up the wine styles that define the moment.
W
ine styles define an era as precisely as fashion, food and music. In the 1980s we were drinking golden, oaky chardonnay and lean and leafy cabernet. In the 1990s we wanted our chardonnay unwooded and fruity and our red wines – preferably Barossa shiraz – big and butch. In the 2000s we started broadening our drinking horizons, quaffing riesling out of screwcapped bottles, filling our fridges with Marlborough sauvignon blanc. So what about the late 2010s? What wines are we drinking now that set us apart from previous decades? Here I’ve identified a few styles that characterise our modern wine-drinking trends. I’ve recommended a few local names and labels, too: some widely available brands found in big-chain liquor stores, some obscure, limited-production wines you’ll probably track down from a good independent merchant or laneway bar.
Mainstream Coriole Fiano from McLaren Vale. Indie Quealy Friulano from Balnarring on the Mornington Peninsula. ORANGE WINES
Nothing says 2017 hipster drink quite like a glass of orange-coloured wine made from white grapes that have been wild-fermented on their skins (preferably in a clay amphora) and bottled with no clarification or filtration. Unfortunately, you won’t find these in your local (just too painfully obscure), but sommeliers love them, so they’re surprisingly well represented on wine lists and in indie stores around the country. Mainstream No, sorry, I got nothing. Indie Cullen Amber from Margaret River. PA L E , D R Y R O S É
We’ve fallen hopelessly in love with rosé in 2017. Imports are booming (Provençal rosé sales grew by more than 120 per cent last year) and we lap up as much of the local gear as winemakers can throw at us. Not that I’m complaining: I love how we’ve finally embraced a wine style so perfect for our food and lifestyle. Mainstream De Bortoli La Bohème Act Two Dry Pinot Noir Rosé from the Yarra Valley. Indie Castagna Allegro Rosé from Beechworth. LIGHT YOUNG REDS
Long gone are the days when you needed to cellar red wine for a decade before it was ready to be drunk. Now we want our reds juicy, medium-bodied, full of freshness and fruit – snappy, smashable wines made from grapes such as gamay, pinot noir, cabernet franc
52
G O U R M E T T R AV E L L E R
WHITE WINES WITH TEXTURE
“Minerality” is the wine buzzword of the moment: a glass of white that tastes like it’s been sprinkled with granite dust is catnip to a wine geek. So: bone-dry, minerally grape varieties such as chenin blanc, grüner veltliner and assyrtiko are hot right now, as are varieties that have a rich, creamy mouthfeel – fiano and Friulano, pinot gris and petit manseng.
2014 Casa da Passarella A Descoberta Dão Tinto, Portugal, $30 A fresh, medium-bodied young red made from a blend of local grapes including touriga nacional and tinta roriz (port varieties) and jaen (Spain’s mencía). Imported by thespanishacquisition.com
TIE H S WEE
Y LIS ST
SNA
To p d r o p s o f t h e m o n t h
Opposite, from left: De Bortoli La Bohème Act Two Dry Pinot Noir Rosé, Ochota Barrels From the North mourvèdre, Glaetzer Dixon Nouveau pinot noir, and Delinquente Pétillant Naturel.
We still love Champagne in 2017, of course – especially high-quality Champagne from small-scale growers – but we’re also really digging different styles of fizzy wine from other parts of the world: top-shelf Tassie sparkling; prosecco (especially mixed with Aperol in a refreshing Spritz); cloudy, unfiltered, rustic pét-nat, fermented in the bottle. Mainstream Dal Zotto prosecco from the King Valley. Indie Delinquente Pétillant Naturel from the Riverland.
P PY R E D
N O T C H A M PAG N E
2012 Ngeringa Altus, Adelaide Hills, $40 for 375ml Inspired by Tuscany’s vin santo, this sweet wine is made from viognier grapes that are air-dried, then pressed into barrel for five years’ ageing without topping up, before bottling. ngeringa.com
Drinks
and touriga, and new, lighter interpretations of traditionally fuller-bodied varieties like shiraz. Mainstream Glaetzer Dixon Nouveau pinot noir from Tasmania. Indie Ravensworth gamay from the Canberra District. VERMOUTH
One of the most exciting wine trends in 2017 is the growing number of producers making vermouth: gently fortified wine flavoured with bitter, aromatic botanicals. This gives winemakers enormous creative freedom, and gives us a whole new spectrum of flavours to revel in. Mainstream The Maidenii range of vermouths from central Victoria. Indie The new red and white vermouths from the Adelaide Hills Distillery. VA R I E TA L R E V I VA L
2015 Coates The Malbec, Limestone Coast, $25 It’s the colour that draws you in: a beautiful, saturated purple black, so typical of malbec. The flavour is true to variety, too: rich mulberry fruit, supple tannin, gently supportive oak. coates-wines.com
2017 Scarborough “The Obsessive” Semillon, Hunter Valley, $30 You could either cellar this, and let it develop classic, mature, toasty Hunter sémillon characters, or drink it right now, revelling in its refreshing, crunchy green-apple glory. scarboroughwine.com.au
2016 Clos Sainte Magdelaine Cassis Rosé, Provence, $60 This wonderful, robust blend of grenache, cinsault and mourvèdre from the coastal appellation of Cassis has a little more colour, richness and texture than many Provence rosés. Imported by worldwineestates.com.au
2015 Hurley Garamond Pinot Noir, Mornington Peninsula, $85 The most “serious” of the three very good single-block pinots produced at Hurley: wild hedgerow berries wrapped in sinewy and savoury tannin. A pinot you want in your cellar. hurleyvineyard.com.au
F T TI N NIE CR A
O T TO K E E P P IN
D EE P PI N K
T EAC H WAY BE
C K RO BE
BLA
PHOTOGRAPHY ROB SHAW (MAIN IMAGE) & ANDREW FINLAYSON (TOP DROPS). ILLUSTRATION LAUREN HAIRE. PLINTH PAINTED IN PORTERS PAINTS ‘BABY DOLL’ EGGSHELL ACRYLIC. STOCKISTS P182.
Back in the 1990s, when I started writing about wine, Australian grenache and mataró (also known as mourvèdre) were dismissed by many as third-rate red grape varieties, and were mostly used to make cask plonk or cheap port. But a new generation of winemakers has turned that perception on its head, sourcing outstanding fruit from old, low-yielding grenache and mataró vines to produce characterful, distinctive red wines. And we’re loving them. Mainstream SC Pannell grenache from McLaren Vale. Indie Ochota Barrels From the North mourvèdre from the Barossa Valley. ●
Sailors Grave Brewing Down She Gose, Orbost, $6 This East Gippsland brewery is becoming renowned for using unusual local ingredients in its beers, such as the sea salt and seaweed in this malty, dry, refreshingly tart ale. sailorsgravebrewing.com G O U R M E T T R AV E L L E R
53
12 DIGITAL ISSUES ONLY $19.99
SAVE 58%
Visit magshop.com.au/gtd or call 136 116 and quote X1709GTD Savings based on single-issue digital edition price of $5.99 and single-issue print edition price of $9.95. Offer available until 24 September 2017. If you do not want your information provided to any organisation not associated with this promotion, please indicate this clearly when you subscribe. For terms and conditions visit magshop.com.au/gtd and for our Privacy Notice visit bauer-media.com.au. Apple, the Apple logo and iPad are trademarks of Apple Inc., registered in the US and other countries.
Sydney review
Rockin’ revival
The original Bodega line-up is back, live, unplugged, and rocking a tiny bar space in Surry Hills, writes PAT NOURSE.
PHOTOGRAPHY WILL HORNER
N
ever let it be said that the Porteño boys are afraid of flavour. Every plate at Wyno, their new bar, drips with the stuff – cheddar and butter, anchovies and olives, cured fish and fat. Tweezer food it ain’t. Are you going to eat a richer new dish in Sydney this spring than the plate of fried eggs smothered in a gravy laden with foie gras and the twang of oloroso sherry? Served with buttery triangles of blonde toast, it’ll stop you in your tracks, a yolk-dripping riposte to every snotty slow-cooked egg in town. Until recently this space was 121BC, the best Italian wine bar the city had ever seen. Apart from the change to the sign out the front and the addition of some plants to the shelf of glasses above the bar, and the fact the map of Italy and the big, light-bulby chandelier are gone, squint and it’s the same room: a narrow corridor partitioned down its length by safety-glass wine for sale in bottles on one side, a low, skinny bar down the other. Dark and convivial and wondrous. Joe Valore, Ben Milgate and Elvis Abrahanowicz were the original partners in Bodega, everyone’s favourite rock ’n’ roll tapas bar that opened nearby just over a decade ago. In the time since, they launched Porteño, moved it, then opened another Bodega, all while Valore and
Abrahanowicz worked on side projects around town (Continental deli among them). Now having them back in one small room, Abrahanowicz and/or Milgate in the tiny kitchen, Valore on the pour in dapper duds behind the bar, it feels a bit like putting the band back together. The immediacy of the cooking at Wyno is reminiscent of the early days at Bodega when the plates were designed so two guys, working with not much more than a flat-top
Top: fried eggs with foie gras and oloroso gravy. Above right, from left: Ben Milgate, Joe Valore and Elvis Abrahanowicz.
and some cheap knives, could bang out great food fast and hot to a full room. Sardines from Continental, for instance, come out in the can in molten butter, topped with a nest of fried potatoes, while a purée of spinach, a mixture of wood-ear, shimeji and shiitake mushrooms and a boatload of cheddar make a bowl of porridge anything but dour. Keeping it in the family, there’s seafood sausages from LP’s Quality Meats, filled with a mixture of ➤ G O U R M E T T R AV E L L E R
55
Sydney review
AND ALSO
From left: Paper Bird’s Ned Brooks, Ben Sears and Eun Hee An.
NEW MOON The return of the Moon Park gang is very good news indeed, not least considering Paper Bird, the team’s new venture on the former Bourke Street Bakery site in Potts Point, also serves breakfast. In addition to the ddeokbokki, bibimbap, fried chicken and other largely Korean-inspired offerings at lunch and dinner, they’re serving a sesame-sprinkled avo toast, crab congee, and breakfast baos. Cue rejoicing. 46a Macleay St, Potts Point
Seafood sausage, spaghetti and bisque. Right: poached quince with labne.
gently smoked crab and flathead bound in egg, set on bisque sauce. The fine texture of the mousse in the sausage is complemented by buttery egg noodles and salmon roe. Saucy stuff. In terms of flavour, the shareplate menu leans more ContinentalEuro than Bodega-Latin, but Milgate and Abrahanowicz haven’t lost their taste for fat. Start with hunks of focaccia cut from a loaf on the bar – a gorgeous, olive-oily thing, shot through with black grapes, which comes alive when swiped through rosemary-powered whipped lard. The Wyno cellar is a patchwork thing, composed in part of quite a lot of wild and woolly Italian wine that presumably came with the premises, an odd smattering of hipster locals, some of the sherry and malbec Valore specialised in at Porteño and Bodega, plus a helping of the Austrian and Alsatian whites he enjoys drinking right now. Call it a work in progress. Some downsides. There’s not a lot of light and shade on the menu. Every vegetable comes with cheese, anchovies or cold-cuts. A lot of the 56
G O U R M E T T R AV E L L E R
plates will start to congeal if left untouched for too long. “Wyno” ends team Porteño’s hitherto unbroken run of excellent names, but at least it’s easy to remember. Desserts are basic: see the sticky cheeks of poached quince with a spoonful of labne redolent with cardamom, and exactly no soil, squiggles, crumbles or cress. The room is small, the seats are few, the space tight. The hillbilly, honkytonk and guitar-driven tunes have been swapped for a soundtrack that leans more Bobby Womack, but it’s by no means hushed. But then just about everything you liked about 121BC is still a big draw. That you can buy everything you’re drinking to go from the retail shelves. (That shouldn’t be so radical, but this is Sydney, after all.) The one-to-one immediacy of the service, the hustle in the kitchen, the raw atmosphere of the place, and its perfect blurring of the eatery-drinkery divide. It’s what living in the big city is supposed to be all about, and just about all of it tastes great. Who’s afraid of flavour? Not us. ●
SUPER NOODLES
Details
Wyno 4/50 Holt St (enter via Gladstone St), Surry Hills, NSW Licensed Cards AE MC V EFT Open Tue-Sat 5pm-midnight Prices Shared plates $16-$26, desserts $14-$18 Vegetarian Four dishes Noise Noisy Wheelchair access No Minus The name; the list also needs work Plus Big flavours, good vibes
Spicy green bean jelly noodles. Duck with pickled chilli. Chilled pig’s ears in chilli oil. Skewers of smoky beef tongue and tripe. Chongqing noodle soup. The new World Square branch of landmark Chinese restaurant Dainty Sichuan, the first outside Melbourne, might be an “express” version, but there’s still more than enough of the magic of the original to keep local fans interested. Shop 10, 19b World Square, 644 George St, Sydney
WHEN IN LA ROSA Gun chef Pablo Tordesillas Garcia has joined La Rosa as co-head chef as the upmarket trattoria takes a turn towards a Roman style with what its owners call a Roman grill presence. Smoked Monte San Biagio sausage and Roman-style roasted Suffolk lamb are on the new menu, along with cacio e pepe pasta reimagined as cheesy ravioli dressed with Tellicherry pepper, and a fantastic dish of tripe braised with tomato and pecorino. Shop 133, level 2, The Strand Arcade, 193 Pitt St, Sydney, (02) 9223 1674
Melbourne review
Left: baby octopus with ’nduja. Below, from left: co-owner Alberto Fava, co-owner and manager Luke Skidmore and co-owner and chef Andreas Papadakis.
Love thy neighbour
PHOTOGRAPHY JULIAN KINGMA
It's double the fun with the opening of Tipo 00's sibling, Osteria Ilaria, writes MICHAEL HARDEN.
B
efore the octopus I had questions. What was the team behind Tipo 00, the Melbourne CBD pasta joint beloved by punters and pundits alike, thinking opening a second, bigger restaurant right next door? Sure, turn up to Tipo without a booking and it can be an hour or more before you’re seated, but that’s why God invented holding bars. Mightn’t opening an Italian restaurant beside your Italian restaurant feel like a consolation prize for its diners and dilute the buzz next door? But then comes the octopus: bashed flat, char-grilled so the tentacle tips are blackened, and splayed across an artful splash of brick-red sauce rich with ’nduja, anchovies and olive oil. It’s all smoke, salt, heat and idealised
Sicilian clifftop lunches. Now I get it. This is no consolation prize. Osteria Ilaria is doing it for itself. Pasta is where the distinction is clearest. Tipo, as the name implies, is a pasta restaurant. Ilaria isn’t. But it’s not like they’re being doctrinaire about it, so there are still two pasta dishes on the extensive carte. One is paccheri tossed with pieces of prawn, a prawn oil-infused Napoli sauce and a citrusy, deep-green sorrel sauce, the other a ridiculously addictive nettle gnocchi with blue cheese and toasted almonds. They’re not to be missed, but there’s more going on here. Yes, we can nail pasta, they're saying, but that’s not all the good we can do. Take the roast corn-fed duck: breast and leg brilliantly supported by crisp skin, butter-braised radicchio and a hazelnut Marsala sauce. Or a whole Lakes Entrance whiting, butterflied and boned, head and tail intact, cradling a pile of pipis cooked in garlic, chilli and white wine and a perfectly tuned scatter of sea herbs. Or the cured kingfish, lifted from also-ran status by salty-smoky pieces of eel rendered pancetta-like, plus shaved bottarga and peppery celery leaves. The look of Ilaria emphasises independence as well. There’s shared design DNA with Tipo 00 (intricately painted concrete floor, wide white marble kitchen pass) but there’s also a kitchen bar as well as a regular bar, tan leather booth and banquette seating, a private room down the back, feature wine racks and a seating density that delivers discernible bustle without feeling overstuffed. More money has been splashed here than next door, and the sleek illuminated wine racks, the open kitchen (where co-owner Andreas Papadakis vies for the title of Melbourne’s calmest and most organised chef) and the sophisticated cocktails at the bar suggest that bumping up the ➤ G O U R M E T T R AV E L L E R
57
Melbourne review
AND ALSO
Right: whiting with pipis and sea herbs. Below: sheep's milk yoghurt semifreddo with pistachio and orange.
A STAR IS BORN The team behind wine bar, bottleshop and cocktail lounge Neptune (above) have put their combined experience (Pastuso, San Telmo, Tokyo Tina) to good use. There’s a well-priced funky-to-refined wine list, sharp and enthusiastic service and a user-friendly menu including ’nduja jaffles, seafood in tins, top-notch steak, big-flavoured vegetable dishes and a really good roast chook with patatas bravas. Good times done with edge and flair. 212 High St, Prahran, (03) 9533 2827
MENU MAKEOVER restaurant credentials was part of the plan. But somehow it ends up coming across as looser and more wine bar-like than Tipo. Ilaria’s 90-plus seat capacity even makes it feel feasible for you to rock up unannounced for a glass of wine to go with a soufflélike pecorino cheesecake topped with sautéed pine mushrooms or a hefty, rich pork liver sausage teamed with a tart rhubarb and balsamic purée. Or, at the other end of the evening, a refreshing, light-on-its-feet sheep’s milk yoghurt semifreddo teamed with caramelised orange zest and candied pistachios. Wine here is a good idea whether you’re in for dinner or just a pit-stop. Co-owner Luke Skidmore, with a bit of help from wine-guy-about-town Raúl Moreno Yagüe, has assembled a strong eight-page list that reads trendaware rather than fashion-fixated. The selection by the glass is 58
G O U R M E T T R AV E L L E R
generous and interesting and includes gorgeous carricante from Etna by organic producer Alice Bonnacorsi, Bandol rosé from Le Galantin and Flotsam and Jetsam cinsault from Western Cape in South Africa. The fortified list is worth some attention, too, thanks to good tokay from Rutherglen and vintage port from Douro. The arrival of Osteria Ilaria might have taken some pressure off Tipo 00 in terms of putting bums on seats, but it hasn’t really done the rest of us any favours. How on earth are you supposed to choose between the two of them? Service is as strong at Ilaria as it is at Tipo, so that won’t push it one way or another. That most contemporary of plights, fear of missing out, is ever-present. The straw to clutch at is that either way you’re going to eat and drink really well. But that octopus might just swing it. ●
Details
Osteria Ilaria 367 Little Bourke St, Melbourne (03) 9642 2287 osteriailaria.com Licensed Cards AE MC V EFT Open Mon-Fri 11.30am-10.30pm, Sat 4pm-10.30pm Prices Entrées $15-$21, main courses $21-$46, desserts $12-$14 Vegetarian Four entrées, one main course Noise A real but manageable presence Wheelchair access No Minus The slight sense of FOMO Plus The Tipo 00 team expands the brand
Former McConnell-empire development chef John Paul Twomey has spruced up the menu at Gilson, an all-day diner on Domain Road with mod-brasserie good looks. Potato focaccia comes with spring onion oil and stracciatella, bruschetta is loaded with cuttlefish and eggplant, and there’s steak and roast chicken. An easy-drinking wine list and switched on service add to the well-planned local vibe. 171 Domain Rd, South Yarra, (03) 9866 3120
CUTTING IT FINE Connie’s Pizza, in city dive bar Heartbreaker, has done its homework on New York-style pies (co-owner Michael Madrusan used to live in NYC). The slices coming out of the tiny window, including molten mozzarella with pepperoni, taste just the right kind of authentic, while shakers of chilli flakes, dried oregano and parmesan add the finishing touch. 234a Russell St, Melbourne, (03) 9663 2112
Eat out
BAR
AN EATING GUIDE TO
Albany One of the state’s best craft distillers and a landmark small bar are leading a fresh wave of dining entrepreneurs in Western Australia’s oldest town, writes MAX VEENHUYZEN.
Albany, in the Great Southern region of Western Australia, is about five hours’ drive south of Perth.
Liberté Whether you settle in the bar or retreat to Liberté’s lavish Belle Époque-inspired back room, Amy Hamilton’s punchy FrenchVietnamese dishes and Keryn Giles’ cocktails are crowd-pleasers. The monthly dim sum-inspired Brunch & Booze Sundays are not to be missed. 160-162 Stirling Tce, Albany, (08) 9847 4797, libertealbany.com.au
DISTILLERY Limeburners Established in 2004, this Albany distillery laid the foundations for Western Australia’s craft spirit boom. The waterside cellar door is open for tastings and distillery tours. While Limeburners’ single-malt whiskies draw most attention, its gins are equally worthy of praise. 252 Frenchman Bay Rd, Albany, (08) 9842 5363, distillery.com.au
SHOPPING Albany Farmers Market A strict locals-only policy among produce stallholders ensures quality is the focus at Albany’s weekly Saturdaymorning market. The vegetables and herbs at Bathgate Farm are a picture of seasonal abundance, and local shellfish and free-range pork and poultry are also popular. Collie St, Albany
THAI
On the outskirts of town, family-run Wilson Brewing is Albany’s newest craft brewer. An on-site café serves local Bakers Junction pies – perfect beer-matching fare. 47768 South Coast Hwy, Albany 60
G O U R M E T T R AV E L L E R
TAVERN Due South Behind the beer-barn exterior of this waterfront pub is an operation committed to good slow food. The kitchen mills its own flour, charcutier Martin Morgan makes some of the state’s finest smallgoods, and a beef ageing program produces excellent steak. The bottle shop next door specialises in local wines. 6 Toll Pl, Albany, (08) 9841 8526, duesouthalbany.com.au ●
PHOTOGRAPHER CHELSEA-LEE CROSBY
COFFEE Fredericks Café Located on Albany’s main street, Fredericks features prominently in the daily routines of many locals. Drop in for the town’s best coffee and grab a bag of the salted caramel popcorn for the road. Cnr York St & Peel Pl, Albany, WA (08) 9841 5112
Maleeya’s Thai Café Maleeya Form makes Thai food using bamboo and herbs grown on her adjacent farm. The property’s idyllic setting and proximity to Porongurup cellar doors, about 45 minutes’ drive from Albany, make lunch at Maleeya’s a perfect day trip. 1416 Porongurup Rd, Porongurup, (08) 9853 1123, maleeya.com.au
Beauty in every bubble
Lightly sparkling Italian mineral water www.santavittoria.com
INSTITUTE
2 017 analiese Gregory E VENT 9
Home-made Jersey milk ricotta with artichokes and broad beans? Gnocchi with greens and kombu butter? Spring has sprung!
sydney 6 SEPTEM B ER
EVENT 9 DETAILS DAT E & T I M E Pre-Event 6:15, Event 7pm, Wednesday 6 September
C H E F Analiese Gregory TO P I C Spring Entertaining LO C AT I O N Harvey Norman @ Domayne, 84 O’Riordan St, Alexandria, NSW
SPRING ENTERTAINING
with ANALIESE
T I C K E T S $60 each TO B O O K gourmetinstitute. pleezpay.com
GREGORY, FRANKLIN
Analiese Gregory rings in the change of season with fresh and tasty eats as suited to a quiet midweek indulgence as they are weekend entertaining. From her days at Quay to her experiences at the internationally celebrated likes of Bras in France to her current Hobart base Franklin, Gregory pursues great produce with passion and presents it with flair. Join us for a night of adventure that takes in homemade ricotta with artichokes and young broad beans, a devilishly smooth duck liver parfait with green apples and oloroso jelly, and a heart-warming gnocchi with spring greens and kombu butter.
TO B O O K YO U R T I C K E T S : G O U R M E T I N S T I T U T E . P L E E Z PAY. CO M F O R M O R E I N F O R M AT I O N : H A R V E Y N O R M A N . C O M . AU/G O U R M E T- I N S T I T U T E O R C A L L K A R L A K E M P S O N (0 2 ) 9 2 8 2 8 3 8 6 .
Smeg 600mm Victoria Compact Steam Oven, $4490 (SFA4920VCX). Smeg Victoria Thermoseal Oven, $3290 (SFPA6925X).
Prices valid for Sydney Metropolitan Area. Prices can vary between states due to additional freight costs. See in store for full range. Harvey NormanÂŽ stores are operated by independent franchisees. Ends 24/09/2017.
AN AUSTRALIAN GOURMET TRAVELLER PROMOTION
A BREATH OF FRESH AIR The fresher your food, the more flavour and goodness it has. Whether it’s fruit, vegetables, fish, meat or dairy, Liebherr’s Integrated Fridge with BioFresh provides the optimal storage conditions to keep your food at its best. The technology that’s built into Liebherr’s SIKB 3550 Premium BioFresh refrigerator maintains the temperature inside at just above 0°C, while at the same time creating the ideal air humidity level for fresh produce. This means your fruit, vegetables, meat, fish and dairy products retain their flavour, goodness and appearance for significantly longer than in a traditional refrigerator compartment. The air humidity can be set individually in each BioFresh compartment to suit the produce. The DrySafe in the BioFresh compartment, for instance, has low humidity, ideal for meat, fish and dairy products. Fruit and vegetables are best kept in the BioFresh HydroSafe at a humidity level of up to 90 per cent. BioFresh is the answer for when only the best will do.
TOUCH OF GENIUS Innovative soft-touch controls in the Liebherr SIKB 3550 Premium BioFresh fridge mean that the selected temperatures are maintained. A digital display accurately indicates the temperature to the nearest degree.
QUICK TO COOL The high-performance SuperCool system rapidly cools down freshly stored food and creates an even cooling temperature throughout the interior. A door contact switch turns the fan off when the door is opened, saving valuable power.
“In an ideal world we’d buy our food fresh every day – but life’s not like that. And that’s where Liebherr’s Integrated Fridge with BioFresh comes in.”
SOFTLY DOES IT All BioFresh safes and pull-out compartments in Liebherr’s SIKB 3550 Premium BioFresh fridge are fitted with a convenient self-retracting system. They can be completely pulled out and removed, even at a door opening angle of 90 degrees.
FOR MOR E I N FOR M AT ION V ISI T a nd ico.com. au/ l iebher r
BIOFRESH APP How long will carrots, say, stay fresh in the fridge? The innovative BioFresh app offers useful information about foods, vitamins and their shelf life, plus the best places to store certain foods in your new Liebherr SIKB 3550 Premium BioFresh fridge.
QUICK MEALS SEPTEMBER
Recipes MAX ADEY Photography by WILLIAM MEPPEM Styling EMMA KNOWLES
Grilled tuna with blood orange, fennel and black olive dressing
68
p
Cauliflower, silken tofu and walnut rice bowl SERVES 4
Pork larb with green beans, cucumber and mint SERVES 4-6
The toasted walnuts in this rice bowl offer not only delicious nuttiness, but also great texture with the cauliflower and the silken tofu – a vegetarian weeknight winner.
We’ve spiked this larb with aniseed. It’s a natural partner to pork and adds an extra flavour dimension to this simple dish.
100 ml chicken stock 500 gm coarsely minced pork 100 gm green beans, cut into 2cm batons ½ Spanish onion, thinly sliced on a mandolin 2 Lebanese cucumbers, half-peeled and thickly sliced 1 cup (firmly packed) mixed coriander and mint Iceberg lettuce leaves, thinly sliced red chilli, fried shallots and steamed rice, to serve TOASTED BROWN RICE DRESSING
1 1½ 100 15 4 2 2 1 1
66
tbsp brown rice tsp aniseed or fennel seeds ml lime juice (about 3 limes) gm (3cm piece) ginger, coarsely chopped kaffir lime leaves, coarsely chopped lemongrass stalks (white part only), finely chopped tbsp fish sauce tbsp crushed dark palm sugar tsp roasted chilli powder
G O U R M E T T R AV E L L E R
1 For toasted brown rice dressing, dry-roast rice in a frying pan over high heat, stirring constantly, until light golden (1 minute; see cook’s notes p182). Add aniseed and toast until fragrant (1 minute). Finely grind with a mortar and pestle, then blend in a blender with remaining ingredients until mixture is very finely chopped. 2 Bring stock to the boil in a frying pan, then add pork and simmer, stirring occasionally, until just cooked, adding beans in the last minute of cooking (4-5 minutes). 3 Transfer pork mixture to a bowl, add dressing, toss to combine and season to taste. Cool briefly, then add onion, cucumber and herbs, and serve warm with lettuce cups, chilli, fried shallots and steamed rice.
400 50 2½ 100 1 50 1 300 3 200
gm brown rice, rinsed ml rice wine vinegar tsp caster sugar gm walnuts small cauliflower, cut into small florets ml grapeseed oil or other neutral-flavoured oil tbsp furikake, plus extra to serve (see note) gm silken tofu, cut into 1.5cm cubes spring onions, thinly sliced gm kimchi, thinly sliced Shiso leaves (optional), to serve GINGER-SOY DRESSING
80 60 30 1½ 1 ½
ml (⅓ cup) grapeseed oil ml (¼ cup) rice wine vinegar ml light soy sauce tbsp caster sugar tsp finely grated ginger tsp roasted sesame oil
1 Preheat oven to 180°C. Cook rice in a large saucepan of boiling water until tender (20-25 minutes). Drain well, transfer to a bowl and stir in vinegar, sugar and 1 tsp salt. 2 Meanwhile, spread walnuts on an oven tray and roast until golden (5-6 minutes). Remove walnuts and increase oven to 250°C. 3 Toss cauliflower with oil and furikake in a roasting pan to coat, season to taste and roast until tender and starting to blacken at the edges (8-10 minutes). Cool briefly. 4 For ginger-soy dressing, process ingredients in a blender to combine. 5 Divide rice among serving bowls, top with cauliflower, tofu, walnuts, spring onion, kimchi, extra furikake and shiso leaves, drizzle with dressing and serve. Note Furikake, a rice seasoning, is available from Japanese grocers and health-food shops.
Quick meals
Chicken salad with asparagus and quinoa SERVES 4 If you’ve got the time, toast the quinoa in a little grapeseed oil until it’s golden brown before adding the water – it adds a great nutty flavour that works well with the asparagus. You’ll want to use this method every time you cook quinoa.
200 2 6 2
gm (1 cup) quinoa, rinsed tbsp olive oil skinless chicken thigh fillets bunches asparagus, trimmed, cut into 1cm pieces 2 salad onions, thinly sliced on a mandolin 3 cups (firmly packed) watercress sprigs 1 cup (firmly packed) mint TARRAGON-BUTTERMILK DRESSING
125 60 35 1 1
ml (½ cup) buttermilk gm mayonnaise ml lemon juice tbsp white wine vinegar tbsp finely chopped French tarragon 1 small garlic clove, crushed
1 Preheat oven to 220°C. Bring quinoa and 300ml water to the boil in a saucepan, then cover, reduce heat to low and cook until water is absorbed and quinoa is cooked (10-12 minutes). Spread on a large tray to cool. 2 Meanwhile, heat oil in a large frying pan over high heat and fry chicken, turning once, until golden brown (5-6 minutes). Transfer to a baking tray lined with baking paper and roast until just cooked through (4-6 minutes). Rest for 5 minutes, then shred.
3 Blanch asparagus until bright green (30 seconds to 1 minute; see cook’s notes p182), refresh and drain, then combine in a large bowl with quinoa, chicken, salad onion, watercress and mint. 4 For tarragon-buttermilk dressing, whisk ingredients in a small bowl to combine and season to taste. Drizzle over salad to taste, toss to combine and serve. ➤
Toast the quinoa before adding the water – it adds a great nutty flavour.
Chicken salad Phendei jug from The Design Hunter. Bowl from Bison Home. Pork larb Bowl (top) and small white dish (with chilli) from Batch Ceramics. Iittala Kartio tumbler from David Jones. Napkin from Città. Side plates from Katherine Mahoney. Rice bowl Grey bowl from Mud Australia. Green dish from Bison Home. All other props stylist’s own. Stockists p182.
G O U R M E T T R AV E L L E R
67
Quick meals
Grilled tuna with blood orange, fennel and black olive dressing SERVES 4 Blood oranges, if they’re around, are beautiful here, but navels or even grapefruit work well.
750 gm piece skinless yellowfin tuna Olive oil, for brushing and drizzling 3 tsp fennel seeds, crushed with a mortar and pestle 3 blood oranges, rind of 1 finely grated, all peeled, thinly sliced and seeds removed ½ head of radicchio, torn 1 fennel bulb, shaved on a mandolin, fronds reserved 1 large golden shallot, thinly sliced on a mandolin 1 cup (firmly packed) basil, plus extra to serve BLACK OLIVE DRESSING
100 ml extra-virgin olive oil 50 gm black olives, such as Gaeta, pitted 2 tbsp red wine vinegar, or to taste 1 small garlic clove, crushed ½ long red chilli, coarsely chopped Finely grated rind of ½ blood orange and juice of 1 2 tsp brown sugar
1 For black olive dressing, pound or process ingredients in a blender until combined and season to taste. 2 Heat a barbecue or char-grill pan to high. Brush tuna with oil, press fennel seeds all over fish and season to taste. Drizzle with oil and grill, turning occasionally, until charred on the outside and rare inside (4-5 minutes). Rest for a minute, then thickly slice. 3 Combine blood orange, radicchio, fennel, shallot and basil in a bowl. Dress with half the black olive dressing, toss to combine and season to taste. Serve salad with tuna and scatter with extra basil and fennel fronds, and drizzle with remaining dressing.
Tuna Dinner plates from Mud Australia. Cutipol fork (top) from Francalia. Linen napkin from Hale Mercantile Co. Ode Ceramics dish (with salt) from The DEA Store. Tacos Plate from Earth & Baker. Green bowl from Batch Ceramics. All other props stylist’s own. Stockists p182.
68
G O U R M E T T R AV E L L E R
Flank steak tacos with corn, avocado and coriander SERVES 4 Add extra char to your tortillas by toasting them over a stove flame for a few seconds each side, then microwave them covered with a tea towel for 10 seconds to keep them nice and soft.
2 tsp cumin seeds 2 tsp coriander seeds 4 garlic cloves, coarsely chopped 100 ml olive oil 800 gm piece of flank steak, at room temperature 200 gm sour cream 1 chipotle chilli in adobo sauce 12 flour tortillas Lime wedges and Tabasco, to serve CORN, RADISH AND CORIANDER SALSA
2 corn cobs, husks and silks removed 1 avocado, diced ½ small Spanish onion, thinly sliced on a mandolin 3 radishes, thinly shaved on a mandolin 1 cup (firmly packed) coriander, plus extra to serve 1 garlic clove, crushed Finely grated rind and juice of 1 lime, or to taste
1 Preheat oven to 220°C. Dry-roast cumin and coriander seeds in a small frying pan over medium-high heat until fragrant (see cook’s notes p182), then crush with a mortar and pestle. Add garlic and 1 tsp sea salt, and pound to a coarse paste, then stir in half the olive oil. Transfer to a bowl, add steak and massage paste into meat. Set aside. 2 For salsa, heat a barbecue or char-grill pan to medium-high and barbecue corn, turning occasionally, until charred and just cooked through (5-8 minutes). Cool briefly, then slice off kernels and place in a bowl with remaining ingredients, toss to combine and season to taste. 3 Brush steak with remaining olive oil, season well and grill, turning once, until browned all over (4-5 minutes each side). Transfer to a roasting tray and roast until cooked to your liking (5-7 minutes for medium-rare). Rest for 10 minutes, then thinly slice. 4 Blend sour cream and chipotle chilli in a small food processor to combine and season to taste. 5 Char tortillas (30 seconds to 1 minute each side), top with sliced steak, chipotle sour cream and corn, radish and coriander salsa, scatter with extra coriander, season to taste, and serve with lime wedges and hot sauce. ➤
Lamb kofte with pea tabbouleh and garlic yoghurt SERVES 4 Lamb, pea and mint are a perfect combination for spring. We’ve given this dish a Lebanese (and gluten-free) twist.
Trofie with potatoes, beans and pistachio pesto SERVES 4-6 You can’t go wrong with pesto pasta. In this take on the Ligurian classic, we’ve swapped pine nuts for pistachios and we think it’s better – don’t tell Nonna.
500 gm dried trofie (see note) 1 large sebago potato (about 275gm), cut into 1cm dice 175 gm butter beans, cut into 3cm pieces 175 gm green beans, cut into 3cm pieces 20 gm butter, diced PISTACHIO PESTO
1 cup (firmly packed) basil, plus extra leaves to serve 185 ml (¾ cup) extra-virgin olive oil 30 gm pistachio nuts, plus extra, crushed, to serve 3 tbsp finely grated pecorino, plus extra to serve 2 small garlic cloves
70
G O U R M E T T R AV E L L E R
1 For pistachio pesto, process ingredients in a food processor until smooth and season to taste. 2 Cook pasta in a large saucepan of boiling salted water until al dente, adding potato in the last 3 minutes and beans in the last minute (8-10 minutes). Drain, reserving 40ml cooking water, and return pasta and water to pan. Add pesto, toss to combine and season to taste. Serve hot topped with crushed pistachio nuts, basil and grated pecorino. Note Trofie is available from select delicatessens. If it’s unavailable, substitute another short dried pasta, such as penne or ziti.
Olive oil, for drizzling 250 gm Greek-style yoghurt 1 small garlic clove, crushed Coriander cress, sumac (optional) and lemon wedges, to serve LAMB KOFTE
500 gm coarsely minced lamb 1 small Spanish onion, finely grated 2 garlic cloves, crushed 2 tsp baharat (see note) ¼ tsp ground chilli ¼ tsp ground allspice PEA TABBOULEH
500 gm frozen peas 2 Lebanese cucumbers, seeded and coarsely chopped 1 cup (loosely packed) mint, finely chopped 1 cup (loosely packed) flat-leaf parsley, finely chopped 3 spring onions, thinly sliced 60 ml (¼ cup) extra-virgin olive oil 1½ tbsp lemon juice 1 small garlic clove, crushed Finely grated rind of 1 lemon Pinch of ground chilli 1 For kofte, heat a barbecue or char-grill pan to medium-high heat. Combine lamb, onion, garlic and spices in a bowl and season
generously to taste. Knead until mixture comes together and is slightly sticky (1-2 minutes). Divide into 12 balls and thread onto metal skewers. 2 For pea tabbouleh, cover peas with boiling water in a bowl, then strain and pulse in a food processor until coarsely crushed. Combine in a bowl with cucumber, herbs and spring onion. Whisk olive oil, lemon juice, garlic, lemon rind and chilli in a bowl to combine and season to taste. Add to salad just before serving, tossing lightly to combine. 3 Drizzle kofte with oil and grill, turning occasionally, until browned and just cooked through (5-6minutes). Rest for 5 minutes. 4 Combine yoghurt and garlic in a small bowl, season to taste and drizzle with olive oil. Scatter kofte scattered with coriander cress and sumac, and serve with pea tabbouleh, yoghurt and lemon wedges. Note Baharat, a Middle Eastern spice mix, is available from Herbie’s Spices (herbies.com.au) or Middle Eastern delicatessens.
Quick meals
Espresso Martini affogato with candied hazelnuts SERVES 4 This is probably one of the quickest desserts to make and a guaranteed crowd-pleaser. If you’re in a rush, drop the candied hazelnuts and add grated coffee beans on top instead.
75 40 60 60 60
gm hazelnuts gm caster sugar ml (¼ cup) vodka ml (¼ cup) coffee liqueur ml (¼ cup) espresso coffee Hazelnut gelato, to serve
1 Preheat oven to 180°C. Spread hazelnuts on an oven tray and roast until fragrant (5-6 minutes), then tip into a tea towel and rub the skins off. 2 Heat a frying pan over medium heat, add hazelnuts, then gradually scatter sugar over, mixing continuously, until sugar caramelises and coats the
nuts (2-3 minutes). Transfer to a tray lined with baking paper to cool, then coarsely chop. 3 Shake vodka, coffee liqueur and espresso in a cocktail shaker with ice to chill. 4 Place scoops of gelato in chilled glasses, pour espresso mixture on top, scatter with candied hazelnuts and serve. ●
Affogato All props stylist’s own. Trofie Phendei bowl (back) from The Design Hunter. Studio W Kyoto bowl (front) from David Jones. Tea towel from Città. Kofte Bowl (with tabbouleh) from Batch Ceramics. All other props stylist’s own. Stockists p182.
G O U R M E T T R AV E L L E R
71
AN AUSTRALIAN GOURMET TRAVELLER PROMOTION
Tours by APT
DISCOVER THE JOURNEY Luxury touring specialist APT announces six tours, designed in tandem with Gourmet Traveller, covering hotspots in South East Asia, the subcontinent and the Med.
MAKE TRACKS Budapest, Hungary. Opposite, clockwise from top left: MS AmaReina on the Danube; Oriental Pearl Tower, Pudong, Shanghai; Gondolas, Venice; the kitchen on board the MS AmaReina.
T
he team at Gourmet Traveller is excited to once again partner with luxury touring specialists APT to design six unforgettable journeys for 2018. Tailor-made to showcase history, culture and, of course, magical culinary moments, the itineraries promise to provide invaluable insight into each destination. With private expertguided tours, specially designed one-off meals and exclusive first-hand experiences, the exceptional insider access makes for unique and inspiring adventures. Members of the Gourmet Traveller team will join the tours, sharing their invaluable knowledge and helping to bring the experiences to life. This exciting partnership brings travel opportunities not to be missed – once-in-a-lifetime journeys.
1
13-day Vietnam and Cambodia Highlights
Siem Reap to Ho Chi Minh City. Departs 2 Feb 2018 From $6,890pp*, twin share. Fly free*
Cruise the mighty Mekong River and discover the rich culture of this wondrous part of South East Asia with host Maggie Scardifield, Gourmet Traveller staff writer.
2
13-day Highlights of the Danube
Budapest to Prague. Departs 11 April 2018 From $7,295pp*, twin share. Companion fly free*
Enjoy cocktail receptions, private recitals and a tour through Budapest's Great Market Hall, joined by Lisa Featherby, Gourmet Traveller senior food editor.
* Terms & Conditions apply.
3
13-day Best of China
Beijing to Shanghai. Departs 24 May 2018 From $8,095pp*, twin share. Companion fly free*
Explore the greatest hits of one of the world's most captivating countries, joined by Pat Nourse, Gourmet Traveller managing editor and chief restaurant critic.
4
12-day The True Heart of Italy
Rome to Venice. Departs 13 July 2018 From $8,895pp*, twin share. $1,000 airfare credit per couple*
Explore Italy’s much-loved regional specialities in private homes and renowned restaurants with host Katie Parla, Gourmet Traveller's Rome correspondent.
5
14-day A Taste of Iberia
London to Lisbon. Departs 24 Sep 2018 From $14,245pp* twin share. Companion fly free*
Follow in the wake of the shippers of old and cruise from London to Lisbon. Gourmet Traveller host to be confirmed.
6
15-day Spirit of India
Kochi to New Delhi. Departs 5 Nov 2018 From $14,995pp* twin share. Fly free*
Experience the vibrant subcontinent, joined by Helen Anderson, Gourmet Traveller travel editor. For more information including hosts and special Gourmet Traveller experiences, visit aptouring.com.au/gourmettraveller, call 1300 335 714 or contact your local travel agent.
The trips combine unique itineraries with the expertise of Gourmet Traveller hosts to create truly memorable travel experiences. — SARAH OAKES, EDITOR, GOURMET TRAVELLER
Chefs’
An army marches on its stomach, sure, but in restaurants staff meals are about more than mere fuel. We visit top Sydney and Melbourne restaurants before service to find out what’s for dinner.
tables
GROSSI FLORENTINO “All the staff from the Grossi sites at the top of the city (Ombra, Grossi Florentino, Grossi Grill and Arlechin) get together at 4.30pm every day. Most days it’s an Italian meal such as chicken on the spit, pasta or risotto, but on Saturdays we’ve devised a roster for the chefs to each have a turn creating a dish from their own culture. We’ve had Korean, Malay and Vietnamese, and a couple of Italian meals, and it’s becoming a bit competitive. Staff can’t work properly if they’re not nourished, but staff meal is also about mental and cultural nourishment. A good team eats together and plays together.” Guy Grossi, executive chef (front right). Grossi Florentino, 80 Bourke St, Melbourne, Vic, (03) 9662 1811, grossiflorentino.com
CUTLER & CO
INTERVIEWS MAGGIE SCARDIFIELD. PHOTOGRAPHY WILL HORNER (MS G’S), JULIAN KINGMA (CUTLER & CO & GROSSI FLORENTINO)
“Cutler & Co and our wine bar Marion sit side by side, but often they can feel really separated, so it’s nice to have the routine where we sit down together each day for a meal. The kitchen teams in both venues work together to put up something delicious, balanced, healthy and light. Often the brigade get together and decide on a theme such as an Indian curry banquet, while other nights it might be grilled meats or a seafood braise with cracked wheat salad. Some nights there can be 10 to 15 of us, other nights there might be 30. It’s important that there’s effort and thought put into it. A big, long table is set and the food is always to share. It helps with staff morale.” Andrew McConnell, executive chef. Cutler & Co, 55-57 Gertrude St, Fitzroy, Vic, (03) 9419 4888, cutlerandco.com.au
76
G O U R M E T T R AV E L L E R
MS G’s “I always say that you’re only as good as your last staff meal. It’s a reflection of you as a chef: your philosophy, your skills (and how proud you are of them), and, most importantly, how much you care about your team. I like my chefs to cook the food of their heritage for staff meal, so we can learn about different cuisines and get to know another side of each other. Some of the best staff meals come out of what’s left over, too – like octopus trimmings being turned into a spicy Korean stew with rice, say, or beautiful bo ssäm with slow-cooked pork-belly trimmings and homemade kimchi (a lot of our chefs are Korean). We always sit downstairs at the round table together and make a proper meal of it.” Dan Hong, executive chef (top right). Ms G’s, 155 Victoria St, Potts Point, NSW, merivale.com
ANCHOVY “We’ve banned phones at the table during staff meal – a chef gets a break at 4pm and the first thing they do is look at Instagram. We also had to ban fried food. There was a time when everything went in the deep-fryer, but now we’re trying to be more health conscious (unless it’s fried chicken). We’ve made a list of countries and we go through one country a week. We’ve done Samoa, when we just ended up eating taro, and everything from New Zealand and Zimbabwe to Brunei. We learnt pretty quickly that you can’t eat and listen to electronic music at the same time, so we tend to play everything from electro-funk to jazz, or occasionally the staff will play the Frozen soundtrack, but that’s usually just to torment me.” Thi Le, chef (centre). Anchovy, 338 Bridge Rd, Richmond, Vic, (03) 9428 3526, anchovy.net.au
SIXPENNY
PHOTOGRAPHY MARCEL AUCAR (ANCHOVY) & WILL HORNER (SIXPENNY)
“We have a rough roster that we try to stick to, but how each chef goes about cooking staff meal is completely up to them. It can be something they’ve learnt from a previous restaurant or a new cuisine that’s recently piqued their interest. We have plenty of books in the kitchen for ideas – Thai Food by David Thompson and The Zuni Cafe Cookbook by Judy Rodgers, for example, often get a workout. Joseph, our apprentice, recently made a broth from leftover duck carcasses and infused it with the mushroom scraps from the night before. Then Brad Guest, our sous-chef, showed him how to make udon noodles, which he learnt from his time at Eleven Bridge. Staff meal is the only time we sit down together as a family, so it’s always a bit of a collaboration. And the same amount of effort has to be put into the meal as a chef’s regular mise-en-place.” Daniel Puskas, chef (second from right). Sixpenny, 83 Percival Rd, Stanmore, NSW, (02) 9572 6666, sixpenny.com.au ●
G O U R M E T T R AV E L L E R
79
In his new book, Igni, chef Aaron Turner chronicles the turbulent demise of the award-winning Loam and his return to cooking at his equally celebrated restaurant in Geelong. Photography JULIAN KINGMA
t all started with a restaurant called Loam, down the end of a dirt road, nestled on an olive grove overlooking the bay. It was simple: 30 or so seats, a small team, and a network of farmers to work with. We were happy, and if only 10 people came a day, that was 10 people we could share our story with. There wasn’t a menu, just a list of ingredients – 50 or so seasonal fruits, vegetables, plants, fish and meats from small suppliers, gardeners, growers and what we could find in the wild. Most days would start at about 6am when, with blurry eyes, I would set off to pick various plants along the train tracks. Or I would set the alarm for low tide to gather fresh sea lettuce and seawater for making cheese or brining, my head swimming with ideas of new dishes and flavours for the day’s menu. The day would wind up somewhere between 1am and 2am. No one complained; we just got on with it. Before the reviews, before the media storm, we had all the time in the world – we just didn’t know it yet. Six months in and we had our first review, in The Age. I remember the service being horrible – we were so behind I was butchering raw suckling pig to roast to order as we just hadn’t had time to break it down that morning. We were flying blind, as we often did then, not knowing what was needed. Despite all that the 82
G O U R M E T T R AV E L L E R
piece was titled “When the food speaks for itself”. We got 16/20 and were labelled “a confident newcomer”. I was over the moon. The day after that, the phone wouldn’t stop ringing. By the end of the day we were booked solid. Loam would go on to win numerous state and national awards including Gourmet Traveller’s Regional Restaurant of the Year in 2012. Bookings intensified and our dining room was full every service. The pressure was on and all we had to cook with was a broken oven, a six-top stove with four working burners, two chefs, an 18-hour day, and the constant drive to be better. Something was always going to break. IT HITS
Today is the day I get to find out my marriage is over. I discover it in a message, a goddamn text message clearly not intended for me. What could be worse, you ask? Christ – I can’t even scribble this down I’m shaking so badly – it’s with a staff member, and that staff member is the only other chef I have. I don’t believe it, but there it is right in front of me. I’m blindsided. Angry, hurt and betrayed. The rug’s been pulled out from under me along with my restaurant, my career, my home, my partner, my staff. In one fucking text message my whole life has imploded. I feel like I’ve just had my throat cut, been left to bleed out on the floor and, as my breath
weakens, they’re plotting where to hide my body. This can’t be happening. Can it? Loam was closed for eight weeks – the period it took for me to find my feet and gather enough strength to open the doors and see out the last five months we had on the lease. These were the months it would take to wind down the restaurant and execute a financial exit plan; they left me emotionally and physically exhausted. During these months of working in an environment that had caused me so much pain I simply fell out of love with cooking. In fact, I began to loathe it. All the things that had given me so much joy and pleasure for years were now things I wanted so badly to remove from my life. In my eyes, cooking was the reason all this was happening. I had just lost my best friend and wife, the business would soon be closed and I would be out of a job. I would have to sell my home. In one fell swoop I had lost it all – cooking had given me everything, and just as quickly taken it all away. NASHVILLE
I went to Nashville. No one I met during my time there was really from Nashville. Instead it was a place people had just escaped to, gathered together and created something new. Some were in need of respite, others running from past lives, some still chasing youthful dreams – singers, songwriters, artists, people all in various states of repair or disrepair. It’s exactly where I needed to be after Loam, foreign and alone, far away from cooking and anything familiar. The perfect place to lose myself, to not be me for a little while and to forget the shitstorm my life had turned into. A friend had offered me a couch to sleep on – that’s how I ended up here. I’d gone from owning a successful restaurant and a house on the beach to sleeping on an undersized two-seat couch with a T-shirt for a pillow, everything I owned packed into a travel pack, a life condensed. I covered most of Nashville on foot, walking and thinking, crossing back and forth over the Cumberland River in the oppressive heat until it was finally time for happy hour at Puckett’s, where I would drink pints of beer for $2 and eat barbecue chicken wings for less than
20 cents each until I passed out, then wake up and do it all again. I had nowhere to be, no obligations, nothing. It was such an odd feeling compared to the non-stop work and 18-hour days of the past eight years. I couldn’t remember ever being that idle, being alone with no responsibility and no accountability. It didn’t really suit me. I needed something to focus on, something to obsess over, something to wake me up. It didn’t take me long to make plans to eat at every hot chicken restaurant in Nashville. Shockingly, I talked to friends who had lived there for years yet had never had it. It made me wonder if I should know them at all. I started to work to fund my chicken habit. It was a small kitchen with a small crew who were not at all interested in the industry or even doing a good job. The menu was terrible, the staff questionable, the drinks good, the place failing. Nothing about the job made me want to cook but it was money, and something I could do, for now – something to replace the fatigue of living in purgatory and existing to exist. COMING HOME
I can’t believe I’m about to board this plane. About to say goodbye to the few thrift-shop belongings I’ve accumulated this year and placed as talismans in my light-filled apartment that looks out over downtown, from where the shouts of drunks have kept me company through the night. I’ve grown to like Nashville and the way nothing seems real here – the façade the city throws up seems to help bury the everyday reality of life. Nashville feels like home to me because I don’t feel real myself, so why am I about to board this plane? Whatever the reason, I’ve decided to go back. I know I have unfinished business at home, and I want my career back. I thought I could work for someone else, cooking food I don’t care about for people who don’t care either, but it turns out I was wrong.
different lives, and I’m wondering if my love of cooking will return, because right now, sitting in a half-built restaurant, I don’t feel like it will. I still wonder how I ended up here, with a restaurant in a laneway in the centre of Geelong. I wonder if I’ve made the right decision. “Well, at least it was a decision,” I catch myself saying under my breath. Decisions are something I’ve avoided making with any consistency for the last two years.. It’s strangely quiet until a couple pop their heads through the open door and ask if this is the new restaurant by Aaron Turner. “We’ve been walking the streets trying to find it,” they tell me. I reply: “It is, but he’s not here right now.” They ask to make a booking so they won’t miss out like they did the three times they tried to book at Loam. I take down their details, smile politely and send them happily on their way. Why did I choose to cook over fire and only fire? At least I can blame that if this doesn’t work. If I can’t get it right, I can take solace in the fact I didn’t know how to use the fire – will that be enough? I’ve never worked with direct flame
before, not like this, not as the only source of cooking in a commercial kitchen, using it to service a dining room full of guests. It’s the centrepiece of the kitchen, the life of it all. It has changed the way I interact with cooking. Every day is different because the fire behaves according to its own will. It has a life of its own, a certain energy that demands constant attention. The trade-off is the calmness at the centre of it, and the realisation that we are never really in control. And it’s then, in a bizarre moment of... let’s call it clarity, it hits me: the fire behaves the way I’ve always cooked, the way I see produce – always different and always changing with the days, and the months, and the weather. The perfect dish week in, week out is so unappealing to me. I don’t chase any regimented consistency; I try to avoid it at all costs, choosing instead to let the produce guide me. It’s a kind of freedom most kitchens or cooks don’t have. Now the fire is offering me that freedom – the freedom to know that it’s different every day, and, therefore, so the food should be. That realisation aside, I still have no idea what dishes we’ll open with. ➤
Aaron Turner at the Hot Chicken Project in Geelong.
BEGINNING AGAIN
I’m sitting on a box, alone in the dining room that in a few weeks will come alive, that will live and breathe for the first time as Igni, quietly reflecting on the last few years. I feel like I’ve lived a hundred G O U R M E T T R AV E L L E R
83
THE OPENING
I’m standing at the pass in my shiny new kitchen, staring at the white plates I hate. Every table is set with them and they stare up at me, mocking me. I hate these plates – they’re so generic, so impersonal, cast within an inch of their lives. The ones we wanted were beautiful – Australian-made, hand-dyed – but we couldn’t afford them because we ran out of money, spent it all on silicone, hooks, curtain rods, storage shelves, and a thousand other things no one will ever see. So here we are with $2 white plates. It’s eerie, waiting for the first guests to walk through the door. Soon they’ll sit and judge every aspect of our hard work over the last year. They’ll scan the finish of the floor, question the choice of colour, discuss the decision-making behind our serviceware, uniforms, lights. Then they’ll move on to the food. I feel nauseous, almost transparent. I crack my knuckles and press my fists into my lower back, arching to relieve the stiffness. I hear the kitchen behind me, fresh with excitement and courage – the young chefs we can’t afford are eager and ready to go. I can’t share their innocent excitement this time around. I hang my head, the weight of expectation growing, my chest tightening, my breathing heavy. Are we ready? By 7.35pm the dining room is filling with smoke. Yup, filling with smoke from the fire we are cooking on. It’s the specialised extraction system we paid a fortune for – it doesn’t seem to be extracting anything. It worked fine all week, but I shouldn’t be surprised that on opening night it breaks. Of course it would. We push on. The guests don’t seem to mind, the brave-faced front-ofhouse team have reassured them that it’s all part of the show; however, I can see that they are deeply concerned that we are about to catch fire. It’s 1am. Everyone’s gone home and I’m alone in the kitchen making peace with the first night of service. I must have wiped the same three benches 25 times thinking about those fucking white plates. After 17 hours and 240 courses, they’re the only solid thing I can wrap my mind around. I need to sleep. I haven’t really slept at all recently, a million different thoughts racing through my mind. 84
G O U R M E T T R AV E L L E R
Pineapple cooked overnight in coals. Left: broccoli heart with macadamia nuts and cabbage oil.
Luke Burgess and Deb Blank are eating tonight. Luke and I came up together in the cooking world, connected in the way only cooks can, for the love of what we do, an understanding, a bond that’s uniquely shared between cooks. Deb, his partner, is also a chef. They’ve flown in from Sydney to cook a special lunch. We arranged the date months earlier, when we were on track to have been open for months by this time. JUST COOK
I find myself apologising to them between courses; I’m nervous and feel bad they’re experiencing the restaurant this way, unprepared and bumbling like an awkward teenager. I know Luke’s palate and he’ll see the mistakes. It’s a conversation over the squab, a leg aged on the carcass for 14 days, started cold on the grill and roasted far away from direct flame. The texture sparks Luke’s curiosity; it’s chewy in a gelatinous way, much like the knuckle of a pig trotter. Luke asks if I’d confited them before they hit the grill. I hadn’t. It never even occurred to me; I just left them on the grill to cook slowly, it just made sense. And it’s then, a light-bulb fuck-me moment – just cook. Stop thinking and just cook. Luke’s Sunday lunch wasn’t planned to happen in our first week, but here he is, and here we are about to prep a new menu, with a new chef in a new kitchen, four days after we opened. It’s madness. Luke cooks a lot like me – needing to see, touch, taste and smell the ingredients before knowing what to do with them. Among the madness of the first week
I’ve ordered a couple of extra squabs and have some Great Ocean ducks ageing in the cool room and a few kilos of King George whiting hours out of the bay. I’ve organised farmer Bruce Robinson to pick the best of the morning’s herbs and leaves. He has promised me white mulberries, so long as he remembers to set his alarm to beat the birds. Luke is bringing with him sake lees that a mutual friend has brought back from Japan. There’s talk of making an ice-cream with them but everything else we’ll work out this morning, creating a menu based on what we have right here in front of us, a reaction to the day and produce, a menu made in a moment and then gone. This is real cooking. To me there’s no other way – it’s the only way I know how, now that I’ve finally remembered. Today it feels like all the pressure is off me and I can enjoy just being here in the kitchen. Creating the menu first thing in the morning and cooking for the love of it, building a fire, telling old stories – the kitchen has become like a campfire, comforting. We share a Sunday night family meal with the staff, and for the first time I convince myself to relax and enjoy the company I’m in. For the first time I can sit in relative calmness, in a space that’s now alive and breathing, and beginning ever so slowly to find its own identity. ● This is an edited extract from Igni by Aaron Turner (published by Hardie Grant Books, hbk, $60), available in stores from 1 October.
LUCKY BREAK David Chang’s cult food magazine, Lucky Peach, burned bright. AMELIA LESTER documents its meteoric rise and fall.
PHOTOGRAPHY ANDREW FINLAYSON. PORTRAIT NEIL WILDER/CORBIS VIA GETTY IMAGES
I
n the beginning, his goal was to open a noodle bar. So when David Chang signed the lease on a funny little storefront at First Avenue and 10th Street in Manhattan in early 2004, he couldn’t have known that pork buns would change his life. Or that two years on, having popularised a whole new culinary genre – something akin to Korean-American stoner food – he would receive two stars from The New York Times for his second restaurant, Momofuku Ssäm Bar, and then, two years after that, stoner food be damned, his third restaurant, Momofuku Ko, would win two Michelin stars. And what did the patron saint of millennials, the Jimi Hendrix of the chef-as-rock star generation, do next? He started a magazine, of course. The year was 2011; the name was Lucky Peach, the translation of Momofuku; and the publisher was McSweeney’s, an artsy, intellectual house in San Francisco. Never mind that Gourmet, the beloved Condé Nast magazine run by Ruth Reichl, had recently folded. That publishers everywhere faced a climate of declining ad revenue and disappearing pages, and, with the rise of social media, corporate pressure to pivot from publishing to event planning. Amid the digital insecurities of the times, Lucky Peach didn’t even come with a companion app. “If magazines are to survive,” intoned the legendary media critic David Carr that year in The New York Times, “they’ll have to become something special.” Just as Chang’s Noodle Bar had done everything differently and succeeded anyway (queues, stools, cash only), his quarterly delivered “special” in spades. Its début, which sold out in its first print run of 40,000, was hailed by Carr as “a glorious, improbable artifact”, and over the following six years, and through 22 more issues, Lucky Peach would change the way we think about food, and how to write about it, forever.
“I
t’s one of those things you do when you’re young and you look back and you can’t believe you were so reckless and confident about yourself.” Chris Ying, who was editor-in-chief of Lucky Peach from its first
David Chang
issue, is speaking on the phone from San Francisco about the earliest days of the magazine he co-founded with Chang and editorial director Peter Meehan. Ying is still only 35, but is reflective about his youth in that way people who are very successful in their twenties can be. Lucky Peach was different, he thinks, because it covered food in a less insular way than mainstream publications. “It was a convergence of people with nothing to do with the food world, but who were very well versed in art and literature” – the McSweeney’s crowd – “with people super-deep in the industry.” That would be Chang and his long-time collaborator,
But they did, and the “deep dives”, as Ying lovingly refers to the long-form pieces, were even, at times, shocking and ingenious. Like “America, Your Food is So Gay” by John Birdsall, from the 2013 Gender Issue (all of the issues were themed), a personal essay that traced the evolution of the American palate from hamburgers and scrapple in the ’50s to ahi tuna, caviar and “the embrace of pleasure” in the ’80s. Or “Fixed Menu”, a 2014 report by Kevin Pang on meals served at Indiana’s Westville Correctional Facility, which began with Pang’s memorable epiphany that he is free because he can eat whatever he wants, and vice versa.
“My most vivid memory of the first issue was holding it and thinking, oh shit, we forgot to sell ads. The fact we have to do this again in three months is terrifying.’” Meehan, who at the time had not only worked on major cookbooks, but had been the “$25 and Under” columnist for The New York Times. For readers, the foray into new territory made for an occasionally bumpy ride. Nine thousand words from Meehan and Chang in the first issue, for instance, about what they ate on a recent trip to Japan. (“A rambling eat-a-logue,” Carr called it.) Meehan, who spoke to me on the phone from New York, is open about the mistakes made early on: “My most vivid memory of the first issue was holding it in my hands and thinking, oh, shit, we forgot to sell ads. The fact that we have to do this again in three months is terrifying to me.’”
Aside from these gems, one way to think about Lucky Peach’s legacy is that it tore down the barrier between the creator and the consumer – which is precisely what Chang did with his open-kitchen restaurants. Chefs themselves often wrote in the magazine. Mario Batali took to the keyboard for the third issue about the formative influence of the Food Network on his cooking, and his enduring love for “guys like Emeril”, no last name needed. In the same issue, which had the theme of Cooks and Chefs, Anthony Bourdain argued for food as a “highway to libertine behaviours” in a vividly illustrated essay with the near self-parodic title of “Eat, Drink, Fuck, Die”. ➤
The rise and fall of Lucky Peach BY SAMANTHA TEAGUE
But although Chang, the magazine’s public face, was one of the most famous chefs in the world, Lucky Peach didn’t only showcase big names. Ying brought a penchant for oral histories from McSweeney’s – the Pho issue profiled pho shop owners; the second Cooks and Chefs issue included a profile of a short-order breakfast cook. Elevating people small-town features such as these to “chefs with their own personalities”, and allowing them to tell their own stories, is something Ying seems proud of. “Not thinking of all ethnic food as the same is a notion relatively better known in Australia,” says Ying, who’s been here seven times in the past eight years. “But knowing the difference between Cantonese and Sichuan, or what miso is and how it’s made is pretty new for Americans.” So that was the writing. But as a food editor at another publication around the same time, I’ll confess the deep dives weren’t what had me tearing off the plastic whenever the new issue arrived on my desk. As Helen Rosner argued convincingly on website Eater earlier this year, the real influence of Lucky Peach might be in how it looked. “Crushingly boring” was how Rosner described the aesthetic of food magazines before Lucky Peach. The cover of the first issue, which featured two raw chickens, all flesh and bones, being lowered into a pot, was “a blaring klaxon that Lucky Peach didn’t really care about
2012
2011 Lucky Peach publishes its inaugural issue, the Ramen Issue, with a pair of raw chickens on the cover. Ying, Meehan and Chang realise after publication that they’d forgotten to sell or include any ads.
The first of three Cooks and Chefs themed issues is released, containing Anthony Bourdain’s profane look at the history of food in film, “Eat, Drink, Fuck, Die”. It’s shared widely on social media and remains one of Lucky Peach’s most popular pieces.
Groening’s earliest work. McMullen was influenced by other insouciant magazines that had come out of nowhere to define the zeitgeist, like Spy had done with ’80s New York, as well as comic illustrators such as Daniel Clowes, who had nothing to do with food, but cornered the market on witty treatments of suburban alienation. Anime, Japanese woodblock, even “junior high desk scratches”, as Rosner puts it, were all thrown into the pot and
Lucky Peach was there to draw back the curtain, refusing Vaseline and airbrushing. whatever it was you’d been expecting to see”. In a post-GFC era that had been defined by austerity, abundance became the thing. Inside, the magazine’s first art director, Brian McMullen, collaborated with Walter Green to establish what became the signature Lucky Peach look. Meehan had made clear his admiration for avant-garde art journals like WET: The Magazine of Gourmet Bathing, a title from the late ’70s and early ’80s that included contributions from Laurie Anderson as well as some of Matt 88
G O U R M E T T R AV E L L E R
the result was rich and earthy. Consumers were growing more sophisticated about food, and restaurants more democratic. Lucky Peach was there to draw back the curtain, refusing Vaseline and airbrushing. Often, as with a recipe feature on brains or of Fuschia Dunlop turning one chicken into nine dishes, the food even looked ugly. At its height, Lucky Peach enjoyed a circulation of 100,000, which is both a lot, given its indie set-up, and a little, considering that Bon Appétit, one of America’s biggest food magazines,
2013 The Gender issue is printed with two covers. One is “For Women!”, featuring spliced open fruit – figs, a melon, a papaya – while the flip side is male-focused and phallic with sausages, gourds and icy poles.
reaches almost a million and a half readers. Yet Bon Appétit, and with it the rest of the established food press, owes a great deal to the Lucky Peach look: stencils, graffiti and handwriting; an embrace of the “before” shot; and a generally more casual approach to the presentation of home cooking. Take a look at the cheeky Gender issue of Lucky Peach, which features flip covers. One is all lurid bisected fruits; the other high-sheen, long-necked gourds, eggplants and icy poles. These covers are fluent in emoji, unafraid of colour, dominated not by an oiled-up roast chicken or some other highly styled dish, but instead scattered with the detritus of a messy sous-chef.
T
he announcement came in March, and was typically madcap. “I think it’s important for you to know that Lucky Peach loves you and REALLY values the time you’ve spent together.” That was Peter Meehan in a March 15 blog post on the magazine’s website. After a 200-page retrospective later in the year, Meehan wrote, the team would be shutting up shop. The news was a shock. Subscriptions were up 20 per cent in 2016; a fourth cookbook, part of a deal
2017 The Suburbs issue is published in May, hitting the stands just after Lucky Peach’s final book, All About Eggs. Right: the cover of the final issue last month.
2015
2014
“AMERICA, YOUR FOOD IS SO GAY” ILLUSTRATION NIV BAVARSKY
“America, Your Food is So Gay”, a piece by John Birdsall published in the previous year’s Gender issue, wins a James Beard Foundation Journalism Award. The piece follows three gay men – including James Beard – and their indelible impact on America’s food culture.
Lucky Peach begins its foray into the world of cookbooks with the publication of 101 Easy Asian Recipes. The book, which covers home-cooking in the magazine’s trademark style, was shot predominantly in Peter Meehan’s apartment, thanks to Lucky Peach’s lack of a test kitchen.
that had attracted a seven-figure advance, was due out the next month. When I asked him the obvious question – why stop now? – you could practically see Meehan shrug dejectedly over the phone: “Dave decided to end the business,” he said. “The structure of the company was such that he could unilaterally decide.” That Meehan’s announcement was framed as a speech delivered by parents announcing their divorce to their children was fitting. The magazine had always provoked strong, emotional reactions, and, as with any family, those emotions weren’t always positive. “You cannot talk about Lucky Peach without talking about the rise of bro culture in the food world,” says Kitty Greenwald, a New York-based food writer and recipe developer. Greenwald is, full disclosure, my sister-in-law. But she was the only person in the industry I could find who was willing to speak on the record about the magazine’s role in deifying male chefs. She mentions an infamous David Chang sound-bite from 2009 when he complained that “fuckin’ every restaurant in San Francisco is just serving figs on a plate”. (Chang, who did not respond to a request for an interview for this feature, has said that “Fig-gate” was blown out of
2016 The magazine has its biggest year yet. On top of the four quarterly issues, it releases two cookbooks (The Wurst of Lucky Peach and Power Vegetables) and wins three James Beard Awards, including best Food Blog and Publication of the Year.
proportion.) That was a couple of years before Lucky Peach even began, but it’s also consistent with the magazine’s sensibility. Chang seemed to be echoing a criticism of Bay Area icon Alice Waters by Anthony Bourdain, who had said that Waters was overly precious about organic food, as well as the purity of its preparation. Two camps were emerging, and they happened to be divided by gender. There were figs on a plate, or there was Wylie Dufresne in Lucky Peach suggesting you add non-fat milk powder and kombu to a burger patty. In a round-up of responses to the magazine’s closure on Eater, only one of the 17 food-world personalities broached the issue of sexism and Lucky Peach. “It was the voice of a new foodie generation, a gonzo-gone-gonzo voice… of a presumably male generation,” said writer Charlotte Druckman. “That, of course, is another way of saying that there was some deeply BRO-DUDE shit – a swinging-dick of a publication.” A less-than-convinced comment on The New York Times article about the magazine’s demise sums up the case for the prosecution: “All the articles [were] about repetitive and boring topics (sriratcha [sic] sauce, umami, kewpie [sic] mayo, ramen).”
Meehan disputes this position, saying “if anything, we tried to make the conversation around food more inclusive and more expansive.” (He also admits to a conscious course correction in later years to include more women and people of colour in the contributor line-up.) After the macho excess of the past few years, perhaps the closure of Lucky Peach was simply the end point of a pendulum swing in the food world. Ying, who is now a restaurant reviewer at the San Francisco Chronicle, might even agree. I ask him towards the end of our conversation how Lucky Peach changed over time. He says at first he was excited to play around with recipe formats. “ We ran a lot of recipes that were not very home-cook-friendly to make a point, or to show something historic, or to celebrate an idea, but I did less of that over time.” What happened? Time, it turns out. “I started in my late twenties, and then I was in my early thirties, putting food on the table, and suddenly useful and practical recipes had so much more value for me.” He pauses. “I guess I just realised that it’s a real service to people to help them make dinner.” Amelia Lester was the editor of The New Yorker’s food issue from 2013-2015. ● G O U R M E T T R AV E L L E R
89
MARCO
INTERVIEW PAT NOURSE. PHOTOGRAPHY PER-ANDERS JORGENSEN
MARCO ON
Reading White Heat with Marco Pierre White: how does the epoch-defining cookbook of the ’80s stand up 30 years later? We sat down with its chef-author to find out.
T
he first thing I see when I look at White Heat now is my son. When I look at the front cover, or the picture of me with the fag in the mouth, I see my son Luciano. He’s now working in the kitchen with the El Bulli boys in Barcelona after finishing a year in London with Pierre Koffmann, my old boss. The other thing I see in a lot of these pictures is myself saying “taste, taste, taste, taste”. Teach them your palate, not theirs. White Heat did 15,000 copies. But a lot of bookshops wouldn’t stock it because they didn’t think it would work. They thought it was a coffee-table book for a small section of the market. What was interesting was that, within 10 days of it being launched, it sold out. Every single year since 1990, it’s been reprinted. It’s never been on the discount shelf. We were shooting this in what would’ve been called the “yuppie” time: the bull market and Thatcher’s England. We were a little hole in the wall in the middle of nowhere – you had to go over bridges – and we had the most glamorous crowd in all of England. We had royals from all over Europe, from further afield, from Jordan, the Sultan of Brunei – all of them. It was an extraordinary time, and it all happened very quickly. The pictures for the book were taken in 1987 when I was at Harveys in London. I worked seven days a week back then, and it’s a bit of a blur, but this book
has fixed some of those moments in time. Looking at some of these pictures of us in service, I can still feel it, see it moving. Bob Carlos Clarke, the photographer, would come for service in the evenings for the most part. He wasn’t that excited about photographing the mise-en-place. Bob took his inspiration from Don McCullin’s pictures of Vietnam, and decided to shoot it on 35mm film to give it that grainy texture. He looked at the kitchen like it was a war zone. He couldn’t believe the military precision during service. But then all the madness as well. That combination of being disciplined, but also the massive pressure. He was clever, was Bob.
In a strange sort of way, that was still a very old-fashioned kitchen. Kitchens today are quite sophisticated. They’ve got extractor fans, they’ve got air-conditioning, they’ve got all this smart machinery. This room is tiny. A hole in the wall. And when you’ve got a tiny kitchen like that, the energy is like nothing else. I ended up with 30 in an enormous kitchen at one stage later on, and in that situation you just put the orders through and everything comes together slowly. Or at least it feels like it. If you imagine flying a plane and you’re 2,000 feet up, you still feel like you’re going slowly, but then when you’re 10 feet off the ground it speeds up – you have that same feeling of speed and concentration in a small kitchen. We used to call the way we worked the Wolf Pack. A table of four would order and we’d all do the starter together – four of us would work on a plate each. It was the only way you could deliver very high-quality food with very few hands, and deliver it fast. If you were in a bigger kitchen, you might have three on the fish, three on the meat, with everyone working separately. We didn’t have fish, meat, entrée, garde manger and so on; it’s just bang, bang, bang. The great thing about that is that the cooks learn a lot very quickly. They have to cook everything. When I see the picture of me prepping the scallops, I see the thickness of my arms and think, wow – it highlights just ➤ G O U R M E T T R AV E L L E R
91
Marco Pierre White and Harveys as photographed by Bob Carlos Clarke (food photography by Michael Boys) in White Heat 25 by Marco Pierre White (Mitchell Beazley, hbk, $35).
92
G O U R M E T T R AV E L L E R
made those sacrifices, I’d not be the man I am today. Winning those stars is the most exciting game on earth. But retaining them is the most boring job in the world. I stopped enjoying it. When you’ve got three stars, you can’t be creative. You’re a slave to people’s demands and expectations and to your specialities.
I
woke up one day and realised I wasn’t happy. I gave myself three options. Option one: continue to do your six days a week, 100 hours a week. You don’t see your children but you have this amazing status. Option two: live a lie, pretend you cook when you don’t cook, question your integrity and everything you stood for. Continue to charge high prices, even when you’re not in the kitchen. Option three: pluck up the courage, hang up your apron and walk away, and accept tomorrow you’ll be unemployed and without status. Pretty interesting options, aren’t they? And on Monday morning, the 23rd of December 1999, I told Michelin I was handing back my stars. And I think that’s why the industry respects me today. Because I didn’t live a lie. You can stray from the stove, but I stayed close to the flame. You’ve seen the picture in White Heat of the chef with the back cut out of his jacket after he complained it was too hot
in the kitchen? His name is Jason Everett. He still works with me today. He doesn’t complain about the heat any more. I think some good came out of this book. It inspired a lot of young people to come into the industry, many of them from outside the blue-collar world. I did my bit. The shot with me holding the cleaver on the cover of the most recent edition of White Heat was taken in Bob’s studio, but the famous one of me with the fag was taken after service at the restaurant. It was the day after I’d won two Michelin stars. Some people might disagree with me, but I think that is one of the most iconic shots ever taken of a chef. It’s dirty, it’s sweaty, my jacket was drenched, every inch of it soaked. That image says: I am giving you everything I have to give. Marco Pierre White hosts Hell’s Kitchen Australia on Channel Seven. ●
PHOTOGRAPHY SCOTT HAWKINS (BOOK)
how physically demanding the job was. I flick through it and it’s so tactile and so beautiful, the way Bob caught the beauty of pasta or bread. When you’re working with it every day, you don’t always see it for yourself. The food photography looks out of date now, but if you took the woodcock with red wine sauce and changed the crockery, you’d still chop it up the same way. A lot of my philosophies and beliefs are exactly the same as they were years ago. I think the more you do to food the more you take away from it. And I’m a classicist. I’m not interested in peculiar flavours and strange combinations. They don’t do it for me. I like my escalope of salmon with sorrel sauce. I like my beef with ceps. I like my stuffed pig’s trotter with sweetbreads and morels. I like my chicken with vin jaune and mushrooms. I like basil and tomatoes, I like salt and vinegar. It works. As far as I’m concerned, you can’t be a top chef and have a life. It’s impossible. If you’re at the highest level, like I was, I’d be at work at seven o’clock in the morning when my sons were still sleeping, and I’d get home after 12 and they were in bed. I’d be at work 20 hours some days. I believe that if you’ve got two or three stars, you have to be behind your stove. Is it worth it? Yes. Of course it is. But there’s always a price. Had I not
2018 AUSTRALIAN RESTAURANT
GUIDE
Small with big ambition (or just plain big), closer to home, more outwardlooking, licked by flame or inflected with sustainable sensibility. Dining in Australia in 2017 is hard to pin down, but in its breadth, in its dedication to pleasure, and in its boldness, it’s better than ever. Presenting the Gourmet Traveller Restaurant Awards. Forks at the ready. Words MAX ALLEN, JOOST BAKKER, MICHAEL HARDEN, GARETH MEYER, PAT NOURSE, MAGGIE SCARDIFIELD, DAVID SLY & SAMANTHA TEAGUE
PHOTOGRAPHY ANDRE CASTELLUCCI
Top of the class
Restaurant awards
RESTAURANT OF THE YEAR
Orana
A
Orana's dining room and its Kangaroo Island queen scallops with roasted kelp and seablite (left).
Adelaide
question has gnawed at Jock Zonfrillo for the past decade: what is Australian cuisine? Trying to answer it, the Scottish-born chef, who has called Australia home since 2000, foraged for inspiration where too few chefs had looked. He visited scores of Aboriginal communities, from the Kimberley in Western Australia to Nauiyu at Daly River in the Northern Territory, to ask elders about harvesting, cooking techniques and eating traditions, and to taste. Zonfrillo decided a cuisine that spoke of Australia today must not only celebrate native ingredients and Indigenous peoples’ mastery of them, but include introduced foods, such as lamb and beef, that also shape the Australian appetite. Research and relearning were essential to unpicking the question, but putting the pieces together and coming up with an answer took time, too. Zonfrillo’s intimate Adelaide restaurant, Orana, opened in 2013, and in the years since, the answer has emerged most clearly in dishes where native ingredients find a happy meeting place with familiar fare: fermented Davidson’s plum on Spencer Gulf prawn; lemon ironbark, Geraldton wax, native honey and green ants with Coorong mullet. It’s Australian food as we’ve never eaten before – confident, assured and original. It moves a bold step beyond Zonfrillo’s training at The Restaurant Marco Pierre White in London, his time at Forty One in Sydney, and at Penfolds Magill Estate Restaurant in Adelaide, where the genesis of his ideas for a new Australian cuisine began to take shape. When Penfolds baulked at the radical departure he had planned for Magill, Zonfrillo understood that his leap forward had to happen in his own restaurant. Fortunately for Adelaide, he remained in the city, building Orana with staff, friends, and ➤
96
G O U R M E T T R AV E L L E R
$1.25 million South Australian government grant) to build a native-food database, run flavour trials, and assess the viability of commercial production. The foundation aims to bring recognition to traditional food cultures, and ensure that Indigenous communities are benefiting from any future commercial enterprises. Professor Andrew Lowe, Director of Food Innovation at the University of Adelaide, will drive the research. He believes it’s a crucial extension of what is presented at Orana. “It’s a special, emotional experience to get a sense of Australia by eating,” he says. “Orana is blazing a trail that can push these native ingredients into the mainstream.” Zonfrillo concurs. “The restaurant is just a billboard that promotes this food,” he says. “Developing the foundation is the crucial next step in capturing and preserving Indigenous food knowledge and to sharing that with everyone. I aim to give back more than I take.” Orana, Upstairs, 285 Rundle St, Adelaide, SA, (08) 8232 3444
Above, from left: Jock Zonfrillo; set buffalo milk with strawberry and eucalyptus.
PHOTOGRAPHY ANDRE CASTELLUCCI (JOCK ZONFRILLO & ORANA) & ANDREW FINLAYSON (MAT LINDSAY)
without outside financial backing. It was a high-stakes gamble, but his belief in the project was unwavering. “I knew what I wanted, but it had to be absolutely tied to a belief system, and it wouldn’t work if it was compromised,” says Zonfrillo. “It was all about timing to push this idea through, and I decided to take the leap.” After four years, there’s relaxation on the plate, but the sense of adventure and excitement is more powerful than ever. Wow-factor comes via superb balance and harmony, with ingredients that dazzle in the mouth – the heat of Dorrigo pepper, the sensations of fermented pandanus, gubinge (aka Kakadu plum) and the spearmint tinge of ox-eye dandelion leaf. These are not mere garnishes; they’re intrinsic to each dish. There’s no hint of pretentiousness in Orana’s busy dégustation of about 18 dishes. Each is delicious and thrilling: sea urchin with a kangaroo ferment; pipis in a rich broth of their own juices with fermented beach succulents; flathead cooked in a firepit with eucalyptus; kohlrabi piqued with Dorrigo pepper, quandong and lemon myrtle. For dessert, a signature that has been on Orana’s menu since day one: set buffalo milk in a pool of wild strawberry juice and eucalyptus oil. Seeking inspiration and knowledge through interacting with Aboriginal communities is central to Zonfrillo’s mission, but he’s determined to make it a two-way street. His Orana Foundation is conducting research with the University of Adelaide (thanks to a
Restaurant awards
CHEF OF THE YEAR
Mat Lindsay Ester, Sydney
M
at Lindsay will not particularly enjoy winning this award. At least not the part where he has to get up and accept it and talk to people. Ester, the restaurant he opened in Sydney in 2013, is his preferred stage, and it’s here that he has won a loyal following of regulars. The cooking at Ester could be said to reflect Lindsay’s personal humility in its more restrained moments (oysters warmed in the wood-fired oven just long enough to pop their tops, then dressed with horseradish; a dessert of young-coconut sorbet and sake that’s almost haiku-like in its concision), but it also shows exuberance and generosity, whether it’s in the smoked oil and egg butter that distinguish his beef tartare or the lush texture of the signature blood sausage “sanga”.
Lindsay works with a wood-fired oven and came to Ester, the first restaurant where the kitchen was his own, after many years working at Billy Kwong, yet while these influences are essential parts of his food, his style is all his own. At the end of this year he and his partners will open a spin-off eatery on Commonwealth Street in Surry Hills. The menu for the new restaurant, like the name, is still a work in progress, but you can rest assured that Lindsay’s laconic charm will be its defining quality. Here is a chef very much content to let his work do the talking. Little wonder that he is considered such an inspiration by his fellow cooks, whose votes drive this award. And little wonder Ester plays to a packed house, day in, day out. Ester, 46-52 Meagher St, Chippendale, NSW, (02) 8068 8279 ➤
Restaurant awards
REGIONAL RESTAURANT OF THE YEAR
Igni
Geelong
98
G O U R M E T T R AV E L L E R
I
f you want to know Igni’s backstory, about how a restaurant in the backblocks of Geelong became one of the most exciting places to dine in Australia, read Aaron Turner’s recently published book. His account (see page 80) doesn't shy from grisly details, personal or professional. It reveals, as he says, “the shit that glossy television shows don’t show you”. It also speaks to the idea of suffering for your art. Because what Turner does is art. And while his mind might go to dark places, the food at Igni never does. It’s light, clever, playful, innovative, pleasurable with deft flavour combinations and beautiful plating. It never loses sight of the delicious. Much has been written about the signature snacks that start a meal at Igni and that’s as it should be. The play of texture alone in the chicken skin topped with tarama and scampi roe, magpie goose wrapped around tiny grissini, and crisp saltbush dusted with vinegar powder is masterful. The snacks signal the delight ahead, built from ingredients that
speak of the region, accompanied by a lick of fire and smoke from the kitchen’s central grill. There’s pleasure in the dining room, too, a concrete box softened with sheer curtains and good lighting. It’s calm and unpretentious but has a frisson of occasion that’s an essential part of the mix. Turner’s business partners, Jo Smith and Drew Hamilton, add to the room’s warmth and serenity. They make dining easy, even for those freaked out about lack of control in a place that eschews menus for lists of ingredients and requests for likes and dislikes, and where no two tables get the same dishes. In his book, Turner speaks about trying to get a handle on exactly what he’s trying to do at Igni, “to find a service beat and rhythm that is different every day and cook our way through flavours and textures”. “It won’t be perfect, it will never be free of mistakes the way they teach you to be, but it will be honest, it will be our moment of inspiration that we will share with the guests at Igni.” Inspiring is exactly right. Igni, 2 Ryan Pl, Geelong, Vic, (03) 5222 2266
PHOTOGRAPHY ANDREW FINLAYSON (RONNI KAHN) & JULIAN KINGMA (IGNI)
Igni co-owners Drew Hamilton (left) and Jo Smith. Right: Igni chef and co-owner Aaron Turner.
OUTSTANDING CONTRIBUTION TO HOSPITALITY
Ronni Kahn OzHarvest
“I
believe there are two kinds of people in the world,” says waste activist and restaurateur Joost Bakker, a past recipient of this award and an OzHarvest ambassador. “People who live, and people who change the way we live. Ronni Kahn is definitely one of those rare people who is truly a game-changer. Dynamic, driven, highly intelligent and most importantly street-smart. “What impresses me most is her ability to cut through bureaucratic bullshit while also understanding that change takes time. Patiently grinding away at those energy-sapping processes that would make almost anyone else give up in despair. “Today it’s hard for us to comprehend how difficult it really was to simply rescue food – an idea so simple, pure, logical and practical, an idea that just makes sense. Before Ronni’s work this was a legal minefield, made so by a raft of different legislation in different states around Australia. “Ronni’s passion comes from deep. Her family are, I believe, a catalyst for her work, and fuel her motivation for improving the world. To date, more than 60 million meals have been created for the people who need it most, made with 20,000 tonnes of food waste intercepted by her brilliant organisation, OzHarvest. “I also believe Ronni’s ability to access people heading up some of Australia’s largest companies and make them aware of the compounding and massive effect tiny changes can have has also resulted in overhauls to systems that not only reduce food waste, but also the non-food waste generated by existing food systems, such as plastic bags. “Ronni’s story is a brilliant example of what can be achieved with perseverance. OzHarvest’s momentum continues to build, and I can’t wait to see her ideas grow and create an even more positive effect, and in the process feed the people in our community who desperately need it.” ozharvest.org ➤
P
roving that hard work and humility, dedication to craft, respect for ingredients and innovative technique can all co-exist (along with waste-consciousness, and a savvy social-media presence), Josh Niland cuts a hell of a figure in the trade – when he’s not too busy, that is, cutting fillets from fresh Yamba anchovies with surgical precision, ageing familiar fish to rare succulence and making rock stars of bycatch species. Saint Peter, the restaurant he opened in Sydney this time last year, immediately raised the bar for seafood cookery. Niland’s skills didn’t spring from nowhere; he put in the years with fish-whisperer Steve Hodges at Fish Face as a young (or, rather, even younger) chef, learning how to prep and cook just about everything that swims in the sea. But one of the things that makes him so impressive is his thirst for more knowledge, and his exploration is relentless, his menus ever-changing, delving into the possibilities of dry-ageing fish, or making its offal delicious. And Niland’s creativity is quite something to see in full flight, whether he’s stuffing the heads of baby octopus to make outré Scotch eggs for brunch, roasting cauliflower in eel skins, making a sauce for coral trout with its bones, head and liver. And just when you thought it was all sounding too easy he manages to seamlessly integrate native plants into the mix with his beloved local fish catch and do clever things with food waste along the way. All this and he’s only 28. We can’t wait to see what happens when he cracks 30. Saint Peter, 362 Oxford St, Paddington, NSW, (02) 8937 2530
BEST NEW TALENT
Josh Niland Saint Peter, Sydney
Restaurant awards
MAÎTRE D’ OF THE YEAR
Chris Young
Café Di Stasio, Melbourne
T BAR OF THE YEAR
Bar Rochford Canberra
PHOTOGRAPHY ANDREW FINLAYSON (JOSH NILAND), JULIAN KINGMA (CHRIS YOUNG) & JASON LOUCAS (BAR ROCHFORD)
I
nspired by hip Parisian wine bars and Melbourne landmarks like Gerald’s Bar, there’s a grounded, personalised touch to service at Bar Rochford. Co-owner Nick Smith points to a clientele that spans “suits, students, mums and retirees”. There’s no hint of velvet rope here. It’s a welcoming, friendly place that joins people together rather than pushing them apart. Rochford’s wine list highlights classic technique as much as edgier, contemporary competition. Cloudy and funky offerings from Domaine Leonine in France’s deep south or Barossa’s Tom Shobbrook sit comfortably beside organic sauvignon blanc from the Loire and Canberra shiraz. Beers range from Melbourne Bitter to hoppy Bridge Road IPA. And the cocktail list is a strong, albeit less conspicuous complement. “I didn’t want cocktails to overshadow our focus on wine, so we’ve opted for stripped-back, stirred-down classics from early last century,” Smith says. Ian Ploy (an alumnus of Sydney’s Sixpenny and Nomad) put in the early work on Rochford’s menu, focusing on seasonal and sustainably farmed
produce. Louis Couttoupes has since extended that vision as the kitchen takes more prominence, serving charcuterie, South Coast oysters and terrines right through to plates of local carrots with buttermilk and almonds, or spatchcock with hay and tarragon. Smith finds common cause among a milieu of energetic local artisans. Farmers Emily Yarra and Michael Kobier of Brightside Produce drop off heirloom vegetables weekly, prominent local chefs run pop-ups and takeovers, and Canberra’s emerging brewers, winemakers and distillers are well represented. Rochford’s refurbished digs in the 1920s Melbourne building would more than hold their own in Fitzroy or Darlinghurst. ’70s lampshades and Deco pendants radiate a sepia-tinged glow across a space around a central bar set with battleship-green stools. As afternoon drifts into evening and the crackle of needle on vinyl (soul, jazz and blues in particular) grows louder, stirring the crowd to dance, there can be few doubts that the crew at Rochford are raising the bar. Bar Rochford, 65 London Cct, Canberra, ACT, (02) 6230 6222
here’s nowhere else like it”, says Chris Young, of Café Di Stasio, the restaurant institution he now calls home. Young has plied his trade in Melbourne since the 1990s, early on it was at the likes of the Adelphi Hotel and Ezard before he teamed up with chef Jeremy Strode at Pomme, spent a lengthy stint at Jacques Reymond, and detoured through China, all while studying different modes of service. For all the variety, Young says it still mostly comes down to intuition and the ability to judge a situation quickly. “That’s certainly the case here – there’s a particular eccentricity and uniqueness to this place that’s a pleasure to be part of.” Watch him work and you may conclude that those at the top of the service game possess a natural ability, an affinity for the work’s true rhythm. Sure, he’s quick and intuitive enough to make what he’s reacting to almost invisible, and can make things appear or disappear from a table seemingly at will, but Young’s real talent is a witty charm that makes you feel comfortable, noticed, even appreciated. A rare gift, and one worth savouring. Café Di Stasio, 31 Fitzroy St, St Kilda, Vic, (03) 9525 3999 ➤
G O U R M E T T R AV E L L E R
101
Restaurant awards
T
here are three wine lists at Kisumé. Each is very good; together they provide a wine experience you want to sink into and savour. A core list of 30 pages features a range of drinks: wine on tap from some of Victoria’s top boutique producers and a lovely selection by the bottle, mostly Australian, most under $100. If you feel like splashing out, there’s a more serious list: 30 pages replete with verticals of big-name wines from Australia and around the world. Then there’s the Chablis Bar, with a booklet of wines from the famed Burgundian region, from Petit Chablis to Grand Cru. It’s a quirky idea, but it has paid off: Chablis now accounts for a third of all wine sales at Kisumé. The wine team is headed by some of the best in the business: GM Philip Rich, late of Prince Wine Store, and group somm Jonathan Ross, formerly of Eleven Madison Park in New York. It helps that their boss, Chris Lucas, also has a passion for wine, particularly Burgundy – a passion that’s infused throughout the list. All three of them. Kisumé, 175 Flinders La, Melbourne, Vic, (03) 9671 4888
WINE LIST OF THE YEAR
Kisumé
O
NEW RESTAURANT OF THE YEAR
Fred’s Sydney
Bucatini with sardines and fennel.
102
G O U R M E T T R AV E L L E R
n paper, it sounds easy. Just take a chef from one of the world’s best-liked restaurants, bring her to Australia, connect her with the finest bespoke producers, set her up in a stunning kitchen of her own in a lovely, comfortable room, backed by superb front-of-house staff and a dizzyingly good cellar. Of course, for chef Danielle Alvarez and the team from Merivale it’s been years of hard slog. Alvarez moved here from the US for the job in July 2014. Before that she worked at Chez Panisse, an experience that profoundly influenced her cooking. Fred’s, she says, is a collaboration between her kitchen and the farmers who grow the produce. “Whatever they want to grow dictates what we have on the menu,” she says. “They’re the base of everything we do.” Again, easy to say; it’s making it a tasty reality that’s the challenge. But, then, that’s exactly what makes Fred’s so magical: it all feels not just effortless, but like it was meant to be, with a team unified under a leader with rare command of her craft. Fred’s, 380 Oxford St, Paddington, NSW, (02) 9240 3000
PHOTOGRAPHY ANDREW FINLAYSON (CAITLYN REES), BEN HANSEN (FRED’S) & MARTIN REFTEL & JESSICA REFTEL EVANS (KISUMÉ)
Melbourne
I
t’s been a wild ride,” says Caitlyn Rees. “But it’s been exhilarating.” It’s with this contagious enthusiasm and confidence that Rees works the floor at Fred’s in Sydney, a place teeming with customers as excited to drink Rees’s wine as they are to eat Danielle Alvarez’s Mediterraneaninflected fare. The plan was for a small wine selection. One list. Easy. Now Fred’s has three: a 10-pager of bottles, and two by-the-glass selections, which Rees wrote in collaboration with Merivale group master sommelier Franck Moreau. The lists are progressive yet approachable. There are skin-contacts, pet-nats and lesser-known local labels, but you can also drop a handsome penny on big names from Burgundy and Bordeaux, if you choose. And Rees is constantly updating all three. While one of the lists is meant to be a daily rotating selection, the others aren’t. But, thanks to the wine-loving guests at Fred’s, they’re constantly selling out of wine. “We have the most amazing guests who want to drink good wine all the time,” says Rees. “And with such a high volume of people through the door, wines that normally stay on the list for a long time are flying out the door.” Her knowledge of the ever-changing lists is impressive and she talks wine with charm and ease. It’s the story behind the wine – the people, the country, the climate – that Rees finds truly engaging, so prepare to be dazzled as she takes you on a journey from BK Wines in the Adelaide Hills to areni noir, grown in Armenia in the foothills of Mount Ararat. This is Rees’s first head sommelier role, but she’s no stranger to pulling corks, having done so at a roster of some of Sydney’s best wine-focused establishments, including The Wine Library, Felix and Momofuku Seiobo. The simple take-home message here: when it comes to engaging service and suggesting the perfect bottle, Caitlyn Rees has you covered. Fred’s, 380 Oxford St, Paddington, NSW, (02) 9240 3000 ●
SOMMELIER OF THE YEAR
Caitlyn Rees Fred's, Sydney
AN AUSTRALIAN GOURMET TRAVELLER PROMOTION
“Many of our alumni are prominent international achievers in the culinary arts and hospitality industry. The Le Cordon Bleu alumni family includes acclaimed personalities such as Julia Child, JP Anglo, Janice Wong, Gastón Acurio, Giada De Laurentiis and Rachel Khoo.”
Le Cordon Bleu stands for culinary excellence.
Lyndsey Jones, Graduate and Alumni Development Manager.
CONTINUING THE TRADITION
OF EXCELLENCE Le Cordon Bleu Sydney, internationally acclaimed culinary arts educator, celebrates 21 years. Le Cordon Bleu’s tradition of excellence began in 1895 when its first school opened in Paris. A hundred years later, Le Cordon Bleu arrived on Australian shores. This year Le Cordon Bleu Australia marks 21 years of delivering worldclass culinary arts and hospitality management education in Sydney. To celebrate this milestone, Le Cordon Bleu will hold a special event with alumni, industry figures, media and staff at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Sydney Institute The Sydney Institute’s success story began in 1996 when the NSW government invited Le Cordon Bleu to train chefs for the 2000 Sydney Olympics. The Sydney Institute has since grown from six students to
around a thousand annually, and its programs have expanded to include the acclaimed Le Cordon Bleu Grand Diplôme (with cuisine and pâtisserie specialisations) and Bachelor of Business degrees in hotel and restaurant management. Le Cordon Bleu Australia now offers vocational, undergraduate and postgraduate programs across four campuses, in Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth, with more than 2500 students enrolling annually. International Alumni Network Le Cordon Bleu’s global alumni network connects alumni with their peers and recognises their contribution. The finest in their fields, the alumni continue Le Cordon Bleu’s tradition of excellence.
WELL CONNECTED Le Cordon Bleu Australia networks with 2100 industry partners in more than 35 countries. From luxury hotels and resorts, prestige restaurants and international hospitality events, Le Cordon Bleu connects students and alumni to the best in industry.
FOR MORE INFORMATION VISIT CORDONBLEU.EDU/AUSTRALIA
FOOD SEPTEMBER
Spring flavours
RECIPE DAVE PYNT. PHOTOGRAPHY BEN DEARNLEY. STYLING CLAIRE DELMAR. FOOD STYLING LISA FEATHERBY
Dishes from the new Agrarian Kitchen restaurant, Dave Pynt’s coal-fired spring menu, light and bright poke bowls and sweets by pastry whizz Alistair Wise.
Blueberry tart
133
p
loaded Spring Tasmania’s Agrarian Kitchen has branched out from cooking school to restaurant – with very tasty results.
Recipes RODNEY DUNN & ALI CURREY-VOUMARD Words RODNEY DUNN
Photography WILLIAM MEPPEM Styling EMMA KNOWLES
Labne with salt-roasted beetroot, pickled onions and peas
p
110
Cured leatherjacket with horseradish vinaigrette
109
p
O
ver the nine years since we opened The Agrarian Kitchen, our cooking school in Lachlan, Tasmania, we’ve become pretty self-sufficient when it comes to growing our own produce. But providing for 100 covers a day at the Eatery, our new restaurant, is another story entirely. When we were gearing up to open in winter, we had to look for other sources of produce, and it’s remarkable how many fantastic Derwent Valley producers we’ve discovered. Down the road there’s a guy growing four or five varieties of morello cherries. Two women nearby raise the Highland beef we use, and another couple has paddocks brimming with asparagus. We used to drive past this stuff. Now I keep my eyes open. My favourite way to cook is to get outside. The Tasmanian winter is cold and at the first sign of warmth we’re straight into the garden to let the sun soak into our bones. Nothing is more beautiful than spring produce, too, and when you embrace the seasons you really can’t go wrong. Spring onion, grilled whole, has to be one of the best vegetables going. And at the moment we’ve got a big patch of horseradish
108
G O U R M E T T R AV E L L E R
growing out of control, so I’m reaching for that to make a light vinaigrette for cured fish here. When you look at our food it’s simple, but there are lots of components that come together to create what’s on the plate. A touch of dairy often ties things together – labne, for instance, is the perfect base for salt-roasted beetroot, tart pickled onion and peas, while yoghurt adds another interesting layer to Turkish flatbread with spicy mince and pickled turnips. I love creating food with great colour and texture, and I love eating food like that, too. Ali Currey-Voumard, our chef at the Eatery, is a fan of using cooked and raw greens together in salads, while for me a pickle or preserve is the secret weapon to adding complexity to a dish. There should be an element of spontaneity and surprise when you cook. I’d encourage you to pick and choose a menu based on what’s in the garden and what’s at its best. And don’t freeze anything. This kind of food should be eaten right now, while the sun’s still shining. The Agrarian Kitchen Eatery & Store, Bronte Building, Willow Court, 11a The Ave, New Norfolk, Tas, (03) 6262 0011, theagrariankitchen.com
INTERVIEW MAGGIE SCARDIFIELD. ALL PROPS RESTAURANT’S OWN
Clockwise from left: Rodney Dunn and head chef Ali Currey-Voumard; the Eatery; CurreyVoumard and sous-chef Clinton Gresham; housemade pork sausage.
Cured leatherjacket with horseradish vinaigrette SERVES 4 // PREP TIME 20 MINS (PLUS COOLING, CHILLING)
“This is a really simple and light dish perfect for spring,” says Rodney Dunn. “The components can all be prepared ahead of time. At the restaurant we use whatever fish the fishermen have caught and so can you – the best white-fleshed fish you can buy – freshness is everything with this dish.” Pictured p107.
2 leatherjacket fillets (about 190gm each), or other white-fleshed fish such as snapper or blue-eye, skin removed 55 gm sea salt 45 gm caster sugar 1 spring onion, thinly sliced Thinly sliced mustard leaves, miner’s lettuce and borage flowers, to serve (see note) TOASTED SEEDS
2 1 1 2 250
tbsp sunflower seeds tbsp sesame seeds tbsp nigella seeds tbsp buckwheat ml (1 cup) vegetable oil HORSERADISH VINAIGRETTE
50 1½ 1½ 1 1 70 1
gm finely chopped onion tbsp rice vinegar tbsp light soy sauce tsp finely grated horseradish garlic clove, thinly sliced ml grapeseed oil tbsp sesame oil
1 Trim fish into 8 portions and transfer to plates. Combine salt and sugar, scatter over both sides of fish, cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 2 hours. 2 For toasted seeds, dry-roast sunflower, sesame and nigella seeds over medium heat until fragrant (6-7 minutes; see cook’s notes p182). Bring a small saucepan of water to the boil, add buckwheat and cook until just tender (7-8 minutes). Drain and pat dry with paper towels. Heat oil in a small saucepan to 180°C and deep-fry cooked buckwheat until golden and crunchy (6-7 minutes; be careful, oil will spit). Transfer to a plate lined with paper towels using a slotted spoon, cool, then combine with seeds. Toasted
seeds will keep in an airtight container for up to a week. 3 For horseradish vinaigrette, process all ingredients except oils in a blender until combined, then, with the motor running, drizzle in oils. Season to taste and refrigerate until required. 4 Brush curing mix off fish and pat dry with paper towels. Transfer to serving plates, drizzle with vinaigrette, scatter with spring onion, leaves, flowers and toasted seeds, and serve. Note Mustard leaves and borage flowers are available from farmers’ markets and specialist greengrocers; If they’re unavailable substitute rocket and other edible flowers, such as chive flowers. ➤
“Nothing is more beautiful than spring produce, too, and when you embrace the seasons you really can’t go wrong.”
Turkish flatbread with beef and yoghurt MAKES 4 // PREP TIME 30 MINS // COOK 25 MINS (PLUS PROVING)
“This is our version of the Turkish lahmacun – flatbread topped with spiced minced beef,” says Dunn. “It’s worth hunting out the pickled turnips and garlic from Middle Eastern stores – they add great flavour to the dish. If you have mince mixture leftover it also makes great meatballs.”
250 gm minced beef 1 tsp sumac, plus extra to serve 1 tsp ground chilli 1¼ tbsp olive oil 240 gm Greek yoghurt 3 cloves pickled garlic, thinly sliced 100 gm Lebanese pickled turnips Coriander, mint, flat-leaf parsley and thinly sliced spring onion, to serve FLATBREAD
1 ¼ tbsp dried yeast 260 gm bread flour
1 For flatbread, combine yeast, 80ml warm water and 2 tsp salt in a large bowl and stir until yeast dissolves. Add 220ml warm water and stir to combine, then add flour and stir until a dough forms. Turn out onto a lightly floured surface and knead until smooth and elastic (8-10 minutes). Place dough in a lightly oiled bowl, turn to coat, then cover with plastic wrap and leave in a draught-free place until doubled in size (1½-2 hours). 2 Process minced beef in a food processor until finely chopped. Add sumac, ground chilli, 2 tsp sea salt and 1 tsp freshly ground black pepper
and pulse until well combined. Transfer to a bowl, add olive oil and stir to combine. 3 Preheat oven to 250°C or the highest temperature. On a lightly floured work surface roll out a quarter of the dough to a 26cm-diameter round. Place on an oven tray and bake until just set (2 minutes). Remove and spread with a thin layer of beef mixture, then return to oven until edges are crisp and beef mixture is cooked (15-20 minutes). Dollop with yoghurt, season with extra sumac, scatter with pickles, herbs and spring onion, and serve hot. Repeat with remaining ingredients.
Labne with salt-roasted beetroot, pickled onions and peas SERVES 4 // PREP 20 MINS // COOK 2 HRS (PLUS DRAINING)
“Drained yoghurt, or labne, is at its best in spring when milk is at its most plentiful,” says Dunn. “Dollop it on salads, make dressings or make it the base of a dish such as this.” Start this recipe a day ahead to drain the yoghurt. Pictured p106.
1 kg Greek yoghurt 2 large (about 260gm each) beetroot, scrubbed 500 gm coarse sea salt 1 eggwhite 300 gm peas, podded 6 (about 300gm) mixed baby beetroot, trimmed and thinly sliced on a mandolin Extra-virgin olive oil, for drizzling Sourdough bread, to serve PICKLED ONION
2 Spanish onions, thinly shaved 1 tbsp fine sea salt 300 ml cider vinegar
110
G O U R M E T T R AV E L L E R
1 For labne, place yoghurt in a fine sieve lined with muslin placed over a bowl. Cover and refrigerate overnight to drain. 2 Preheat oven to 180°C. Place large beetroot in a small roasting dish. Combine salt and eggwhite in a bowl, then add enough water to form a paste the consistency of wet cement (about 60ml). Cover beetroot completely with salt paste and roast until tender (2-2¼ hours). Cool, then remove crust, peel and cut into thin wedges. 3 For pickled onion, combine onion and salt in a bowl and leave for 1 hour. Rinse salt from
onion, drain well, then cover with cider vinegar and leave to pickle for 1 hour. Pickled onion will keep refrigerated for up to a week. 4 Blanch peas until bright green in a saucepan of boiling salted water (1-2 minutes; see cook’s notes p182), then drain and refresh under cold running water. 5 Season drained yoghurt to taste. Divide among bowls, arrange salt-baked and sliced beetroot on top, then scatter with peas and pickled onion. Drizzle with olive oil and serve with sourdough bread.
Chef Vincent Macdonald
Char-grilled spatchcock, celery heart, fennel and spring onions with lemon sauce
Char-grilled spatchcock, celery heart, fennel and spring onions with lemon sauce SERVES 4 // PREP TIME 20 MINS // COOK 45 MINS
“As the weather warms so does the desire to cook outside,” says Dunn. “If you have a wood-fuelled barbecue, then this dish will be all the better. We particularly like to grill spring onions this way – with nothing more than the chilli salt and lemon sauce they make a great side dish.”
4 spatchcock (about 400gm each) 100 ml extra-virgin olive oil 2 baby fennel, cut into thick wedges 2 celery hearts, quartered lengthways 16 spring onions, trimmed LEMON SAUCE
2 60 200 200 100
egg yolks ml (¼ cup) lemon juice ml olive oil ml sunflower oil ml warm chicken stock CHILLI SALT
Turkish flatbread with beef and yoghurt
2 1 1 1 1 ¼
tbsp sea salt flakes tsp dried chilli flakes tsp smoked paprika tsp mustard powder tsp ground black pepper tsp ground cloves
1 Remove the backbones from spatchcock with kitchen shears, press on breastbone to flatten them, then tuck wing tips underneath. Pat spatchcock dry with paper towels, brush with a little oil and season with salt. 2 Heat a barbecue or char-grill pan to medium-high heat, add spatchcock skin-side down (in batches if necessary) and cook, turning occasionally, until juices run clear when thickest part of thigh is pierced (18-20 minutes; if you cook them in batches keep them warm in a 100°C oven). 3 Meanwhile, drizzle vegetables with remaining oil, season to taste and grill
until tender (8-10 minutes for celery and fennel; 5-6 minutes for spring onions). 4 For lemon sauce, whisk egg yolks and lemon juice together in an electric mixer until pale and thick (3-4 minutes). With motor running, add combined oils in a thin steady stream until incorporated, then add chicken stock. Season to taste with sea salt and freshly ground black pepper. 5 For chilli salt, combine all ingredients in a bowl and mix well. 6 To serve, halve spatchcocks and arrange on a platter with vegetables, scatter with chilli salt and drizzle with lemon sauce. ➤
Spring-green salad with buttermilk dressing SERVES 4 // PREP TIME 30 MINS
“The idea of this salad is to use whatever greens you can get your hands on in spring, and of course there are many,” says Dunn. “We love to combine the cooked and the raw for different textures.”
200 100 3 1
gm baby spinach gm rocket baby cos, cut into wedges bunch chives, coarsely chopped BUTTERMILK DRESSING
350 120 40 1 1 1½
gm sour cream ml buttermilk gm parmesan, finely grated tbsp cider vinegar egg yolk tsp caster sugar
Spring-green salad with buttermilk dressing, and roasted pork belly with tomato and cucumber relish
Head bartender Jackson Duxbury
Rhubarb and chamomile tart
1 For buttermilk dressing, blend ingredients and 1½ tsp each salt and ground black pepper in a blender until combined. Refrigerate until required. Buttermilk dressing will keep for up to a week. 2 Blanch spinach in a large saucepan of boiling salted water until wilted (5-10 seconds; see cook’s notes p182), then drain and refresh under cold running water. Drain and squeeze to remove excess water. 3 Combine rocket, cos, chives and spinach in a bowl, and serve drizzled with buttermilk dressing.
Roasted pork belly with tomato and cucumber relish SERVES 4 // PREP TIME 40 MINS // COOK 40 MINS (PLUS BRINING, DRYING, RESTING)
“Although brining is another step, it allows meat to be evenly seasoned and keeps it juicy when cooking,” says Dunn. “The other benefit is that any leftovers will keep for longer. The relish comes from our preserves teacher at the cooking school, author Sally Wise.” Start this recipe three days ahead to brine and dry the pork.
225 gm fine salt 125 gm caster sugar 900 gm pork belly TOMATO AND CUCUMBER RELISH
750 gm ripe red tomatoes, coarsely chopped 250 gm onions, finely chopped 1 Lebanese cucumber, cut into 1cm dice 1 large red capsicum, cored and diced 250 gm white sugar 650 ml white vinegar 1 tsp brown mustard ½ tsp curry powder ½ tsp ground turmeric 1 To make brine, heat salt, sugar and 4 litres water in a large saucepan, stirring often, until salt dissolves. Cool to room temperature and refrigerate in a plastic container to chill. 2 Immerse pork belly in brine and refrigerate for 48 hours. Remove from brine, pat dry with paper towels and refrigerate uncovered skin-side up on a tray overnight.
3 For tomato and cucumber relish, place tomato and onion in separate bowls and scatter each with 1 tbsp salt. Leave for 2-3 hours, then drain. Combine tomato, onion, cucumber, capsicum, sugar, vinegar and spices in a large saucepan, bring to the boil, then reduce heat and simmer, stirring often, until reduced and thickened (1-1¼ hours). Pour into sterilised jars (see cook’s notes p182) and cool, then seal. Relish will keep for up to a year in the pantry; refrigerate after opening. 4 Preheat oven to 190°C. Score pork skin at 5mm intervals with a sharp knife. Place skin-side up on a rack in a roasting tray and roast until meat is just cooked through, skin crackles and internal temperature reads 63°C on a meat thermometer (40-45 minutes). Rest in a warm place for 10 minutes, then carve and serve with relish and spring-green salad (see recipe opposite).
“When you look at our food it’s simple, but lots of components come together to create what’s on the plate.”
Rhubarb and chamomile tart SERVES 12 // PREP TIME 45 MINS // COOK 50 MINS (PLUS RESTING)
“Rhubarb is one of the few sweet ingredients available in spring,” says Dunn. “Its natural sourness adds an acid balance to the sugar and cuts through the sweetness, creating the perfect foil for custard. We grow chamomile and dry the flowers, but you can buy whole dried chamomile flowers; even chamomile teabags will give the desired result.”
250 3 60 165 1 3 1 250 1
ml (1 cup) pouring cream tbsp chamomile flowers gm butter, melted gm (¾ cup) caster sugar tbsp plain flour, plus extra for dusting eggs egg yolk ml (1 cup) well-shaken buttermilk tbsp white vinegar SWEET PASTRY
315 gm plain flour 175 gm cold unsalted butter, cut into 2cm pieces 60 gm caster sugar 1 egg yolk ROASTED RHUBARB
700 gm rhubarb stalks, cut into 15cm-20cm lengths 100 gm caster sugar Zested rind and juice of 1 orange 1 For pastry, place flour, butter, sugar and a pinch of salt in a large bowl. Rub butter into dry ingredients with your fingertips until mixture resembles coarse breadcrumbs. Add egg yolk and 1 tbsp cold water, and gently knead until mixture comes together. Form into a disc, wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate until chilled (about 1 hour).
2 For roasted rhubarb, preheat oven to 150°C. Place rhubarb in a roasting pan, scatter with sugar and orange rind and drizzle with orange juice. Roast until tender (12-15 minutes). 3 On a lightly floured work surface roll out pastry to 5mm thick and line a 28cm-diameter fluted tart tin, pressing pastry into the corners, then trim edges. Refrigerate tart case for 30 minutes to rest. 4 Bring cream to the boil in a saucepan, then remove from heat, add chamomile flowers and leave to infuse for 10-15 minutes. Whisk butter, sugar, flour and ½ tsp salt in a large bowl to combine. Mix in eggs one at a time, then egg yolk. Strain cream through a fine sieve, add buttermilk and vinegar, then stir into egg mixture. 5 Increase oven to 180°C. Blind-bake tart shell (see cook’s notes p182) until pastry sets and edges are golden brown (12-15 minutes). Remove paper and weights, return tart shell to oven and bake until base is golden brown (8-10 minutes). Carefully pour in custard, reduce heat to 160°C and bake until set with a slight wobble in the centre (8-10 minutes). Cool. To serve, arrange rhubarb on tart and drizzle with rhubarb poaching syrup. ●
cip
es
A LI
ST AIR F
ER
hy
Y
Y S
ap
Y St y l i n g LY NS E
Ph ot
ogr
D
NLE
R
B
WISE E
N
R EA
Fo
od pr
ep a ra
tio n N A D I
A F
O
N
OF
Re
Sweet Envy is an apt name for the Hobart bakery where ALISTAIR WISE works his inventive magic. Be envious no more. We bring you a taste of his best.
Life is sweet F
Jatz pie
p
118
Twinkies MAKES 12 // PREP TIME 40 MINS // COOK 30 MINS
“Flour and Stone’s lamington soaked in panna cotta is one of the few legends of the baking game in Australia,” says Alistair Wise. “Does panna cotta beat lemon posset in a game of one-upmanship? I’m not sure, but it’s a worthy experiment.”
5 430 300 150 1 300
eggs gm caster sugar ml milk gm butter, diced tbsp vanilla extract gm (2 cups) plain flour, sifted 2 tsp baking powder POSSET
500 ml (2 cups) pouring cream 225 gm caster sugar 2 lemons, juiced SWISS MERINGUE
150 ml eggwhites (from about 5 eggs) 300 gm caster sugar
116
G O U R M E T T R AV E L L E R
1 Preheat oven to 170°C. Wrap a deep 25cm-square baking tin with tinfoil to prevent leaks, then line it with baking paper. Whisk eggs and sugar in a heatproof bowl placed over a saucepan of boiling water until it reaches 50°C on a thermometer, or feels hot when you put your finger in it (3-4 minutes). Transfer to an electric mixer and whisk until mixture holds a ribbon (5-7 minutes). 2 Meanwhile, heat milk, butter and vanilla in a heatproof bowl over a saucepan of boiling water until it reaches 75°C on a thermometer (5-6 minutes).
Fold flour, baking powder and a pinch of salt into egg mixture, then add a third of the batter to the milk mixture, beat vigorously, then fold the two mixtures together and pour into prepared tin, spreading evenly. Bake sponge until a skewer inserted comes out clean (30 minutes). Cool in tin while you make the posset. 3 For posset, bring cream and sugar to the boil in a saucepan over high heat, add lemon juice and boil for 5 minutes. Pour mixture over sponge and refrigerate to chill (3-4 hours). 4 For Swiss meringue, whisk eggwhites and sugar
in a heatproof bowl over a saucepan of simmering water until it reaches 82°C (8-10 minutes). Transfer mixture to an electric mixer and whisk until cooled (5-6 minutes). Place in a piping bag fitted with a 1cm plain nozzle. 5 Cut sponge into 12 squares and sit each on a flattened paper muffin cases. Pipe meringue on top (lightly brown the meringue with a blowtorch if you like). Twinkies are best served on the day they’re made but will keep refrigerated for a 2-3 days in an airtight container. ➤
PREVIOUS PAGE Jatz pie Black Tie side plate (far right), Awash side plate (top left) and bowl (top) from MH Ceramics. Cup from Mud Australia. Cornflake cookies Saucer from Mud Australia. Twinkies Plate from MH Ceramics. All other props stylist’s own. Stockists p182.
Cornflake cookies
118
p
Jatz pie SERVES 12 // PREP TIME 15 MINS // COOK 28 MINS
“This came about when we were making crack pie for a sundae in our ice-cream truck, but the top was too sticky and everything bound together and ended up a mess,” says Wise. “The Jatz on top solved it and made a fine salty crust. The pie took over and we had to start selling it in the shop. It’s also a tribute to Sydney restaurant Acme, which serves Jatz and dip.” Pictured p114.
150 125 200 120 15 3 1
gm butter, diced ml (½ cup) pouring cream gm caster sugar gm brown sugar gm milk powder eggs tsp vanilla extract Finely grated rind of ½ orange, or 3 drops of orange oil 225 gm (1 packet) Jatz biscuits PIE BASE
210 180 75 160
gm raw sugar gm plain flour, sieved gm desiccated coconut gm butter, melted
1 For the pie base, preheat oven to 170°C and line two 22cm-diameter cake tins with baking paper. Combine dry ingredients in a bowl, then mix in melted butter (the mixture will resemble coarse breadcrumbs). 2 Press pie base into the prepared tins and bake until light golden (8-9 minutes; the base doesn’t need to be cooked all the way – it will return to the oven shortly). 3 Heat butter and cream in a saucepan over medium heat until butter is melted. Meanwhile, mix dry ingredients in a bowl. Lightly whisk eggs, vanilla, orange and a pinch of
salt into butter mixture, then stir into dry ingredients; don’t whisk – you don’t want the mixture to become aerated. Transfer to a jug. 4 Cover base with overlapping crackers. Slowly pour custard over crackers, ensuring all get a coating, which will caramelise during baking. Bake until set with just a little wobble in the centre (45-50 minutes; if the pie starts to get too much colour, cover with foil until the centre is done). Cool completely in tin before serving. Jatz pie will keep refrigerated for up to a week, but it’s best eaten on the day it’s made.
Cornflake cookies MAKES 12 // PREP TIME 15 MINS // COOK 15 MINS
“Why limit yourself to cornflakes?” asks Wise. “Roll these in any breakfast cereal, coconut chips or try goji berry granola chunks with flaxseed and try selling them outside your local gym.” Pictured p117.
115 100 100 1 225
gm softened butter gm caster sugar gm brown sugar egg gm (1½ cups) plain flour, sifted 1 tsp baking powder 100 gm coarsely chopped dried pitted dates 90 gm (3 cups) cornflakes
118
G O U R M E T T R AV E L L E R
1 Preheat oven to 170°C, and line oven trays with baking paper. Beat butter and sugars in an electric mixer until pale and fluffy (3-4 minutes). Beat in egg, then add remaining ingredients except cornflakes and mix until smooth. 2 Preheat oven to 170°C. Divide dough into 12 even balls and, with damp hands, roll balls in cornflakes. Place on trays, leaving 5cm-6cm between each to allow for spreading, and bake until golden (15 minutes). Cool on tray or on a rack. Cookies will keep for up to a week in an airtight container.
Custard tart Flared dinner plate from Mud Australia. All other props stylist’s own. Stockists p182.
Custard tart SERVES 8-10 // PREP TIME 20 MINS // COOK 25 MINS
“Like most good pastry cooking this tart is about juxtaposition: buttery crisp crust contrasted with a silky smooth centre,” says Wise. “Use good cream – this is one of those times when you’ll taste it.”
750 1 12 120 1
ml (3 cups) pouring cream tsp vanilla extract egg yolks gm caster sugar nutmeg SWEET SHORTCRUST PASTRY
200 gm (1⅓ cups) plain flour, sifted 60 gm pure icing sugar, sifted 120 gm butter, diced 1 egg, plus extra lightly beaten for eggwash 1 For pastry, place flour, icing sugar, butter and a pinch of salt in a bowl and rub until mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs. Add egg and mix just to bring the mixture together. Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate to chill (2-3 hours). 2 Roll out pastry on a lightly floured bench to 3mm thick and place it in a 4.5cm-deep, 20cm-diameter cake ring or springform tin on an oven tray lined with baking paper. Refrigerate for 30 minutes to rest. Trim edges and dock with a fork. 3 Preheat oven to 170°C, then blind-bake pastry case for 15 minutes (see cook’s notes p182). Remove foil and weights, brush tart shell with lightly beaten egg and return to oven to just set (7 minutes). 4 Reduce oven to 130°C. Bring cream and vanilla to the boil in a saucepan. Lightly whisk eggs and sugar in a bowl, then, whisking continuously, pour hot cream into egg mixture. Transfer custard to a jug, then pour into tart shell and bake until set with a little wobble in the centre (20-25 minutes). Remove from oven, finely grate nutmeg over the top, leave to cool (about 1 hour), then serve. Custard tart is best served on the day it’s made but will keep refrigerated in an airtight container for 3-4 days. ➤
Breakfast buns
122
p
Breakfast buns Paris bowl (top) from MH Ceramics. Blackout cake Black Tie plate from MH Ceramics. All other props stylist’s own. Stockists p182. 120
G O U R M E T T R AV E L L E R
Brooklyn blackout cake SERVES 8-10 // PREP TIME 3 HRS // COOK 20 MINS (PLUS SETTING)
“Brooklyn blackout cake is a delicious little number,” says Wise. “This version uses the power of dates to keep the interior exemplary, while whipped ganache makes a great contrast.”
210 1 210 70 2 140 70
gm dried pitted dates tsp bicarbonate of soda gm brown sugar gm butter, softened eggs gm plain flour gm Dutch-process cocoa, plus extra for dusting 1 tsp baking powder WHIPPED GANACHE
450 gm dark chocolate (64% cocoa solids), finely chopped 500 ml (2 cups) pouring cream
1 Preheat oven to 170°C. Line the base of a 20cm-diameter cake tin with baking paper. Bring dates and 350ml water to the boil in a saucepan, add bicarbonate of soda, then purée with a stick blender until smooth. 2 Beat sugar and butter in an electric mixer until pale and creamy. Beat in eggs, then stir in the date purée. Sift together dry ingredients, fold into butter mixture, then pour into tin. Bake until an inserted skewer comes out clean (50 minutes to 1 hour). Cool in the tin, then turn out and slice horizontally into 5 thin layers (about 5mm); hold your knife steady while rotating the cake to get even layers.
3 For ganache, place chocolate in a heatproof bowl and bring cream to the boil. Pour cream over chocolate, stir until melted and smooth, then chill for 30 minutes. Transfer chocolate mixture to an electric mixer and whip until light and fluffy (10 minutes). Chill for 15 minutes, then whisk until light and airy (15 minutes). 4 Place a disc of the cake in a lined springform tin and top with a layer of ganache. Alternate the layers, finishing with ganache. Smooth the top, refrigerate until set (2-3 hours), then dust with cocoa and serve. Cake will keep refrigerated for up to 5 days in an airtight container. ➤
“Brooklyn blackout cake is a delicious number. This version uses blended dates to keep the interior exemplary, while ganache makes a great contrast.”
Savarins MAKES 6 // PREP TIME 30 MINS // COOK 15 MINS (PLUS PROVING, CHILLING)
“I like boozy cake, and the best thing about savarins is you can always add more liquor,” says Wise. “Normally this dough is difficult to handle but mixing it with your hand stops the gluten from developing, so it’s easy to pipe.”
90 12 7 40 1 125
ml lukewarm milk gm caster sugar gm (1 sachet) dried yeast gm butter, melted large egg gm plain flour Finely grated dark chocolate, to serve CHOCOLATE CREAM
100 ml milk ½ titanium-strength gelatine leaf, softened in cold water for 5 minutes 125 gm dark chocolate (60%-65% cocoa solids), finely chopped 210 ml pouring cream CARAMEL SOAK
200 gm caster sugar 60 ml dark rum 1 tsp vanilla extract
1 Preheat oven to 180°C. Combine milk, sugar and yeast in a bowl, stand until foamy (8-10 minutes), then mix in butter and egg. Add flour and a pinch of salt and stir with your hand until smooth. Cover and leave until doubled in size (1 hour). Place in a piping bag with a 1cm plain nozzle and pipe into 8cm buttered savarin moulds, cover and prove until at least doubled in size (30-45 minutes). Bake until puffed and golden brown (15 minutes). Turn out onto a rack and cool. 2 For chocolate cream, bring milk to the boil in a saucepan. Squeeze excess moisture from gelatine and stir into milk. Place chocolate in a bowl, beat in a third of the milk, then beat in
remaining milk. Fold in cream and refrigerate until chilled (3-4 hours). 3 For caramel soak, stir sugar in a saucepan over high heat until dark caramel (5 minutes). Gradually add 600ml water (be careful, hot caramel will spit), then stir in rum and vanilla. Soak savarins in the warm syrup until well soaked (2-3 minutes), then remove with a slotted spoon. 4 To serve, place savarin in bowls and spoon a little syrup on top, dollop chocolate cream in the centres and grate a little chocolate on the top. Savarins are best served on the day they’re made, or will keep unsoaked for 4-5 days in an airtight container. Note Savarin moulds are from kitchenware shops.
Breakfast buns MAKES 12 // PREP TIME 40 MINS // COOK 25 MINS (PLUS PROVING)
“Cheesecake for breakfast is always a good idea. For a different topping try a slice of Brillat-Savarin and some mustard fruits along with the crumble.” Pictured p120.
100 100 100 225
gm (⅔ cup) plain flour gm brown sugar gm butter, diced gm (1½ cups) frozen blackberries or raspberries BUN DOUGH
5 35 400 15 60 1
gm (1 tsp) dried yeast gm caster sugar gm (2⅔ cups) plain flour gm milk powder gm butter, melted egg, lightly whisked CREAM CHEESE FILLING
330 45 1½ 3 ⅔ ½ 122
gm cream cheese, softened gm butter, softened tbsp caster sugar, to taste large egg yolks tsp cornflour tsp vanilla extract
G O U R M E T T R AV E L L E R
1 For bun dough, combine yeast, 1 tsp caster sugar and 100ml warm water in a small jug and leave in a warm place until foamy (5-10 minutes). Mix flour, milk powder, remaining sugar and 1 tsp salt on low in an electric mixer fitted with a dough hook, then add yeast mixture, egg and butter and mix to a smooth dough (5-6 minutes). Place in a bowl and prove until doubled in size (30-40 minutes). 2 For cream cheese filling, beat ingredients in an electric mixer fitted with a paddle until smooth. 3 To make a crumble topping, combine flour, sugar and butter
in a bowl and rub together until mixture resembles coarse breadcrumbs. 4 Preheat oven to 170°C, and butter twelve 10cm-diameter pie tins. Roll out dough on a lightly floured bench to a 30cm square. Spread three-quarters of the cream cheese mixture over and roll up and away from you to form a log, cut into 12 even pieces and place in tins. Top with remaining cream cheese, berries and a little crumble and bake until golden brown (25 minutes). Serve warm. Breakfast buns are best eaten on the day they’re made. ●
Savarins Black Tie bowl (with black rim), Paris bowl (white rim) and Black Tie dinner plate all from MH Ceramics. All other props stylist’s own. Stockists p182.
Savarins
Photography BEN DEARNLEY
Styling CLAIRE DELMAR
Drink suggestions ANDREW CAMERON
Food styling LISA FEATHERBY
Buttermilkbrined lamb shoulder with harissa
p
130
Playing
g
If you’re not barbecuing over wood, you’re not doing it right. So says DAVE PYNT, Aussie chef at Singapore’s Burnt Ends, who sets us straight with a coal-fired menu made for spring. Recipes DAVE PYNT Words MAX VEENHUYZEN
Artichokes with Taleggio sauce
p
Pea, bean and shallot salad
132
p
with
129
T
hink cooking over fire is something only chefs can do? Think again. “Just do it,” says Dave Pynt, chefpatron of Singapore’s Burnt Ends. “Just get in there and figure it out as you go.” Just doing it has been a recurring theme in the Perth-born chef’s career. Following time at Australian fine-dining powerhouses Tetsuya’s and Restaurant Amuse, Pynt headed abroad and staged in kitchens such as Noma, St John Bread & Wine and, perhaps most tellingly, Asador Etxebarri, home of Basque barbecue master Victor Arguinzoniz. After five months in East London running a pop-up (known as Burnt Enz) Pynt was lured to Asia by Singaporean hotelier and restaurateur Loh Lik Peng to open a more permanent venture. Enter Burnt Ends, a lively Chinatown bar and restaurant where dinner includes the theatre of a buzzing open kitchen, outstanding drinking, and a toe-tapping soundtrack. Factor Pynt’s fun take on barbecue cooking and you’re looking at a good time that’s turned the heads of eaters from around the world.
Although the heart of the Burnt Ends kitchen is custom-made grills and ovens designed by Pynt, the dishes can be faithfully reproduced in any backyard here. All that’s needed is something to hold the coals – a medium-sized Weber, say, or, as Pynt has resorted to in the past, oil drums cut in half – and the ability to think on your feet. “Cooking over fire is very interactive,” he says. “You have to focus your energy on the fire to make sure you’re working with it rather than against it. You also have to be flexible. Sometimes the fire will dictate when it’s time to cook something.” While barbecuing with wood can be as much art as science (see Pynt’s advice below), Pynt stresses that throwing a good barbie is first and foremost about being a good host. “If a guest wants to cook, let them cook,” he says. “Get people involved. It creates a conversation. You’re not putting on a Michelinstarred meal; you’re cooking a barbie with your mates. It’s about creating an environment you enjoy.” Burnt Ends, 20 Teck Lim Rd, Singapore, +65 6224 3933, burntends.com.sg
Menu Jamaican chicken wings Artichokes with Taleggio sauce Clams in garlic brown butter Buttermilk-brined lamb shoulder with harissa Radish and butter lettuce salad Pea, bean and shallot salad Blueberry tart
• As tempting as it might be to use gas or charcoal, Pynt implores backyard barbecuers to go to the trouble of making their own coals. “Wood produces a cleaner, more delicate flavour,” he says. “When wood burns, it releases natural oils. Those are already all gone in charcoal.” • The best wood to use is a slow-burning hardwood like jarrah, redgum or ironbark. It’s important that it’s dry and seasoned. These woods can be sourced online or from hardware stores and service stations. • Remember you want coals, not flames; hardwood takes about three hours to break down into coals. • Start your fire with small logs and kindling rather than paper, leaves or cardboard; they’ll create too much ash. If you have a blowtorch, this will help get it going. • Raising or lowering your barbecue grill with bricks (or empty beer cans) is an easy way to regulate the heat. If you need to get closer, place a wire rack directly above the coals. • Burn more wood than you think you’ll need. Ideally, you want somewhere to burn more wood while you’re grilling – to the side of the coals if you have a big barbie, or in a spare Weber, say – so you can top up as you go. Fire has a life-cycle: if it’s perfect for the chicken, by the time you’re cooking the clams, you might have to top up the coals. • Don’t play with the fire too much or the coals will break down. The bigger the coals, the hotter the fire.
126
G O U R M E T T R AV E L L E R
PORTRAIT SIMON PYNT
Fuel to the fire
Jamaican chicken wings SERVES 8-10 // PREP TIME 25 MINS // COOK 20 MINS (PLUS BRINING, COOLING, PREPARING EMBERS)
“Use the versatile spice mix here for more than just chicken,” says Dave Pynt. “It goes great with pork and rabbit, and can also be used to season vegetables. You can also use it almost like ras el hanout and serve it with olive oil as a dipping sauce for bread.”
50 gm sea salt 1.4 kg chicken wings, jointed, wing tips reserved for another use Lime cheeks to serve LIME CREMA
2 2 1 1 125 125 150
small eggs tsp Dijon mustard tbsp lemon juice garlic clove ml (½ cup) vegetable oil ml (½ cup) olive oil gm yoghurt, or to taste Finely grated rind and juice of 1 lime, or to taste JAMAICAN SPICE MIX
40 gm brown sugar 25 gm sea salt flakes 25 gm coriander seeds, coarsely ground 3 tsp black peppercorns, coarsely ground 3 tsp cayenne pepper 3 tsp finely grated nutmeg 1 tbsp ground ginger 1¼ tbsp ground allspice 1¼ tbsp ground cinnamon
PREVIOUS PAGE Lamb shoulder Wallpaper (used throughout) from Scandinavian Wallpaper & Decor. Platter from Slab & Slub. KH Würtz plate (top right) from Ondene. Pea salad Slip Ceramic white bowl (centre) from Chinaclay. Vintage Japanese bowl (top) from Planet. Glasses (used throughout) from Ondene. Jamaican chicken KH Würtz plate from Ondene (right). Sarah Ormonde dish from Chinaclay (with sauce). All other props stylist’s own. Toast KH Würtz plate from Ondene. All other props stylist’s own. Stockists p182.
1 To brine the chicken, place salt and 250ml water in a saucepan and bring to the boil, stirring until salt dissolves. Remove from heat and add 750ml cold water, transfer to a large container and refrigerate until chilled (30-40 minutes). Add the chicken wings and refrigerate for 5 hours to brine. 2 For lime crema, process eggs, mustard, lemon juice and garlic in a small food processor until well combined. With the motor running, slowly add combined oils in a thin steady stream and process until emulsified. Season to taste with salt, then stir in yoghurt and lime rind and juice. Refrigerate until required. 3 For spice mix, combine all ingredients in a bowl. 4 Burn wood down to embers. Remove wings from brine, pat dry with paper towels and dust generously in the Jamaican spice mix. Grill wings on a rack over coals, turning occasionally, until charred and cooked through (12-15 minutes). Serve with lime crema and lime cheeks. Wine suggestion A lively lighter red or a fun red-white blend would sit very well with the dark spices and the crema. ➤
Radish and butter lettuce salad SERVES 8-10 // PREP TIME 10 MINS
“We’ve had this fresh and easy salad on the menu at Burnt Ends since opening,” says Pynt. “The trick is to use basic vinegar and basic oil. Seriously. I use basic red wine vinegar and a pomace – or second press – olive oil. Don’t be tempted to use fancy stuff. You don’t need it.”
2 heads butter lettuce, quartered 4 radishes, thinly sliced 2 golden shallots, shaved into rounds on a mandolin RED WINE VINAIGRETTE
150 ml olive or grapeseed oil 50 ml red wine vinegar Caster sugar, to taste 1 For red wine vinaigrette, whisk oil and vinegar together, then season to taste with sugar and salt. 2 Arrange lettuce in a bowl or on a platter, top with radish and shallot, season with salt flakes, dress generously with vinaigrette and serve.
“This fresh and easy salad has been on the menu at Burnt Ends since opening. Don’t be tempted to use fancy, expensive olive oil and vinegar. You don’t need it.” 128
G O U R M E T T R AV E L L E R
Artichokes with Taleggio sauce SERVES 8-10 // PREP TIME 15 MINS // COOK 2 HRS (PLUS PREPARING EMBERS)
“Artichokes make for a very conversational course,” says Pynt. “You need to peel off each individual leaf, dip it, then scrape off the tender base with your teeth. It can take half an hour for two or three people to go through one artichoke. It’s not something you can just eat. I don’t mind if there’s a bit of rind in the Taleggio sauce. It just has so much flavour. Why do people throw it out?”
8 small whole globe artichokes Sweet paprika (optional), to serve TALEGGIO SAUCE
300 ml milk 400 gm Taleggio with rind, coarsely chopped
1 For Taleggio sauce, bring milk to the boil in a saucepan. Add the cheese, stir until it begins to melt, then blend with a hand-held blender until smooth. Season to taste. Taleggio sauce will keep refrigerated for up to 3 days and can be reheated before serving. 2 For the barbecue, slowly burn the wood down to embers. Place artichokes on a rack over the coals and grill gently, turning occasionally, until the leaves are charred and a knife pierces the base easily (1½-1¾ hours). 3 Sprinkle with paprika and serve with Taleggio sauce. Drink suggestion Nebbiolo, or a Birra Moretti would work a treat, as would the Two Metre Tall Forester Farmhouse Amber Ale – malty yet fresh. ➤
Artichokes Plate (right) from Planet. Butter lettuce salad Sophie Moran Platter from Chinaclay. All other props stylist’s own. Stockists p182.
Clams in garlic brown butter SERVES 8-10 // PREP TIME 15 MINS // COOK 20 MINS (PLUS PREPARING EMBERS)
“It’s important to get the clams off the coals as soon as they start to open,” says Pynt, “Their juices are used to emulsify the garlic and brown butter sauce.”
½ sourdough loaf, halved lengthways and thickly sliced 1 kg clams, cleaned ½ cup coarsely chopped flat-leaf parsley BROWN-BUTTER SAUCE
400 gm cold butter, diced 40 gm garlic cloves (about ½ bulb), finely chopped 25 gm salted capers, rinsed well and patted dry Lemon juice to taste, plus extra wedges to serve
1 For brown-butter sauce, heat a saucepan over high heat. Add butter and cook without stirring until foaming and nut-brown (8-10 minutes). Strain into a clean pan, add garlic and cook over medium-high heat until garlic is golden brown (3-4 minutes). Strain, discard garlic and stir in capers. Brown-butter sauce can be made up to a week ahead; reheat it to serve. Season with lemon juice just before using. 2 For the barbecue, burn wood slowly down to embers. Brush sourdough generously with brown butter sauce (reserve 100gm for clams) and grill on a wire rack until toasted on both sides (2-3 minutes each side). 3 Meanwhile, place the clams in a metal sieve with a flameproof
handle or place on a wire rack and cook over the embers, transferring to a heatproof bowl as soon as they start to open (6-12 minutes). Add remaining brown butter sauce and toss well until the sauce starts to thicken slightly (1-2 minutes). Throw in parsley and season with lemon juice, sea salt and freshly ground black pepper. 4 To serve, place toast in large serving bowls and top with clams and sauce. Wine suggestion Something that’s fresh but also brings a touch of nuttiness to the party, such as a white with a little acidity and a bit of age – a Clare Valley riesling with four to six years on it, for instance.
Buttermilk-brined lamb shoulder with harissa SERVES 8-10 // PREP TIME 25 MINS // COOK 5 HRS (PLUS BRINING, PREPARING EMBERS, RESTING)
“The lamb is first grilled until it’s well browned, then it’s wrapped in paper with shallots and grilled until it’s cooked,” says Pynt. “Be careful taking it out of the paper – you want to reserve the juices for serving and for the pea salad.” Begin this recipe two and half days ahead to brine lamb. Pictured p124.
1.5 kg lamb shoulder, bone in 10 golden shallots, peeled BUTTERMILK BRINE
50 gm sea salt 1.2 litres buttermilk Lemon juice, to taste HARISSA
3 ½ 1½ 500 100 50 2 1 ¼ 2
130
G O U R M E T T R AV E L L E R
tsp coriander seeds tsp cumin seeds tsp black peppercorns gm long green chillies, seeds removed (optional), coarsely chopped gm (2 cups) coarsely chopped coriander gm ginger, coarsely chopped garlic cloves, coarsely chopped tbsp sea salt flakes tsp garlic powder Juice of ½ lemon, or to taste tbsp olive oil
1 For the buttermilk brine, place salt and 600ml water in a saucepan and bring to the boil, stirring until salt dissolves. Cool, then stir in buttermilk and lemon juice, place in a large container and refrigerate to chill (20-30 minutes). Add the lamb shoulder and refrigerate for 1½ days, turning occasionally. Remove lamb from brine (discard brine), then refrigerate lamb uncovered overnight to dry out. 2 For the harissa, dry-roast seeds and peppercorns until fragrant (10-20 seconds; see cook’s notes p182). Crush, then combine with remaining ingredients in a food processor and process until coarsely chopped. 3 For the barbecue, burn wood down to embers. Gently grill lamb on a rack over coals,
turning often, topping up embers as necessary and ensuring the lamb’s surface temperature doesn’t exceed 105°C, until well browned (2-2½ hours). 4 Remove lamb from barbecue and place on a double layer of baking paper with shallots. Brush with harissa and wrap to enclose tightly. Grill, turning occasionally, until lamb and shallots are tender (2½-3 hours; try not to open the paper often). Remove lamb from barbecue, keep it well wrapped, and rest in a warm place for 30 minutes. Reserve the juices when you unwrap the parcel and serve spooned over the lamb (reserve the shallots and remaining juices for the pea salad; see p132). Wine suggestion A pinot noir or gamay with a good amount of weight. ➤
“Focus your energy on the fire to make sure you’re working with it rather than against it.”
Clams Spoon from West Elm. All other props stylist’s own. Stockists p182.
Pea, bean and shallot salad SERVES 8-10 // PREP TIME 25 MINS // COOK 10 MINS (PLUS DRYING ROSEMARY)
“I’ve kept this recipe fairly generic,” says Pynt. “The idea is to use whatever vegetables are available as well as the tendrils, pea flowers and shoots. The peas and beans get cooked on the coals and the brighter, fresher elements keep it alive. I put semi-dried rosemary on the coals; instead of going up in flames, it smokes beautifully and introduces some moisture – it’s almost like a steam-grill effect.”
300 gm podded peas (about 750gm unpodded) 400 gm sugar snap peas, trimmed 200 gm snow peas, trimmed 250 gm podded broad beans (about 750gm unpodded) 3 bunches semi-dried rosemary (see note) Braised golden shallots (reserved from the lamb; see recipe p130) 10 thin slices lardo (see note) Pea shoots and edible flowers (such as broad bean, snow pea and garlic flowers; optional), to serve CIDER VINAIGRETTE
150 ml grapeseed oil 2 tbsp apple cider vinegar
Blueberry tart Toast plates (top) from Planet. Olive bowl (left) from Mud Australia. All other props stylist’s own. Stockists p182. 132
G O U R M E T T R AV E L L E R
1 Blanch all peas and broad beans in a large saucepan of salted boiling water until bright green (30-40 seconds). Refresh, drain, then pat dry. (This can be done a few hours ahead; refrigerate peas and beans and bring to room temperature before using.) 2 For cider vinaigrette, whisk oil and vinegar in a bowl and season to taste. 3 For the barbecue, burn wood down to embers for medium heat. Place rosemary directly on coals, then place blanched vegetables in a large metal sieve with a flameproof handle and grill over rosemary until hot (5-8 minutes). Transfer to a bowl, add shallots and a little of
the reserved lamb juices (see lamb recipe p130), season to taste and toss to combine. Transfer to a large bowl or platter, and top with lardo. Dress pea shoots with vinaigrette, scatter onto the salad, then top with flowers, drizzle with extra vinaigrette and serve. Note For semi-dried rosemary, put rosemary in a sunny place for a couple of days. Lardo is available from select delicatessens and Italian butchers; to make your own, cure a 200gm piece of pork back-fat (order ahead from your butcher) in salt in the fridge for 3 days. Wipe off excess salt before use.
Blueberry tart SERVES 8-10 // PREP TIME 20 MINS // COOK 1½ HRS (PLUS INFUSING)
“If you can get everything ready to go for this tart and bake it last minute, great, but otherwise, the morning of the barbecue is fine,” says Pynt. “We use blueberries, but use whatever seasonal fruit you have on hand.” Begin this recipe a day ahead to infuse the cream.
375 gm (3 punnets) blueberries, plus extra to serve Pure icing sugar, for dusting CRÈME CHANTILLY
500 50 50 ½
ml (2 cups) pouring cream gm honey gm caster sugar vanilla bean, seeds scraped SWEET PASTRY
150 100 30 1 250
gm softened butter gm caster sugar gm almond meal egg gm (1⅔ cups) plain flour ALMOND FILLING
300 gm unsalted butter, softened 300 gm caster sugar 300 gm almond meal 150 gm eggs (about 4 small eggs)
1 For crème Chantilly, bring cream, honey, sugar and vanilla to the boil in a saucepan over high heat, stirring to dissolve sugar. Cool, then refrigerate overnight. Remove vanilla bean and whisk cream to soft peaks just before serving. 2 For pastry, beat butter and sugar in an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment until pale and creamy. Beat in almond meal, then egg and flour, scraping down sides of bowl. Turn out onto a clean work surface, form into a disc, wrap in plastic wrap, then refrigerate for 1 hour to rest. 3 Roll out pastry between two sheets of baking paper to a 30cm round, then line a lightly greased 28cm diameter tart tin with pastry, pressing into edges and trimming excess. Chill for 1 hour 4 Preheat oven to 140°C. Place tart tin on an oven tray and blind-bake until pastry is set and just starting to colour (20-30 minutes; see cook’s notes p182). 5 Meanwhile, for almond filling, whisk the butter and sugar in an electric mixer fitted with the whisk attachment until pale and creamy. Stir in almond meal, then gradually incorporate egg until well combined. Gently spread evenly into pastry case. 6 Cover tart with two-thirds of the blueberries. Increase oven to 160°C and bake tart until the filling starts to set (30 minutes). Top with remaining blueberries, reserving some to serve, and bake until tart is golden around the edges, just set in the centre and the filling temperature reaches 92°C (15-25 minutes). Cool, then top with extra blueberries, dust with icing sugar and serve with crème Chantilly. Wine suggestion The first thing that came to mind was the Switch Organic Wines Petit Verdot by Vanessa Altmann. It has lots of dark fruit, but is still quite bright. ●
PO KE
Ocean trout poke on matcha rice
136
p
Poke, Hawaii’s Asian-inflected bowl of raw-fish salad on rice, makes for smart-casual spring meals. Recipes & food styling EMMA KNOWLES Photography CHRIS COURT Styling GERALDINE MUÑOZ Drink suggestions MAX ALLEN
Tuna K-poke SERVES 4 // PREP TIME 20 MINS // COOK 50 MINS (PLUS STANDING)
You’ve heard of K-pop; now here’s our K-poke. Korean flavours join the more traditional Japanese and Hawaiian, kimchi adding a funky element while its pickling liquid ever so slightly cures the fish.
400 gm (2 cups) brown rice 5 cm piece dried kombu 350 gm sashimi-quality skinless tuna fillet, diced 100 gm kimchi, coarsely chopped plus 1½ tbsp kimchi liquid 1½ tbsp soy sauce 1½ tbsp rice vinegar 1½ tbsp sesame oil 2 tsp roasted sesame seeds, plus extra to serve 2 avocados, cut into thin wedges Thinly sliced spring onion, to serve
1 Place rice, kombu, 750ml water and 1 tsp sea salt in a saucepan, bring to a simmer, then reduce heat to low, cover with a tight-fitting lid and cook without uncovering for 50 minutes. Remove from heat and stand covered for 10 minutes, then discard kombu and fluff up rice with a fork. 2 Combine tuna, kimchi and kimchi liquid, soy sauce,
vinegar, sesame oil and sesame seeds in a bowl, toss to combine and stand to marinate lightly (10 minutes). 3 To serve, divide warm rice among serving bowls, top with tuna mixture and avocado, drizzle with any juices that remain from the tuna and scatter with spring onion and extra sesame seeds. Drink suggestion Amber ale.
PREVIOUS PAGE Trout poke Bowl (left) from Robert Gordon Australia. Brett Stone bowl (centre) from Claypool. Bowl (right) from Batch Ceramics. Small pink bowl from Zakkia. Tuna K-poke Brett Stone bowls from Claypool. All other props stylist’s own. Snapper poke All props stylist’s own. Stockists p182.
Ocean trout poke on matcha rice SERVES 4 // PREP TIME 20 MINS // COOK 20 MINS (PLUS STANDING)
Matcha brings a gorgeous earthiness to the sushi rice in this poke, contrasting with the sweetness of the trout and tang of the ruby grapefruit dressing. Pictured p134.
400 gm sushi rice, rinsed 1 tsp matcha powder (see note), dissolved in 50ml hot water 150 gm podded edamame 350 gm sashimi-quality skinless ocean trout fillet, diced 1 small Lebanese cucumber, thinly sliced on a mandolin 2 radishes, trimmed, thinly sliced on a mandolin Tobiko (see note) and coriander cress, to serve RUBY GRAPEFRUIT-TAMARI DRESSING
2 2 1 1 2 1
tbsp vegetable oil tbsp ruby grapefruit juice tbsp rice vinegar tbsp tamari tsp lemon juice tsp finely grated ruby grapefruit rind 1 garlic clove, finely chopped
136
G O U R M E T T R AV E L L E R
1 Place rice, 500ml water and 1 tsp sea salt in a saucepan, bring to a simmer, then reduce heat to low, cover with a tight-fitting lid and cook without uncovering for 20 minutes. Remove from heat and stand covered for 10 minutes, then mix in matcha. 2 For ruby grapefruit-tamari dressing, shake ingredients in a jar to combine. 3 Cook edamame in a saucepan of boiling salted water until tender (1-2 minutes), then drain, refresh and drain. 4 Divide warm rice among serving bowls, top with trout, edamame, cucumber and radish, drizzle with dressing to taste, scatter with tobiko and coriander cress and serve. Note Matcha powder is available from specialist tea shops, Japanese grocers and healthfood shops. Tobiko, flying fish roe, is available from select fishmongers. If it’s unavailable, substitute salmon roe. Wine suggestion Pinot noir.
Green bomb snapper poke SERVES 4 // PREP TIME 15 MINS // COOK 20 MINS (PLUS STANDING)
Green is good, especially in the form of crunchy raw snow peas and broccolini, seaweed salad and piquant wasabi peas. The peppery kick of a wasabi vinaigrette is incredibly moreish – adjust the heat level to suit your tastebuds.
400 gm (2 cups) sushi rice, rinsed 350 gm sashimi-quality skinless snapper fillet, diced 120 gm snow peas, trimmed and julienned 120 gm broccolini, tips coarsely chopped, stalks thinly sliced 100 gm seaweed salad (see note) Pea tendrils and wasabi peas, to serve WASABI VINAIGRETTE
2 1 60 2 1
tsp wasabi paste tbsp mirin ml (¼ cup) vegetable oil tbsp rice vinegar tsp finely grated ginger
1 Bring rice, 500ml water and 1 tsp salt to a simmer in a saucepan, then reduce heat to low, cover with a tight-fitting lid and cook without uncovering for 20 minutes. Remove from heat and stand covered for 10 minutes, then uncover and fluff up rice with a fork. 2 For vinaigrette, whisk wasabi and mirin in a bowl until smooth, then gradually whisk in oil until emulsified. Whisk in vinegar and ginger, season to taste and thin with water if necessary to a drizzling consistency.
3 Divide warm rice among serving bowls, top with snapper, snow peas, broccolini and seaweed salad, drizzle with wasabi vinaigrette to taste and serve scattered with pea tendrils and wasabi peas. Note Seaweed salad is available from select fishmongers and Japanese grocery shops. Drink suggestion Unfiltered, cloudy, sparkling sake. ➤
Spicy prawn and pineapple poke SERVES 4 // PREP TIME 20 MINS // COOK 20 MINS (PLUS STANDING)
What could be more Hawaiian than coconut? Coconut milk adds a beautiful creaminess to the rice base, while coconut flakes bring just the right amount of crunch. Use an underripe pineapple here to bring tartness and complexity to the dish.
400 gm sushi rice, rinsed 250 ml (1 cup) coconut milk 16 cooked prawns, peeled with tails intact 250 gm pineapple, thinly sliced 4 baby cucumbers, thinly sliced lengthways 1 tbsp finely chopped Spanish onion Coriander, thinly sliced long green chilli, finely grated lime rind, toasted coconut flakes and lime wedges, to serve COCONUT-GREEN CHILLI DRESSING
70 2 2 1
ml coconut milk tbsp vegetable oil tsp rice vinegar tsp soy sauce Juice of 1 lime ½ long green chilli, thinly sliced ½ garlic clove, finely grated
1 Bring rice, coconut milk, 250ml water and 1 tsp sea salt to a simmer in a saucepan, then reduce heat to low, cover with a tight-fitting lid and cook without uncovering for 20 minutes. Remove from heat and stand covered for 10 minutes, then uncover and fluff up rice with a fork. 2 Meanwhile, for coconutgreen chilli dressing, shake ingredients in a jar to combine and season to taste. 3 Divide warm coconut rice among serving bowls, top with prawns, pineapple, cucumber and onion, drizzle with dressing to taste, scatter with coriander, chilli, lime rind and coconut flakes, and serve with lime wedges. Wine suggestion Mediumsweet young riesling.
Prawn poke Oval bowl from Batch Ceramics. Pourer from Chuchu. All other props stylist’s own. Kingfish bowl All props stylist’s own. Stockists p182. 138
G O U R M E T T R AV E L L E R
Black and white kingfish bowl SERVES 4 // PREP TIME 20 MINS // COOK 25 MINS (PLUS SOAKING, STANDING)
Black rice adds a delicious nutty texture to this beautiful monochrome bowl, while the miso dressing brings a rich umami note.
400 gm (2 cups) black rice, rinsed (see note) 2 tbsp light soy sauce 2 tsp mirin 2 tsp rice vinegar 2 tsp black sesame seeds, plus extra to serve 2 tsp roasted sesame seeds, plus extra to serve 350 gm sashimi-quality skinless kingfish fillet, thinly sliced 150 gm cabbage, very thinly shaved on a mandolin
100 gm black fungus, torn 60 gm enoki mushrooms, trimmed Thinly sliced spring onion, to serve WHITE MISO DRESSING
1 1 1 2 2 1 ½
tbsp shiro miso tbsp rice vinegar tbsp lemon juice tbsp vegetable oil tsp sesame oil tsp finely grated ginger garlic clove, finely grated
1 Place rice, 1 litre water and 1 tsp sea salt in a saucepan and soak for 1 hour. Bring to a simmer, then reduce heat to low, cover with a tight-fitting lid and cook without uncovering for 25 minutes. Remove from heat and stand covered for 10 minutes, then stir in soy sauce, mirin, vinegar and sesame seeds. 2 For white miso dressing, whisk miso, vinegar and lemon juice in a bowl to combine, then whisk in oils, ginger and garlic. Thin with a little water
if necessary to achieve a drizzling consistency. 3 Divide warm rice among serving bowls, top with kingfish, cabbage, black fungus and enoki mushrooms, drizzle generously with miso dressing, scatter with extra sesame seeds and spring onion, and serve. Note Black rice – not to be confused with sticky black rice – is available from select delicatessens. Wine suggestion Bottle-aged chardonnay. ➤
Scallop poke with pickled ginger dressing SERVES 4 // PREP TIME 20 MINS // COOK 12 MINS (PLUS STANDING)
Scallops are amazing served raw – be sure to trim the muscle from the side, then use a very sharp knife to slice them horizontally into rounds.
400 gm (2 cups) sushi rice, rinsed 2 tsp roasted sesame seeds 2 tsp sesame oil 2 tsp rice vinegar 16 sashimi-quality scallops, trimmed and thinly sliced into rounds 1 avocado, thinly sliced 1 Lebanese cucumber, cut into julienne Âź small daikon, cut into julienne
140
G O U R M E T T R AV E L L E R
Furikake (see note) and thinly sliced spring onion, to serve PICKLED GINGER DRESSING
20 gm pickled ginger, finely chopped 2 spring onions, thinly sliced 1 tbsp rice vinegar 1 tbsp mirin 1 tbsp vegetable oil 2 tsp soy sauce
1 Bring rice, 500ml water and 1 tsp sea salt to a simmer in a saucepan, then reduce heat to low, cover with a tight-fitting lid and cook without uncovering for 20 minutes. Remove from heat and stand covered for 10 minutes. Add sesame seeds, oil and vinegar and stir to combine. 2 Meanwhile, for pickled ginger dressing, shake ingredients in a jar to combine and season to taste.
3 Divide warm rice among serving bowls, top with scallops, avocado, cucumber and daikon, drizzle with pickled ginger dressing to taste and serve scattered with furikake and spring onion. Note Furikake, a Japanese rice seasoning, is available from Japanese grocers. Drink suggestion Fine, fruity junmai daiginjo.
Tofu poke bowl with pickled carrot SERVES 4 // PREP TIME 25 MINS // COOK 50 MINS (PLUS PICKLING, STANDING)
This vegan tofu bowl is full of flavour and texture. Use a mix of varieties of baby beetroot. If the leaves are small and tender, why not add them to the mix?
400 gm (2 cups) brown rice 1 tbsp dried sea vegetable (see note) 350 gm firm tofu, sliced 8 baby beetroot, trimmed and thinly shaved on a mandolin 1 golden shallot, thinly shaved on a mandolin Radish cress and torn nori, to serve Crumbled seaweed crackers and shichimi togarashi (see note), to serve PICKLED CARROT
1 2 2 2 1
Tofu poke Bowl (left) from Batch Ceramics. Pebble bowl (right) from Mud Australia. Scallop poke Bowl from Batch Ceramics. All other props stylist’s own. Stockists p182.
carrot, cut into julienne tbsp rice vinegar tbsp mirin tbsp sesame oil tbsp finely grated ginger
1 For pickled carrot, combine ingredients in a bowl, season to taste and stand at room temperature to pickle for 1 hour. Refrigerate in an airtight container for up to a week. 2 Place rice, sea vegetable, 750ml water and 1 tsp sea salt in a saucepan, bring to a simmer, then reduce heat to low, cover with a tight-fitting lid and cook without uncovering for 50 minutes. Remove from heat and stand covered for 10 minutes, then uncover and fluff up rice with a fork. 3 Divide warm rice among serving bowls and top with tofu, beetroot, shallot, pickled carrot,
and pickling liquid to taste. Scatter with radish cress, nori and seaweed crackers, season to taste with shichimi togarashi and serve. Note Dried sea vegetable is available from Asian grocers and health-food shops. Shichimi togarashi, a Japanese spice blend, is available from Asian and Japanese grocers. Wine suggestion Tangy, skin-contact white wine. ●
This vegan tofu bowl is full of flavour and texture. Use a mix of different varieties of baby beetroot and you’ve got bowls brimming with good looks, too.
TRAVEL SEPTEMBER
Great escapes Adventures on the Silk Road, hiking and the high life in South Australia, and eating like a local in Hong Kong.
The Ark Fortress in Bukhara, Uzbekistan.
144
PHOTOGRAOHY JOHN LAURIE
p
Cities of sapphire
On a magic-carpet ride along the Silk Road, JENNIFER BYRNE finds the shining blue towers and vivid history of Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan even more striking than the poets’ promises. Photography JOHN LAURIE
and gold
I
t’s the journey, not the destination, I know. Sometimes, though, a place comes along that blows the rules out of the water, and that’s how it was for me when I first saw a photograph of the unfinished minaret of Khiva, at the far western end of Uzbekistan’s stretch of the ancient Silk Road. There are other World Heritage sites en route, cities with taller towers, grander palaces, deeper histories. But this single image of a beautiful, barrel-shaped tower, built when Khiva was the centre of an empire, fired my imagination. I yearned to see it for myself. Exactly 14 months later I stand at the foot of the Kalta Minor minaret – as glorious as any dream. Horizontal bands of turquoise, aqua and sapphire tiles, each more geometrically intricate than the last, rise into a bright blue sky. A golden light bounces off the high mud-brick walls nearby, standing on foundations dating back to the 10th century. But the city is older still; the mathematician and astronomer Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi invented algebra in his birthplace many centuries earlier (the title of his massive treatise includes the word al-jabr). The shining minaret was commissioned not quite 200 years ago by Khiva’s king to be the world’s tallest Islamic tower, partly for his own glory, but also to keep a sharp eye on movements in the desert beyond the walls. But it’s less than half its intended height of 70 metres, a dwarf by the standard of Uzbek towers, its flat top an indication of the day the khan dropped dead and his workers downed tools. His successor scampered back to the old palace, which offered greater security and more rooms for concubines. A poem inscribed in mosaics runs around the top of Kalta Minor: Centra
l A si
a
Kazakhstan
Uzbekistan Tashkent
Khiva
Bukhara
Samarkand
Turkmenistan
Ashgabat
146
Afghanistan
G O U R M E T T R AV E L L E R
PREVIOUS PAGES Left: the minaret of Islam-Khodja in Khiva. Right: flatbread in Khiva. OPPOSITE Clockwise from top: Kukeldash Madrasah in Tashkent; Siab Bazaar in Samarkand; the ceiling inside the dome of Tilla-Kari Madrasah in the Registan, Samarkand; Chorsu Bazaar in Tashkent.
This minaret was finished, It reached the sky, it was so beautiful. Even the trees in the heavens, Were just a shadow of this minaret. There’s a bit of an historical fudge on “finished”, but the verse is true in essence. Personal obsessions aside, travelling Uzbekistan’s long stretch of the Silk Road is a bit like being in a long blue dream, such a dazzle of tiles and arches, and decorated domes and cupolas, it risks bringing on a Central Asian case of Stendhal syndrome. Uzbek guides joke about the four Ms: mosques, minarets, madrasahs and mausoleums. Museums makes five. It can be exhausting, but exhilarating, too, because the history is only part of the story. This old country is also very young, reborn in 1991 from the ashes of the Soviet Union. The collapse was a profoundly traumatic event – and not the universally welcome one many in the West imagine. I meet older Uzbeks who still mourn for the days when they were part of the Russian empire, before the desperate decade of the ’90s when they lost their industry, their currency, their capacity to feed themselves. “You can’t eat cotton and oil,” one old-timer says. “We starved.” They had to rebuild their country from the ground up. So this two-week journey is about more than the past. We visit the circus, and what a frolic that is. We bluff our way into the national sports training centre and meet the trainer who made Uzbekistan the sensation of the Rio Olympics, lifting the country out of nowhere to blitz the boxing medals; the place is full of boys training to become the next champions. We dance with grannies wearing Lurex and we’re ambushed by schoolkids determined to practise their English. We eat the national dish of plov, join a wedding party, and sit among a weeping crowd beside the rose-covered body of the country’s first president, and dictator, Islam Karimov, before he’s dispatched to his mausoleum. We also cross the border from Uzbekistan into Turkmenistan – a Le Carré-style operation – and see just how much marble you can afford if you’re sitting on the world’s fourth-largest gas reserve. And I ride on one of the descendants of the “heavenly horses”, so admired by the Chinese that they packed up their silk and started a legendary trade route to acquire them. Geographically, Uzbekistan is what they call a double-landlocked country – landlocked by ’stans that are themselves landlocked. It rubs along well enough with its giant northern neighbour, Kazakhstan (though Uzbeks do love a Borat joke), but its short southern border with Afghanistan is one of the world’s most dangerous. It’s fiercely guarded, against drugs mainly, but also Islamic extremism, which so alarms Uzbek authorities that even in this overwhelmingly Muslim ➤
G O U R M E T T R AV E L L E R
147
country the burka is banned and there are no work breaks on Fridays for prayers. But culturally it is extremely rich, luring travellers with its exotic, centuries-old stories of caravanserais filled with precious goods, and camel trains crossing the deserts, the traders building camps all along the route, which became trading posts, growing into fortified cities. Bukhara, Samarkand and Khiva are brilliant examples of these; the capital, Tashkent, not so much. Destroyed by an earthquake in the 1960s and rebuilt as a showcase for the best (and worst) of Soviet architecture, Tashkent has its charms: grand gardens, wide boulevards and, in the oldest part of the city, a modest but much-loved mausoleum built in the 16th century to honour the Muslim scholar and wise-man Kaffal-Shashi. Across a vast square is a madrasah housing one of the country’s great treasures: the world’s oldest Koran, one of six commissioned by a 7th-century caliph to collate all versions of Muhammed’s words shortly after he died. This is the last surviving copy, written in ink mixed from coal, walnut shells and pistachio blossoms. It’s a beautiful, awe-inspiring thing. “Music for the eyes”, as calligraphy master Bahodir Saliev describes it to us. He’s a seventh-generation calligrapher, fluent in five languages, and he sends me away with a small treasure: a swirl of dots and lines reading “Jennifer” in Arabic.
Heading west from Samarkand to Bukhara; roadside sellers at the entrance to Samarkand. Opposite: Uzbekistan’s national dish, plov, served traditionally with freshly baked bread and tomatoes.
T
ashkent is also museum central and, as the first stop for most visitors, a useful primer to the region’s history. This is fascinating but also fiendishly complex since pretty much everyone has stuck their oar in Central Asia, from Alexander the Great to Stalin. The standout monster of the ’stans seems to be Genghis Khan, who swept through with his infamous Mongol hordes in the 13th century, destroying everything they encountered. Mysteriously, his equally bloodthirsty successor, Tamerlane, is accorded the status of national hero. This historical anomaly dates from the crucial year of 1991, when the Soviets withdrew from Uzbekistan but their hardman, the autocratic Islam Karimov, determinedly remained in office. He ordered the old busts of Marx and Lenin be replaced by outsized statues, one featuring the warlord king Tamerlane on horseback, bearing a sword, with his right leg (wounded during battle, hence his name: Timur-thelame) still magnificently in action. So what do Uzbeks learn at school about Tamerlane? Do they know he killed 17 million people and built towers from the skulls of his enemies? Oh, yes, our guide – whose name is Timur – says cheerfully, we know about his brutal methods and the towers, but he united disparate lands and disparate people. This counts in Uzbekistan, with its mix of ➤ G O U R M E T T R AV E L L E R
149
100 or so ethnicities, among them Russians (Russian is the lingua franca) and Tajiks and Koreans and Iranians and Arabs and Tartars, many of them with the wide cheeks and square faces inherited from the original Mongol invasion. This is one of the most perpetually occupied parts of the world, where half a dozen religions have taken root over the centuries. Travelling the length of the Silk Road you can see how the history unfolded, how the cities rose and fell. We leave Tashkent by high-speed train, zooming past rocky dunes and dusty fields rimed by salt to reach the near-mythical city of Samarkand; at its medieval heart is the Registan, which viceroy of India George Curzon described as “the noblest public square in the world”. The most spectacular sight in Central Asia, some say, and who would argue? The Registan is a vast open-air plaza framed by three madrasahs, covered to within an inch of their towering, tilting heights with mosaic tiles and majolica – sheets of blue and gold, earth to sky. I spend hours here, bewitched, until a guard “pssts” at me and points to a rickety set of wooden stairs leading to the top of what’s known (because of the tilt) as “the drunken minaret”. I climb, cautiously, and I’m rewarded with a panoramic view of the old city and the desert beyond.
S
amarkand was the centre of Tamerlane’s empire, built on his own giant scale. Some two kilometres from the Registan is the Gur-e Amir mausoleum, where his body lies beneath a solid block of green jade surrounded by statues and arches that light up spectrally at night. Guides here whisper about the curse of Tamerlane. Legend has it that when Stalin ordered the grave to be opened, in 1941, archaeologists found an inscription inside: “Whosoever disturbs my tomb will unleash an invader more terrible than I”. Three days later, Hitler ordered the invasion of the Soviet Union. Stalin ordered the body to be reinterred with full Islamic ritual the following year. Then there’s the observatory built by Tamerlane’s grandson Ulugh Beg, a bad ruler but brilliant geek, who constructed a massive sextant with which he located more than a thousand stars; his globe of the heavens was so precise it astounded Oxford scholars of his day. Though for sheer loveliness, nothing beats the colour and intricate mosaics of the peaceful necropolis Shah-i-Zinda, built on a high green hill looking over the city, filled with tombs for Tamerlane’s wives and relatives. A place so holy that a visit here is regarded by some as equivalent to a pilgrimage to Mecca. At lunch we join Uzbek men at the traditional Samarkand teahouses called chaikhana for simple meals of kebabs and salad served on bright plastic cloths. At dinner we join parties at barn-like restaurants where three generations gather to feast
150
G O U R M E T T R AV E L L E R
Above, from left: Bukhara’s Ark Fortress; Po-iKalyan mosque complex, which includes the Kalyan minaret; and a local at Bolo Hauz – the Emir’s Mosque.
on chicken, mutton and noodles, and dance. It’s in Samarkand, too, that we try plov, the traditional dish of Uzbekistan: a one-pot rice stew studded with vegetables and fatty lamb, served with sweet local tomatoes and freshly baked bread. Direct communication isn’t easy but the welcome is unmistakeably warm at these gatherings, with big golden smiles from older Uzbeks who during the hard years invested their gold in teeth. The women wear headscarves and bright velvet tunics, the men, skullcaps and boots. Life is hard – one can see that – and the winding road from Samarkand to Tamerlane’s birthplace of Shahrisabz, two hours’ drive south, takes us past a roadside market selling little more than herbal teas, dried fruit and sour-milk balls. On the way to Bukhara we pass the industrial zone of Karshi, a gas and oil production centre expanding across the desert at cracking speed, heralded by the smell of gas and the sight of blue pipes snaking towards an enormous power station in the distance. The desert is fringed, incongruously, by green fields of cotton,
Uzbekistan’s chief cash crop – in fact, the cotton boll is a national symbol. But lines of salt show the cost of such a thirsty choice. Wheat is the favoured crop these days – something you can eat.
I
f Samarkand is the glamour girl of the old trade route, Bukhara, some 280 kilometres to the west, is its gentle, modest sister. A maze of a city-museum, it was founded in the 6th century, though its history as a centre of scholarship, culture and trade stretches back centuries before that. It’s the best place to buy embroidered jackets, shawls, heavy falls of old Russian silk and wonderful hats from traders who’ve set up shops under the arches of ancient caravanserai, where the camels slept. Those were the days when a soldier or priest would climb the 45-metre spiral staircase (that’s 105 steps – I counted) to the top of the glowing Kalyan minaret to light a signal fire every night to guide travellers. They would enter through iron gates guarding the massive 4th-century Ark Fortress; just beyond is the khan’s vast open-air arena, looking like something
straight from Game of Thrones, and the cells where prisoners spent their last, miserable night before being executed in public. Bukhara has its fair share of magnificent blue monuments to visit, but it’s the kind of dreamy, jewel-like place that rewards the aimless wanderer. I make nodding acquaintance with the men playing backgammon just outside our hotel, their board set up in the shade of plane and beech trees, and I chat with workers restoring a 16th-century mosque – an endless job, they complain amiably. I buy a pretty necklace from the women who run the bustling gold market and one of the city’s famous hand-embroidered jackets. From our guide, I learn a few of the secrets and traditions of old Bukhara, such as the code of the doors: a woman caller knocks gently on the wood; a man rattles the chain. And it’s in Bukhara we discover the circus, a travelling show managed by Shirin – meaning sweet in Uzbek – who tells me she’s just lost her husband and performance partner of 43 years, a magician named Farkat. Their act had been the retelling of a 15th-century Persian love story renamed – what else? – Farkat and ➤ G O U R M E T T R AV E L L E R
151
Shirin. She speaks lovingly of her husband, but looks to the future; many young people want to join the circus, she says. We sit in the bleachers watching children stream in, past barkers spinning sticks of old-fashioned fairy floss in metal pots. The audience is pulsing with energy and anticipation. It’s both a privilege and a visceral pleasure to be here, under the faded yellow and blue canvas top, at a circus that reminds me so of what it was like to go as a young, wide-eyed girl.
T
he third of the beautiful sisters is Khiva, a seven-hour drive west. It’s the smallest of Uzbekistan’s Silk Road cities, circled entirely by the desert that defines its character: sand-coloured, sun-baked, immensely hospitable. Home not just to that unfinished minaret I’d so longed to see, but to the mighty fortress of Itchan Kala, with thick mud-brick walls curving like protective waves. Though first recorded by Muslim travellers during the 10th century, Khiva’s glory days were in the 16th, as capital of its own khanate stretching to the Caspian Sea. Now it’s a living open-air museum, packed with richly painted madrasahs and palaces. Its narrow lanes are full of music, markets and noisy weddings; travellers are encouraged to join in the dancing and try on furry hats made of astrakhan wool. I could spent weeks in Khiva, lounging in its tea rooms and bars, but this is our last stop, where the old Silk Road turns south into the neighbouring nation of Turkmenistan. We’re dropped by taxi at a dusty, tightly fenced border crossing where we’re greeted by guards, dogs, lots of stamping of documents and much searching of luggage. The next few days are a blur of ancient sites – unlike Uzbekistan, which enhances monuments shamelessly, Turkmen authorities believe they should generally be left in their unrestored state. The depth of the history in this huge nation of just five million people, many of them tribal nomads, is staggering – though harder to read. And it’s impossible not to be distracted by Ashgabat, the blazing white-marble capital city of towers rising from the desert. This is a country rich from gas and, like Uzbekistan, it was ruled for many years by one of the old Communist Party dinosaurs turned nationalist president. From 1985 until his unlamented death in 2006, Saparmurat Niyazov’s rule was as repressive as it was eccentric. The capital was littered with golden statues of Turkmenbashi, as he called himself, and he renamed some of the months in honour of his family. Beyond Turkmenbashi’s monuments, though, the landscape is ancient and powerful – high on a hill above the capital’s thrusting white apartment blocks and eight-lane highways are the bones and bricks of an ancient city. Archaeologists digging at Old Nisa, some
152
G O U R M E T T R AV E L L E R
Above: carp with tomatoes, flatbreads, smoked cheese, tea and vodka. Opposite from top: a market in Khiva; a section of Kalta Minor minaret in Khiva.
20 kilometres from Ashgabat, have discovered fire temples surrounded by niches decorated with symbols of Zoroastrianism, the old faith here but honoured by Islam, the dominant religion that followed. A tour of Turkmenistan’s major heritage sights – Mary, KunyaUrgench and the ancient city of Merv – involves travelling to three of the country’s five provinces; all have grandish capitals, but nothing to beat Ashgabat, which is clearly where the money is, and the power. The Silk Road is a glorious misnomer. A series of routes snaking across Asia and Europe, shape-shifting with history, it’s so vast it’s hard to imagine what any stretch of it might look like. Now I see it in shades of blue, from the sapphire tiles of the Registan to the cloudless azure sky over the western desert. And that shining barrel-shaped minaret in Khiva, as beautiful as I’d hoped, and the old poem promised. ●
Tr i p notes
Getting around Abercrombie & Kent has a range of hosted small-group tours and customised journeys to Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. Its 15-day Ancient Trade Routes of Central Asia, a hosted small-group tour, has departures in October 2017 and May, September and October 2018. It’s priced from $11,995 per person twin share (single supplement $2,495), which includes extensive touring with English-speaking guides, the services of an A&K host, most meals, and all accommodation and transport, including regional flights and a high-speed train from Tashkent to Samarkand. An eight-day private journey costs from $7,715 per person twin share. 1300 590 317, abercrombiekent.com.au Visas Australians require visas for Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. A&K helps guests with applications and recommends allowing at least three months for processing. Getting there Emirates-Qantas codesharing with Uzbekistan Airways flies from select Australian cities to Tashkent via Dubai.
G O U R M E T T R AV E L L E R
153
Due
For a taste of South Australia’s extreme wilderness in extreme comfort, HELEN ANDERSON dovetails hikes into the Flinders Ranges and along the sea cliffs of Kangaroo Island. Photography JAMES GEER
South Au
st
ra
li
a
Flinders Ranges
Adelaide
Kangaroo Island
A
t the end of the summer of 1932 Hans Heysen hooked up a makeshift trailer-caravan to his Model A Ford Roadster, packed his paints and camping gear, and drove north. It was hot as hell and bone dry after years of drought, yet the artist had been drawn, moth-like, to the Flinders Ranges for years, catching trains and mail trucks, staying at station huts and country hotels and, finally, in his little caravan. “It is a fascinating part of our country distinct from anything in Australia, and it is crying out to be painted,” he wrote in 1927, soon after his first trip from his home in the Adelaide Hills. “No one that I know of has attempted it.” Though Heysen was well established as an artist, his study of this monumental landscape challenged him to rethink scale, mass and saturation of colour, inspiring some of his best-loved works. I think of Heysen often out here. All my notions of the Flinders Ranges are drawn from his work, so vividly and faithfully rendered I have an odd sensation of familiarity as I walk along dry creek beds and copper-hued escarpments, though it’s my first time here. I can see the artist’s challenge. It’s not gentle country; it’s dry and rough, the light dazzling in its harshness, the scale so vast it’s difficult to frame any view. “Everything looks so old that it belongs to a different world,” Heysen wrote. “Fine big simple forms against clear transparent skies – and a sense of spaciousness everywhere.” This is a hiking trip to two different worlds just a couple of hours apart – a classic vision of the Australian outback in the Flinders Ranges, and a wild coastline of sea cliffs and lonely beaches on Kangaroo Island – linked by light-plane flights and packaged with stays at two of the nation’s finest wilderness lodges. It’s a study in geographic extremes in extreme comfort. It begins with an early-morning flight in an eight-seater from Adelaide to the Flinders Ranges, 75 minutes above dry cropland and, further north, parched sheep country. We’ve crossed the invisible Goyder’s Line, which was drawn 150 years ago by a surveyor-general to indicate where the state’s arable land ends (it’s moving south, scientists believe, as the climate changes). The rock star of the Flinders Ranges
156
G O U R M E T T R AV E L L E R
PREVIOUS PAGE A hiker on the Arkaba Walk faces the Elder Range. Clockwise from above: Wilpena Pound; Arkaba’s Charles Carlow; Arkaba homestead; South Australian cheeses, bush tomato chutney and saltbush-smoked kangaroo served on an Arkaba safari drive.
is the ancient crater of Wilpena Pound, 800 million years old, like a gigantic worn molar framed by the incisors of the Elder and Chase ranges. The country glows an antique copper red in soft morning light as we fly a double loop across the Pound. Sitting just outside the crater, the 26,000-hectare Arkaba station appears at this height as a khaki tile in a mosaic of arid sheep properties. Charles Carlow bought the heavily grazed property in 2009 with pioneering intentions quite unlike those of the tough-as-nails pioneers before him. Born and based in Sydney, educated in Edinburgh and scion of a long line of Irish aristocrats, Carlow is the founder of the wilderness experience company Wild Bush Luxury. Inspired by best-practice conservation tourism in Africa, he bought Arkaba with the twin ambitions of turning it into a private wilderness conservancy and using tourism as the means to fund the huge rehabilitation effort. It’s the first such venture in Australia. “Conservation is behind everything we do, and the experience we offer travellers is what makes that possible,” says Carlow as we leave his 1850s homestead with day packs and head towards the Pound. “We know we can use the bookings to make a difference within our relatively small area, and that’s an important realisation for our guests, too.” We’re hiking a shortened version of the four-day Arkaba Walk, a sometimes challenging 35-kilometre route through spectacular country punctuated by stays at two luxe bush camps. There’s no phone signal, no wi-fi. The isolation and the presence of an expert guide ensures swift immersion in the fascinating ecology and human history of the ranges. ➤
G O U R M E T T R AV E L L E R
157
158
G O U R M E T T R AV E L L E R
The final night of the walk is spent at the homestead. Five bedrooms with ensuites are furnished with wool-bale tables, cowhide rugs, antiques and wildlife studies by artist Rosemary Woodford Ganf, and open onto a deep veranda. Guests share meals of South Australian produce prepared by chef Luke Dale-Smith in a big eat-in kitchen or at a repurposed wool-sorting table with views of the red ranges.
O
ver dinner – Spencer Gulf calamari, saltbush lamb, desert-lime cheesecake – station manager and born storyteller Brendon Bevan talks about the challenges of overseeing Arkaba’s recovery. Born in South Africa, and with a distinguished career as a field guide and researcher across southern Africa, Bevan moved to the remote South Australian station seven years ago. “That first sunrise was enough,” he recalls. “I just fell head over heels for this place. It’s some of the best walking country I’ve ever enjoyed.” Cyanobacteria, lerps, feral-cat behaviour, salinity, the politics of dingo control and goat culling – Bevan’s ability to describe the dizzyingly complex rhythms of
Below: the terrace at Southern Ocean Lodge. Opposite, clockwise from top left: McLeod Hill lookout in the Flinders Ranges; Kangaroo Island marron and abalone with native bush fruits and coastal herbs served at Southern Ocean Lodge, and the waiting area of the Southern Spa.
nature and the domino effects of human intervention is compelling, his passion for Arkaba’s rehab infectious. After dinner he’ll head out to set feral-cat traps or analyse survey data. “We’re on page 10 of chapter one of a book that doesn’t end,” he says cheerfully, undaunted by the magnitude of the challenge. Carlow, too, has his eye on the long game. “Our livelihood as a tourism business is inextricably linked with the health of our environment,” he says. “We have a fundamental responsibility to look after the country both for its own good and for our business.” After renovating the homestead and setting up the walk and bush camps in the first year, Carlow and Bevan rolled up their sleeves. They removed 8,000 sheep in stages, shut down the windmills, established extensive surveys and monitoring of soil, water, flora and fauna, and started the difficult, ugly work of eradicating ferals: rabbits, foxes, goats and cats. The results, says Bevan, are “truly phenomenal”, among them sightings of 12 species of birds not seen in generations, pioneer vegetation well established in parts, the return of bats, a new species of toadlet identified and two communities of slender bell-fruit saplings discovered, one of the rarest species in the ranges. “It took me three years to see an echidna,” he says. “In last year’s walking season we saw 67 in seven months.” Dunnarts, striated grass frogs, spiny-tailed skinks, owlet-nightjars, a colony of 37 rare yellow-footed rock wallabies – all seldom seen, now present and, in some cases, thriving. “We’re over the moon,” Bevan says. “I couldn’t have dreamed we’d be seeing these kinds of changes so soon. And the changes we know about are the tip of the iceberg – I’m sure there’s millions of little things we may never know are going on, or not for 20 years or more.” The river red gums rendered so memorably by Heysen have survived, lining dry creek beds and dominating every view: majestic, battered and burnt, some so tortured you can walk through gaps in their trunks. “We see these giants, some of them 2,000 years old, but find me a little red gum,” says Bevan. “Riparian veg has taken such a hammering from grazing, the next generation doesn’t exist.” This is why he’s boyishly excited by frequent sightings of the nondescript Acacia victoriae, a prickly, swift-growing pioneer species that protects slower-growing, more palatable plants. “I’ve gone out with guests and they’re scratching their heads wondering why we’re stopping to see a prickly little bush,” he chuckles. “But just to see Acacia victoriae regenerate…” He shakes his head as though he’s just seen a miracle. Bevan grew up helping his parents run ecotourism ventures on former cattle properties in South Africa. He describes the business model as “bloody beautiful”. “You’re employing many more people than you would have running livestock on marginal land. As a guest, you’re actually participating not spectating – you’re ➤ G O U R M E T T R AV E L L E R
159
making a real contribution to what we’re doing. And that transformation becomes part of the story.” The exertion of walking and watching is meditative as we climb the Pound wall on our first afternoon and slip through Bridle Gap. The sun has softened by the time we descend a tricky scree-slippery slope into camp at Black’s Gap. Never had a beer in the shower? I can recommend it. There I stand in a little open-fronted corrugated-iron shack beneath a big tin bucket of hot water, beer in hand, facing the Pound set ablaze by the setting sun. Then it’s drinks and three hearty courses conjured over a barbecue by Dale-Smith, and another glass of wine and fireside ghost stories as the moonless night presses in. Overhead the constellations hang low. I watch the sky for a long time that chilly night, warm inside a soft swag atop an open platform for two. There’s a corrugated-iron shelter at one end of the deck, but we pull the swags into the open: a thrilling, grown-up version of camping out.
C
onnected by a 90-minute charter flight, the Arkaba experience – the red-rock majesty of the Flinders Ranges, “star beds” and a genteel outback homestead – is a dream contrast with hikes along the sea cliffs of Kangaroo Island and downtime at the fabulously stylish Southern Ocean Lodge. About a third of the island is protected and pristine; the only feral critters here are koalas. The 18 koalas introduced in the 1920s have multiplied to some 30,000, making Kangaroo Island prime territory to spot them, along with a Noah’s ark of other Australian mascots: Kangaroo Island kangaroos (of course), wallabies, echidnas, pygmy possums, bandicoots, sea lions, fur seals. And the hiking is superb, crowned by the new Kangaroo Island Wilderness Trail. Opened in October last year, the five-day, 61-kilometre trail traverses coastal heath, eucalypt forest and magnificent stands of grass trees, skirting sea cliffs and overlooking basking seals on white beaches, with well-equipped camping sites along the way. Fortuitously, the trail passes behind Southern Ocean Lodge, multiplying the hiking options already accessible to its guests and redefining the notion of wilderness trekking to include soaks in deep tubs, therapeutic massages, an impressive open cellar and refined dishes of local fare. The quality of the island’s produce is evident from the break of day when a pre-walk breakfast might include local free-range eggs, smoked bacon, goat’s curd, Ligurian honey and muntrie jam. A swell that originated in Antarctica weeks ago is visible this morning from the lodge’s split-level dining room and lounge with its photogenic suspended fireplace, and from 21 suites tucked under a ridgeline cresting Hanson Bay. The surf far below is a muffled doof-doof soundtrack.
160
G O U R M E T T R AV E L L E R
Above: the surf off the south-west coast of Kangaroo Island. Opposite: Remarkable Rocks; Southern Ocean Lodge.
It’s not so muffled at Remarkable Rocks, prime among the island’s dramatic rock formations and the start of our day’s hike. We’ve followed a convoy of seven motorhomes along the road into Flinders Chase National Park, and later we find the inhabitants draped over the Remarkables’ granite boulders, posing with designer scarves billowing in the wind. (Okay, I take a selfie here, too.) The air is cold, pure, bracing. As we head east on foot, high above a sculpted shoreline, our guide, Michael Caspar, tells stories of French expeditions, shipwrecks (at least 85 of them) and the secret lives of long-nosed fur seals. Soon, though, we’re walking in companionable silence, concentrating on each footfall along a narrow track that, although level, is pitted with limestone potholes. Every pause delivers an eyeful of wild coastline. We stop for lunch at a deserted beach where fossilised tree trunks are exposed among the dunes. Four dolphins come surfing in on cue. It’s a longish afternoon’s walk, nearly 14 kilometres, and by Cape Younghusband I’m slowed by an old ankle sprain. I limp into the lodge. There’s Boston Bay mussels, American River oysters and sweet Kangaroo Island flathead on the menu tonight. Guests are gathered on the terrace with Barossa shiraz and Clare Valley riesling. There’s time, however, to draw a hot bath and wallow for a while, watching those Antarctic swells roll in. ●
Tr i p notes
The Arkaba Walk and homestead The four-day Arkaba Walk operates from the end of March to mid-October, with departures from Adelaide on Thursdays, plus more on Fridays during April, May, August and October. Walks operate with a minimum of two guests and a maximum of 10. The package costs from $2,400 per person twin share, which includes two nights’ camping in deluxe swags on Arkaba’s “star beds”, one night in the homestead, all meals and drinks, expert guiding and luggage transfers between camps. Also included is a one-way flight from Adelaide to Whyalla and return by scenic drive through Clare Valley with lunch en route. Arkaba homestead is open year round for stays, with safari drives and activities. 1300 790 561, arkabawalk.com Southern Ocean Lodge On the south-west coast of Kangaroo Island Southern Ocean Lodge has 21 suites from $1,200 per person per night (two-night minimum stay). This includes all meals, open bar, signature experiences and airport transfers on the island. The new Kangaroo Island Wilderness Trail passes the lodge, and a range of self-guided and guided hikes are easily accessible. (02) 9918 4355, southernoceanlodge.com.au Getting around To dovetail stays at Southern Ocean Lodge and Arkaba, Chinta Air operates charter flights from Adelaide to Hawker in the Flinders Ranges, close to Arkaba homestead, and from Hawker to Kangaroo Island’s airport at Kingscote (chintaair.com.au). Rex operates frequent scheduled flights from Adelaide to Kingscote, and to Whyalla, about two hours’ drive from Arkaba. Qantas launches thrice-weekly direct flights to Kangaroo Island from Adelaide on 4 December, and from Melbourne on 17 December until 28 January, 2018. southaustralia.com
G O U R M E T T R AV E L L E R
161
g n o H
g n Ko
Ph
ot
og
ra
ph
y
J O N
H AT
AN MA LO NE Y
for ONE Flying solo on your next trip to Hong Kong? A thriving tradition of table-sharing makes the city a haven for lone rangers, as CANDICE CHUNG attests.
Ho
G O U R M E T T R AV E L L E R
g
164
n
D
ining in Hong Kong is a picture of secular communion. In cramped barbecue restaurants and noodle houses, friends and families gather regularly for noisy conversation over plates of crisp-skinned roast meats, braised brisket and bowls of wontons. In one of the most densely populated and expensive cities in the world, the practice of tablesharing is so common it has a name, daap toi, and it’s this thriving communal-dining culture that makes Hong Kong a solo traveller’s haven. A diner having a solitary meal might be drawn into a family lunch with three generations, say, or a companionable dinner with an octogenarian who shares a passion for roast duck. In the right company, it’s a pleasant together-separateness that beats a table for one. But first, some daap toi etiquette. Most shared-table action happens at budget eateries, where service is reliably grumpy and owners are under pressure to turn over tables swiftly. “Get in, get out” is the implicit understanding. Diners who linger too long in popular restaurants such as Yat Lok in Central are likely to find themselves unceremoniously ushered out by a waitress. Some of the city’s most acclaimed restaurants are also the most affordable, which means a dining companion isn’t required to help defray the cost of ordering across the menu. Wonton noodles at Mak’s Noodle and Kau Kee’s beef brisket, for instance, draw long queues and cost less than an average food-court meal. For a budget Michelin crawl, start the night with a cocktail at Belon, then head to a strip of low-key diners on Wellington Street bearing red Michelin stickers. Stop by Yat Lok for the best roast goose in town, Tsim Chai Kee for fish balls and wontons, and for dessert, take the MTR to nearby Causeway Bay for a bowl of silky steamed milk pudding, called dun nai, at Yee Shun Dairy Company. For more refined but still unpretentious fare, a growing number of restaurants offer impressive counter dining. Yakitori bar Yardbird is beloved for its grilled dishes and an all-Japanese beer and liquor list, as is its seafood spin-off, Ronin. There’s a FrenchChinese tasting menu at VEA, a slick 25-seat counter run by Vicky Cheng, who claimed a Michelin star before the restaurant’s first birthday this year. French toast and Hong Kong-style milk tea in a cha chaan teng, the ubiquitous Cantonese cafés that are seemingly impervious to fashion, is an essential Hong Kong experience. Most cha chaan tengs also offer cheap, all-day set menus featuring their most popular dishes, a sound alternative for those who have decision-fatigue. Take afternoon tea at Lan Fong Yuen in Central, or in the 1950s wooden booths at the atmospheric Mido in Yau Ma Tei. From booth to bar stool and shared table, solo diners are well served in Hong Kong.
K o
Kowloon
ng
Central and Western
Previous page: applewoodsmoked quail eggs at VEA (left); Ichiran’s tonkotsu ramen with pork, spring onion and hiden no tare sauce. Clockwise from above: Mak’s Noodle; a Daniel Sorlut oyster with red shiso vinegar at Ronin (left).
MAK’S NOODLE
Though the Mak family’s recently renovated noodle house has a modern Chinese gloss, the restaurant was founded in the late 1960s as an open-air food stall in Central by Mak King Hung (nicknamed Mak Ngan, or “skinny Mak”), whose father, Mak Woon Chi, brought his wonton noodles to Hong Kong from his native Guangzhou. A few things distinguish Mak’s acclaimed dumplings. While most wonton makers bulk out their filling with pork, Mak’s just uses prawns. The resulting parcels are bite-sized and delicate – an addictive accompaniment to the ultra-thin noodles and umami-rich broth, made with dried shrimp, flounder and pork bones. The springy texture of Mak’s noodles can be attributed to the use of duck eggs and the way the dough is flattened and worked repeatedly. Try them served dry and tossed with an intensely flavoured prawn roe. Plates are snack-sized here, so solo diners can embark on a multi-course noodle feast. 77 Wellington St, Central RONIN
Opened in Sheung Wan in 2013, this 24-seat eatery made an impact way out of proportion to its diminutive size when it was placed 45 on Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants list this year. Canadian-born ➤ G O U R M E T T R AV E L L E R
165
chef-owner Matt Abergel, who also owns Yardbird, divides the menu into three – raw, smaller and bigger – featuring the likes of Daniel Sorlut oysters from France served with red shiso vinegar, snack-sized grilled baby squid with shishito pepper, and a more substantial tomato miso udon with chorizo and wild shrimp. It has a wall of Japanese whisky and a dark, timber-clad interior that evokes the mood of a Murakami novel. Arrive early to claim one of only 10 walk-in bar seats. 8 On Wo La, Sheung Wan, roninhk.com SUSHI MORI TOMOAKI
This sparsely furnished sushi den with no signage has only 15 seats lining an omakase counter. Choose nine, 12 or 15 pieces of sushi fashioned by chef Mori Tomoaki using fish delivered daily from Kyushu and Hokkaido. The mixed clientele – couples, travellers, businessmen – pay hushed attention to the chef’s knifework, which skilfully produces nigiri using the likes of sea bream with shiso leaves and plum sauce, sea bass with yuzu pepper, and a mix of two breeds of sea urchin. Seabright Plaza, 9-23 Shell St, North Point ICHIRAN HONG KONG
Dubbed “the introvert’s paradise” for its solo booths, Ichiran became a social-media sensation when the Japanese ramen shop opened a branch in Brooklyn late last year. When its sister shop opened in Causeway Bay in 2013, the reception was so enthusiastic diners queued for three hours. The booths are separated by partitions, ostensibly so diners can concentrate on what’s in their bowls. Guests indicate their preferred toppings, richness of the tonkotsu broth, and firmness of ramen on a form, then slip it through to the kitchen via a slot in the booth. The entire meal – from seating to payment via a vending machine – can theoretically be conducted without any human contact. Shop F–G, Lockhart House, Block A, 440-446 Jaffe Rd, Causeway Bay
YAT L O K R E S TAU R A N T
The crisp-skinned, delicately flavoured roast goose is so popular at this cramped, perpetually packed one-starred eatery it’s no surprise its waitstaff are eager to keep tables churning. Order your favourite portion with rice and a side of tangy plum sauce, or leave it to the chef and enjoy the surprise. For a different carb component, try a goose-flavoured noodle soup with spring onions called lai fun, or boost the protein intake by adding a side of barbecue pork, or soy and rose-wine chicken. The fast turnaround means solo customers are often summoned from the long queue to fill a seat. 34-38 Stanley St, Central AU S T R A L I A DA I R Y C O M PA N Y
The name of this cha chaan teng may come as a surprise given its quintessentially Hong Kong fare – it’s a homage to the time spent by the founder working on an Australian dairy farm in the 1940s. Locals love this no-frills, daap toi-only café for its steamed milk puddings and buttery scrambled eggs. To create an extra-creamy texture, a splash of thick Hokkaido milk is added to the curds during cooking. Order the all-day breakfast set with scrambled eggs and buttered white toast, which comes with a savoury macaroni and ham soup. Portions aren’t huge, which means solo diners can try several dishes. Finish with a velvety steamed milk dessert, reminiscent of a sweet chawanmushi. 47 Parkes St, Jordan 166
G O U R M E T T R AV E L L E R
V E A R E STAU R A N T & LO U N G E
Clockwise from far left: Wellington Street; chef Mori Tomoaki puts the finishing touches to a 12-piece sushi dish; Yat Lok; wonton mein and beef brisket with noodles at Mak’s Noodle.
Vicky Cheng, who cut his teeth at Daniel in New York, runs an action-packed open kitchen. At a curved marble counter surrounded by polished brass fittings, Cheng plates an eight-course seasonal menu he describes as French-Chinese. Snacks to start include quail eggs that have been pickled, then smoked with applewood. Combinations that seem curious on paper – tuna belly with burnt cucumber jelly, say – work on the plate. Cheng takes seasonality seriously, too. Meat from locally sourced hairy crabs is rolled in shiso and served in a stock made from crab shells and dashi, and a breast of pigeon and smoked eel might be dressed in a jus of the bird’s blood. 30/F, 198 Wellington St, Central, vea.hk ●
Local knowledge
JOWETT YU Born in Taiwan, raised in Canada and trained in Sydney (Mr Wong, Ms G’s), Jowett Yu moved to Hong Kong in 2014. His Soho restaurant Ho Lee Fook (“good fortune for your mouth”) is one of the city’s most popular modern Chinese restaurants. Here are his suggestions for solo dining in his adopted city. Yum cha at Sun Hing “If you’re alone and jet-lagged, there’s a dim sum joint called Sun Hing in Kennedy Town that opens every day at 3am and closes in the evenings. This place is buzzy, affordable and has zero service – meaning you help yourself with tea and baskets of dim sum.” 8 Smithfield Rd, Kennedy Town, Western District Noodles at On Lee Noodle “This place in Shau Kei Wan makes a great fish ball and brisket noodle soup, but be prepared for a long queue.” 22 Shau Kei Wan Main St E, Shau Kei Wan Soup at Shui Kee “Shui Kee, a dai pai dong in Central, serves the best ‘miscellaneous offal noodle soup’ in the city. All the seating is outdoors in a tight alleyway, with a mostly local clientele.” 2 Gutzlaff St, Central Bar dining at Belon “Dining solo at the bar in Belon is one of the restaurant industry’s best-kept secrets. It’s not uncommon to find chefs from around the world dining late at the bar. The vibe is cool-Parisian but the food is refined, and a comprehensive natural wine list makes this place great for solo dining.” 41 Elgin St, Central Kushikatsu at Hidden “This is a small place with bar seating that opens only at night, hidden in an office building in Causeway Bay. They serve Osaka-style kushikatsu – miscellaneous items deep-fried on a stick – with an extensive shochu menu.” Room D, 3/F, Prosperous Commercial Building, 54 Jardine’s Bazaar, Causeway Bay
G O U R M E T T R AV E L L E R
167
UNDER AFRICAN SKIES Experience the true heart of Africa with Abercrombie & Kent.
P
eople tend to describe a pilgrimage to the African wilderness as transformative. Whether it’s witnessing the Great East Africa Migration up close, being awestruck by the Zambezi or experiencing the wonder that is the Okavango Delta, travellers seeking to understand and experience the real Africa will be captivated by an Abercrombie & Kent safari. A&K started out as a luxury safari company in East Africa in the early 1960s and has been the leader in intrepid and luxury travel ever since. Patrick Clementson is the A&K safari expert-inresidence. He found his calling after watching Serengeti Shall not Die, the classic 1959
documentary of Bernhard and Michael Grzimek’s adventures studying wildlife in Tanzania. The film sparked a strong fascination with the continent for Clementson, and on first trip, and the 26 that followed, he formed an unbreakable bond, and a deep respect and kinship with this vast land, its people and its wildlife. Staying in tented safari camps, being up close with wildlife, and experiencing a truly unique land are highlights of every A&K safari, but it’s the intimate knowledge and insight of the guides that make these trips unforgettable and wholly cultural experiences. What are you waiting for? The adventure of your lifetime starts here.
“Travellers seeking to understand and experience the real Africa will be captivated by an Abercrombie & Kent safari.”
AN AUSTRALIAN GOURMET TRAVELLER PROMOTION
PLAIN ADVENTURE From far left: Masai Mara men, luxury camp dwellings, slow-moving safari traffic, capturing big game, Victoria Falls, Zambia.
TOP FIVE A&K’s Africa specialist, Patrick Clementson, lends his knowledge and experience to design bespoke African safari adventures. Here is a selection of his favourite experiences:
Great East Africa Migration To witness millions of mammals making their journey across the seemingly endless savannahs of East Africa on the Great Migration is a breathtaking experience. The migration is, of course, constantly on the move, and Patrick’s tip is to be flexible, visit more than one area and rely on A&K’s expert advice for the best camping and vantage points – this is, after all, an adventure.
Tanzania Under Canvas Wide open spaces, sun-dappled forests, crocodile-infested waters, stunning rock formations and incredible game-viewing – the Serengeti is a wonder that must be seen to be believed.
Zimbabwe Discovery Take in some of the best wildlife in Hwange National Park, famous for its elephant herds, as well as the breathtaking Mana Pools National Park in the Zambezi Valley.
Best of Zambia Wild Africa at its best, with night game drives and walking safaris, Zambia has spectacular big game, famed national parks including South Luangwa and the Lower Zambezi, and Victoria Falls.
Samburu & Mara Safari Kenya is the birthplace of safari, and of A&K, and still offers one of the best wilderness experiences available. Patrick suggests private conservancies where the wildlife is abundant, and visitors are fewer in number.
For the most exclusive accommodation and the best game-viewing experiences, start planning your 2018 safari with Abercrombie & Kent now. Call your local travel specialist or A&K on 1300 851 800 or visit abercrombiekent.com.au
Cabin class
A clutch of artfully designed pop-up pods in the Welsh countryside captures the tiny-house ethos in mythic detail, writes LARISSA DUBECKI.
T
he Welsh countryside is littered with places named after fairies, dragons and the battles of Arthurian knights. The legends live on, too, in a collection of luxe cabins that popped up like magic this northern summer in remote spots in Snowdonia and the Llyn Peninsula. Inspired by folklore and the global tiny-house movement, the eight artfully designed pods, collectively known as the Epic Retreats, are the result of a global competition staged to promote Wales’ 2017 Year of Legends. The anonymous entries were required to use Welsh building materials, meet restrictions on size, weight, and cost (a maximum budget of £11,000) and include features not usually seen on camping trips: an ensuite shower, a double, king or circular bed, a composting toilet, and a seating area with wood-burning stove. The results are as colourful as Welsh history. The Dragon’s Eye is an unblinking glass and steel-scaled ocular wonder by
170
G O U R M E T T R AV E L L E R
Welsh-born tiny-house proponent Carwyn Lloyd Jones. Arthur’s Cave, based on the story of a royal refuge that vanished after a single night, is a suitably dark and moody portal with undulating walls and ceiling. There’s the Black Hat, based on the shape of a traditional Welsh stovepipe hat, and Skyhut, equipped with retractable walls and ceiling and a telescope for stargazing; it pays homage to the myth of Cadair Idris, a Welsh mountain on which it was said that travellers who slept under the stars would awaken as madmen or poets. The Miner’s Legend requires guests to crawl through a small tunnel to enter, while the elevated Animated Forest, based on the medieval Welsh poem Cad Goddeau, or The Battle of the Trees, has a circular door that rolls across the entrance like a boulder blocking a cave. The Little Dragon pod even manages to fit two levels into its tiny circular structure as well as a door decorated with intricate Celtic knotwork. ➤
Design
“It delivers the full Welsh experience: the history and landscape in one package.”
Clockwise, from above: Epic Retreats’ Animated Forest; Dragon’s Eye; Sky Hut; Miner’s Legend; and Black Hat. Opposite, from top: Arthur’s Cave; and Little Dragon.
G O U R M E T T R AV E L L E R
171
Design
Slate Cabin, designed by Sydney’s Trias, and its birch plywood interiors (left).
Epic Retreats has an Australian connection, too. Slate Cabin is the work of new Sydney architecture studio Trias, which is attracting international attention for its groundbreaking work that upholds the mantra of “less but better”. Trias principal and founder Jennifer McMaster says slate, used commonly throughout Wales, was the key inspiration. “Slate really appealed to us because it’s textured, heavy, rough and dark,” she says. “When you’re in Wales you see a lot of new buildings are clad in slate and a lot of older farms have walls made with dry slate.” McMaster describes Slate Cabin as “an introverted space, solid but escapist”. “It’s solid and impenetrable on the outside but warm and light and connected to the landscape. The building is all about the framing of the views.” The structure has external battens between which guests can stack pieces of slate, changing the cabin’s appearance at whim. The interiors, in birch plywood, provide a light, warm contrast to the sombre exterior and the clever use of space, including a table 172
G O U R M E T T R AV E L L E R
for two and the bed on a raised platform, evoke the feeling of a landlocked yacht.
T
he eight flights of fancy have sparked a Grand Designs-esque television series, Cabins in the Wild, and become a tourist attraction in themselves. “The whole concept really delivers the full Welsh experience,” says Cambria Tours managing director and Epic Retreats partner Aled Rees. “They deliver the history and landscape in one package.” The pods, built for two, are positioned for privacy and within walking distance of a communal area where guests can share meals and storytelling around a campfire. Priced from £425 for a weekend package, the pods have been heavily booked during their first season. They’ll disappear from the rolling green Welsh countryside at the end of their summer residency and reappear next year, though Rees said it’s yet to be decided if they’ll remain together on one site or sprinkled throughout wild Wales. ● epicretreats.wales
AN AUSTRALIAN GOURMET TRAVELLER PROMOTION
Sail with style When you travel with Silversea Cruises, it’s luxury in every global location.
Travel is more than just the destination, it’s also about the journey. With Silversea, it’s more than just a cruise. SERVICE, STYLE, SPACIOUSNESS With our small luxury ships you can explore the seven continents, discovering the world’s most intriguing destinations.
“
Our ships are designed for those who delight in the thrill of discovery while indulging mind and body in the most lavish surroundings imaginable.
”
Designed for travellers who appreciate the finer things in life, Silversea’s small luxury ships are custom-designed to offer nothing but quality, beginning with spacious, all ocean-view suites. Beyond your suite, culinary excellence comes courtesy of
daily changing menus that accommodate every dietary desire while showcasing regional specialties unique to your destination. You’ll also discover service that is personalised, genuine and caring, befitting the fleet’s gracious Italian heritage.
For more information, call 1300 306 872 or visit silversea.com
On a Silversea cruise, you’ll discover the difference comes not just from the intimate, boutique ships’ ability to sail into the heart of a city while others must anchor offshore. It’s also in the staff-to-guest ratio of almost one to one, the polished and attentive service, and the all-inclusive fare that lets you focus on enjoying your trip. The convivial atmosphere and casual elegance make for a journey like no other. Silversea is about the finer things in life, both on board and on land, as you encounter local colour and cultures from around the globe.
All Silversea cruises include: • Spacious suites – over 85 per cent with private verandas • Butler service in every suite • Complimentary WiFi throughout the ship • Nearly one crew member for every guest • 24-hour dining options • Complimentary on-board drinks, including Champagne, select wines and spirits
City hitlist
EAT
Don’t miss
Tian Veganism isn’t the first thing that springs to mind in Munich, but this fine-diner (above) leads a growing trend in meat-loving Bavaria. Choose a four- to eight-course menu with vegan and vegetarian options inspired by the city’s farmers’ markets and featuring artfully plated and deliciously complex flavours. Unusual pairings include pear and parsnip curry and cauliflower roasted with chanterelles and passionfruit. Frauenstrasse 4, taste-tian.com
Marienplatz city square in Munich, with cathedral Frauenkirche at rear left and New Town Hall to the right.
Munich
The once-fusty Bavarian capital brims with energy, globetrotting cooking and hip ’hoods, writes EMMA SLOLEY.
STAY The Flushing Meadows Occupying three floors of an austere 1970s post office building in Glockenbachviertel, a former red-light district, this 16-suite boutique inn with a rooftop bar is emblematic of Munich’s new-found cool. The airy rooms are a contrast of industrial motifs and artistic whimsy; 11 of the suites feature the work of local creatives. Fraunhoferstrasse 32, flushingmeadowshotel.com
SEE Lenbachhaus museum This storied 1930s art institution has an even more striking façade featuring tubes of gold-hued alloy that seem to glow. The collection features works by the Blue Rider group, an influential band of German Expressionists that included Gabriele Münter and Wassily Kandinsky. Esteemed restaurant Ella has an outdoor terrace that’s popular on warm days. Luisenstrasse 33, lenbachhaus.de
Getting there Airlines flying one stop from select Australian cities to Munich include Lufthansa, Thai, Etihad, EmiratesQantas and Qatar.
Schumann’s Timeless Old World traditions are upheld here: red velvet drapes, wood-panelled walls and attentive waiters in white waistcoats. Yet this place near Odeonsplatz manages to be on-trend at the same time with its short menu, unadorned tables and bistro vibe. Start with a cocktail – many flirt with sake and Campari – then order Wiener schnitzel with potato salad or a pumpkin risotto. Odeonsplatz 6-7, schumanns.de Little Wolf Reflecting the current obsession among the city’s chefs with American soul food, Little Wolf – dedicated to Chicago blues singer Howlin’ Wolf – serves the likes of house-smoked ribs and brisket, jambalaya and pastrami in a charming, elbow room-only space reminiscent of a classic American diner. There are even booths fashioned from old San Francisco cable-car seats. Pestalozzistrasse 9, zumwolf.com l
Munich is a supremely cycle-friendly city with dedicated bike lanes lining most streets, and its popular bike-share program makes touring a breeze. Download the app (nextbike.de) and find a station – they’re everywhere. 174
G O U R M E T T R AV E L L E R
PHOTOGRAPHY GETTY IMAGES (MUNICH & MUSEUM)
English garden Cycle or walk in the Englische Garten’s 364 hectares, where you can witness (or partake in) nude sunbathing, beer drinking and river surfing. This last one can be seen on the Eisbach, a stretch of the Isar River that flows through the park, on which a challenging artificial wave attracts experienced surfers year round. Order an ale and people watch at beer garden Chinese Tower, named for the adjacent pagoda built in 1789. muenchen.de
Tr a v e l m e m o i r
UNPACKING
ILLUSTRATION LIZ ROWLAND
W
e get off the bus from Havana to be welcomed to Varadero by statues of a golden mermaid, a Venus de Milo and a plump naked woman who’s expressing breast milk into a pineapple. We’re checking into the Hotel Internacional, where Frank Sinatra, Ava Gardner and the mafia used to party. But the Internacional, opened to wild mob revelry in 1950, is down to three stars these days, and lucky to have them. Only the service lift is working and it’s a trek to our room along a sandy carpet that barely covers holes in the floor, through which you can see the landing below. A throatcatching stench of mould, rum, pork grease and cigars wafts up from below. Our room has a bullet hole in the window. The king-sized bed has two singlebed sheets and a hospital-style rubber sheet on the mattress. Cheered slightly by the thought of Frank and Ava cavorting here, we notice there are no curtains. Wind whistles through the bullet hole. Once you’ve checked into the Internacional and paid upfront, food and drinks are free. You’re encouraged to refill your thermos of Mojitos, Piña Coladas or
Cuba
Surrounded by mankinis and Che Guevara souvenirs, ROBERT DREWE retires to his deckchair with a thermos of Mojitos.
beer and drink all day under framed photographs of Al Capone, Meyer Lansky and Lucky Luciano drinking and smoking cigars, sitting just where we are now. Every morning, guests scurry towards the sparkling Caribbean to find a deckchair that isn’t broken. Statues of gods and goddesses, missing an arm or nose, gaze solemnly across the sea. So do the European male guests, straight and gay alike, favouring bulge-enhancing Lycra trunks or the mankini, a bizarre testiclesling swimsuit that loops around the neck and owes its risible reputation to Borat. Strangely, no one swims. Instead, everyone stands knee-deep, motionless, faces raised to catch the rays; shiny, fat torsos remaining dry, before returning to
refill their drink flasks, apply more body oil and fry in the sun. In the restaurant, a fierce-looking Central American woman with an Amy Winehouse hairstyle and wearing a gold bra and hot pants, sits with her husband and two plump children, all munching pork chunks. The woman’s gaze falls on each of them in turn. Under her scrutiny, they drop their eyes. No one speaks. She holds her knife like a weapon, stabbing the food, then eating off the knife, sliding the blade slowly between her scarlet lips. If you like pork chunks with black pig hairs still intact, you can eat all day here, too. Unless you prefer the Restaurante Esquina Cuba, a favourite of the Buena Vista Social Club, where, if you drag the waitstaff away from the baseball on TV, $US13 buys tasty beef brisket ropa vieja, translated, confusingly, as “old clothes”. In town we buy paper cones of shelled peanuts, called mani. Our friend Rudolfo studies the wrappers and says, “Ha! These are the dismissal notices of a bureaucrat, sacked for stealing.” When sunshine breaks through the rain, Rudolfo remarks solemnly, “There’s an old saying for this: ‘The daughter of the devil is getting married’.” He shrugs and adds, “I’ve no idea why they say that.” As common as Che Guevara souvenirs are unsettling caricatures of black Cubans. A fat-lipped Sambo and bandana-wearing, huge-hipped Mammy are comically represented in souvenirs from ashtrays to T-shirts, even in stores with black shopkeepers. At home these would be seen as blatant racism. In Cuba, where half the population has an African background, Sambo and Mammy hold sway with Che. One day we’re accosted by a living, elaborately costumed Sambo and Mammy. As wacky as football mascots, huge heads rolling on their shoulders, they’re waddling along, stopping traffic and posing for photographs. Arms outstretched for an embrace, they bear down on us. Do they want money? Nervously, I get out my wallet. But big-buttocked Mammy sashays up to me, and from inside her massive head a deep male voice says calmly, “No need. Have a nice day.” And then Mammy hugs me to her padded body. l Author Robert Drewe’s latest novel, Whipbird (Penguin Random House, pbk, $33), is out now. G O U R M E T T R AV E L L E R
175
Style 2
3
1
Listen to
4
Japanese Wallpaper by Japanese Wallpaper
Yasaka Pagoda and Sannen Zaka Street, Kyoto
11
12
Go East
Gucci A/W ’17
Recall the skylines and streetscapes of Kyoto in vibrant jewel colours, clashing patterns and accents of gold. 9 10
8 Visit 7
176
G O U R M E T T R AV E L L E R
5
6
PHOTOGRAPHY GETTY IMAGES. MERCHANDISING LIZ ELTON
1 Zandra Rhodes Archive “Field of Lilies” gown, $3,381, from Matches Fashion. 2 Tom Ford Plum Japonais Eau de Parfum, $340 for 50ml, from David Jones. 3 Gucci headband, $470, from Net-a-Porter. 4 Chanel Rouge Coco Stylo Complete Care Lipshine in 207 Sépia, $53. 5 Lizzie Fortunato “Jambo” tassel earrings, $265, from Shopbop. 6 Mimco “Supernatural” pouch, $89.95. 7 Witchery “Jessie” satin skirt, $179.95. 8 Tiffany & Co HardWear Ball Wire bracelet in 18-carat gold, $2,150. 9 Attico jacquard satin kimono dress, $2,760, from Matches Fashion. 10 Gucci “GG Marmont” jacquard bag, $2,035, from Net-a-Porter. 11 Dolce & Gabbana jacquard mini dress, $3,246, from Matches Fashion. 12 Country Road “Nelly” slingback flats, $129. Stockists p182.
The Four Seasons Hotel, Kyoto
iPad, iPhone, Android, Google, Samsung, Laptops, Desktop computers, Windows Phones & tablets
READ YOUR FAVOURITE MAGAZINES ON ANY DEVICE! More than forty titles available!
Read ANYWHERE, ANYTIME on ANYTHING! Search for your favourite magazines on these Apps and websites.
Apple, the Apple logo and iPad are trademarks of Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries. App Store is a service mark of Apple Inc.
TRAVEL OVERSEAS
TRAVEL OVERSEAS
Expect to be delighted as our small group tours introduce you to littleknown secrets and take you off the beaten track to parts of Italy that most tourists never see. April/May 2018 THE GREAT GARDENS OF ITALY TOUR
Discover the hear t and soul of Italy
May 2018 PUGLIA, THE ROAD LESS TRAVELLED TOUR June 2018 THE BEST OF THE ITALIAN LAKES TOUR Book your 2018 tour now! 02 9358 4923 ciao@italiantours.com.au italiantours.com.au
GALLERIES
Gourmet Traveller Marketplace To advertise phone 02 8622 9231
TRAVEL OVERSEAS
DINING Beach Almond – Palm Cove Modern Asian Seafood Restaurant
HALL of FAME AWARD 5 YEARS IN THE TOP 10% T 07 4059 1908 A 145 Williams Esplanade, Palm Cove, Queensland E info@beachalmond.com W www.beachalmond.com BeachAlmondPalmCove
HOLIDAY ACCOMMODATION
TRAVEL OVERSEAS
TRAVEL OVERSEAS
SPAIN, PORTUGAL and MOROCCO
TOURSTRAVEL TO ITALY 2017 TO
ABRUZZO - PUGLIA - BASILICATA NEXT TOURS: OCT 1 & 17
Excellence in tourism to the Iberian Triangle • Chauffeur Driven Itineraries • Self Drive Tours • Enticing Walking Tours • Great Train Journeys • Gastronomic Adventures • Heritage Accommodation
harboursideapartments.com.au Tel +61 2 9963 4300
Reservations: 1800 500 016 Ph: 03 9867 8833
TRAVEL OVERSEAS
The Italy you have been searching for..
Small group tours All inclusive travel Food & Wine History & Art
ibertours@bigpond.com
www.ibertours.com.au
www.touringabruzzo.com 07 3102 4384 luci@touringabruzzo.com
TRAVEL OVERSEAS
BOATS BARGES NARROWBOATS IN EUROPE
Trieste and Friuli guided walking tour ( 1 to 13 September, 2017). Surprisingly, Italy doesn’t stop at Venice: between La Serenissima and the Slovenian border lies one of Italy’s most fascinating and least known regions, Friuli Venezia Giulia (FVG). With five languages, four national park, three borders, beaches and Alpine mountains, exceptional walking, gorgeous towns and fabulous food, the region of FVG has all the ingredients for a very special two-week visit. Plenty of places available, please join us! “The Fruili trip was terrific, and I loved everything about it: the walks; the Via dei Sapori restaurants; the mountain huts; Antonio talking about the history of the area; Lake Bled; and always feeling I was a very long way from other tourists.” Anastasia B.
A wide choice of self-skippered canal or river cruising - ideal for friends or families – or fully crewed relaxing hotel barge cruises with an onboard chef, regional cuisine, local wines & with guided sightseeing Departures from March to October – early booking essential – call the inland cruise specialists for a free brochure
Full details: www.hiddenitaly.com.au To advertise phone 02 8622 9231
Gourmet Traveller Marketplace
ENGLAND IRELAND SCOTLAND FRANCE GERMANY HOLLAND BELGIUM ITALY
118
p
Cook’s notes Measures & equipment • All cup and spoon measures are level and based on Australian metric measures. • Eggs have an average weight of 59gm unless otherwise specified. • Fruit and vegetables are washed, peeled and medium-sized unless otherwise specified. • Oven temperatures are for conventional ovens and need to be adjusted for fan-forced ovens. • Pans are medium-sized and heavy-based; cake tins are stainless steel, unless otherwise specified.
Cooking tips • When seasoning food to taste, we use sea salt and freshly ground pepper unless otherwise specified. • To blanch an ingredient, cook it briefly in boiling water, then drain it. To refresh it, plunge it in plenty of iced water (this stops the cooking process), then drain it. • We recommend using free-range eggs, chicken and pork. We use female pork for preference. • To dry-roast spices, cook the spices in a dry pan, stirring continuously over medium-high heat until they’re fragrant. The cooking time varies depending on the spices used. • RSPCA Australia’s recommendations for killing crustaceans humanely are to first render the animals insensible by placing them in the freezer (under 4°C – signs of insensibility are when the tail or outer mouth parts can be moved without resistance); crustaceans must then be killed quickly by cutting through the centreline of the head and thorax with a knife. For crabs, insert a knife into the head. This splitting and spiking destroys the nerve centres of the animal. • All herbs are fresh, and both leaves and tender stems are used, unless otherwise specified. 182
G O U R M E T T R AV E L L E R
• Non-reactive bowls are made from glass, ceramic or plastic. Use them in preference to metal bowls when marinating to prevent the acid in marinades reacting with metal and imparting a metallic taste. • Eggwash is lightly beaten egg unless otherwise specified, used for glazing or sealing. • Sugar syrup is made of equal parts caster sugar and water, unless otherwise specified. Bring the mixture to the boil to dissolve the sugar, remove it from the heat and cool it before use. • Acidulated water is a mixture of water and lemon juice; it prevents discolouration. • To sterilise jars and lids, run them through the hot rinse cycle in a dishwasher, or wash them in hot soapy water, rinse well, place on a tray in a cold oven and heat at 120°C for 30 minutes. • To blind bake, line a pastry-lined tart tin with baking paper, then fill it with weights (ceramic weights, rice and dried beans work best). • To test whether marmalade, jam or jelly is at setting point, you’ll need a chilled saucer (place a couple in the freezer before you start cooking). Remove the pan from the heat, spoon a little mixture onto the saucer and return it to the freezer for 30 seconds, then draw your finger through the mixture – it should leave a trail, indicating that the mixture has reached setting point. If not, cook for another few minutes before testing again. If you prefer, use a sugar thermometer to measure when the mixture reaches 105°C; once it does, start testing for the setting point. • To clarify butter, cook it over low heat until the fat and the milk solids separate. Strain off the clear butter and discard the milk solids. You will lose about 20 per cent of the volume in milk solids.
Stockists Batch Ceramics batchceramics.com.au Bison Home (02) 6257 7255, www.bisonhome.com Chanel 1300 242 635, chanel.com Chef’s Armoury (02) 9699 2353, chefsarmoury.com Chinaclay chinaclay.com.au Chuchu chuchu.net.au Città cittadesign.com Claypool claypool.com.au Country Road 1800 801 911, countryroad.com.au David Jones 1800 354 663, davidjones.com.au The DEA Store (02) 9698 8150, thedeastore.com The Design Hunter (02) 9369 3322, thedesignhunter.com.au Earth & Baker ceramichomewares. com.au The Essential Ingredient theessentialingredient.com.au Francalia (02) 9948 4977, francalia.com.au Ginkgo Leaf ginkgoleaf.com.au Hale Mercantile Co halemercantileco.com Hay (02) 9538 0855, hayshop.com.au Herbie’s Spices (02) 9555 6035, herbies.com.au In Bed Store inbedstore.com Katherine Mahoney katherinemahoney.id.au Koskela (02) 9280 0999, koskela.com.au Little White Dish littlewhitedish.com.au Matches Fashion matchesfashion.com MH Ceramics mhceramics.net Mimco mimco.com.au Mud Australia (02) 9569 8181, mudaustralia.com Net-a-Porter net-a-porter.com Nordic Fusion (02) 9960 6609, nordicfusion. com.au Ondene (02) 9362 1734, ondene.com Outback Pride outbackpride.com.au Peter’s of Kensington (02) 9662 1099, petersofkensington.com.au Planet (02) 9211 5959, planetfurniture.com.au Porter’s Paints 1800 656 664, porterspaints.com Riedel (02) 9966 0033, riedelglass.com.au Robert Gordon Australia robertgordonaustralia.com Scandinavian Wallpaper & Décor wallpaperdecor.com.au Seastonewares 0438 273 176, seastonewares.com Shopbop shopbop.com Slab + Slub slabandslub.com.au Studio Huntseek studiohuntseek.com.au Telegram Co (03) 9318 0822, telegramco.com Tiffany & Co 1800 829 152, tiffany.com.au Top3 by Design 1300 867 333, top3.com.au West Elm westelm.com.au Witchery 1800 640 249, witchery.com.au Zakkia (02) 8002 7498, zakkia.com.au
This issue of Gourmet Traveller is published by Bauer Media Pty Ltd (Bauer). Bauer may use and disclose your information in accordance with our Privacy Policy, including to provide you with your requested products or services and to keep you informed of other Bauer publications, products, services and events. Our Privacy Policy is located at bauer-media.com.au/privacy/. It also sets out how you can access or correct your personal information and lodge a complaint. Bauer may disclose your personal information offshore to its owners, joint venture partners, service providers and agents located throughout the world, including in New Zealand, USA, the Philippines and the European Union. In addition, this issue may contain Reader Offers, being offers, competitions or surveys. Reader Offers may require you to provide personal information to enter or to take part. Personal information collected for Reader Offers may be disclosed by us to service providers assisting Bauer in the conduct of the Reader Offer and to other organisations providing special prizes or offers that are part of the Reader Offer. An optout choice is provided with a Reader Offer. Unless you exercise that opt-out choice, personal information collected for Reader Offers may also be disclosed by us to other organisations for use by them to inform you about other products, services or events or to give to other organisations that may use this information for this purpose. If you require further information, please contact Bauer’s Privacy Officer either by email at privacyofficer@bauer-media.com.au or mail to Privacy Officer, Bauer Media Pty Ltd, 54 Park St, Sydney, NSW 2000.
PHOTOGRAPHY BEN DEARNLEY
Cornflake cookies
FATHER’S DAY
FRENZY
WITH
THIS FATHER’S DAY GIFT THE OLD MAN A SUBSCRIPTION TO HIS FAVOURITE MAG – IT’S STILL THE PERFECT GIFT! DON’T FORGET!
3RD SEPT
Plus at Magshop.com.au we will reward you with a 20% OFF Red Balloon Gift Voucher for every subscription bought until Father’s Day! So you can create your own adventure with Red Balloon! Hurry this offer is only available until September 5, 2017!!!
6 ISSUES: $69.99
Save 22%
13 ISSUES: $89.95
Save 34%
12 ISSUES: $69.99
Save 41%
13 ISSUES: $89.95
Save 34%
4 ISSUES: $39.95
Save 16%
11 ISSUES: $54.99
Save 37%
12 ISSUES: $89.95
Save 24%
12 ISSUES: $59.99
Save 54%
13 ISSUES: $89.95
Save 27%
12 ISSUES: $89.95
Save 24%
Visit www.magshop.com.au/fathersday Terms and conditions: For full terms and conditions visit www.magshop.com.au/fathersday-tc
AN AUSTRALIAN GOURMET TRAVELLER PROMOTION
Gourmet shopping
They’re the flavours of the month, so put these items at the top of your wish list. 1
Captain’s Choice Discover rare culinary secrets on an 18-day Andalusian Feasts journey led by chef Frank Camorra of MoVida. Devour the region’s dazzling cuisine and drink in its culture. Departing 11 April 2018. captainschoice.com.au
4
Castello Double Cream Brie is carefully crafted to mature over time into a distinctive soft cheese with a smooth texture and a rich, creamy flavour – perfect with a glass of Champagne or your favourite white wine. castellocheese.com
7
Oceania Cruises Explore the best of Europe in 2018. For a limited time, receive unlimited internet, plus shore excursions, a beverage package or shipboard credit. Terms and conditions apply. oceaniacruises.com/special-offers/olife-choice
2
Harvey Norman The Kenwood Chef Sense XL Mixer features variable speed settings, a range of attachments and a powerful motor – it’s engineered to give you perfect mixing results. Priced $699. harveynorman.com.au
5
Crystal River Cruises Featuring elegant all-suite accommodation with butler service and exceptional cuisine, Crystal’s river yachts cruise into the heart of Europe’s most iconic cities. crystalrivercruises.com
8
Vittoria Enjoy Vittoria Coffee in style with the new limited-edition Vittoria Fashion Series espresso crockery featuring prints by leading Australian fashion designers. Priced $59.95 and available from vittoriacoffee.com/shop.
3
Wolgan Valley Emirates One&Only Wolgan Valley, in the heart of the Greater Blue Mountains, offers a quintessentially Australian bush experience as well as the perfect ultra-luxe getaway. oneandonlywolganvalley.com
6
Smeg The new Smeg 90cm Thermoseal Freestanding Cooker now features Thermoseal engineering, Venturi atmospheric control and dynamic airflow for unrivalled cooking performance. smeg.com.au
9
Barge Vacations Take in vineyards, villages and ancient ruins on a 2018 Tango barge cruise in Bordeaux. From €4,200 per person, with private charters available for four to eight passengers. 1800 679 365, bargevacations.com.au
Fare exchange
Wattleseed and honey cake
150 gm eggs (about 3 large eggs) 185 ml (¾ cup) vegetable oil, plus extra oil for greasing 185 ml (¾ cup) orange juice Finely grated rind of 1 orange 150 gm honey 125 gm brown sugar 125 gm molasses 6 gm (2¾ tsp) wattleseed powder (see note) 1 85 gm plain flour, plus extra flour for dusting 2 tsp baking powder ¾ tsp bicarbonate of soda Whipped butter and honeycomb, to serve
SERVES 8-10 // PREP TIME 50 MINS // COOK 50 MINS (PLUS RESTING, COOLING)
PHOTOGRAPHY BEN HANSEN. GLUTEN-FREE ADVICE ACCREDITED DIETITIAN & NUTRITIONIST NICOLE SALIBA (EAT-SENSE.COM.AU)
Pictured p186
1 Whisk eggs in an electric mixer on medium speed until pale and creamy (4-6 minutes). Reduce to low speed, add vegetable oil, orange juice and rind, honey, brown sugar, molasses and wattleseed and mix to combine (1 minute). Add flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda and 3gm (1 tsp) salt and whisk until well combined (10 minutes). Cover and rest batter for 1 hour. 2 Preheat oven to 200°C fan-forced. Lightly grease a 10-cup non-stick kugelhopf or bundt tin with oil, Dust with flour to lightly and evenly coat. Pour cake batter into tin, place on middle shelf of oven, reduce oven to 170°C and bake until
a skewer inserted comes out clean (40-50 minutes). Cool cake completely in tin on a wire rack, then invert onto a platter and serve with whipped butter and honeycomb. This cake is best eaten on the day it’s made, but will keep for 2-3 days stored in an airtight container. Note Wattleseed powder is available from Herbie’s Spices, Outback Pride and The Essential Ingredient (see stockists p182).
Recipe index SOUPS, STARTERS, SNACKS AND SIDES Artichokes with Taleggio sauce ●●● .............................. 129 Cauliflower, silken tofu and walnut rice bowl ●● ................66 Chicken broth with ginger, turmeric and lemongrass ●● ................45 Miso broth with spring vegetables and tofu ●● .........44 Labne with salt-roasted beetroot, pickled onions and peas ●● ............................ 110 Pea, bean and shallot salad ●● ..................... 132 Radish and butter lettuce salad ●●● ...................28 Spring-green salad with buttermilk dressing ●●● ...... 112 Tofu poke bowl with pickled carrot ●●● ................ 141 Trofie with potatoes, baby beans and pistachio pesto ●● ....................................70
SIMPLE
Turkish flatbread with beef and yoghurt ● ................ 110
MEAT AND POULTRY Buttermilk-brined lamb shoulder with harissa ● ........ 130 Char-grilled spatchcock, celery heart, fennel and spring onion with lemon sauce ● ..... 111 Chicken salad with asparagus and quinoa ●●.....67 Flank steak tacos with corn, avocado and coriander ● ......69 Jamaican chicken wings ●●... 127 Lamb kofte with pea tabbouleh and garlic yoghurt ●● ............70 Pork larb with green beans, cucumber and mint ●..............66 Roasted pork belly with tomato and cucumber relish ●●● ................................ 113
SEAFOOD Black and white kingfish bowl ● ....................................... 139
GLUTEN-FREE
Clams in garlic brown butter ● .. 130 Cured leatherjacket with horseradish vinaigrette ● ....109 Green bomb snapper poke ● ...137 Grilled tuna with blood orange, fennel and black olive dressing ●● .........68 Ocean trout poke on matcha rice ● .................... 136 Pan-fried ocean trout with miso butter and karkalla ●..... 47 Scallop poke with pickled ginger dressing ● .................. 140 Spicy prawn and pineapple poke ● ...................................... 138 Tuna K-poke ● ............................ 136
Jatz pie ●● ................................... 118 Rhubarb and chamomile tart ●● ....................................... 113 Savarins ● .................................... 122 Twinkies ●..................................... 116 Wattleseed and honey cake ●●.................................... 182
DESSERTS AND SWEETS Blueberry tart ● .......................... 133 Breakfast buns ●● .................... 122 Brooklyn blackout cake ●● ..... 121 Cornflake cookies ●●● ............ 118 Custard tart ●● ........................... 119 Espresso Martini affogato with candied hazelnuts ●●●..........71
VEGETARIAN
CAN BE PREPARED AHEAD G O U R M E T T R AV E L L E R
185
Chefs’ recipes
Fare exchange
Recipes from Australia’s leading restaurants.
p
185
Wattleseed and honey cake “The honey cake at Adam Wolfers’ Sydney pop-up, Casoni, was unforgettable. Could you get the recipe?”
REQUEST A RECIPE // EMAIL FAREEXCHANGE @ BAUER-MEDIA.COM.AU 186
G O U R M E T T R AV E L L E R
Cake Large plate from Little White Dish. Bowl (with honey) from The DEA Store. Bowl (with butter) from Seastonewares. Side plates from Studio Huntseek. All other props stylist’s own. Stockists p182.
RECIPE ADAM WOLFERS. PHOTOGRAPHY BEN HANSEN. STYLING LISA FEATHERBY. MERCHANDISING ROSIE MEEHAN
Lisa Nguyen, Elizabeth Bay, NSW
The Pearlmaster The perfect marriage of traditional watchmaking and sophisticated gem-setting is a feat of technical excellence and refi nement. It doesn’t just tell time. It tells history.
oyster perpetual pearlmaster 39
official rolex retailers: sydney swiss
j
farren-price
concept
AIRPORT
rolex
hour
glass
(08)
8223
2787
rolex
(03)
9231
3299
(02)
9221
6288;
(02)
9669
1175
9650
6988
boutique
the
gold coast
(02)
Sydney
brisbane
•
•
•
kennedy
swiss the
hour
watches
langfords
rolex
concept
of
jewellers
boutique
hurstville
glass
(02)
9221
switzerland rolex
(02)
(02) 2288
rolex
boutique
9236
9580
0411;
826
melbourne boutique
(07)
3210
kennedy
•
(03) 0614
Swiss
kennedy 9663 •
star
(02)
Gallery
rolex
boutique
3303
the
the
Watch
adelaide
hour
glass
9518
9499
international
j
(03)
8614
1160
farren-price
(07)
3221
9133
langfords jewellers rolex boutique (07) 5575 5858 cairns watches of switzerland (07) 4031 5766 perth kennedy
boutique
(08)
6169
3690
•
smales
jewellers
(08)
9382
3222
•
watches
of
switzerland
(08)
9322
8800