6 minute read
From the producers to the consumers, this ones for you
I grew up in this part of the world. Beautiful country. Beautiful and wonderfully productive country. Country that has fed locals for thousands of years and supported intensive horticulture for well over a century. There’s a reason why the food grown down here is so good. The secret is in the ground beneath your feet and above you in the sky.
The earth you are standing on is perfect for growing food. Across large swathes of the Mornington Peninsula is soil that is deep reddish brown and profoundly fertile. It runs under places like Red Hill and Main Ridge and grows some of the best stone fruit and apples in the country. Here, cool winters help develop and form the cherry, pear and apple flowers and long summer days help ripen the fruit. Along the coast, down towards Bass Strait and in belts near Frankston the soil is thinner but free-draining. Good farmers know how to work with this soil to grow great crops of carrots, potatoes and leafy greens. Around Flinders, on the gently undulating folds of land, grows rich pasture that has fed countless herds of cattle.
But not even the best farmer on Earth can grow a blade of grass without water. When it rains on the Peninsula, it rains hard. The average rainfall for some parts of the Peninsula is almost a metre. Melbourne has about two-thirds of that rainfall. Perched between the bays and jutting out into Bass Strait, the Peninsula has its own microclimate that is warmer in winter and cooler in summer than metro Melbourne. And when clouds come in on those prevailing westerlies, laden with water evaporated from the Southern Ocean, they hit Arthurs Seat. That great mound of granite pushes those clouds up where the air is cooler. The clouds then drop their rain on Red Hill, Main Ridge and Shoreham. Our great soil and reliable rainfall makes this region one of the best parts of the country to grow food.
It is also one of the best parts of the world to enjoy food. And wine. With the renaissance of the Mornington Peninsula wine industry in the 1970s and ‘80s came a new wave of places to eat. Back in the 1980s when I was growing up there wasn’t a lot of choice of places to dine out. A counter meal at the Flinders Pub where a seafood basket, deep-fried from imported frozen seafood, was a rare highlight. We owned the Merricks General Store at the time. I worked in the kitchen and watched as hungry day-trippers would devour anything fresh, homemade and local we put in front of them. We offered something different. Real food that tasted great. Freshly baked pies with big chunks of real steak in a thick gravy redolent of nutmeg and bay, a nod to Nana Cornish’s recipe. Even as a teenager I could see that people were ravenous for real food experiences. Fertile ground for the restaurants that sprung up alongside wineries.
There was the groundbreaking La Baracca at T’Gallant where Kevin McCarthy and Kathleen Quealy served pizza in an old shed and the waitresses would burst into song. People like the McIntyre family, who built a great rammed concrete structure in their Moorooduc Estate vineyard and started serving provincial French food alongside their Burgundy-influenced cool-climate wines. The Mitchell family at Montalto in Red Hill reinvested in their beautiful vineyard looking into the cleft of a steep valley. They groomed the vineyards, planted sculpture and took the incredibly progressive step of hiring a full-time vegetable gardener to grow crops to feed the kitchen. Today each meal starts with an offering from the garden, via the kitchen, of food that was connected to a plant only minutes before you crunched into it. Peas in spring, tomatoes in summer, pumpkin in autumn and brassicas in winter. On a windswept hill in a bald sheep paddock once owned by spinster sisters, the Gandel family built a temple to gastronomy and surrounded it with vines and sculpture. Point Leo Estate’s Laura Restaurant is now recognised as one of the country’s best.
In the past decade the rate of high-end restaurants opening has gone through the roof, with top chefs such as Scott Pickett and George Calombaris opening the doors to new dining rooms. Those high-end dining venues have been joined by a raft of everyday bistros, restaurants, cafes and eateries that dot every town, village and hamlet. Comfortable and delicious places like Bistro Elba in Sorrento, where the team celebrate local seafood and produce in a constantly changing seasonal menu. Neighbourhood dining rooms that are worth driving for like Many Little in Red Hill, where a Sri Lankan-born chef celebrates the food of his home country in a modern dining room in a 1980s shopping centre overlooking a cherry orchard. Places that serve exceptional coffee like Pier Street kitchen in Dromana, whose corn and broccoli fritters are so delicious you would never believe they were good for you. Or Zarb & Ru in Rosebud where every day starts with a toasted jaffle and a latte.
They are joined by the countless people who through sheer hard work and endless imagination produce some extraordinary food for our everyday home kitchens.
They are the bakers, the chocolatiers, the preservers, meat smokers and the tireless business people, mostly sole traders or families, who put truly delicious things in jars, packets and boxes.
This edition of Eat.Drink Mornington Peninsula is a dedication to all those people who live among us and work so hard to put food on our tables, put food in front of us, or put food and drink into jars, boxes and bottles for us to enjoy and others around the world to get a taste of this beautiful part of the world. And to all of you who eat and drink the fruits of their labour.
Please enjoy this edition for yourself or give it to a friend who enjoys their food and drink as much as you do.
Enjoy. Cheers
RICHARD CORNISH
www.richardcornish.com.au
