The scholarship of twenty-three elder gardening enthusiasts from the South Channel Gardeners Group combined with their collective expectations of what I would cojour up for
their annual luncheon was, I’ll admit, a bit daunting.
Adding to my percolating unease was the rapturous response which
they had heaped, justifiably so I might add, on edible-greens-wunderkind
Paulette Whitney from Provenance Growers with her absorbing oration on her
subject of botanic comestibles.
It was to a seasoned crowd that I was pitching to and one
that had been suitably warmed-up by a virtuoso whom didn’t need to share a
stage or play understudy to anyone, so as you can appreciate, the pressure was,
well and truly on.
After last years inaugural luncheon in which the ‘Potato’
was fêted with several courses, each a different interpretation of seven
different varieties and what I thought was the best for the task but unlike Ricky Gervais, James Franco or Seth McFarlane, I was
asked back by the committee for another gig and this time the spotlight would
be turned onto the humble Pumpkin. This was a relief at first because the
previous lunch with all its carb-laden glory presented a girdle-hurdle for all
present and one which I’m surprised that didn’t send the attendees into a
Paleo-Shock and with it, the possibility of resultant litigation from Slater
and Gordon.
But once that initial wave of amnesty broke and receded, I
was left contemplating the poor old pumpkin with that same feeling of being
dudded when faced with the remaining partner left at the school dance when all
the good ones had already been whisked onto the floor.
Out of all in the vegetable kingdom, the pumpkin or squash
at it is sometimes referred, is the village-idiot or jester to the courts King,
the potato. Often deemed ‘only fit for swine’ by some cultures, carved into
menacing faces for all Hallow’s Eve(In which turnips or beets were the first
choice) or ridiculed in verse depicting a pumpkin-eating cuckolded husband that
is forced to hold his wife captive for her sins.
Of course it has redeeming qualities. For me, spying of
chunks of roasted Queensland Blue amongst the vegetables with a joint of meat
is heartening as is its workman-like ability to play the straight-man to a stable
of stand-up cheeses, from the most piquant blue to the mildest of semi-hards.
There is no doubt in my mind that a good pumpkin-pie, though
rarely spotted emerging from the kitchens of this country, can hold its head
high amongst some of the more venerable of worlds desserts.
It was through this jumble of information, my own experiences
and conventionally held, prejudiced or not wisdom that I began to hammer away
at the forge of my brain until the molten mass of inspiration revealed itself
like the polished layers of Damascus steel.
It was a challenge not to resort to the path well trod and
it was not until I received word that the Gardeners Group had invited Paulette
to contribute some of her wares after the aforementioned seminar, that the
concept was finally galvanised into menu.
I am in my thirty-first year of cooking professionally and
have practised my craft which has included having the most luxe of ingredients
to the most prosaic at my disposal. I had never though, in all these years
crossed the path of the wonderments that Paulette and Matt propagate and glean
from their property and surrounds with the exceptions of samphire, which I can
attribute my three years cooking in English kitchens and the Stinging Nettles,
a large bush of which I fell into after a long tipsy walk from the Swan Inn,
Stratford St Mary, 1988, for exposing me to them.
It was my task to try and match some of the exotica to a few
different types of pumpkin and let each component be free to be heard about a
chorus of flavours. No easy feat when one’s single, freshly-bound Wizard
spell-book is bereft of the elements that would be cascading from the pages of
Dumbledore’s voluminous library on the subject. Anyway it went like this:
pumpkin scones and whipped blue
cheese
slow-roasted pumpkin, miso &
sesame
horta-pie & spiced pumpkin
pumpkin tortellini, chickweed &
sea celery
beef cheeks, vegemite, baby cimi
di rapa & pumpkin skins
vanilla baba, pumpkin &
alpine baeckea
dunkin pumpkin donuts &
coffee
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| plates are SO yesterday |
In a homage of sorts to Flo Bjelke-Petersen (One shouldn’t
visit the sins of the husband onto the wife, unless that wife is Rosemary West)
I’m not an admirer of her political view if indeed she was aloud to snatch the
microphone occasionally from her hubby Joh but she was Dinky-Di and her pumpkin
scones were legend.
I paired the scones with some whipped blue cheese, a smear
of plain old Queensland Blue puree and these were a nibble to start
proceedings.
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| Even the dishes were fashioned from pumpkin |
I tried to evoke my inner-Shinto with arcs of very
slow-cooked Kabocha, lacquered with sweetened, ginger infused red miso paste
and liberally peppered with toasted sesame seeds. It was served in a small pool
of spicy hot-vinegar and some Land cress for garnish
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| You show me a Claret bottle and I'll show you something you can serve stuff on |
From Japan
we go to Greece
via the Horta-Pie. ‘Horta’ roughly translates as ‘wild greens’ in the Hellenic
language and in the past I have incorrectly used this term to describe a dish
that was made from cultivated crops. Technically the greens from Provenance
Growers were ‘grown’ as their moniker suggests but their uniqueness I believe,
gives them and me, some artistic licence. There were far too many for me to mention
in the list of ingredients, except for the Stinging Nettles. Mixed with
Ashgrove fetta, lemon, egg, fresh black pepper, some dried ‘Rigani’(Greek
Organo), dried dill, Elmside olive oil and of course some lovely crushed Tassie
purple garlic encased in layers of buttery filo pastry.
Served with a smear (I hear that therm has been officially
outlawed by the Master-chef Franchise?) of spiced Butternut, think cinnamon,
clove, nutmeg and cayenne and a bit of Bling in the form of a daintily halved,
pickled and garishly pink-hued radish, which had the entire table agreeing that
it resembled the hood ornament on a Morris Super Seven.
 |
| At last! A soup bowl |
Having been sufficiently Greeked, we fly over its influence
in Sicily and its Neapolitan cousin for what is widely considered to be Italy’s
gastronomic heart, Bologna, the home of tortellini amongst other pastas and foodstuffs
and of course the Ducati factory. I made a very strongly reduced chicken brodo
which incidentally Maggie Beer used to call, Golden Stock, which was used as
the basis for many of the Pheasant Farm’s splendidly crafted sauces. Two little
Jarrahdale stuffed tortellini, some chickweed and sea celery constituted a
flotilla of aroma and textural interest whilst a crown of crisped, compressed
and salted chicken skin adorned the bowl.
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| That's more like it, finally some decent crockery |
For the record I don’t really like menus in restaurants that
span the globe with their representations however for a meal such as this, it
would be parsimonious of me not to invite the colour and movement available
from other vibrant nations to help embroider curiosity for my guests into our
patchwork quilt of gluttonous stimuli.
And so, the new country welcomes us after a long haul.
‘A Rose in every cheek’ once chirpily sung by children
enrolled by advertising agency, a jingle that some could be excused for
mistaking for the national anthem, it’s chorus familiar to nearly all
Australians of the virtues of yeast
extract. Sadly for some this national icon was sold to a multinational which
bought about much debate and angst. The oft overlooked fact that it was
invented by an American chemist was lost on the most furious of flag waver but
the irony that it had actually returned to its spiritual home, not unlike the
poor old Ford motorcar of today, was not lost on some.
So the cheek in which we were to put this rose in, belonged
not to a child, please stop calling 000, but to some local beef cattle.
In an age where the name, hobbies and sexual preferences of
the flesh animals we farm to consume have taken precedent over questions of
their flavour or suitability for a dish, I am happy to have handy a working
abattoir whose captain at its tiller assures me that: ‘all of the beef cheeks I
get are local.’ Knowing as many local farmers as I do, I’m satisfied with this
answer and all of there number, to a person, could not be more focused on
top-shelf animal welfare and husbandry. In fact, I think it’s a conveniently
ignored truth that many ill-informed and emotive people engage, in their quest
to apportion blame for the offences bought about by the industrialization of
farms and the of big agri-businesses that call the shots, buts that’s just my
opinion.
These cheeks were cooked for twenty-four hours with the
vegemite, some beef stock and a few other seasonings. Once cooked they were
chilled and left to settle, their proteins grouped to the texture of what the
French call ‘Melt in ze mouth’.
Thin slices of the Anna Swartz-Hubbard Squash were fried to
crisp, some baby cimi di rapa dressed in vinaigrette adorned the plate with a
‘snowstorm’ of micro-planed horseradish finishing the dish.
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| You had to go back to these didn't you? |
I always associated the old fashioned Rum Baba with
evocative images of the Arabian Nights, of deserts, camels and scimitars. Much
like I imagine the long dead and Cadbury absorbed confectionary company Fry’s’
would have done with their ersatz interpretation of their Turkish delight
choccy bars, through ignorance and cliché.
I know Rum would have been a banned beverage and probably
wasn’t heard of anyway in that part of the world so maybe it’s just the word
‘Baba’ itself that is alluring to me?
For the un-initiated, a Rum Baba is a syrup and or alcohol
(Rum) soaked, yeast leavened, butter and egg enriched pastry not unlike a
brioche or even a croissant dough. Aha! Now there might be a connection after
all? According to myth, the Croissant was invented by Byzantine bakers whom had
the honour of being immortalized in pastry for alerting their sleeping
garrisons of soldiers to an imminent attack in which the enemy was soundly
defeated, but I’m just guessing.
Mine were stuffed with; you guessed it, Sweet-Grey, then
soaked in saffron syrup and served atop a Nike Swoosh TM of Alpine
Baeckea-flecked custard.
We ended our Pumpkin-Trotting lunch with organic, fair
trade, single-origin, East-Timorese Maubisse from those fine purveyors of Coffee
and National Golden Bean Award winners, Mahalia Coffee-Oh and did I mention
that the Mahalia in ‘Mahalia Coffee’ is my sister? We have proudly served this coffee at the cafe for the last three years in that good Tasmanian tradition of nepotism.A petite donut filled with
pumpkin jam was served alongside.
At lunch end I swanned around the table, cadging compliments
and managing to just remain humble until my conscience got the better of me, as
it inevitably does. So I called on the real heroine of the event, my colleague
Jenna, whom in my absence of the last few days leading up to the day, ordered,
prepped, orchestrated and delivered the goods as she always does. It was her
turn to take the credit for all the Beta work whilst I tend toward the Meta.