Opening Date May 11 and Vale the Plongeur

SUNDAY MAY 11

The date has been set.
Sunnybrae Restaurant and Cooking School will re-open on Sunday May 11 for lunch after nearly eight years. It will be Sundays only and classes on Saturdays and Mondays.
The dining room will seat 40 and a small private room will seat 10.
I have not finalised the menu format but it will again be a multi course long slow lunch a little different in structure from last time. We have been working towards this for the last 6 months on many essential details and small renovations. The essence of what we will do has not changed. That is simply to make you comfortable, relaxed, with as close to a balanced seasonal, local, country dining experience as we can provide. When we closed in 2000 there were only a handful of local wines but now we are spoiled for choice and the list will concentrate on wines of this extended district. We will again also be BYO and there will be a small list of special reserve wines.
I do not like to bang on about a culinary philosophy but I was given an opportunity to express these ideas a couple of years ago in the form of a detailed report for Geelong Otway Tourism as part of a strategy which I called A Sense of Place which says it all.
We are very proud of this district and try to create an experience that echoes the seasonal flavour of this small piece of Victoria. If you wish to read the whole report.click here.http://www.scribd.com/doc/929252/asop-section1-lowres Especially the final conclusion, this years prediction is less difficult. Back to Back in 2008.

Part 2 of the report is the Regional Produce Guide on the right of the page under Sunnybrae Rescouces I am updating it soon.

If you are thinking of coming to the restaurant please book on the phone rather than email as its easier to discuss any special needs that you may require . 03 52362276.

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VALE THE PLONGEUR

It has been a tough week with news that Michael Thwaites our first plongeur at Sunnybrae had died.
Reflecting on our dear mate [he was a friend way before he hit the sinks] I realised that Mick has been on the plonge at some time at nearly every kitchen that I had run.
My mate David [17 summers with me on the floor] reminded me how neglected this spot is in the libraries that have been written about food.
Michael was a deep, complex, well read individual with immaculate taste in music and was always in charge of the kitchen sounds. Each season can be fondly recalled by the popular anthems of the time from Mick's legendary kitchen tapes. We first heard Ian Dury from Mick plus many others, Neil Young took us back at the funeral to time of innocence and play, King Crimson sent us off to the pub to celebrate the man.
He held the kitchen together without you even knowing he was there with perfect timing both on the sink and on the speakers.
If a kitchen brigade can be compared to a group then the plonge is the Bass, Michael was the best bass player I ever knew.
Cool moods for early morning prep building up to blinding crescendos at the dinner rush.
The pan you needed always there, the pass clean and fresh, sink water really hot.
He could turnout over 400 hand-made dim sims an hour and keep the fridges and cool room spotless all the while smoking and cruising with the usual suspects at the kitchen door where Malcolm his beloved dog waited patiently..


We will miss you dearly Mick.

Supertaster

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I see Red or is it Blue?

Some years ago Norman Swan on the Health report [link later]
reported on a symposium on.. "how we inherit our sense of taste, how that affects which foods we like or hate and the ways that could affect our health. This special symposium took place at the l997 American Association for the Advancement of Science Congress in Seattle".

It seems that some of you are what’s called Supertasters which means that some have a very highly focused sense of taste due to the high concentration of taste buds on the tongue.

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This can readily be seen if blue food dye is placed on the tongue. The taste buds do not stain blue and a tiled effect is seen on the Supertasters tongue.

No my tongue is not in my cheek, just yet.

We sometimes tested cooking class participants when they seemed to be sensitive to bitter flavours. Its not a great syndrome to have as some great flavours are just too painful to appreciate.

But the link here explains all ttp://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/8.30/helthrpt/stories/s369.htm

While watching SBS on a Sat night and reflecting on the brilliance of the programming line up I came up with this…..

Blue Tongue , The Taste Test or Supertaster.

The Pitch---

ROCKWIZ MEATS IRON CHEF
It’s a panel show
Setting A Flash Restaurant
The panel sits in the kitchen at the chef’s table in real time.
Dining room is wired for roving vision, sound and wireless pad from each table.
Host Ignatius Jones [Showman, offal aficionado, and noted gastronaught]
Captains
Frank Moorhouse..[Author bon vivant, loose liver] and Jill Dupleix [Myffy expatriate author, foodie ]
Guest panellists
1 Visiting foodie… insert here…. Charlie, Michele, Ruth, Rick, Tony, Jamie there’s always at least a dozen in the country at any one time.
1 Local hero/villain insert here … Ronnie, John, Ed, Shannon, Matt, Tom, Dick, Harry……

The restaurant serves a degustation menu that defines the game structure of the show.
The panel and all diners paint their tongues with a blue food dye to identify any Supertasters .
The dining room uses this for warming up the audience.
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Game 1
Red or White? Panel has to tell if a wine is red or white from a concealed glass through a straw. Both wines at the same, proper or reversed temperatures. Noses blocked with a peg.

Game 2
Fish or Fowl
5 small appetisers are served and panel has to guess if each one is Fish or Fowl
The pass is wired for sound so home viewers know the answer.

Game 3
Whose signature is it?
A small iconic/historical starter is served and 3 alternative creators are offered.. panellists and diners guess. A brawl ensues over the origins of the dish.

Game 4
Wait here!
The panelists have to clear a table in the dining room and the first one finished gets the points.

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Game 5 Offal? innit?

Next course is served and the anatomical source is questioned.

Its a photo of????

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Game 6
Reel Food
5 Foodie film clips are shown and first buzz that identifies Film and Food reference wins the points

Game 7
Eat your words-
A passage from a ripe volume of food writing is read backwards. First to identify the book and author gets the points.

Game 8
Chowrades

One panellist has to eat a hidden dish with his fingers and describe the dish using only expressive muffled sounds.

Game 9
Pressure Point

Chef is given 3 ingredients by the panel to create a dish he has 5 minutes to deliver six tasting serves. One Panellist has to review the dish and all the others served on the night. The review is scored by Chairman Ignatius and diners.

Game 10

Feel free to add your own games and please take the taste test with the blue dye it may explain why you can’t handle really spicy foods…

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Cartoon is by

David Low

Circa 1930

Caption.

Diner:

"Here what do you call this?

Beef or Mutton?

Waitress: Carnt you tell the difference?

Diner: " No!"

Waitress; Then why worry about it.

RIPE and SEEDY

For the last eight years we have been decidedly seedy gardeners. Without the pressures of a restaurant to supply the garden has for the most part grown itself.
While the restaurant was going ten seasons of kitchen gardening had left us with a very big self seeding vegetable patch that more than adequately supplied our, and our mates' needs. Plants once in neat rows now popped up in the most unexpected places. Tomatoes under the olives, asparagus in the artichoke beds, fennel with the garlic. All this in a rather romantic state of semi-controlled chaos. We kept on collecting seeds just in case plants like the poppies bought on our first trip to France decided to stop growing. A frightening prospect. Not only have they grown but crossed with each other into the most extraordinary combinations that surprise and delight each year. Diane collects the seeds and carefully stores them for the next season. We have lost some varieties though, the white wild strawberries that seemed to seed so prolifically have disappeared in the big dry but luckily one of our friends has now got more than they need. We regularly get calls from guests who have grown our plants from cuttings or seed asking how to prepare them.

The joys of sharing seeds.

Some seeds are also picked for cooking. fennel, coriander, lovage, caraway and such but some seeds are also useful when green like these nasturtiums "fruit" that will dry into mature seedpods..

They are moist, crunchy, and peppery like horseradish perfect for a surprising addition to salads and sauces.

This year a little more order is required as the full potential of the garden is again to be realised.
Picking ripeness is an art in itself and a little local knowledge is priceless. Take tomatoes for instance. The large beefsteak varieties if left to fully ripen on the vine can become floury but if you pick them when just red they ripen to a magnificent moist sweetness.

Pears also get very floury if fully ripened on the tree, they need to be picked when they easily separate from the branch and left to ripen in the kitchen. These ones are
Mock’s Red Williams quite aptly re-named Sensation for marketing purposes.

The most difficult fruit to pick ripeness in are the olives. Most Australian consultants tell you to pick them black, fully ripened for the best yield of oil. On the other hand most high quality European olive growers advise picking them when just changing from green to red and a fascinating equation is offered to get it right.
Take 100 random olive samples from the crop and assign a number to each starting from 0 for the least mature deep dark green to 7 for the ripest black skin and black flesh. Multiply the number of olives in each grade by the number of its ripeness add all the numbers together and divide by 100. The optimum result is supposed to be 5.
But here over the last 3 seasons the cockatoos seem to be the perfect actuaries. When the cockies strike we harvest. The greener the fruit the better the flavour, that is if you like strong spicy oil. The small loss of yield is more than made up for by the intensity of taste.

The cooking class program is up at this link http://www.sunnybraecookingschool.blogspot.com/ Starting in the second week in May.
If anyone has a better calendar that can enable photos and recipes to be added please send me a link it looks a bit OfficeWorks at the moment.

Blackfella's Bread

M works in the Otways. He’s a lumberjack and he’s OK. While clearing what’s left of our old growth forests he stumbled upon this extraordinary fungus buried under the ground and he thought I might like to see it. M also fishes for snapper and despite his rather controversial profession is a food lover at heart. I had read about “Blackfella’s" Bread, seen photos but I have never tasted one. I emailed a picture to, and called Our Man at the Herbarium Tom May for a positive identification. I cannot stress too strongly the dangers of indiscriminate fungi tastings. Even with this unique specimen I wanted to be sure I had a positive identification and that it was safe. I had not spoken to Tom for a couple of years but he reassured me it was definitely Laccocephalum mylittae and sent an extract of his contribution to a new cookbook about to be published by the International Mycological Society….
In south-eastern Australia, few fungi have been recorded as eaten by Aboriginal people, perhaps through lack of the right questions being asked by mycophobic English settlers. One of the exceptions is Native Bread, the sclerotium of Laccocephalum mylittae, which is reported as being eaten across Victoria and Tasmania under a variety of names, such as the 'Boee Wan' of the Tjapwurong people of western Victoria (Kalotas, Fungi of Australia 1B). A polypore fruit-body is produced from the sclerotium after bushfires, at which time the sclerotium shrivels. The deeply buried sclerotia can reach 30 cm in diameter, and were detected by Aboriginal people by the smell of rotting wood associated with the fungus (which forms a brown rot). Nowadays sclerotia are typically found when recently cleared land is ploughed. They can be eaten raw or cooked, and have a rather bland flavour, like boiled rice. Nevertheless, Native Bread has been enjoyed by forest workers as a hearty meal around the campfire.

Now; what was I to do with it? It has the texture of a rubber ball, quite solid but slightly pliant and I decided to bake it whole in foil to see if really had any flavour. Well Tom was right, bland is a bit of an understatement but at least it was neutral nothing unpleasant. Salt did little to improve it, honey the same but somehow it gave you the impression that if you were to eat it all it would be very filling.
I guess if I was to follow the locavore path I could pair it with a couple of Barwon River Crayfish and the “bread” would be good to mop up the juices of its roe.

But the find was of some importance. There is a project based in the Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne called the Australian Fungimap Project. It focuses on 100 target species of fungi that are being watched by professional and amateur mycologists to chart the habits of these extraordinary wonders of nature. This is one of the target species.
I fear that it will be a lean year for mushrooms due to the drought but never the less its always fun hunting.

Check out the site..link here http://www.anbg.gov.au/fungi/fungimap.html

Sweet Pickings

The rhythm of the garden is surging and right now magnificent.
The home harvest brings the challenge of making sure the excess is well preserved.
But if we do not get above average rainfall this autumn Victorian growers will really be pushed to the limit.















The prune plums attained their glory and are now dried and stashed along with the dried Granny Smiths. There is a glut of cucumbers so some pickles are on the cards.














.The melons are getting to a decent size and preservation recipes are being collected, perhaps a Callison-style sweetmeat with the new honey?

Last week was full-on beginning with preparation for our Melbourne Food and Wine Festival lunch. The itch slowly faded as Diane and I became completely immersed in the menu planning and set up.
A very capable crew assembled with Anton of la Madre fame, helping in the kitchen. Denis oven builder and resident honorary health and safety officer, on oven and sink. Ella and Kathleen, new faces on the floor. With Lea [Mr.T Spoon, the coffee magician] Ingrid back from 7 years of un-paid long-service leave and Di leading the floor.
All intentions of capturing the day on the camera quickly dissolved into the bustle of the prep and service.
The menu is like a jigsaw always finalised on the day.
The bread was made with a long slow Biga fermented overnight.
Katos came good with some very fresh local Snapper which we flashed in the wood oven with a salad of home grown garlic, purslane, fennel, rock samphire and a dressing made by Di using the last of our Arbequina EVO.
Gosling Creek Reisling 2006 Murroon.
This was followed by a selection of antipasto-










House made panir [the only photo I took]
Garden fresh cucumbers, perilla and pepper.
Skipton smoked eel with an anchoiade de Croze and Leeks.
A haricot bean salad with a smokey mustard dressing.
A confit of wild rabbit and Western Plains pork with spiced morello cherries served with finely grated Granny Smiths that had just ripened last week.


The prep started early with the beef slowly braised in the wood oven with a sofrito enhanced with orange zest. The bones removed much to the delight of the four leggeds exiled to the canine stalag for the day. Narelle is not to be trusted and Barbie is a bit bewildered these days and can’t hear the cars.
The tomatoes for the salad came good at the last minute and now we are picking 3 to four buckets a day for the year’s supply of tomato sauce. The spuds came from one of our neighbours.
Innisfail Cab merlot 2004 and Farr Rising Shiraz 2005.

Poached white nectarines and plums served with a buttermilk Bavarois

Fizz with a white peach granita.

I apologise for some of the chairs the new ones will be here soon.