Grandma's Little Bakery

"Grandma's Little Bakery" looks like a misnomer to me. It should probably be called Ia-ia's or Nonna's or Siti's. This cafe, function centre and shop is located in the Fedra olive grove, just off the Federal Highway in the Collector region. They specialise in olives, of course, and other Mediterranean products, and they serve meals as well as selling foods. They seem to be doing pretty well - we dropped in on our way back from Sydney last week and the place was packed.

The shop is quite the treasure trove. You can find freshly made hummus, pestos, olive and ricotta dip, tapenade, and more. There's a range of home made nougats - the pistachio and apricot is great - and other confectionery. There's ingredients such as syrups of rose, date, and pomegranate, dry goods such as lentils and couscous, and a big range of spices, whole and ground including exotics like za'atar and baharat. But the spice tub sizes are a bit too large for me; they'd be stale by the time I finished. You can buy their specialty boreks packed frozen to take home. There's also fresh baked bread, bagels and pastries, and they stock the well-known Lynwood farm preserves.

We didn't actually stop for lunch or arvo tea, since we'd just had a big brunch in Sydney. But having checked the place out and enjoyed their produce, I hope to make it a destination sometime.

Regional Goings On

We've just got back from Goulburn, where we saw some amazing acts at the annual Australian Blues Festival. Pugsley Buzzard is a fabulous pianist, with a voice of gravel. Sorta kinda like a cross between Louis Armstrong, Tom Waits, Fats Waller and Nick Cave; always worth seeing. And we saw the Lemon Squeezing Daddies with new front woman, Perle Noire, who looks and sounds like she's out of Chicago but is actually a Londoner. In the one paid show we went to, Doc Neeson (of the Angels) walked on stage looking oddly like Matt Preston, and delivered a solid blues-rock set, with guitarist Mal Eastwick. New finds from this time are the young Shaun Kirk, from Melbourne and Luna, who it turns out are from Canberra, even though I haven't seen them around here yet.

In food news, we ate at the Tatts one night, which is pretty standard pub grub. They do a decent burger and a cook your own steak; the scotch fillet I had was great, very tender. The salad bar was decent, with good fresh greens but I'd steer clear of the curry coleslaw if I were you. The other night we ate at the Goulburn Workers Club, which is pretty standard club grub. A decent salt and pepper squid, a slightly odd caesar salad with whole lettuce leaves and no egg, and a big slice of garlic bread instead of croutons. Also no anchovies, but I don't even expect anchovies in a Caesar these days.

Cafe Book is our first choice option for breakfast, with a fairly standard bacon and egg breakfast. The menu is nothing remarkable, but the food is all fresh and hot and well cooked. You get service with a smile, and a huge wall of second hand books for sale. And enormous smoothies. The bakery up the road near the Big Merino is not bad, either, and do a nice sourdough and a good cornbread. In both cases, it helps to order the coffee extra strong. What is it with country towns and weak coffee?


Meanwhile, back in Canberra, the Handmade Upmarket is back next weekend. This thing just keeps growing and growing. It's a market for regional craftspeople, and the goods for sale include a decent selection of food, as well as all the jewelery, clothes, bags and so on. It outgrew the Albert Hall, then the Yarralumla Woolshed and the Kamberra Wine centre, and have now moved to the National Convention Centre. Saturday 19th February, from 11am. They're also running a shop, on the Boulevard near the former Electric Shadows, but the range there is naturally much smaller. As well as the crafty stuff, they stock some good chockies from Lindsay & Edmunds and the Curious Chocolatier.

By the way, pARTy cakes will be there, and donating 25% of their profits to ovarian cancer research. So get in there and eat cake. I've bought cupcakes from them before; they are very good.

Making the most of a truffle

Yep, scrambled eggs.

So, as is becoming customary, I apologise for not posting much these days. I have been thinking of taking up tweeting, because that way I could have said stuff like "Hi all, truffles at EPIC market this week!" and "Hey, 40% discount on cookbooks at Borders this weekend" at a time when it was actually relevant. Like two weeks ago. Too late now. I intend to get a fancy new iphone sometime soonish, but meanwhile I am such a late adopter that I still haven't got round to net connecting my old Nokia.

So, sorry if you almost missed truffle season. There are still some remnants around - the Truffle Festival runs for the whole month of July, and there's truffle dinners still happening at Flint, Pulp Kitchen and Locanda.

My way to make the most of truffles is pretty much what I did last year. Buy a small piece, pop it in a box of risotto rice and fresh eggs, and let it infuse for a week. I only had about 15g, and by the end of the week it was a bit less. It dehydrates somewhat during the infusion process.

I used a third to add to about 300g of mushrooms, panfried in butter. Two thirds of these went into a simple mushroom and leek risotto, made with the infused rice and another third of the truffle. The final third went into the scrambled eggs, which were made with the infused eggs. And voila: truffled scrambled eggs, served with truffled mushrooms, sourdough toast and a fried tomato.

At that Borders sale I bought the new Jamie Oliver book - I'm not crazy about his TV personality, but I do like his cooking style and his recipes. This one is "Jamie Does...", based on a TV series that I haven't seen and probably won't. He goes to Fance, Italy, Morocco and more, and this is the recipe collection. He has a truffled omelet recipe in the French section, where he uses 5g black truffle for 3 eggs. I had more eggs, but they were infused.

And remember those lentils? They were from the same Jamie book. And just to make sure I didn't miss out on any truffled goodness, when I saved the mushrooms for risotto, I deglazed the pan with some Fino sherry and chucked that into the lentils. I didn't mention that last time, because it's not reproducible.

PS: No, I do not like Master Chef either.

The Best Lentils Ever

According to Jamie Oliver, that is. And since I futzed around with them, probably not exactly, but they were damn fine. Unphotogenic, though.

I've just finished Sunday dinner in front of Dr Who, with a plate of slow cooked lamb on a bed of lentils, with home made mint sauce and roast potato, pumpkin, onion and fennel, and steamed broccoli. With a 1999 cab sav, Harper's Range by Seppelt. I went on line to look for it, and found it's still only $25 a bottle, so we didn't score very much by keeping it in the cupboard for almost a decade. Oh well. It's very yummy anyway, and at least it didn't go off.

I was very pleased with this. If you've ever made one of those lentil dishes with some fatty meat, you know you're supposed to add some vinegar to finish it. Balsamic, almost certainly. And if you are a roast lamb traditionalist, you will be thinking mint sauce. And if you are old enough, then you will remember fresh mint from the garden, chopped with sugar and doused in excessively potent malt vinegar.

Sooo... Balsamic or Malt? Hmmm... I've solved this: neither. Mint sauce old-style - but made with Homeleigh Grove Apple citrus vinegar. It's much more delicate, but still assertive enough to add the required sharpness to the lentils.


Recipe: Not Quite Jamie Oliver's French Lentils with Lamb
2 cups Puy lentils
2 carrots
2 onions
3 cloves garlic
1 small leek (2cm diameter)
1 medium potato
splash olive oil
splash brandy or cognac
1 litre beef stock
Bouquet garni
--
A small lamb roast
--
2 tablespoons mint leaves
2 tablespoons vinegar
1 teaspoon caster sugar


* Chop the carrot and onion small, and fry gently in a good glug of olive oil until onion is translucent.
* Add chopped leek and finely chopped or crushed garlic and fry another minute or so.
* Deglaze with a splash of brandy, then add in stock.
* Add lentils, chopped potato and bouquet garni.
* Cover and simmer for 30 minutes.
* Add lamb to the top of the lentils.
* Cover and bake at 150C for 2 hours.
* Uncover and give lentils a good stir, crushing the potato in to make a creamy base.
* Squidge the lamb down into the lentils, so it's mostly covered; skin side up and uncovered.
* Bake for another half hour uncovered.
* Remove from oven and let rest for half an hour.
* Chop mint leaves with the sugar sprinkled over (this helps to bruise them). Put in a small jug and stir in the vinegar.

To serve, remove lamb and carve up. Put a mound of lentils on the plate, top with sliced lamb and pour over a generous serve of mint sauce.

Notes: My bouquet garni was a generous sprig of rosemary and thyme, tied up in string with 3 fresh bay leaves. I used Australian Puy-style lentils, available from most gourmet delis. My lamb roast was a small leg - just 1.3kg. I can't remember who raised the lamb, but it was from one of the stall-holders at EPIC.

The half hour rest gives you time to turn up the oven and crisp up a tray of baked veggies - they can be started for an hour in the slow oven.

We have lots of leftovers from this meal, and I only made enough mint sauce for one go. I'll have to do more sauce for the re-heat.

Jamie's recipe uses parsley instead of rosemary, and duck fat instead of olive oil; and veggie stock instead of beef. For meat, he has confit duck added right at the end, instead of the lamb cooked in the lentils, and he adds a swirl of creme fraiche at the end. No mint sauce, of course - Jamie uses balsamic vinegar. His lentils only take 45 minutes, with no baking, so his is the quicker option unless you confit your own duck. But they won't be as richly meaty as mine!

Autumn gold

Wait, what? It's January. But yes, these are new season apples. They are Early Golds from the Borenore Hillside orchard, the largest fruit stall at the EPIC Growers' market, and one that I find consistently reliable. These new ones are so crunchy and juicy - just fabulous! Obviously they are related to Golden Delicious, a supermarket staple which is pretty reliably horrible, unless you are lucky enough to find them fresh in season. Apples are one fruit that I simply won't buy from the supermarket any more.

And there were these large yellow figs. It's always interesting to go to the market after a month away and see what's changed. I was hoping for early figs, and there were some though not very many yet. Plums, peaches, nectarines and berries galore, and rhubarb and melons too. The fruit was amazing and I may have over-bought. The most notable veggies were beetroot and cauliflower, but I didn't need any. Next week, perhaps.

I've eaten the figs, and made some slightly dodgy muffins with fresh blueberries (too much baking soda, oops). Tonight we've eaten steak and salad, made with another market purchase, a Homeleigh Grove apple vinaigrette. This is made with their fruity olive oil and a light, sweet cider vinegar. It's a nice simple one; I like it. Tomorrow's breakfast may feature fresh blackberries with yoghurt and granola. Sounds like a good start to a Monday.

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My very own truffle

Even though there will still not be very much cooking going on, I made it to the EPIC growers' market at the unusually early time for me of 8am. These truffle sellers were out there with their stock sitting under glass. I tried to take a picture of the huge one that would sell for over $1000, but my crappy phone camera didn't do so well at that. They are happy to cut the truffles up for you, though - they didn't think anyone would actually buy the big one. I've got a 22g piece at $66; friend Fi has twice that much.

I thought it might be a little bit frustrating wandering round the market and not being able to buy much. But actually it was rather fun. We have a short trip planned, and we still need to paint the kitchen and clean up the problems, so I'm only buying the most immediate things. I haven't been out there for a while, but there haven't been very many changes since my last time. Poachers Pantry have a van there now, and I think the gentleman selling Tsakiris Greek sweets is quite new. He has proper baklava with walnuts, and wonderful honey fritters. Yum!

I bought just a few things - half a dozen bagels, a jar of stringybark honey, a punnet of swiss brown mushrooms, four quinces, a bunch of tatsoi, and some slices of Bundewarra ham. We'll use all these very soon. I'm putting the quinces in to bake now - they are perfuming the kitchen wonderfully.

And here is the truffle back home in action. I've put it in a box with a dozen week-old free-range eggs from Fi's chooks, and a packet of arborio rice. Now it can sit for a few days in the fridge just doing its scent thing. The rice will keep for some time, but the eggs and the truffle itself will need using sooner. I'm thinking of making simple omelettes for Bastille Day, perhaps.

This piccie also provides a very tiny sneak preview of the kitchen. The white sparkly benchtop is just visible in front between the fabric sample bundles. And there's some of the teal and white mosaic splashback tiles in shot, too. Hmmm... Purple cushions for the built in seat, perhaps?

Truffles!

Saturday lunch was in Bungendore, at Le Tres Bon. We had a hands-on demonstration of truffle preparation, and put together a lunch of truffled chicken with Périgueux sauce and mash, followed by a truffled crème brûlée. It was a sweet deal - $100 for a two hour demonstration and talk, the amazing meal and a couple of glasses of rather good wine.

Mostly chef Christophe did the cooking while we watched, but we did get to bone the chicken and help with peeling potatoes and separating eggs and such. And he shared his crème brûlée recipe with us. I asked permission to pass it on here, and Josephine said yes as long as I gave him full credit. It's not his bitter almond one, though. You will have to go there to eat that. And I'd encourage you to do that, the food is great and they are lovely people.

The truffle came from Braidwood. Yes - this is true local food! In case you missed seeing all the ads recently, the Truffle Festival is on. The local climate is perfect for truffles, and there are now around 30 growers in the region. Aussie farmers are using dogs to scent out the truffles, rather than the traditional French pigs.

We actually started with the brulee, since it needed to bake and cool. A few of us separated eggs, and then Christophe whisked the yolks up with cream, vanilla and sugar. He put a couple of julienne slices of shaved truffle in each ramekin before pouring on the custard mix. And then it was off to oven in the bain-marie.

The main was chicken and the lightest, fluffiest mash I can ever recall. There's no formal recipe for the mash. Basically all you do is boil the potatoes, then pass it through a veggie mouli - this lightens it a lot, compared with the old potato masher. Then beat in some milk, melted butter and a smidge of nutmeg and salt. And pipe it out onto the plate with a cunning swirly action.

The chickens were local free range organic birds. We split them into four quarters, saving the frames for stock, and boned the thighs. Each quarter was folded around a truffle shaving, sprinkled with salt and white pepper, then tied up with string into a neat bundle. They were pan-fried in a mix of olive oil and butter until pale golden, and then Christophe dredged a little flour over them before adding chicken stock, white wine, chopped onion and carrot, a bay leaf, rosemary sprig and parsley stalks. And so they were left to simmer gently for an hour. Check occasionally to see if the stock needs topping up.

The sauce - well, it was amazing. I've seen Iron Chef French Hiroyuki Sakai, the Delacroix of French Cuisine, do the "perry-goo" on telly, but I've never had it in real life. To make this, we used the pan juices from the chicken. These were brilliant to start with, and when strained into a pot and enriched with cream and duck foie gras and butter and a goodly amount of truffle - well, it's heaven. Time didn't actually permit a proper reduction, so Christophe showed us his sneaky trick of thickening it up with - bog standard cornflour and water! So in theory his sauce should be even better, but that is very hard to imagine.

And here's dessert.


Recipe: Christophe's Truffled Crème Brûlée
15 egg yolks
1 litre cream
a splash of vanilla
200g caster sugar
30g fresh truffle shavings
white sugar to sprinkle

Whisk up the eggs yolks with the sugar, then whisk in the cream and vanilla.
Make sure you have a slice of truffle per serve set aside. Julienne the rest of the shavings and add a couple to each of 12 small ramekins.
Line a deep baking tray with paper, then add the ramekins, then pour water around them.
Bake at 130C for 30 minutes, until just set.
When cool to room temperature, sprinkle each with sugar (a scant teaspoon per serve).
Caramelise it with a kitchen blowtorch and while the sugar is still bubbling, add on the reserved truffle shaving.
Serve immediately.

Notes: Christophe actually made twice this quantity. He notes that if you are not using truffle, then brown sugar is better for the caramelising. The paper in the baking is to stop the water bubbling if it boils - splashes of water could spoil the smoothness.

This sounds a bit gimmicky, and reminiscent again of Iron Chef - an eggplant dessert! A fish icecream! But really, the truffle works surprisingly well in this. There is a mushroomy flavour, but it does not clash. It's a complex flavour, highly aromatic, and plays well with the egg and caramel.

I'm quite tempted to go look for a truffle now. They can be bought at EPIC markets if you get in early enough, and while it may be around $3 per gram, you don't actually need a lot. You can perfume rice or eggs with it, just by leaving the truffle with them in a sealed container for three or four days. Don't try making truffle oil, though - one thing we learned is that the Perigord style black truffles will not flavour oil in any lasting manner. Truffle oil as sold in gourmet shops is either artificially flavoured, or made with Italian white truffle.

A truffle should be kept wrapped in a damp cloth in a sealed jar. It will last up to two weeks, but remember that it is a fresh product. You should have enough time to scent your eggs, rice or cheese, but basically it's just a mushroom, with high water content. It will go off if left too long.

The Credits
Recipe: Christophe Gregoire
Photos: Fred Harden from the Australian Capital Country Truffle Festival. The first one depicts a truffle being shaved, but it's not Christophe. It's Jan Gundlach from SENSO, aka Flavours in Fyshwick. The second is an actual dessert from this demonstration: Fred was there with camera.

The Merino at Gunning

Last Sunday I went off to Gunning with B1 & M, for an afternoon in the country. M was singing in a concert: the Oriana Chorale's "Choral Cabaret" at the Gunning Courthouse. We had lunch and wandered the streets looking at the antique shops and art galleries - like many country towns, they do aim for the tourist trade. Then off to the Courthouse for the concert, a quick beer at the pub, and home.

We had lunch at the Merino cafe, one of the two cafes on the main street. It's the one that doesn't serve chiko rolls... Yes, these sheep sculptures are out front. Their menu is quite modern city cafe in style, but with some excellent country touches. I had a mediterranean salad ($14.50) for lunch, since I had a big meat feast planned for dinner. It was a good one - plenty of marinated eggplant and fetta and a swirl of pesto, with nice fresh greens.

We were sitting under a shade sail in this lovely back garden full of roses, with the interesting corrugated iron fence decor. It looks like a Rosalie Gascoigne art installation. Up the back, a garden bed featured a flourishing stand of silverbeet.

The burgers ($8) looked very tempting - they have several varieties on offer, including a couple based on lamb rather than beef. I saw some being made, and they were based on huge sesame seeded rolls, with lots of fresh salad, and served just so, with no chips. B1 and M took advantage of the all day breakfast menu, and reported that their food was good. There's a good range from toast on up to the "Shearer's Breakfast" - for $17.50 you get egg, bacon, sausage, lamb chop, onion, tomato, spinach, tomato relish and toast.

I also liked the look of the cakes and slices. I had a florentine ($3), of the inelegant but satisfyingly thick peanut and cornflake style. Yummy. There was also an unusual meringue-topped jam slice, and some other things that looked homemade. Or at least, not made by the same kitchen that supplies half of Canberra's cafes. I didn't have a coffee, but B1 that said hers was surprisingly weak. It might be worth trying a double shot - I find weak coffees to be a very common feature of country cafes.

By the way, I don't much recommend the pub: gentrification and the tourist trade have passed it by. It's totally old-school, both in decor and in stock. There's Reschs & Tooheys & Hahn light on tap, with no fancy boutique beers, or even premium beers. Not even in bottles - not a James Squires or a Cooper's to be had. There's also a barren and depressing "beer garden" out the back. The tables out the front verandah on the street were much more pleasant, so that's where we sat with our downmarket beer, wine & G&T.

Finger Lime Tart and non-recipe cooking

Saturday morning found me on the road to Bungendore again, off to another native foods cooking class at Le Tres Bon. This week's theme was native limes. Julianne and Anthony supplied a big box of finger limes for us to cook with, and we also saw some of the small desert limes and plants. The fruit ripens in late summer and autumn. But the limes freeze well, and we were using defrosted ones.

We made a vinaigrette, the tart, and an icecream base for gin and finger lime icecream. The vinaigrette was actually a perfect example of my non-recipe cooking. We each had a small jar, and selected from the range of vinegars and oils and herbs to make our own to taste. Mine came out very sharp (as I like it), and beautifully pink, with both the lime and native pepper contributing colour. Belinda's was more mellow, and brown, with a rich lemon aspen infused balsamic vinegar doing the colour. We ate them on a prawn and mesclun salad, and had some left over to take home. They were all good in their own ways. I'll put my recipe later on.

The tart and icecream are recipe material, and we got to eat ones that Julianne and Anthony had prepared earlier, and take ours home. With the tarts, the balance of filling to case wasn't quite right with the ones we made - as you can see, it's a bit shallow. But they are very, very delicious. Fi & I were simply forced to lick out our bowls and beaters, because you couldn't possibly waste any. The icecream wasn't as successful as the wattleseed variant - the little caviar pearls of the lime freeze solid, so you don't get the nice flavour burst. Tart recipe below the fold; I won't bother with the icecream.

For the rest of the weekend it's been non-recipe cooking. A big pot of chilli is simmering away for the week, and we've had chicken sorta-cacciatore, pizzas, and BLTs.

The BLTs were tonight - just simple sandwiches, so we'd have room for dessert. The bacon was from the Bungendore Food Lovers Deli, where the owner salt-cures his own ham and bacon from the local free range pigs. Good stuff. The pizzas were made at a friend's farewell party - he's moving to Melbourne. We assembled our pizzas on individual bases and shoving them in the oven, two at a time. With only about a dozen people this is fun; nobody has to wait terribly long. The pizzas only take 10 minutes and you can assemble, chat, drink, and generally hang about the kitchen. I put lots of anchovy on mine so nobody would steal it...

The other two no-recipe meals are the chilli and the chicken sorta-cacciatore. I don't bother with weights and measures and details - it will all work, even if it's never exactly reproducible.

For the chicken, I browned an onion and some garlic, tossed in strips of chicken breast and browned them too. Then I chopped up and added 5 fresh tomatoes, and a red and green capsicum, and some oregano and bay leaves from the garden. Add a dash of brandy, simmer for half an hour and serve with pasta and a green veg - asparagus and broccolini this time. I used fresh tomatoes because they needed using up. A tin would be fine. Mushrooms would be nice. Fresh basil would be good. White wine, maybe. It's a "whatever" dish.

Chilli is similar. I do follow recipes for particular variants, but as a generic no-recipe meal it works, too. I soaked and boiled some kidney beans - but a large tin, drained and rinsed, could do. I fried up onion, garlic, mushrooms, zucchini and minced beef - but kangaroo or even no meat at all is fine. And different veggies can go in - eggplant, perhaps, or corn. Add some tomato - a huge tin, or fresh ones, and some tomato paste, or tomato juice, or passata. Add herbs and spices - cumin and chilli are essential; maybe oregano, coriander seed, pepper, and even a dash of cocoa and cinnamon. Simmer it all together for a couple of hours; leave overnight to let flavours meld in. Add salt to taste at the end. It's very hard to go wrong. Though do remember you can't take chilli out, so add judiciously and taste as you go.

And now, as promised, the finger lime recipes. To prepare finger limes, slice them in half down the length. Use a teaspoon to scrape all the tiny "caviar" out. Remove any seeds once it's scraped out; it's easier than trying to get them out of the fruit. There will be a little juice, toss that into your mix, too. Discard the rinds. Actually, it seems quite tempting to try candying them, since the fruit is such a rarity at the moment. But we didn't. Maybe another time.

Recipe 1: Finger Lime Vinaigrette
2 tablespoons macadamia oil
2 tablespoons white wine vinegar
1/4 teaspoon ground native pepper
"caviar" of 1 large finger lime
tiny pinch of sea salt
Put all in a small jar and shake madly.

Notes: use a different oil:vinegar ratio if you prefer. I have a strong taste for acid, more than most people. And hey, look at that colour! That's basically from the pepper. The fruit colour is actually variable from very pale ice pink to a deep raspberry shade.

Recipe 2: Finger Lime Tart Filling
Pulp of 4 large finger limes
1/3 lemon juice
3 eggs
3/4 cup caster sugar
50g unsalted butter
Put eggs and sugar in a metal bowl that will fit over a saucepan. Mix well, then whisk in lemon juice.

Put basin over saucepan of simmering water, and whisk continually until it is very pale and thickened - around ten minutes. It should almost double in volume. Stir through chopped butter, and when it is melted in, fold in the finger lime pulp. Set aside for ten minutes to cool slightly.

Fill a pre-baked pastry shell (about 20cm) with the mixture, and refrigerate for several hours. It will set more firmly.

Notes: we used a sweet shortcrust made with self-raising flour, but you could use any sweet or plain short pastry, even bought pastry.

The filling is a sabayon, and it's a little sensitive. Keep whisking pretty steadily; it's important for it not too heat up too much or the eggs will get grainy and scrambled. Take it off the heat for a minute or two if you're worried.

B is for Bungendore: a cooking class

Yesterday I spent the morning in Bungendore, which I will claim as B for my Canberra alphabet. It's only 20 minutes drive from my house - the same as Mawson - and it's a pleasant spot to visit. There's bookshops, antique shops, cafes, pubs, restaurants, and even some good food shops. The woodworks gallery and cafe is a favourite for breakfast, and for the amazing craftsmanship. When I win Lotto I will furnish my house from there. (Must buy a ticket one day. Or not, the odds are much the same.)

This time I was mostly up the back of Le Tres Bon, making wattleseed pasta, icecream and meringues with my friend Fi. She is a big bushfood enthusiast who writes the insufficiently updated Eat Australia. I gather she's been busy collecting chooks and digging gardens and training dogs and otherwise having a life instead of writing.

The cooking classes we're attending are not the ones run by Christophe himself, who is off in France at the moment. While he's away, Julianne and Anthony Cowley are teaching about bushfoods. They are a Canberra couple with a large bushfood garden, which they have on occasion opened to the public. I think I missed one showing this year. Julianne is an enthusiastic cook, and watching her knead pasta dough and prepare it is a delight. That unfussed smooth action must have taken her a lot of practice to develop.

I'm no dab hand with pasta, nor is Fi - her bloke is, though, by all accounts. We managed to produce some decent fettucini anyway, though with much less flair and panache, and much more overworking and compromise. Actually, we really didn't do ourselves proud at all: our meringues inexplicably failed to puff up and rise. Not my greatest moment. I had thought that if you got your egg whites safely to the firm peak stage that the rise was inescapable, but apparently not! Usually I use electric beaters, though, and hand whisking is clearly *not* better. Yay, technology!

Oh well. We had a lovely lunch of wattleseed pasta with a simple tomato sauce, followed by wattleseed icecream with a chocolate dipped wattleseed meringue, and wattlecino coffee. And we had leftovers to take home. Fi's & my skinny unrisen meringues actually taste excellent: a good strong flavour rush. I had a couple after dinner last night.

I wanted to pick up some of the wonderful ham from Food Lovers on my way home, but they had sold out. Fortunately I'm going to the next class in two weeks, so I've ordered some. Until then, I'll have to content myself with a garlic and rosemary rubbed leg of saltbush lamb, a couple of organic sirloin steaks and a pair of organic chicken breasts. I haven't decided on an exact menu for the week, but a Sunday roast lamb is always attractive.

Last night I used some of the chicken with a mango and native mint marinade from Outback Spirit. Served with oven chips from a packet, fresh steamed green beans and a simple mango salsa that was just half a Kensington pride mango, chopped with a fresh jalapeno and a couple of slices of red onion. Very yummy, though a bit expensive this early in mango season - I got two at $3.75 each, but I do love them.

Chestnut Mania!

"Nuts About Bungendore" is a hazelnut and chestnut orchard just outside Bungendore. You can pick your own chestnuts, or buy ready picked, at $6-7 a kilo. It's chestnut season, and I went with Slow Food for a tour of the orchards, including some nut-gathering, and then on to a chestnut-themed lunch at Le Très Bon.

We also stumbled on a tiny local market in Bungendore - a part of the Weereewa festival - and couldn't resist stopping for a bit of a shop. I came home laden with not only a huge bag of chestnuts, but also some glorious locally grown rhubarb and apples, and some intriguing local cheddar style cheese which I haven't tasted yet. Also I picked up some lillipilli jelly and pickled garlic - made by Fiona's neighbour out on Mayfield Road. I couldn't resist the garlic - unlike the Asian style I described last week, this is a classic English pickled onion recipe, except with very unEnglish garlic. I'll have to try it with the cheese sometime soon.

It was a beautiful day to be wandering around an orchard - sunny and mild. The view from the orchard stretched out to the distant hills, and a pair of wedgetailed eagles circled in the bright blue overhead. The way to collect chestnuts is actually to pick them up off the ground, when the spiky burrs have just fallen. The burrs should still be slightly greenish. If they haven't split open by themselves, you can roll them on the ground with your shoe to open them up, and then pick the nuts out with gloved hands. It's strangely addictive fun.

To actually use the chestnuts, you have to peel them. The classical choice is to roast them - orchard owner Stewart Deans here has a dedicated roaster, while Christophe used an old frypan with holes in, on the open fire. Cut a small slit in the shell, and toast them until they just start to burn. Peel and eat, trying to avoid burned fingers - delicious just as is. Some people like to salt them.

If you want to cook with them, you have to peel them. There are various options like briefly microwaving, or boiling. I haven't cooked any of this lot yet, but last year I made some chestnut gnocchi, and I found that microwaving worked best for me. Slit the shells, nuke 'em in a single layer in a covered container for 2 minutes, wrap in a tea towel and peel while still warm. It's important to get the inner brown layer off, as it's quite unpleasant - a small sharp knife is useful for the most stubborn pieces.

Fortunately for us, Christophe and staff did all this work for our lunch. We had our chestnuts several ways - as a puree mixed with potato; whole on the side with a venison casserole and a pear poached in red wine; and for dessert a crepe stuffed with a sweet chestnut puree, with another whole chestnut to garnish. It was a beautiful meal. Beth's vegetarian meal was a leek quiche, which was rich with cheese and cream, and quiveringly just set, fresh out of the oven. The only fault I'd find was with the rather weak and bitter coffee. The food was beautiful, and so was the accompanying Cotes du Rhone red wine.

Chef Christophe is well known to Canberrans as the former owner and chef of Christophe's in Manuka. If you've been missing him, this is where he went - off to the quiet country life in Bungendore, where his restaurant is much bigger than the old back alley shop in Manuka. It's a nice country themed space, with old French advertising posters for decor. The service for our group was unfortunately very slow, but I suspect this was not normal. We did drag him out from the kitchen to do his roasting demo and talk. I'd happily revisit there, when I get a chance. The regular menu includes a cassoulet and a pre-dessert French cheese course - very tempting! He also runs some French cooking classes about one morning a month, with lunch included, but I'm just too busy this year.

Down the Coast

I'm told that simply nobody, darling, stays in town for the Canberra day long weekend. So like a proper Canberran, I did my duty and went to the coast. It was a great weekend - cool on Friday, but sunny and warm for the rest. Belinda has a share in a little house at Guerrilla Bay, a tiny little beach a bit south of Bateman's Bay. You can sit on the couch and look out the window at the water sparkling in between the trees. The bay is quite calm and protected, great for rock hopping and investigating the tide pools, or snorkelling about looking at all the fish and sea urchins. And of course there is interesting food to be had.


Bungendore Food Lovers Market
Bungendore has a lot of cafes and restaurants, and this one is really more of a deli, with a cafe on the side. They serve good coffee and light meals, and sell an assortment of gourmet products and local produce. Beth and I had lunch there on Friday, and I was so impressed with the ham on my ploughman's lunch that I had to buy some. It turns out that it is a house specialty - cured without preservatives (except salt, of course), it's tender, moist and very tasty. I must try to remember that Bungendore is really close. It's only half an hour's drive from my place, and that ham is worth it! The garlic sausage was pretty good, too.


Suzanne's Bakery at Mogo
Suzanne does organic sourdough, and it is seriously good stuff. The fruit loaf is a solid and heavy beast, stuffed with fruit and spices and set on a base of nuts. It keeps well, too, and makes the best toast. The shop includes an assortment of good quality organic drygoods - dried fruits, nuts, flours, lentils, etc.


The River at Moruya
Fantastic! This restaurant has a wide deck overlooking the river. We were a bit back from there, but the space is so open that the tranquil view easily extends to us unbooked peons up the back. The service was terrific - we rocked in without a reservation, in our T-shirts and shorts, ordered coffee to start, went for the cheapie lunch special menu, made trouble by trying to swap things off the special menu, and we were still treated with perfect charm and courtesy.

The food was superb. I had a silky duck liver pate, followed by a perfectly cooked chunk of salmon, set on spinach, with a tomato butter sauce and olive potatoes. We had a side salad of plain baby cos lettuce vinaigrette, which was perfectly crisp and fresh. Such simplicity has got to be just right to work, and it was. We didn't need dessert, but I had to try the dark chocolate tart with white chocolate icecream. Purely for research purposes, of course... It was beautiful - a very smooth and rich dark chocolate filling, like a heavy cream custard in texture. Even with three of us sampling, we had to leave some behind, and we didn't eat much dinner that night. My friends had the velvety spinach, walnut and roquefort soup for entree, and Belinda had the rather Christmassy chicken ballotine with fig vinaigrette. Although there was no vegetarian option on the special menu, the chef whipped up a delightful strongly flavoured tomato risotto for Beth.

The lunch special was $28 for two courses, or $33 for three, including a glass of the house wine. This was a French Georges du Bouef sauvignon blanc. The selection is very limited compared to the main menu, but the value is unbeatable. We hope to go back for a birthday dinner for Beth on the ANZAC weekend. The dinner menu is rather pricier, closer to the usual Canberra standards - entrees and desserts in the $15-20 range, mains about $30. But we expect it will be worth it.