Win Win

 

There has been a considerable amount of discussion this week in the traditional and ‘new’ media about the delicate question of Restaurant Cancellations and how to manage them. One of the many examples that surfaced rather loudly was the recent case of a table of 6 unable  honour a reservation at the highest placed restaurant in Melbourne.

The rule of booking at this restaurant is, that they have a clearly stipulated cancellation policy that meant in this case, if the table of six could not be filled after cancellation, there was a strict cancellation fee of $900.

I believe the person that booked could not come due to an illness that happened the day before the proposed visit. He cancelled the night before the arranged lunch booking.

 He thought that he was entitled to some leniency due to the sudden nature of the illness. The owner stuck to his guns and explained that he had taken advice from the ACCC when forming the policy and that the cancellation policy was declared strictly kosher and always clearly explained to everybody that booked.

There was a cold impasse and I think both parties came out rather worse after the confrontation.

But both sides had to my eyes equally valid points of view.

The diner did not plan to be sick and the restaurateur had strict clearly stipulated rules of engagement.

No shows, last minute and unannounced table number changes, and of course dreaded cancellations have troubled diners and patrons for ever.

 I am working on a very simple  solution that preserves the goodwill of both the unfortunate canceller and also preserves the rights of the restaurateur in any reasonable situation. 

But as with all simple ideas it will need a very experienced entrepreneur to be able to bring it to fruition and provide a globally applicable fair working solution.  It has to be win win.


Off to the Zetter

Graphic by Les Mason

RED BLUE POLES

I’m driving to Melbourne on Wednesday. The usual grooves of PBS FM is displaced by Radio National’s Books and Arts Daily talking about John Logan’s play Red currently at the MTC.

Before I can switch back to PBS’ Roots of Rhythm, my usual Wednesday driving companion, I realise that Red is about Rothko and my all time favourite restaurant, in a design sense, the Four Seasons in New York.

I’m certain that the vision, extravagance, drama and conceit that made up the gestation of this Madmen extravaganza will, even in these post Bulli times, be hard to Trump.

Bit of background..Put Yankee post war binge in the late 1950’s, a prime piece of Park Avenue real estate, the Seagram Corporation, Mies Van der Rohe, Philip Johnson, Joe Baum. George Lang, Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollock into a skyscraper of a cocktail and what you got was a deadly mix of an operatic scale played out in the opening of the most extravagant modern restaurant dining room of the most extravagant city at a time when extravagance new no bounds.

I was really looking forward to the play especially to see how the serendipitous Australian connection will be revealed. I ring the Hyphen, make a booking and slide breathlessly 8 hours later into Script dining room for a pre dinner meal.

Without giving anything away [its been reviewed in all the media quite closely] the play centres around Rothko’s moral soul search in taking a big commission from a large corporation for work that he sees as transcending all previous attempts at abstract expressionism. It’s a two-hander between the new assistant and the master confronting his own demons while monstering the young up and coming artist with questions of Pollocks suicide, the trivia of Pop Art, the nature of colour, the interplay of light, Nietzsche, Apollo- Dionysus and the eternal questions of generational change.

 Colin Friels gives a good but predictable performance with a very stilted accent [why do we need to copy accents?] the assistants role is restrained and he brings the drama to a head by confronting the Artist with the essence of his moral dilemma. After visiting the Four Seasons [its already open] Rothko reneges and brings on the climax and return of the substantial commission.

As the lights dim and applause begins I realise that the full story with the equally dramatic Australian connection is not going to be revealed.

What happened next.........

When Jerry Brody of Restaurant Associates one of the consultants working on the restaurant realises that they will not have the Rothko paintings they turn to art collector Ben Heller to ask if he had something appropriate to fill nearly 20 meter space. Heller suggested a painting in his garage that his kids were in danger of destroying. Of course it was Blue Poles. The painting goes into the private room of the Four Seasons before Rothko’s visit but strangely this is not mentioned in the play.

Fast forward to 1973 Rothko has committed suicide three years earlier. The Four Seasons has fallen on hard times and James Mollison from the Australian National Gallery convinces Whitlam and the acquisition committee to pay the highest price [A$2 million] to that date for a modern American painting. Resulting in a scandal that rocked the art world at the time.

Post Script: Blue Poles whatever you may think of it, is, today valued at between $50M and $150M

The opera continues to be played out still every day in the restaurant that now desperately needs a new American vision to feed the desires of today’s madmen. If you get a chance to go the bar snacks at the 5 pm happy time are brilliant and the interior is totally intact.

A Mornings Harvest, A New Loaf and a Gin and Tonic

 It can be easy to forget some of the slower growing plants in the garden when confronting an onslaught of summer produce.

 










 I planted these Juniper bushes about three years ago and while they have had some fruit before [they are really the cones of this conifer] all of a sudden you realise that there are enough to stock the larder with yet another useful ingredient that will yeild enough to last the whole year. The bushes are so spikey that thick gloves are needed to harvest them without causing injury. The spelt and khorasan grains have been harvested and with much excitement we are finally baking bread from home grown grains. A quick calculation indicates there is enough for us, for replanting and the bulk of it also for others.  I have been experimenting with a mix of the spelt, Khorasan and hard wheat flour learning how to control the doughs with completely new [to me] ingredients. Both our flours are whole grain and at this early stage the spelt seems to impart a strong nutty flavour while weakening the structure a bit. The khorasan also adds some very earthy toasty flavours that also slightly weaken the structure but add a very crisp layer to the crust. We are using the skins, bran and whatever comes off the final sieving for the lining of the proving baskets and the crusts have been very encouraging, thin but very crisp and tasty. The aim is to bake a unique bread that speaks of this little garden.

 All we have to do now is install a still into the shed and we can distill some of these grains, set the Juniper into the mix and get halfway to a  decent G and T. But then  I will need to plant some Cinchona trees to  put the T or is that Q? into the G and T.
Charles Ledger would approve.
 Hey Jethro Where's that banjo?

Oocytes and Loose Living

Its wonderful how ingredients can trigger memories...
Have you noticed these unusual bunches of raw egg yolks at the market? They come in a small bucket of about 30. They are called Oocytes, the unlaid egg yolks from laying hens dressed for the market. I love the parallel culinary path that ingredients take in different cultures. I can remember shopping for these with my mother at the kosher butchers in St.Kilda and they were used in our home for cooking chicken soups in a similar way that the Vietnamese from whom these were bought in Footscray, use them.
My mother also used them for cakes and noodle dishes. I haven't bought them for ages but thought they might provide a comforting accent to a dish of farmed prawns that we have been serving as the opening course on the menu. I usually avoid cooking Asian dishes here but I could not resist this salad of green papaya, green mango, kohlrabi and daikon all giving a moist crunch with different flavours that are echoed in the dressing of the classic lime scented Thai  trinity. Perilla, Holy basil, mint and coriander complete the aromatics.
While cooking at the Grace Darling Hotel in Collingwood in the late seventies we served a dish  mentioned in Lampedusta's novel The Leopard,  Timballo del Gattopardo an exquisite suede-like textured extravagance of chicken livers, cinnamon, pasta and many more goodies that also use these rich yolks in a spectacular pasta pie or Timballo.
Books can convey such a deep culinary resonance especially if they are not specifically about cooking. Food in a real context. One of the reasons that I have not been posting lately [the other is laziness] is  that I have been reading and also re-reading much of Frank Moorhouse's work.  Few writers can capture the mores and foibles of the table like Moorhouse. I have spoken of his book Loose Living before and when he agreed to come to Sunnybrae for a Melbourne Food and Wine Festival event this year we were thrilled and excited to soon have our hero here in person. Six spots left for March 18 click here for Details.
                                               A Taste of Summer in the Garden

Behind the Scenes

  

 

A  glimpse of a little of what’s been happening behind the scenes here on

the farm.

In February  we had to make some changes as the farmer who has been agisting his cattle here for many years found himself like all the farms in the district with more than enough feed in his own pastures  to take his cows home.... I have been a little lazy with this cosy arrangement for many years but the change gave us an opportunity to see what could be done with the land that fits into our other culinary pursuits. I have been a little obsessed with bread over the last 7 years or so since the wood oven was built experimenting with different flours and grains and realised that I knew bugger all about wheat.

But then I did not know much about artichokes and many other food plants till we began to grow them. The link between the garden and the kitchen is strongest when you can see, sample and taste food plants as they develop so a bit of bullet biting was required.   We needed to grow something that could be managed efficiently and able to be stored safely as well as providing a staple-like role on our menus.

The first workshop we conducted with the wood oven just prior to our re-opening in 2008 was with John Downes and for one of those workshops we sourced about 25 different types of flours that could only be bought in 10 or 20kg bags. After the workshops I had an arsenal of commercial and  artisan flours left over with which to learn how to use the new oven. Amongst the more interesting flour that was left  was the Khorasan [Kamut] and Spelt and these seemed to elicit the most interest from our diners. I am slowly getting to understand how they can be used in the kitchen. I hope to entice John down again next year to conduct a couple of workshops on grains.

So a leap into the unknown was made last May when I approached our neighbour  Don Liggerwood. Don has a large model farm and seed growing/cleaning business about 3km from here down the Cape Otway Road. I must have hit a resonance because Don very quickly embraced the concept with much enthusiasm. Both spelt and Khorasan are hard to find seeds in large quantities but some serendipitous convergence gave us a chance to begin this experiment. The strike rate has been excellent, the rains so far kind and { I hope I don’t put a mozz on it } the crop is growing magnificently despite the recent heavy downpours. Watching a new plant develop is exciting. As the shots grew the central stalks shoot up and before you know it they have self pollinated and the ears fill out providing a carpet of swaying fields that change colour each month.

The most striking difference in the look of the two crops is the height and vigour of the Khorasan. Its tall with a massive seed head and a very long beard. The long beard I have read is to make it more difficult for the birds to get at the seeds. The spelt is shorter and a quiet achiever with denser growth, very sturdy and  less likely to lodge[fall over ]. About 3 months after Don did the planting he rang and nonchalantly mentioned that he bought a second hand flour mill in pieces that is specified to process 250kg per hour! So the kit up is complete when Don figures out how to put it back together again.

Then we should have fresh flour and seeds to continue the experiment....

The other new crop developing is a few Pistachio trees that we planted in 2007 as we were getting the garden ready for re-opening. After 4 years they are full of immature nuts that should be ready in February.  For those of you taking a stroll between courses have a look under the trees in the orchard and you will see hundreds of tomatillo, tomato, cucumber, pumpkin and  other seedlings from the compost that has been spread below all the trees in the orchard. 

We have upped the ante with the compost making. 

 We get our eggs from Annete and Stuart Rayner’s  free range egg farm about 2km down the Cape Otway Road next door to Liggerwood’s and they have a brilliant industrial sized mulcher. For the last 2 years we have asked them to construct a composting shelter from their  last year’s straw and we make compost inside this slowly using the straw for layering the organic waste. When the pile is complete the bales are gone and Stuart shreds it and it erupts into a Jeff Koons-like Puppy sculpture of Pumpkins, Melons  and all the rest of the seeds that have sprouted from the kitchen and garden “waste”. 

  Its sits for a year to ferment and when it’s spread under the fruit trees the second coming of the self seeded windfall begins again. This year the straw will come from our paddocks after the quail get their fair share.  I saw one take off from the middle of the Kamut yesterday.. not sure how I will feel about letting the guns in.  Good I think.

Play with Fire or Sans Sous Vide

 On our first visit to France and we found ourselves in Hauterives on a pilgrimage to see the Palais Ideal the work of a retired postman who spent most of his life building a do it yourself concrete folly--Think Ankor Wat meets the Sagrada Famiglia. After a mind blowing morning wandering around this extraordinary site we decided to walk to the next village  in search of lunch. Its the classic French dream a small bistro on the edge of the town. Fresh mirabelle tart on the scrubbed pine presentation table, flowers, thunderstorm then sunshine and a new menu to explore. We order quenelles de brochet  sauce Nantua, a local Marsanne  then the tart.... walk to the hotel-- France at its best. The next day we are at yet another bistro and the temptation to try the local speciality again is too great to resist. By some miracle the dish is exactly the same as the previous day—you’ve got it by now. The first wave of the sous vide revolution is at its peak in France. In the seventies sous vide cooking hit France by storm. "Georges Pralus in the mid-1970s working with the Restaurant Troisgros (of Pierre and Michel Troigros) in Roanne, France who were looking for a new way to to cook foie gras, which shed 30 to 50 percent of its original weight in cooking. Pralus found that when cooking foie gras using Sous Vide techniques its original appearance did not lose excess amounts of fat and had better texture."

"Bruno Goussault was working along the same lines in the 1970's, but instead at an industrial level. In 1974, Goussault worked on a study that was presented on the sous vide cooking of beef shoulder at an international frozen-foods conference in Strasbourg, France. It was found that cooking the beef sous vide extended its shelf life to 60 days."

  The supermarkets were full of famous chefs’ branded signature dishes but the local palate and media dismissed it as a fad a bit too close to mass produced fast food. It was thought [ in a gastronomic sense]  that while it works well for foie gras for those that have not tasted it freshly   cooked, it was just a little too industrial for take home food and the restaurants realised that their "brand" was being diminished by mass marketing in  a country that still largely cooked at home and went out or to the local traiteur for fancy food. A few months later I am trying to survive in London buried in a basement room of a claustrophobic horror show hotel in Baker Street. The only job I can score is a twee bistro in Islington that has a parent restaurant across the road. The job involved following an intricate set of recipes [loosely used] that gives instructions like

Bag 1 to MW 2 for 15 secs on 4

Bag 2 into WB for 2 mins

Garnish: warm squeezebowl 1 to rim

Salad mix 1 centre

Bag 2 to top

Bag 1 over.

The owner chef of the flagship shop across the road cooked and bagged the whole restaurant menu at the big kitchen with one sous chef and my job was to run the bank of microwaves and pots of water to the simple instructions provided. His food was quite good, solid European cooking, good stocks fresh well picked greenery and good dressings. It took 2 days to get a hold of the system and while completely mind numbing the job demonstrated a minimalist modernity that had a certain perverse attraction if you looked at it from a strictly logistical perspective. We did twice as many covers as his excellent real charcoal grill across the road I came 20 minutes before first orders and left 15 minutes after the last hot dish. The waiters did the pud in a similar way. Luckily a good  job in Soho rescued me from who knows what?

You can argue for low temperature setting of proteins, minimal cell disturbance along with post preparation  Mallardisation or any other pseudo industrial modernity that takes your fancy but I love to play with fire and juggle a hot pan with a slow steamer, checking a wood oven while reducing a couple of stocks to splash on some freshly roasted meat to serve at the same time as a slow braised  stew and a couple of serves of grilled fish. Yes I know sous vide may streamline our service, minimize wastage but I still remember how my mothers freshly cooked foie gras tasted and stumble along to the Stones classic.....

Too Old Too Slow Too Good

Vale Narelle

Narelle 4 Feb 1998 -- 21 September 2011

Quail Sera Sera

It’s the end of a big Sunday service, let’s call him Bill, he quietly meanders into the kitchen with an impish smile, with thanks all round to the kitchen team asks if perchance we liked the taste of wild quail? Our collective eyes light up... a kindred spirit. Over a quiet drink he told us of his passion for hunting quail and how his father had also hunted and explained the intricacies of its storage and preparation.  A week later with a rendezvous in Camperdown we get a large box [bag] of superb stubble quail. Now the packaging was intriguing but so elegant. The birds are layered on straw from the fields where they were shot, a large icepack on the top and bottom. Bill explained that this was the same method his father had used during the depression to deliver game to local pubs to supplement the farming income. We spoke about how to dress them and his method is something like this...

First cut off the head, wing tips and feet with a pair of scissors.

 Plucking is a quiet skill best performed in company with some good bottles and plenty of conversation Bill does this in the field around a campfire with his mates. I like to age them in feather on the straw in the cool room for about 4-7 days. The feathers and skins are delicate but after about a dozen you get used to the way they are layered. Some start at the back and work their way to the neck  others go in reverse, the main thing is to try not to tear the skin. Do not try to use hot water as they are far too delicate When they are plucked rinse and place them into a bucket of icy salted water [10%] salt this begins to sterilise the skin.

When you have plucked your bag make another icy salt bath and cut along the spine with the scissors and remove the internal organs. Rinse and place in the second iced salt water bath. Leave them in the brine for about 4 hours . The quail are now ready to cook or they will store in the fridge for about a week. Sadly most hunters stew them for far too long. They are quite tender and only require about 10 minutes in a hot oven. I like to add a little garlic, salt and juniper into the cavity and bard them with some tasty form of pig fat like speck or bacon and cover with a fine layer of crepinette for roasting. Stubble quail are small with dark flesh but extremely tasty a real wild flavour. A couple of weeks later our rendezvous is in Inverleigh and the prize is Brown Quail from the islands in Bass Straight. Bill has a  hunt with his close buddies once a year,  the old dog patiently waiting in the car a calming companion.  Thanks Bill for reminding me that the best food hardly ever makes it to a restaurant.   Now where are those Morels?....

Capocollo for Claire

Hi Claire
We do a similar method to your Nonno but a wet cure as opposed to a dry one. Click on the photos for a larger resolution. First we choose the neck or scotch fillet of pork that does have fat and do not trim as we feel it adds more flavour. We rub a generous amount of salt very carefully into every little crevice of the meat, this is the most important part-- take your time. After 12 hours the meat will have given off quite a bit of moisture and we turn it every 4 hrs or so for 4 days. We then dry it and cover with a spice mix of paprika, coriander, black pepper and chilli. Then we wrap it in collagen paper and tie it very tight with string and cover with the sausage netting. We also use a piece of AG pipe to thread the stocking on. Then as you do, we hang it in the shed for a couple of months in cool winter weather. I hope you have done this with your Nonno so you can pass your families' methods on to the next generation. They will gather some moulds on the surface and its always good to have an expert to let you know if these are good moulds. The more surface mould the better the fermented flavour. This is the easiest of pork cuts to cure as there is no bone for air to get trapped in.
We vacuum pack them after they are done to stop them from continuing to dry out. Some people pack them in lard which does the same thing.  Photos from Steve and Ingrid.