PHOTOS COURTESY OF NICOLA HAWKINS
More than once blackberries have managed to make the dining table at our events. Which is great, seeing as we grow more of them, for less effort, than any other food. They are natural accompaniments to apples—both in the paddock and in an apple pie; both are in season at the same time.
Raw milk cheese
That first sheep I killed from my own flock was for an illegal lunch. Having had a spot visit from the local health inspector, who imagined for some reason Ross and I were preparing stuff for the market at my home, we decided that it’d be fun to see just how many laws we could flout, and yet still make food safely enough for ourselves, and guests, to eat.
Our idea was to make every single thing on the menu something that it would be illegal to sell in a restaurant. And where possible, we did everything illegal in the preparation too.
So the prosciutto was home-cured in a shed. The two-tooth was killed on the property (meaning nothing, not the hide nor the guts, nor the meat, could ever leave our farm and we couldn’t have any commercial arrangement at all as far as the consumption of it went). We used wooden chopping boards, an anathema to your local environmental health officer, and carbon steel knives, the ones that—while managing to stay heroically sharp—rust if you cut anything acidic or don’t oil them straight after use. There was a cold-fermented sausage, in this case chorizo, which would need to be tested before selling, there were things smoked just outside the front door, and home-killed ducks and geese too.
Most excitingly, as far as some of the guests were concerned, was the fact that we would also have raw milk on the menu.
Raw milk is a curious thing. Unpasteurised milk, which is what raw milk is—the stuff that comes just as it appeared from the cow—is a contentious topic. Local, state and national health bodies are rabid in their opposition to its sale or use. A highly nutritious, extraordinarily perishable product, milk is a perfect place for bacteria and other bugs to thrive in. By simple merit of its nutritional value, it’s therefore considered high risk. Pasteurisation, the heat treatment of milk originally developed to kill potential pathogens, is considered by many as the easiest, cheapest and most effective way to render milk safe.
The milk that comes from a cow, a goat, a sheep is by definition raw. So is the milk that comes from a woman’s breast. And almost by definition, if the milk is fresh, clean and from a healthy animal, it is unlikely to cause any harm; the reason animals have milk is to nurture healthy young. So while the authorities insist on milk being pasteurised to make it safe, some people believe the heat treatment of milk destroys some of its beneficial nature, killing both good and bad bacteria indiscriminately, and changing the chemical structure of the milk.
Now, I’m no expert on the science. I’m sure more people get sick from chicken every year than raw milk, but I can tell you there’s a massive black market in raw milk all over Australia. Aficionados will go out of their way to buy ‘bath milk’ or ‘pet milk’ or to belong to a herd share, just so they can get their hands on raw milk. The problem is, some of them don’t just wash their tootsies in it, or feed it to their dog or their orphaned calf. Some do drink it. And the fact is, raw milk is the milk that’s most in need of regulation, not left to some black market where people transport it in their ute to secret pick-up locations in town. Or run under-the-radar dairies that don’t do even the most rudimentary biological testing, unlike the dairies that are regulated.
Anyway, the good news for us is that we don’t want to do bath milk or sell pet milk. But we did want to serve the milk from my new cow at our illegal lunch. Even better than that, we wanted to serve a gently set, raw milk curd—a little blancmange, really, using some of the exquisite milk from Maggie, my Jersey. An elegant, dark-lashed lady, she’d only been with me for a month by the time the lunch was on, and the milking was one of the craziest yet best things I did in my first year on the farm. I’ll tell you more about Maggie later.
First, the meal.
For lunch that day we served the chorizo that Ross had knocked up a couple of weeks before, cooked in cider I’d made myself. We smoked duck and goose breast from the birds we’d killed and plucked ourselves. The hogget shoulder formed part of a cassoulet, along with legs of the salt-cured and slow-cooked geese and some luscious pure pork sausages from pigs that we would normally use for the market.
The guest list was select, born out of the people we had met through the market. We invited John Hounslow, knifemaker extraordinaire. There was Peter and Ruth Althaus from Domaine A winery, who we invited so we could say thanks for allowing us to use their commercial kitchen on our first week at the market. We’d befriended a French bloke and his Aussie wife who had fallen for some of our products at the stall, and invited them along. Others were simply market regulars.
We laid out one long table in my sunroom, with views over the paddocks to the bush beyond. We slaved away in the kitchen, trying to create a winter meal that would surprise and satisfy. Emma helped on the floor. So did Sadie, who I’d managed to talk into coming down for weekend visits. Often to help me pack for the market or, in this case, wait on table. (A sign, perhaps, of the workload she’d one day end up with when hanging around with an occasionally absent farmer!)
We dished up several courses, both meat and vegetable, over the course of three hours. And as a special treat after the meal, for those who were game, there was a drink of raw milk straight from the cow that had been parading up and down in front of the house. All we did was put a chill on the milk and then pour it into glasses. The guests were very excited by it, this dangerous contraband that everybody who isn’t a dairy farmer is highly unlikely to be able to taste. And the response from those who had never had it before was reassuring. It really does taste different to the bought stuff.
The lunch went off pretty well. I think the theme of an illegal lunch, a speak-easy kind of thing, heightens the senses and gives an added punch to the flavours on the plate. There’s something of the naughty boy and girl in us all that rather enjoys breaking the rules.
Now, I could tell you we charged money for the experience. That we consciously made every aspect of the lunch illegal, simply to snub our noses at those rules that render truly great food inaccessible to all who don’t grow and rear and cure food themselves. But that’s not the kind of thing Ross and I were likely to do, I don’t think. And if I told you that we charged for the meal, that would get me in trouble. My memory, of course, is now hazy on the detail, anyway. Charging for the meal—not to make money, simply to raise two fingers to the authorities— wasn’t something Ross and I would ever have considered. But I really wish we had.
Fish
It was at a chipper that Sadie told me we were going to have a child. Most men will remember when they first learnt their lover was pregnant. It’s usually a fond memory that often has a little to do with the place, and a lot to do with that most basic of human desires, to procreate. But I remember the place with almost the same fondness I have for the news itself.
A fish and chip joint is hardly the most glamorous of locations to remind me of this news, you’d think. And despite the waterside tables, and the dock where real fishing boats pulled up, I wasn’t expecting what came from the fryer to make me sit up and take notice as much as Sadie’s news had. But that was the reality at the Dunalley fish and chip shop. Not only did I get to hear my lover was with child, but the stuff in the batter was as good as any fish you’ll find anywhere.
I probably should tell you more about Sadie. And I will. But right now I feel a rant coming on.
I don’t know what’s wrong with the seafood system in Australia. But I do know it’s in need of fixing. And forgive me if I compare what we do to other places, or compare it to the dream world that exists in my imagination, but if we can do better, then we should.
Fish, most of it, comes from the ocean. And most fishing towns I know hardly have any good seafood available locally. Yes, you may be able to corner the fishing boats in Alb
any as they come to shore and get a Nannygai or similar just as they dock. You could, if you’re lucky, be at a fish co-op on the east coast of the mainland and buy a fresh snapper or two. But I’ve been to fishing villages all over Australia, dropped by the co-op where the fish are delivered and sorted for shipping, and all I could buy was packaged frozen crumbed fish fillets. The best fish, it seems, is exported.
I get angry when I hear about what happens with the best Australian produce. That it leaves our shores before we get a chance to buy it. But if you go to most Aussie fish markets, they smell like old fish. Go to the centuries-old fish market in Venice, and it doesn’t smell of fish at all. Or the one in Trani in Italy’s south. Or Tsujiki in Tokyo, or La Boqueria in Barcelona, or the fish market on the river in Guangzhou in China’s south. I know, I’ve been to them all. They value all their fish so highly that nothing is left to waste. Not an anchovy, not a mullet, not a clam. These fish markets don’t smell like rotting fish because no fish ever get to spend much time there. You can smell the Sydney Fish Markets from several streets away as you walk in.
No, we don’t value our fish highly enough. But other nations do. And they are often first in line to get hold of the finest harvest from our bit of ocean.
Whenever I think of the best Australian produce leaving our shores, I’m reminded of a visit I once made to a mozzarella producer in Italy’s south. I was at Battipaglia, near Napoli in Campagnia, where arguably the finest buffalo mozzarella is made. Pinched off a large ball of curd while still molten hot, the little orbs of mozzarella were dropped into brine to cool. A second or two after the orbs were squeezed into the cooling vat, I was offered a taste. The complex, crystal-clear flavour of buffalo milk, still vaguely warm and with its characteristic fragrance, was at its miracle best, encased in the filigree layers of the cheese. I asked the mozzarella-makers when they think the cheese loses its magic.
‘When do you eat mozzarella?’ I probed.
‘Now,’ they said. ‘We only eat mozzarella di bufala when it is fresh.’
‘How fresh is fresh?’ I asked, naively.
‘We only eat mozzarella that is, at most, a few hours old,’ they told me with that characteristic Italian shrug. If you make the cheese, then I guess you have that luxury. ‘Locals come to the factory to buy it in the hours after we make it.’
‘Once it’s a few hours old, then what do you do with it?’ I prodded.
‘If we don’t sell this cheese at the factory door today, tomorrow we will send it to Napoli, the big town about half an hour away.’
‘And how long will they consider it fresh?’ I asked.
‘For a couple of days. Then, if it’s two days old already, we send it to Roma.’
‘Oh,’ I said, feeling just a little sorry for those poor Romans, about 300 kilometres to the north. ‘What happens if you haven’t sold it all by the time it’s three days old?’ I want to know.
‘When it’s about three or four days since we made it,’ they explained, ‘then we send it to Milano,’ which—as you’ve probably guessed—is further north than Rome.
‘And when they won’t take it, what then?’
I could almost have guessed the next line.
‘Then, when nobody in Italy will buy the mozzarella, then we pack it for export. That’s when we send it to places like Australia.’
I have a mozzarella-maker’s attitude to food. The best things we grow never leave the house. The next best go to my neighbours and friends. If we have too much, I’ll sell them locally. And the further afield the produce is going (not that we really export things we grow), the quality is inversely proportional to the distance. So if you want the best, you have to be invited into my home or pray there’s a surfeit of the same quality that week.
Australian seafood suppliers, from what I’ve seen, don’t think like that. The best stuff is usually exported, often while it’s still alive. We just don’t give seafood the respect it deserves.
I was once given some cooking advice by a South Australian fisherman who fished commercially for King George Whiting. This bloke watched from cliff tops as the whiting fed near the sea’s surface, then grabbed his boat from the beach and rowed out and cast his nets for the fabled white-fleshed fish. A romantic image if ever there was one—a lone fishermen bringing in his haul, moments after catching it on the great expanse of The Gulf of St Vincent. And his recipe for his catch, as fresh as any fish you could imagine?
‘Pop it on a plate with some margarine, cover with plastic and microwave for two minutes on high.’
That from the person who should know more about whiting, and how to cook it, than anyone.
His response, I’m sad to say, says a lot about the way we Australians view the things we pluck from the oceans. It may not be indicative, but from my perspective, it’s not unusual.
It was, then, with the utmost trepidation that I visited the chipper at Dunalley, a seaside town you pass between Hobart and Port Arthur. Another anonymous place serving greasy, white fish of unknown origin in some kind of industrial batter? That was my expectation, after a few decades of finding just that in chippers all over Australia.
The person running the shop down by the water was a fisherman. Still is. He can tell you not only when the fish were caught, but by whom and along which part of the coast. Fishing boats pull up alongside to unload their catch. When you order fish and chips at Dunalley, you get whatever the boats have brought in, not what the trucks full of frozen slabs of Mekong Delta catfish (basa) have delivered.
My god, it was good. And this was the place where Sadie told me she was pregnant. I have very fond memories of the meal, of the excitement and trepidation that I felt. At 43, I was going to be a dad!
The calamari was not only tender, but full flavoured.
Having almost given up on having children (wrong women, wrong time, blah blah blah . . .), I was now going to have to open my new home not just to a lover but also to a child.
And the flathead was seriously good too.
Life was about to change in ways only a parent can truly understand. But it was another seven months before Sadie could leave work in Sydney and finally move to the farm.
Beer-battered flathead
Serves 4
We can catch flathead relatively easily near our place, and it’s a top fish for lots of things, including the local favourite, fish and chips.
1 egg
180 ml (6 fl oz/about ¾ cup) beer, ideally a good local brew so you can drink the rest of the bottle
100 g (3½ oz/ 2/3 cup) self-raising flour
salt and freshly milled black pepper
olive or peanut oil, for deep frying
500 g (1 lb 2 oz) flathead fillets
plain (all-purpose) flour, for dusting
homemade tartare sauce and lemon wedges, to serve
Whisk the egg lightly in a bowl until smooth, then whisk in the beer. Sprinkle in the self-raising flour as you whisk, and season well with salt and pepper. If there are many lumps, put the batter through a sieve. Leave for half an hour before using.
Heat enough oil in a wok or big saucepan to be able to deep fry. Place a tray or bowl lined with paper towel on one side ready for the cooked fish.
Season the fish and dip in the plain flour to coat. Then, holding the very fine tip of the tail, dip the fish in the batter to cover. Allow to drain for a couple of seconds as you hold it up before laying it gently down in the hot oil, trying your best not to fry your fingers. The oil should be hot enough to fizz straight away; if it doesn’t, heat longer and try again (you can use a little bread or crumbs or a wooden skewer to test that it is going to sizzle). If you have a thermometer you can cook the fish at 180°C (350°F). Cook several pieces of fish at a time until golden, drain well and lay on the paper towel. Serve straight away with homemade tartare (mayo with capers, gherkins and parsley in it) and lemon wedges.
Pancakes
Some things you can just master quickly. Other things, those that seem incredibly simple,
like boiling sugar and fruit to make jam, are harder than you’d think. So it’s no surprise that my first attempt at making jam in Tasmania was a bit of a failure. The strawberries were very big and watery. And they were very ripe. So my jam was fairly runny. Luckily I’d only made about twenty big jars of the stuff. Enough for about two years of toast, by my reckoning. Wet toast, at that.
When Sadie moved to Tasmania, however, and even a little before that when she’d visit most weekends, the strawberry jam was put to good use. As a boy I’d always been enamoured of Pancake Tuesday. Shrove Tuesday, by its official name, is a quasi-religious festival where you eat up all the eggs and butter and other rich goodies in the house before the 40-day fast for Lent. In our house in Canberra when I was growing up, it was usually my job to make the crepes for Pancake Tuesday. I loved making them thin, letting the butter bubble and barely brown before swirling in the batter. I would stand in the kitchen with two pans, churning out the pancakes while my sisters and parents sat in the next room devouring them as fast as I could slide them onto their plates.
But I have to say, for someone who likes a bit of indulgence in his life, the traditional Pancake Tuesdays are a bit too far apart. Who wants to wait a whole year between excuses to gorge on pancakes? Not the French, with their penchant for buckwheat galettes and superfine crepes. And not the Americans, who are known to stack pancakes so high they could reach about halfway to their cardiologist’s office and back.
I wanted more lazy breakfasts in my life, and now we had the excuse—using up my strawberry ‘sauce’ on pancakes. Regular, weekend pancakes, seven days rather than 365 days apart. Pancake Sunday, we called it, and there were—at least for a while—very few Sundays that passed by without a batch of them slathered with sauce and a good drizzle of Jersey cream.
The Dirty Chef Page 11