Giorgio di Maria's Garagistes Lunch

GIORGIO Di Maria from Sydney's Vini, Berta and 121 BC visited Hobart two weeks ago to present fabulous Italian wines from his native Piedmont while Luke Burgess threw together a 6 course Piemontese truffle lunch at Garagistes using Peter Cooper's Tasmanian truffles. It was by far the best and most generous lunch I have ever eaten. Once again Pauline Mak was there with her camera to capture the event.

No sooner had we finished nibbling on Luke's house made salumi than I received a tweet from Bell's Stefano Manfredi who confessed that Giorgio's passion for Italian wine was an inspiration to him. Giorgio stopped pouring the baccabianca to check it out.

Meanwhile Luke was busy plating up the truffle laden raw vegetables for the bagna calda.

First course was a bagna calda accompanied by a baccabianca 2006, tenuta grillo.

The colour of the baccabianca was the first surprise, the taste was out of this world.

Next came scraped wagyu fillet covered in truffles and coupled with a salty caramel like egg yolk.

The wagyu was teamed with a nebbiolo 2009 giuseppe rinaldi

Then came a wild rabbit agnolotti sprinkled with crumbled house made amaretti. A sensation.

Accompanied by a boca 1990, campo delle piane. This North Piemonte wine had rested in large botte from 1990 until 1999 when it was bottled. It was truly amazing.

As if this wasn't enough - a smoked tongue risotto with bone marrow and more truffles, house baked bread and truffle butter.

The wine was a gattinara san francesco 1999 antonolo

The last savoury course was waygu rib eye cooked over the restaurant's wood grill and served with a crema di cipollle al forno and fritto misto alla piemontese.

This time the wine was a barolo vecchie vigne 1998, giuliano corino.

The dessert created by Luke was a pannacotta, better than any I have ever tasted. The dish was made in Giorgio's regional traditional method incorporating egg white and was served with a truffle and mandarino chocolate sauce. The dish pannacotta tradizionale, gianduja, tartufo e mandarion was a triumph.

And perfectly matched with a sol 2007, ezio cerruti. What a lunch. Thanks Giorgio and thanks Luke.

Astrid's Macaron Masterclass

Last Sunday Astrid Wootton taught a macaron class in our kitchen attended by Mary and me, Astrid's partner Jade, Ella Haddad and her two small girls and our Munsterlander, Minnie. It was a crowded house with some great results.

The first step in making chocolate macarons is to blend almond meal, cocoa and icing sugar and then put it through a sieve.

Next the almond meal and sugar is mixed with 80g of egg white and stirred through and set aside.

Then beat up another 80g of egg whites to stiff peaks while at the same time heating up 200g of caster sugar with 75ml of water til the syrup is at soft pull - about 140C.

This is the preparation for Itlalian meringue. The hot sugar syrup is then slowly whipped into the beaten egg whites resulting in a silky, partially cooked meringue which will defy gravity.

What follows is the macaronage. About half of the Italian meringue is stirred quite strongly into the almond meal, sugar and egg white mix and when mixed through gently fold in the balance of the Italian meringue.

It is mixed correctly when you can pull the spoon out and wave it around the bowl and ribbons form on the surface.

The mix then goes into a piping bag ...

... and is piped on to a baking sheet. The discs are then set aside for 30 minutes before cooking begins.

The same method is followed for the pistachio macarons with ground pistachios taking the place of the almond meal and cocoa mix.

A tiny amount of green food gel is stirred into the macaronage for a more vivid colour.

The macaron halves then go into a pre - heated 125C fan forced oven for 14 minutes. Take them out and leave the baking paper on the sink which should be ever so slightly moistened. Leave them for 10 minutes before pushing them off the baking sheet from underneath and placing them on racks to cool further.

The biscuit halves are then paired off for size and the chocolate macarons are gently spread with chocolate ganache or salted caramel and the pistachio with pistachio butter or salted caramel. As the halves are put together a gentle twisting motion is used to bring the filling to an even thickness and to the edge of the "foot" of the biscuit.

And voila.

Thanks heaps Astrid. You are a star and a great teacher.

And the recipes with precise quantities and more detailed instructions will be posted next.

Loaves & Fishes

LOAVES and fishes. Evocative words. Simple fare. Egalitarian food for the masses. No restaurant could get them wrong - right? Wrong - cooking school has cured me of that delusion.

Cooking schools have taken off in Tasmania, as elsewhere, and we are particularly fortunate to have two of Australia’s best in Rodney Dunn and Severine Demanet's Agrarian Kitchen at Lachlan and Lee Christmas’ Red Feather Inn at Hadspen.

I have not visited the Red Feather Inn since its recent conversion although I must confess to one of Lee’s ethically bred and raised Wessex Saddleback pigs converted to a casalinga ham last Christmas. That I think though is another story.

My wife Mary and I have however, been fortunate to be able to attend a number of cooking classes and lunches at the Agrarian Kitchen. Rodney, a former food editor for Australian Gourmet magazine and a Tetsuya Wakuda trained chef last year won the Australian Traveller magazine’s Greatest Australian Gourmet Experience award.

Attending these cooking classes and learning about subjects such as Tasmanian truffles, processing heirloom tomatoes and the art of pastry making under the exotic names of Truffle Experience, Tomato Gluttony and Pastry 101, from such masters of their subject as former Gordon Ramsay pastry chef Alistair Wise, is in itself foodie heaven but I couldn’t say those classes have affected the way I look at how those foods are presented in restaurants. Loaves and fishes on the other hand – well, I am ruined for life.

Learning the secrets of sourdough from Oatland’s baker Graham Pritchard, (pictured above with Rodney Dunn), who bakes with dough made from wild yeasts in a wood fired oven under the shadow of the recently restored Callington Mill and being immersed in the passion of iki jime sensei and former Tokyo fish market doyen Mark Eather for the Tasmanian seafood he supplies to chefs including Neil Perry and Kylie Kwong, have forever changed my life. These cooking classes have totally revised my expectations of the loaves and fishes served to me in a restaurant.

I now want a high quality crust and good crumb in the bread that is served to me and I feel that chefs who serve house made bread should know about the hydration of their dough and about baking with steam and in a descending oven. And if fish has that metallic cloying smell that has put so many home cooks off cooking fish in their own kitchens, then no thanks, I know it is not sparkling fresh and I don’t want it. As Mark Eather (below) has proved to me the best fish doesn’t smell at all when being cooked or when it’s plated. If it smells of anything but the pleasant smell of the sea then it is the odour of decomposition you are smelling. Not nice.

So am I better off for my cooking classes or have they just caused me to eat at home more? Certainly not the latter – with so many good restaurants in Tasmania such as Garagistes in Hobart and Ut Si at Perth who bake sublime bread and understand it and with such talented chefs as Philippe Leban at the Source at MONA and David Moyle at the Stackings at Peppermint Bay, who only work with the freshest of fresh fish, I think the experience has just made me more discerning. Ultimately such a result will benefit everyone in the industry and will enhance Tasmania’s reputation as a serious contender in the Australian food market.

Whole Chicken Soup

This recipe originally published by David Herbert in the Weekend Australian Magazine has become a winter favourite of ours. It has a few ingredients admittedly but it easily serves 6 and so for Mary and me it provides a couple of meals.

Peel or scrub

6 carrots

3 parsnips

6 small turnips (or 1 small swede)

3 leeks

1 small onion studded with 2 cloves

2 celery stalks

1 clove garlic

Take a 1.5kg chicken put one of the sticks of celery inside it and place in a large pot.

Cut the leeks and all other vegies into 2cm (i.e bite size) thick rounds or chunks and surround the chicken with them. Add 2 bay leaves,garlic and 4 sprigs of thyme and cover the chicken with water or chicken stock. Bring to the boil and simmer gently uncovered for 1 hour. Salt and pepper to taste.

Serve portions of chicken (e.g break into legs , thighs, breast pieces etc ) in bowls sprinkled with as much of 2 tablespoons of chopped parsley and chives as desired and ladle the broth over as much as desired.

Match with a chardonnay and serve with farm buttered sourdough (optional of course)

Tapas at Grape Wine Bar

Grape Wine Bar has opened up a new way of eating for Salamanca Place. Cargo is well know for its pizzas and there are several good restaurants in Salamanca Square but when you are hungry but just want small plates with a drink, up until now you would have had to go to Ethos in Elizabeth Street in the Hobart CBD. Not any longer - Grape chef Ivan Haynes has commenced a really very good tapas menu and it's a must try.

After the magnificent West Australian sardines and the bacalao croquetas came marinated mushrooms - all pictured above.

Then some freshly shucked Barilla Bay oysters which had been in the water just two hours earlier.

The trilogy above was next - grilled local octopus, more of those magnificent mushrooms (which speaks for itself), and a tasty chickpea, roast capsicum and fetta salad.

Then came a spectacularly fresh ceviche of blue - eye with lime, red chilli and basil. Next to them for the meat eaters was a dish of fried sliced chorizo.

The ceviche was so good I thought it warranted a close up. You can sense the exquisite freshness from the photo. The dish was really sensational.

And to finish, a plate of garlic prawns cooked with quintessential Spanish simplicity. So what are you waiting for?