The Forager: show champs, kitchen for rent
This week in The Forager: top awards from the Royal Adelaide Show, new places to cook and eat, and some of our readers share their favourite food haunts.
Blue-ribbon winners
Almost all the five major food groups have gone under the scrutiny of this year’s Royal Adelaide Show judges. Cheese, chocolate and beer has been joined by cider and perry (pear cider), a new food and beverage classification awarded for the first time at the 2014 show, produced from apples and pears grown in South Australia.
The Champion Perry went to Victoria’s Flying Brick Cider Co, but Champion South Australian Exhibit went to Adelaide Hills’ Sidewood Estate Apple Cider. Chief cider judge Warwick Billings said organisers were delighted to receive more than 50 entries in the competition’s first year.
“We look forward to the cider competition growing in future years.”
The Most Outstanding Beer in Show went to Barossa Valley Brewing’s India Pale Ale “Canis Majoris”, a super-strong beer (8 per cent alcohol) named after one of the largest known stars in the universe, Canis Majoris.
In cheese, Champion SA Manufactured Cheese went to Hindmarsh Valley Dairy’s Cumulus, a whipped French-style goat curd, which also won Champion Cheese from Small Scale Dairy Producer. The Most Successful Exhibitor in All Cheese Classes went to La Vera Matured Pecorino.
Finally, the most hotly contested of all categories – chocolate – Bracegirdles House of Fine Chocolate won Champion Chocolate for High Thai, an infusion of chilli, coriander and lemongrass in a white Belgian chocolate ganache in a dark chocolate shell, and Most Successful Chocolate Exhibitor for its Blood Orange, Marzipan & Hazelnut Bar. Best Product from an Emerging Chocolate Manufacturer went to Chocolate @ No 5 for its Murray River Salted Caramel.
A full listing of show results can be found here. The Royal Adelaide Show is from September 5-14.
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A place to cook
A new commercial kitchen at Prospect that offers 24-hour access, hourly rates and storage is providing a solution for start-up businesses and established restaurants.
The Cooks’ Base was purpose-built by engineer-chef couple Graeme and Paula Robertson, who were looking for a place where Paula could create cakes and desserts for her business, The Layered Cake, which supplies local cafes and restaurants such as The Coffee Barun, Bar 9 Central with tarts and cakes and Chianti with special occasion cakes.
A lack of suitable opportunities around Adelaide prompted the idea to create a state-of-the-art commercial kitchen that complies with the latest food safety standards and make it available to rent to others.
“We’ve had a lot of interest from start-up businesses, such as food trucks and market stall holders, and people who can see benefits of being able to scale up their home operation with the use of a larger commercial kitchen,” Graeme Robertson says.
“One of our current customers has started out using The Cooks’ Base once per month, but has plans to increase to five days per week as their business grows. It allows people with food business dreams to gain access to a commercial kitchen without the high overhead costs of setting up their own kitchen.”
Caterers and restaurants needing extra space for food prep or recipe development also use The Cooks’ Base.
“Auge is currently running some cooking classes from here – we can have five separate businesses operating here at once,” says Robertson. “We have two cooking ranges with five-tray convection ovens and we also have a blast chiller, cool storage, freezer storage and dry storage available with swipe card access and CCTV cameras throughout.”
Paula Robertson now also uses the kitchen to create meals for the couple’s convenience meals business, FedByChefs, and to process their harvest of home-grown tomatoes for tomato sauce.
“Once you’ve got a kitchen you’ve got so many possibilities,” Graeme says.
Who’s Sean Connolly?
The opening of Sean’s Kitchen in Adelaide next month is creating a lot of excitement, with a plethora of publicity being bandied about the place, but unless you’ve seen SBS cooking show My Family Feast or been to The Morrison in Sydney or The Grill at Auckland’s SkyCity, you may well ask: “Who is Sean Connolly?”
With the closing of North last year, the Adelaide Casino has found a keen replacement in Connolly, a chef who originates from the UK, but whose career has taken him all over the world running the kitchens of some major hotels. He is famous for his award-winning duck fat chips.
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Adelaide Casino goers can now look forward to some good chips with their chips.
Extra special pizza
It’s truffle season and during August Goodlife Pizza is celebrating with a black Tassie truffle pizza special – The Luxe – featuring black winter truffles from Tasmania, organic potatoes, aioli and truffle oil.
“Black winter truffles are an amazing experience,” says Marco Marinelli, whose Central Market stall The Mushroom Man supplies Goodlife with truffles. “The winter truffle is strong and highly pungent in aroma with a rich, deep earthy flavour.”
Street art hits the bottle – may the beastman win
Each year at the Adelaide Hills Crush Festival, more than 1200 people witness the creation of some very special artwork as part of Longview Vineyard’s Piece Project, where four of Australia’s best street artists create huge aerosol murals in front of a well-refreshed audience. At the end of the day, the art is judged and the winning art becomes the label of the winery’s premium The Piece Shiraz.
Last week at the Australian Boutique Wine Makers’ Industry Label Competition, Longview’s The Piece Shiraz 2009 – featuring the work of 2011 winner of the Piece Project, Sydney street artist Beastman – not only won the trophy for best red wine label for a producer over 250 tonnes, but also the trophy for Best Wine Label in Australia.
More hidden gems
Just across the road from Sean’s Kitchen, upstairs in the Stamford Plaza, is new Japanese-French fusion restaurant Ginzu Miyako. Adelaide-based restaurateur Johnny Yung, who also owns Indochina, Ginza Unley, Golden Dragon Palace, Burger Foundry and others in Hong Kong and China, has created a temple to the delicacies of the two cuisines, complemented by excellent Japanese beers, whiskies and sakes.
The people of Uraidla have some new action in their neck of the Adelaide Hills with pop-up café The Owl and the Elephant on Greenhill Road. The café is hoping for some longevity, but in the meantime it is open for business Tuesday to Friday, 8am to 4pm, and Saturdays 8am till 2pm, serving breakfast and lunch to locals, cyclists and day-trippers.
Owner Denise Manson is working with local orchardists and market gardeners to present a genuinely authentic menu of the region’s produce featuring Cobbledick’s leeks, Driver’s rhubarb, Filsell’s apples, Piccadilly pide bread, Tweedvale milk, Ashton Valley juices and Moshico coffee.
“Recycling is a very important part of The Owl and the Elephant,” says Manson. “All the crockery, cutlery and furniture was sourced from local op shops. And people bring in their excess produce, such as pumpkins and lemons, for us to use in the kitchen.”
Call 0412 836 547 for more information.
Following InDaily’s recent Forager column – Hidden gems; new finds (July 30) – calling for readers to share favourite food gems, Rob recommended Paddy’s Lantern at 219 Gilbert Street, Adelaide. “If you haven’t tried Paddy’s Lantern, you’ll be challenging ‘best coffee in Adelaide’ arguments, not to mention the beautifully prepared brekkies through lunches.”
And another reader, Shannon, shared that her favourite is Sublime Cafe on East Avenue, Clarence Park. “Check out Sublime Café – another great little cafe doing great brekkies and lunches in the suburbs! I’m told the coffee is great, too, but don’t drink it myself.”
Poetic justice
A dash of poetry and a pinch of science … creating a sci-ku for this year’s food-themed RiAus Sci-ku competition should be a piece of cake for a foodie.
Provoking thoughts of cooking, nutrition, farming and food sustainability, Maggie Beer was inspired to help raise awareness about food sustainability issues with her Sci-ku:
Thought for food
Is food for thought
Let’s think sustainably
The topic also ties to the National Science Week schools’ theme – Food for our Future – and the UN’s International Year of Family Farming.
Entry is free and winners of the Primary, Secondary and Open categories will be in the running to receive Kindles, book vouchers and ABC Natural History DVDs. Entries close on Sunday, August 24. More information can be found here.
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