The Forager: It’s a kinda ice magic
In this week’s column, liquid nitrogen ice cream takes off in Adelaide, the best views in town, dining jungle style, more Crush Festival events, plus other Australia Day weekend food and wine ideas.
All-you-can-eat ice cream
With the use of liquid nitrogen it is now possible to turn any food – sweet, salty or sour – into an ice-cream flavour and the newly opened Fancy Ices is doing just that.
Fancy Ices opened last week, just off Gouger Street in a cluster of new restaurants on Field Street, with just four flavours to test Adelaide’s taste buds.
It is the first liquid nitrogen ice creamery to open in Adelaide, following the lead of Melbourne, Sydney, Queensland, Singapore and Hong Kong, where the concept has already taken off.
Owner Dorothy Chang says the beauty of making ice cream using liquid nitrogen is being able to use fresh ingredients without added colours, preservatives or flavours. It also means the ice-cream texture is super-smooth because liquid nitrogen freezes the ingredients rapidly at -196 degrees, creating very small ice crystals.
Think chef Heston Blumenthal’s scrambled egg and bacon ice cream and you get the picture. Fancy Ice’s first flavour offerings are Ferrero, Sweet Corn, Oreo and V8, but Chang says the menu is set to change every two weeks. It will expand to include flavours such as salt and pepper squid, black sesame, tuna mornay and smoked salmon.
“The possibilities are endless; you can even use soy sauce and vinegar in the ice-cream ingredients. And there are health benefits from being able to use fresh whole fruit, instead of purees.”
Fancy Ices is decked out like a science lab. You order from the menu on the wall-mounted television screen and a “technician” in a white lab coat, safety glasses and latex gloves will measure out 150 millilitres of flavoured ice-cream base from a large beaker into the mixing bowl of one of the four bright red mixers.
Behind a locked cage is a tank of liquid nitrogen from which the technician decants some of the smoky stuff into a stainless-steel jug – the process sounds just like a koala grunting. The gas is then poured into the running mixing bowl attached to the mixer, cooling the mixture rapidly while it boils away and produces a cloud of vapour. Voila! The mixture has doubled in volume and the ice cream is served in a tub complete with trimmings.
Chang says the process is completely safe and that customers will not ingest any liquid nitrogen while consuming the ice cream.
The Ferrero and Oreo flavours are delicious – smooth and true to their origins. The Sweet Corn and V8 flavours are far more challenging and strange. Sweet Corn comes topped with a splodge of tinned creamed corn and a sprinkling of Crunchy Nut Cornflakes – after a few mouthfuls with eyes closed, it tastes like caramel.
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The V8 is made from a V8 Juice ice-cream base, topped with diced tinned tomatoes and served with a syringe full of tomato ketchup – yes, I ate commercial tomato sauce by the spoonful. The V8 is light and refreshing – my favourite.
Each serving of ice cream is prepared on-the-spot for each customer which means during busy times you may have to wait five minutes or so, but the process is entertaining.
For safety reasons, Chang chose a venue for Fancy Ices that is very well ventilated as there is a risk of oxygen depletion when handling liquid nitrogen.
New in town
Bar with a view
The much-awaited 2KW opened last week with patrons queuing down King William Street for a first look. The rooftop bar and restaurant located above Jamie’s Italian offers arguably the best views of any venue in Adelaide, taking in the Riverbank Precinct, Adelaide Oval and a big peek inside the grounds of Government House.
Access is gained by taking two lifts up the eight floors of the Art Deco former bank building.
There is a fun cocktail menu and a food menu “designed for sharing”, including pizza, lots of local seafood and steak. However, 24 hours’ notice is required for the “Chilled Crayfish Indulgence – French baguette, Cognac and horseradish crayfish sauce, sauce gribiche with salmon caviar, framboise-pickled shallot and josper grilled baby cos leaves (POA).”
There is a tight but excellent by-the-glass wine list and an exclusive by-the-barrel offering from local winemakers, currently Dean Hewitson, Andrew Hardy, Reid Boswell and Ferguson Fernandez. The substantial full drinks menu is available by request.
Everybody should go to 2KW at least once.
From tees to trees
Another venue to behold is the newly renovated Kent Town Hotel. It is said that $12 million was spent removing the driving range that was part of the hotel’s former incarnation as The Tap Inn, and it has been replaced by an artificial tropical rainforest restaurant complete with a life-sized gorilla and elephant, Tarzan footage, a rooftop bar with dunking machine, its own butcher shop behind glass (leaving nothing to the imagination), and tunnels and slides to access all areas.
In the Jungle Bar, the South American-style Churrasco grill can be enjoyed from treetop dining platforms.
More openings
Other new openings to look out for include Sushi Planet on West Terrace tomorrow and Madame Hanoi at the Casino on Friday.
Popping corks on Australia Day
Whether you plan to prepare one of Wakefield Grange’s lamb recipes featured in InDaily Food & Wine earlier this week or simply enjoy a meat pie on the beach, Michael Andrewartha from The Tasting Room has recommended some locally produced tipples that he says South Australians will be proud to have in their Eskies on Australia Day.
Lobethal Bierhaus Pilsner – $25 per six pack
The Lobethal Bierhaus Pilsner is the quintessential summer beer – extremely fresh and drinkable, but also with enough substance to make it stand out from the crowd. Made in the Adelaide Hills, this is a great example of a craft beer which was made to be both drinkable and affordable.
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Romney Park Blanc de Blancs 2011 – $42
We love what Rod Short produces, especially his work with Chardonnay. This fine and fresh sparkling wine from his Adelaide Hills Chardonnay vineyard delivers flavours of lemon butter, apple and cream with great length and persistence.
O’Leary Walker Polish Hill River Riesling 2014 – $23
O’Leary Walker say it’s the soil at their Polish Hill River site in the Clare Valley that produces such amazing Riesling. The grey loam acid over sandstone and slate with top soil littered with rock hints at just how tough the vines need to be to sustain growth and produce quality fruit with finesse and intensity. The resulting wine shows muddled limes and orange zest and bouncy acidity, with a clean finish and bright mid-palate.
The Lane Block 5 Shiraz 2013 – $23
The Lane is a winery which has the ability to produce high-quality wines across different styles and price ranges, and this Adelaide Hills Shiraz is another example. It has all the wonderful characteristics of a well-made cool-climate wine without being thin or insipid. A lovely medium-bodied Shiraz built for all seasons.
Aussie cake breaks with tradition
Responding to recent statistics showing 90 per cent of South Australians drink coffee, making the state the country’s biggest consumer, Kytons Bakery has decided to create a coffee-flavoured lamington in time for Australia Day.
Despite having no real credit as a delicacy, the lamington has become an Australian food icon and thus an “Australia Day tradition”.
Created in Queensland at the turn of the century by accident or by innovation, the chocolate-dipped and coconut-dusted cubes of sponge have become part of our folklore and are generally eaten more out of a sense of patriotism than as a culinary delight.
“For many South Australians, coffee is a staple of their daily routine,” said Kytons Bakery owner Sharon Sutton.
“We’ve blended these two loves into one home-grown product that is tailor-made to suit the tastebuds of our state.”
The Kytons Bakery coffee-flavoured lamington is much sweeter and has a moister and softer texture than many of the lamingtons sampled in past dessert-table offerings, but The Forager still prefers a good coffee over a lamington.
And for something a bit wild…
Check out the native food offerings at Something Wild prepared especially for Australia Day barbecues – Keemu Kebabs are marinated kangaroo and emu pieces sprinkled with Australian native herbs, while Croc-all-u is an emu, wallaby and crocodile roast stuffed with native herbs and venison sausage meat. See the range here.
Playing cool at Crush
The Adelaide Hills Crush Wine and Food Festival will take place this weekend, with 35 participating wineries hosting 26 cellar-door events, 10 exclusive ticketed events and one cluster event.
The Piece Project is a live street art, food and wine event at Longview Vineyard featuring graffiti legend Johnny Duel and a slow-cooked barbecue with Longview wines by the glass and bottle. Bus packages and further details are available here.
At Woodside, Tomich Wines is hosting a family-friendly event called Pony in the Vines with North Adelaide restaurant SARS’ world-famous paella, sangria, pony rides, face painting, hay rides, fairy floss and ice cream.
And at Verdun, Sidewood at Maximillians will celebrate Crush with DJ tunes and the only floating golf green in SA that could net you a cool $5k on the day. Sidewood’s range of hand-picked, single-vineyard wines and award-winning cider will be available by the glass and bottle, as well as food platters, sliders and children’s activities.
More information about Crush is available here.
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