- Zagol House, www.zagolhouse.com.au

GET SET TO SIZZLE

BARBECUING HAS LOST NONE OF ITS FLAVOUR

The traditional Aussie barbecue remains a great way to entertain over the summer months, providing the opportunity to get out of the kitchen and share an easy meal with friends. 

When planning a barbie it seems there are four “S” essentials - sausages, steak, seafood and salads.

Some of the best local sausages are made by the Cimarosti Brothers - Steven, Phil and Gary – at their Colonel Light Gardens butchery. Their father Louis was a butcher in the West End of Adelaide about 40 years ago and his sons carry on the tradition.

The star snags include the signature West End original-style beef sausages which crop up on pub menus around town (the Prince Albert Hotel, Wright St, serves Cimarosti sausages with roasted vegetables, caramelised onion, gravy and tomato chutney).

Other sizzling favourites include award-winning continental Italian pork sausages, lamb and mint, pork and fennel, old English pork and the classic BBQ snag.

Steak may seem an easy option at first but there are plenty of pitfalls for novice barbecue cooks.

These can be solved with Meat and Livestock Australia (MLA) cooking tips and techniques for achieving the best juicy steak.

To start, coat the meat in oil instead of adding oil to the barbecue grill or hotplate. Also, remember to post-season the steak rather than pre-salt.  Don’t use salt in a marinade or rub mixture and then leave the meat to stand for several hours before cooking or the salt will draw out the juices, making the meat tough. And the biggest tip of all - cook on one side until moisture appears and be sure to turn once only.

Fresh seafood is another winner on the barbie and Michael Angelakis of Angelakis Bros says firmer-fleshed fish varieties such as swordfish steaks, marlin steaks and kingfish portions, are ideal for barbecuing as they hold their shape and texture.

He also suggests Atlantic salmon skewers or prawn shaslicks which need a minimum of preparation, mackerel cutlets or one of the great Greek traditions - barbecued octopus tentacles cooked on a char grill.

Michael’s key tips for barbecuing seafood include making sure the hot plate is very clean before heating up and, if the  fish is sitting in a marinade, ensure it is well drained before cooking otherwise the portions can stew in the excess moisture while on the hot plate. 

If the gas bottle at home has run out or you don’t feel like cleaning the barbie, then head to The British Hotel at North Adelaide where you can get a great cut of meat and cook it yourself on the impressive central barbecue.

The hotel sources high quality meats ( from Austral Meats) such as scotch fillet, sirloin, aged rump, kangaroo, chicken breast, T-bone, pork rib-eye or lamb backstrap.

Owner Richard Spalvins says the DIY barbie option is popular for bucks nights and with sporting clubs but admits more people choose to let talented chefs Melissa Grant and Tom Fox cook it for them in the  kitchen.

Cimarosti Bros Colonel Light Meat and Smallgoods, Goodwood Rd, Daw Park

www.themainmeal.com.au

www.angelakis.com.au

The British Hotel, 58 Finniss St North Adelaide

Soft meringue with passionfruit
curd and kaffir lime salad
from Spoon

Passionfruit berry triffle
from the Botanic Gardens
Restaurant

FRUIT BOUNTY

SEASONAL PRODUCE ADDS ZING TO FESTIVE DESSERTS

Summer brings a colourful bounty of juicy, sweet fruits including berries, mangoes, pineapples, melons and passionfruit which all shine brightly in festive desserts.

The seasonal fruits are ripe and ready for home cooks whipping up a trifle or inventive restaurant chefs who take dessert to the next level.

Chef Mark Cooper of Spoon by Aramis Vineyards, in Gouger St, embraces the onset of summer with its plentiful stone fruits, lychees, kiwi fruit and cherries.

“My desserts here this season are all designed to be flavour based and refreshing so you don’t walk out the door feeling six kilograms heavier after dinner,” he says. 

One of his signature desserts is a reworking of the classic Aussie pavlova but with a modern Asian twist. Mark makes a soft meringue topped with a quenelle of passionfruit curd and served with finely diced rockmelon, honeydew melon and paw-paw with kaffir lime salad, lychee sorbet and  chargrilled pineapple. 

“Altogether it tastes like an Asian dessert but it has that link to a traditional pav,” he says.  

He is also using summer berries in a pudding with house-made mango icecream and double cream. Fruit even makes an appearance in Mark’s Christmas-inspired Partridge in a Pear Tree main course – made with roasted pigeon breast, stewed pear, crisp parmesan and mandarin caffe latte.

At the Botanic Gardens Restaurant, head chef Dennis Leslie has created a lively summer menu which bursts with seasonality. 

Dennis makes a cracker passionfruit berry trifle (see below) replacing sponge cake with panettone (Italian Christmas bread) soaked in fig syrup with layers of mascarpone cream, strawberries, berry compote, passionfruit curd topped with Italian meringue and poached figs.

Another personal favourite is Dennis’s vanilla semifreddo, a semi-frozen creamy vanilla dessert made with mixed peel soaked in brandy with figs reconstituted in red wine and Cognac with almond and cardamom tuille.

Dennis is part of a new team at the landmark Botanic Gardens restaurant which is now owned by Christopher Horner (ex-Magill Estate) and Steve Blanco (Enoteca and Blanco Catering).

Passionfruit and berry trifle (serves 4)

Recipe from Dennis Leslie at the Botanic Gardens Restaurant

1 small panettone

Passionfruit Curd

200ml passionfruit juice

100g unsalted butter

175g caster sugar

3 eggs, whisked and strained

Bring juice, butter and sugar to the boil, do not let it reduce, and stir in whisked eggs. Stir until it thickens. Do not let it boil or eggs will curdle.

Strain again to remove any lumps, cool in the fridge.

Mixed Berry Compote

150g frozen mixed berries

60g sugar

40g fresh strawberries

Defrost berries and drain off the juice, bring juice and sugar to the boil, reduce slightly and pour over berries. Once cool, add cut up strawberries.

Cream

100ml thickened cream

100g mascarpone

Whip together to a medium peak

Italian Meringue

50g egg white

100g caster sugar

Mix sugar with 70ml water and boil to bubble stage. When sugar is nearly ready, start whisking egg whites in mixer. When they get to medium peak, begin adding hot sugar slowly and when all is combined turn speed down until meringue cools.

Poached Fig

12 dried Turkish figs

400g sugar

500ml red wine

200ml port

200ml water

1 cinnamon stick

Place all the ingredients in a pot and bring to boil, then turn the heat down to simmer. 

Add the figs and cook on low for 20 minutes.  Allow to cool in their own juice.

Once all components are cool and ready, prepare glasses by lining the bottom with a slice of panettone soaked with the syrup from the figs.

Then line the glass with slices of strawberry and spoon in berry compote in the middle. Pipe a layer of passionfruit curd, then a layer of cream, then repeat once.

To top the trifle, pipe a small rosette of meringue and brown with a blow torch. To serve, finish with soaked figs.

Hot Belgian chocolate at Steven
ter Horst’s studio at Norwood

Steven ter Horst’s Chantelle
chocolate made with chocolate
chill ganache enrobed in dark
chocolate and covered with cocoa

Steven ter Horst

Steven’s Elouise chocolate made with Gianduja, praline, milk
chocolate ganache wrapped in
dark chocolate and rolled in
toasted almonds

Choco-Vino marries chocolate
with wine at Hahndorf Hill
Winery, Hahndorf

RICH REWARDS

WITH ARTISAN MAKERS TURNING THEIR ATTENTION TO CHOCOLATE, THE SWEET TREAT HAS NEVER TASTED SO GOOD

Choosing chocolate used to be simple - Cadbury’s or Haigh’s – but a new breed of boutique producers is broadening our horizons with an array of ambrosial, hand-crafted chockies.

Adelaide’s Steven ter Horst is an artisan chocolatier who creates a stylish range of European-style chocolates at his Norwood studio which are named after the women in his life including Chantelle (his partner, artist Chantelle Giardina) which is dark chocolate chilli ganache enrobed in dark chocolate covered in cocoa. 

Anneke, named after his Dutch/German mother, balances marzipan layered with spice ganache.

Others are filled with fresh raspberries, mandarin, lemon or kiwi fruit and Champagne.

“I’m a very small maker and what’s important to me is not being a mass producer, being able to use high quality ingredients and, knowing that we all eat with our eyes before our mouth, they have to have a visual aspect,” Steven says.

“I can’t roast my own cocoa beans so I source two premium Belgian couvertures and blend for the right flavour and the length on the palate.

“When you eat one of my chocolates, you need to taste the chocolate itself first, then the filling, and the final flavour needs to be chocolate again and linger for about 20 minutes.”

Steven, who  studied at  Melbourne’s Savour Chocolate and Patisserie School, uses local dairy products from Fleurieu Milk Company cream and B.-d. Farm Paris Creek, lemons from his dad’s Adelaide Hills property and raspberries, figs and oranges from the Wayville Farmers Market where he also has a stall.

“I don’t want to cheapen my product so I don’t for instance use orange oil because I want a true representation of the fresh fruit I’m using.”

Steven , who also loves cooking but didn’t want to be a chef, uses his natural foodie curiosity to explore interesting ideas such as such as his fleur de sel sea salt chocolate, another dark chocolate made with goat’s curd and lime or a current experiment teaming chocolate with Sichuan pepper and Chinese five spice chocolate.

Steven ter Horst chocolates are on the menu at Assaggio Ristorante and the new Assaggio Café, Citrus, Ciccolatte on Melbourne St,  Felici in Rundle St and Goodine Bistro at Kurralta Park.
The world’s best chocolates are also on the menu at Hahndorf Hill Wines where owners Marc Dobson and Larry have created the new ChocoVino glass-enclosed tasting room which overlooks the vines.

Chocolate and wine matching ideas include the Hahndorf Hill Winery 2009 Pinot Grigio 2009 served with a gourmet Belgian chocolate with a cacao content of 52 per cent and infused with the flavours of Earl Grey tea.

“A gourmet chocolate allows you to actually taste the cacao from the bean and it engages all your senses and even surprises and challenges you … as with wine and olive oil, gourmet chocolate is best appreciated with an adult palate,” Marc said.
 “More and more, the world’s top chocolate houses are focusing on single-origin chocolate which is based on the concept that good chocolate, as in fine wine, has the ability to reflect terroir – that unique combination of factors which reflect where the beans, or grapes, were grown.”

ChocoVino includes fine chocolates from Michel Cluizel in Paris and others crafted from beans grown in the most prized plantations on the planet including Amedei Chuao in a remote area of north Venezuela.
 

www.steventerhorst.com.au
www.hahndorfhillwinery.com.au

Head waiter Nigel Bateman

Pure Suffolk lamb at Regoni’s bistro

PICK OF THE CROP

FRESH SPRING PRODUCE OFFERS A FLAVOUR BOOST TO ANY MENU

Seasonal produce is a reminder for us to leave the hearty casseroles and slow-cooked meals behind and look to lighter dishes for the warmer months ahead.

Home vegie patches, market stalls and greengrocers are all filling up with foods which thrive in spring. And while most of our favourite fresh fruit and vegetables are now accessible year-round, all produce still has a natural season when it flourishes, tastes best and produces the best crops.
Wendy Helps is the price and produce reporter for Adelaide Produce Market, SA’s centre for the distribution and marketing of fresh fruit
and vegetables.

“Stone fruits will start to appear in the next few weeks and mangoes will be in good supply this year, they will be a highlight,” she says.

“A lot more asparagus from Victoria is coming in, we don’t grow a lot of asparagus here, and it’s really good quality, beautiful stuff.
“There is always an apple and a pear variety for every season and spring brings lovely Sundowner apples and Corella pears.”

Other spring favourites include broad beans, artichokes, green peas, beans, tomatoes, sweetcorn, strawberries and citrus fruits such as mandarins, grapefruit and blood oranges. 

Spring is also an ideal time to enjoy succulent lamb, according to Adelaide Hills meat producer and purveyor Richard Gunner.

Richard’s premium Suffolk sheep, known for their juiciness and flavour, are used either for branded Pure Suffolk Lamb which is best from November to July or as milk-fed lamb from August to November. 

“Spring lamb is extra special as the grasses that the lambs are grazing are at their best in spring…and you are what you eat!” Richard says.

“In winter, grass is full of moisture and short,  in summer it gets pretty dry and autumn grass is either non-existent or very, very short whereas in spring it’s  abundant and has the perfect mix between how green and dry it is.

“Also most lambs are born around the same time and when spring comes around, they are at the perfect age of about four to seven months to be at their most juicy and tender.”

Richard says his favourite lamb cut at the moment is butterflied leg cooked slowly on a low heat and stopping when the inside of the thickest part of the leg is 60C on a meat thermometer.

“I am particularly loving Middle Eastern sumac spice as a flavour to go with lamb,” he says.

One local restaurant which favours Richard’s spring lamb is Rigoni’s Bistro, in Leigh St, which celebrates its 30th anniversary this year and three years under the ownership of Aaron Martin and Tony Bailey (pictured).

Their spring menu includes a roast leg of pure Suffolk lamb with braised shoulder cannelloni, brussel sprouts, rocket and mint salsa verde, crisp fried shallots, fried parsley and jus (pictured).  

“Italian food is all about the seasons, what’s best at various times, we follow those principles strongly here,” Tony says.

Spring ingredients are used throughout the menu such as a breakfast dish of watercress crepes with smoked trout, white asparagus, fresh herbs and rocket-mint-macadamia pesto. Poached eggs and spinach are served with a maltaise sauce - a hollandaise sauce made with blood oranges.

Broad beans star in a dish with roasted Berkshire pork belly while seasonal rhubarb features in a brulee with Granny Smith sorbet, chocolate sauce and pineapple chips.

www.feastfinefoods.com.au
www.rigonis.com.au

Sharron Trinh from
Café Kowloon

Amy Zhou from Citi-Zen Chinese Restaurant

SHARING RITUAL

YUM CHA IS PROVING A POPULAR BRUNCH OPTION 

Brunch is a great way to catch up with friends but for those wanting to branch out from the usual eggs and bacon-style menus, yum cha is an ideal alternative.  

Yum cha means “to drink tea” in Cantonese and describes the tradition of small servings of different foods, or dim sum, served with Chinese tea.

The tradition dates back to the 10th century and the beginning of the Sung dynasty when street vendors established roadside tea houses to serve dim sum. 

These days, yum cha in China is a mostly weekend tradition with families gathering to eat and drink in sessions which usually last from mid morning to mid afternoon. 

The yum cha ritual has also taken off in Adelaide. It can be a hectic experience; the food is wheeled to the table on trolleys in steamers or on small plates and guests can pick up whatever they like. The items are stamped in price columns on an order sheet for each table and are totalled when you ask for your bill – it is usually a very affordable way to dine.

Citi-Zen Chinese Restaurant, in King William St, is known as one of the city’s best yum cha spots with chef Heng leading a special kitchen team dedicated to preparing the handmade morsels.  
More than 90 varieties include prawn and scallop dumplings, snow white chicken feet, honey tripe and pan-fried water chestnut cake. Weekend sessions offer special dishes such as radish cakes with XO sauce.

Manager Amy Zhou says Citi-Zen’s signature dim sum dish is har gao, prawn dumplings, which are regarded as a good test of a yum cha chef’s skills.

“People judge it for how thick or thin the skin is - it must be thin and transparent and not too chewy but easy to pick up with chopsticks and it is pure prawn which has to be cooked perfectly,” she says.

Australians have wholeheartedly embraced yum cha in recent years and are willing to try some of the more authentic dishes such as chicken feet and beef tripe.

“Some people say ‘ooh, chicken feet, that’s disgusting’, but then if they are brave and try it, they always come back for it again and again,” Amy says.

Café Kowloon, in Gouger St, serves dim sum during the week but people line up to be part of the action on the weekends. 

Manager Sharron Trinh says she loves the hustle and bustle of weekend yum cha and enjoys seeing it become a more mainstream family tradition for Australians.

“So many come in now and they bring their kids so they can experience a different culture , learn something and give them something different to eat other than McDonalds,” she says.

“It does get very crowded and it’s busy and it’s fun and not at all formal.”

Café Kowloon’s Hung Wong creates handmade dim sum dishes such as scallop dumplings, barbecue pork buns, steamed king prawn in rice pastry and Chinese custard tarts or lotus buns.

“Yum cha is so popular now and I think this growth has been helped along by the fact there are so many Asian students here now,” Hung says.

Tea is an intrinsic part of the yum cha experience and the most popular brews are the light, subtle jasmine or chrysanthemum teas or richer-flavoured varieties such as pu-erh, or Oolong.

Ragini Dey from Dhaba
at The Spice Kitchen.

Manager Manoj  Kundrapu
and head chef Bishnu Kharel
at The Village Indian
Restaurant.

Northern Indian-style lamb
shanks from The Village
Indian Restaurant

Moreton Bay bug masala
from TheVillage Indian Restaurant

Spice it up

ADD SOME WARMTH TO WINTER DINING
WITH A TRADITIONAL CURRY

Think classic winter fare and it is hard to go past Indian curry with its exotic colours, heady aromas and feisty flavours of spices such as cardamom, garam masala, cumin, cloves, mustard seeds and turmeric.

Curry is a favourite around the world and has a complex history. Ragini Dey from Dhaba at the Spice Kitchen, at Leabrook, voted best Indian restaurant in this year’s Restaurant and Catering Awards, says curry is largely a British invention.

Curry, as we know it in the western world, was actually invented during the Raj era when Britain colonised India. The Brits developed a fondness for Indian cuisine and took a powdered blend of spices home to use in their cooking and these stews evolved into the Anglicised dish of “curry”.

“People lump all Indian dishes into this one category of curry with a yellow gravy into which you put chicken, or pork or beef and the main ingredient is the only thing that changes, not the yellow saucy goo,” Ragini says.

“Different spices and different combinations of those spices are what makes curry…real Indian food has no place for a ubiquitous curry powder.”

While Ragini champions authenticity, she is also unafraid to introduce modern influences to her menus.

“Curry is not just a dish you can make completely out of the blue, it’s all steeped in tradition,  but you can take elements of the dish and do things in a modern way,” she says.

“Everything evolves, Indian food is not the same as it was 500 years ago, so as long as I  am not professing to rigidly recreate a particular recipe then I can chop and change a bit to suit today’s culture.

“I don’t completely break with tradition but can take that tradition into another dimension…there are so many new ingredients being used all the time, you can’t just go around with your eyes closed to new things.”

Ragini, whose restaurant turns 21 this year, shares the secrets of Indian food at her popular cooking classes held on the last Wednesday of each month.

Bishnu Kharel, chef and co-owner of The Village restaurant in Gouger St, agrees there’s more to Indian food than the clichéd hot curry.

“People think Indian cuisine is just hot vindaloo but it is far more diverse and curry is not necessarily hot either, depending where it’s from,” he says.

“It’s different spices from different regions, different everything, and we want to show all that difference here because I think it’s too limiting to just serve the same curries all the time as some places do.”

Bishnu worked for five years at the five-star Le Meridien Hotel, in Delhi, before coming to Australia where he cooked at the now-defunct Indian Brasserie, also in Gouger St. 

He has teamed up with friend Manoj Kundrapu to open The Village with a menu which showcases dishes from various regions such as Lucknow, Hyderabad, Mangalore, Bengal, Kashmir and Punjab.

“Most people have either never seen some of these dishes or they have tasted them on travels and come here to experience what they had in India,” Bishnu says. “A couple were here recently who’d loved Goan fish curry in India and were very happy with my version.”

He says it’s never too early for curry – it even appears on The Village’s popular breakfast menu.

www.spicekitchen.com.au

www.thevillagerestaurant.com.au