The Taste/The Trough

My plan yesterday was to head down to the Taste festival, grab a few plates, take some photos, write a flowery blog post on how great and wonderful Taste is. Plan B.

If you do not know, the Taste is week long festival on Hobart's waterfront featuring Tasmanian Food and Wine.  It is a showcase of the great things Tassy can do, or at least that was its original intention.

(Deep Breath)

The Taste does not promote great food and wine.  I feel that it now should be called "The Trough".  It is full of people queueing up to dig in to fish and chips. Serious.

The most popular stands, with queues 20 deep, were Flathead, Mures and Fish Frenzy.  This is for food that I can get anytime.  Great Tassy food?

And I am only getting started.
(Deep Breath)

The design of the interior is poorly thought out for the flow of pedestrian traffic that this event now commands.  I think that perhaps the HCC need to rehire Jan Gehl to remap the shed layout.  It is impossible to walk the length of the shed.  Impossible.  Just to prove it I have recorded a lap of the shed, end to end.  I finished it in 1 min 53 sec.  Try to beat that!



With the extra seating outside why not remove one row of seating inside and increase the walk way areas?  Why we are at it, why not rope off the queues, that way they don't stand in the walkways?

(Deep Breath)
I could not find any free water, but plenty of bottled water for sale from Hartz, a major sponsor.

Now my big bone of contention
(Very DEEP Breath)
Merch.  The Hobart City Council are now selling merchandise.  What great marketing hairbrain scheme is that.  I dont want a "Taste" hat.  Your kidding aren't you?  And they have mobile trolleys hawking the stuff.  I really don't want to be interrupted when eating my expensive fish and chips with a "would you like to upsize that with a hat"!

And...AND... the Hobart City Council are selling "Taste" branded wine, formerly known as clean skin wine. This is in direct competition to the wineries who paid a small fortune to be there.  This is the worst idea of all.    If I were a winery at this event I would have walked out and asked for my money back.  It is outrageous for the Hobart City Council to ask stall holders to pay serious, and I do mean serious (~$12,000 for a corner stand), money to attend, only to have the owners of the event compete with them.

What is next from the HCC.  Will they start a sausage sizzle with homebrand snags, as well as selling some Coon on crackers?

Alderman Ron Christie was contacted for a response about the HCC selling wine at Taste, with no reply.

Maybe I have gotten Taste all wrong.  Maybe it is just an event to hang out at, get some grub and get slowly pizzled in the sun?  I don't actually know what the objectives are or mission statement is.  Do you?

There were some positives though:

• The new outdoor seating and the taking over of Salamanca Lawns. Big Tick

• An impromptu barbershop Happy Birthday for our friend from roving buskers, sweet

The Taste is no longer what I am looking for in a Wine and Food event.

I will save my money for Savour Tasmania.

A Wino's Christmas

So how does a family with three winemakers do Christmas?

Present opening followed by croissants for brunch

Lots of slothing and a light lunch

All hands to shell prawns

Making gougère

Horse doovers: gougère, trout gravalax, rabbit terrine 

Wine

1st course: Prawn and Turkey Salad

2nd course: Roast Duck and Mango Salad

3rd course: Little Birds

Desert: Panacotta (forgot the photo)

1pm: Lovebox by Groove Armada

Cajun-spiced Salmon with Couscous and minted yoghurt

I love the interwebs, particularly when you have some ingredients to use, and no recipe.  Type them in to Google followed by "recipe" and hey presto, you can find what to cook.

The other day I had 2 ingredients to use, Salmon and Couscous.  Well, I didn't have to use couscous, but I have a "thing" for it at the moment.  I typed "salmon couscous recipe" into Google and it popped out this in first spot:

Cajun-spiced Salmon with Couscous and minted yoghurt

Sweet.  I followed the recipe to the letter apart from:

• I always use Waji Cajun Spice mix, it da bomb!
• I cooked salmon fillets, not 4cm cubes.  How cook I massacre this piece of fish?

• Instead of the chicken stock I used Massel Vegetable stock powder.  My favourite and it is Australian.  (Although I thought it was Italian watching the ad)

The spices worked beautifully with Salmon, gave it a nice crusty appearance.  Minted yogurt excellent.  Couscous great as usual.  Highly recommend! 

Pulling Garlic

I love growing garlic. There is something holistic about growing it. It feels like it is the right thing to do. But a few people have asked me what is the point when it is so cheap to buy?

It is so easy.
It taste better than store bought, China grown.
And, it help improves your soil.
In the long run it is free.

Last autumn I planted out several hands of organic purple garlic that I bought from Hill Street.  And this is the result.

The size this year is massive.  And we tried some fresh garlic a few weeks back and it was magical.

The haul was quite big too.  About 100 hands in total.  I left the bulbs in this giant pot for one week to dry off the soil.  Then I sat down with a nail brush and clean off the soil and trimmed the roots.

I plat my garlic into dozens and half dozens.  This year we are also going to try storing some garlic under oil as the last of last years crop did not last us 12 months.  Tips for plating, on each cross over, add one bulb, very close to the crossover.  Make it tight.

This should last us 12 months easy, and some left over for planting next year.  The aim is to be self sufficient in garlic.

Shank you very much Mr Wallaby

I don't like it that every man and his dog now loves Shanks.  This off cut of a beast used to be so economical, in fact Wikipedia still says it is a bargain in the UK.  Bastards.  Thanx to Masterchef/etc shanks have become the latest in-thing to cook.  You just need to put it on the mortgage to buy them.

The lovely Grapegirl brought home for me some surprise shanks to cook.  The surprise was that they were were wallaby not cow.  They came from Bruny Island Game Meats and at $11.95 a kilo, economical.

How to cook them?  Hunted for a recipe in the library to no avail.  Lets just whack it on then.

1. Mirepoix
This is the French word for frying up onion, garlic, celery and carrot.  It is a good start for most braising/stewing recipes.  Put the cooked off mirepoix in the base of the Romertopf (covered roasting dish)

2. Romertopf
Lightly brown shanks.  Place on top of mirepoix, add 2 cups of vegetable stock, some halved cherry tomatoes and a sprig of rosemary.

3. Cook
Place in a cold oven.  We cooked it at 160°C for 1.5 hrs.  Because the shanks are so lean and small, I would try 140°C for 1.5 hrs next time.


4.  Couscous
How good is couscous!  Why is it not used more?  Remove the pot from the oven.  Carefully take out the shanks, place on a plate and keep warm.  Now you should be left with the stock in the pot.  Place one cup of couscous in the pot, stir, put the lid and wait 5 minutes.  This is what it should look like:

5.  Plate
I like how chef's don't serve up food, they "plate" it.  Must find out why.  Place a serving of couscous goodness in the centre of the plate.  Now artistically arrange two shanks over the couscous.  Sprinkle with chopped parsley.

Enjoy.

First Weekend Garden Club - December

It is the first weekend of the month and the garden is bursting forth with vigour.  The recent rains and warmth has made everything go nuts.  This weekend will see the tomatoes go in and most of the summer vegies.  Need to keep the disease and pests in control (powdery mildew, coddling moth, cabbage moth, pair slug, etc).  I am sick of mowing, need to make more garden.

 New season apples growing

Peas. Start harvesting soon

Tomatoes are going in this weekend.  This bed will be full, 20 plants, all different varieties.

Corn part 1.  Staging the plantings this year to avoid a corn-nami.

Red Nasturtium

Want to participate in the First Weekend Garden Club? Here is how. #firstweekendgardenclub