On our drive back to Sydney, exhausted but blissfully happy at having a great time at the Snow, we sought out a great place to have breakfast. The little country style shop near the house was closed this Monday morning so we drove towards Sydney through Tumut to find a bigger town. I was looking for something cute and blog worthy whilst everyone else was looking for a meal to fill their growling stomachs. Luckily we happened upon the Coach House.

Housed in a sandstone building, there is a front counter with hot pastries, pies and sausage rolls and walking through, an eating area with handy monogrammed green blankets to help ward off the cold. We grab a blanket each and settle in to examine the menu. Ordering and paying at the front I ask about certain items and choose the home made raisin bread and pancakes (told you I was hungry!). The breads, pies, sausage rolls and quiches are all made there daily.

Poached eggs and toast $9

It takes a while for our food and drinks to arrive and when they do, they arrive one by one. Anneli’s poached eggs arrives first. The wholemeal bread is delicious, with a lovely crunch to it- Anneli loves it so much that she enquires as to whether they sell it by the loaf. They do, but require a day’s notice. After a few more queries they offer her a frozen wholemeal loaf which she happily purchases ($4).

The Hot Chocolate with marshmallow, one of those items that the cold weather enhances so superbly is not very impressive, tasting like the base is made up of water and chocolate instead of milk and chocolate - weak and watery.

Cappucino $3.00

The cappucino suffers a similar fate, very weak and not particularly full flavoured.

Raisin toast $3.70

My fruit toast arrives, with that lovely crunch and full with plump raisins. I slather it with the butter and crunch away happily.

Pancakes with syrup (or honey) $6.80

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Let me start off admitting that I had to be somewhat wrangled into going to the Snow this year. My husband and his equally sporty family couldn’t wait to go skiiing whereas all I could think about was how damn cold I would be and given how bone-chillingly cold Sydney has been lately, why on earth would I want to go somewhere even colder? I’m no romantic, starry eyed snow virgin either, having lived in Tokyo where it does snow and my firm belief is that snow is awfully pretty to look at - when you are inside. When you have to face it directly, it’s nothing but a pain in the bottom - literally - when you fall on your ass.

However my interest grew when my friend M gave me the low down on skiing. Being Austrian, she grew up skiing at school and her tips were:

• Carry a chocolate bar with you at all times. If you get cold, eat it and warm up and then you can keep skiing
• Never ski when you are cold
• Stop by positioning your ski tips together in an inverse V

But like the saying “You had me at Hello” goes, she had me at “Carry a chocolate bar with you at all times”. I confirmed the chocolate point with her and she nodded emphatically saying that I will eat lots of chocolate as I’ll need it. OK sign me up for 4 days of this! And hardly a whimper was heard from me again.

After some cross country skiing, tobogganing (we became Champion tobogganers, is there an Olympic division?) and tube riding, we worked up a very hearty appetite. So with the help from a Vogue forum member rainbowcloud who asked her mum for the lowdown on where is good to eat, we converged, hungry and cold, on Jazz River restaurant in Tumut, reportedly the best place to eat in town. Housed inside an arcade, a sparkling glitter sign announced its presence.

We are directed to our table. It is a still little cold there and we were hoping for a warmer restaurant. The menu on the blackboard has some tempting dishes. I choose the sirloin with mash, my husband chooses the veal scallopine, Figaro chooses the pork and Anneli chooses the salmon. When I had rung ahead to make the booking, I told them that we had some vegetarians in our party and asked whether they had any dishes. They were only too happy to make up some meals so A, Tuuliki and The Assman choose the porcini risotto and a vegetarian tapas plate.

Grainfed sirloin with creamy mash, greens and caramelised onions $29

It’s a while until we get our meals and as we are next to the glass doors, it’s a little chilly. When the meals arrive we are ever so grateful and pounce on them. My sirloin, despite one or two gristly corners, is delicious with a sublime sauce and a huge serving of mash.

Veal Scallopine with baked polenta, greens and herb glaze $28

My husband’s veal Scallopine is tender, thinly pounded pieces of veal with alternating pieces of crumbed veal. Despite its simple description, it’s well executed and satisfying.

Tasmanian Salmon with warm potato salad and beurre blanc $28

I try some of Anneli’s salmon and it’s divine, moist and perfectly cooked inside with a delicate side of diced potato salad. She is in raptures over this having just recently become a Pescatarian (fish eating vegetarian) for health reasons.

Pork fillet with baked vegetables, greens and red wine jus $27

Figaro’s pork is reportedly “ok but nothing special” and something that he feels he could make at home.

Porcini risotto $22

I try some of the porcini risotto, it’s not bad although as a confirmed omnivore I would want for something with more meat, however the vegetarians seem very happy with this.

Vegetarian Tapas plate $22

I sample some of the vegetarian tapas plate, the spinach omelette is a little dry but the semi dried tomatoes are a serious slice of heaven - sweet and deliciously juicy but still full of flavour, they’re probably the nicest I’ve had. The baked polenta is delicious, crispy on the outside and soft inside.

Vegetarian tapas plate

On the way back we saw lots of kangaroos near the road, emerging through the misty thick fog. There’s even a sign warning us of Kangaroo and Emu on the way although we were out of luck Emu spotting!

Road Sign (taken on another day)

Jazz River Cafe Bar Bistro

The Hub - 34 Wynyard Street Tumut NSW 2720
Tel/fax: +61 (020 6947 6966
email: jazz_river@bigpond.com

For a city girl like me, the chance to visit a farm that prides itself on fresh fruit and vegetables plucked as close to the day that they’re ordered as possible is like the childhood equivalent to being asked to go to the best birthday party-you know the one with the pony and the jumping castle. So when the lovely people at Field to Feast contacted me about coming out for a visit to their farm, the answer was “Absolutely, when?”. I invited my in laws, a bunch of country lovin’ folk who left their idyllic country home to venture out into the capitalist jungle of Sydney, but who still missed the country setting.

Finger eggplant

Cath (who runs the marketing) and Hapi (who runs the farming) have 5 acres of land for their vegetables all neatly rowed and pretty as a picture with vivid greens and purple sprouting like exotic flowers, all lined up to bask in the goodness of the sun under Hapi’s green thumb. So blessed is he that he holds the record in his native Tonga of the largest taro at 6 foot long.

We’re shown the rows of produce, all beautifully cultivated and mostly unsprayed (only when absolutely necessary). The cabbages are bursting open with their wide open leaves like petals.

Lemon chilis

We see their range of chilis including the fiery hot Habanero, milder Jalapeno, long reds as well as a new one, the Lemon Chili, with a whole new taste to it. It’s said to be particularly good for Indian cooking and they cannot keep up with demand.

Black capsicum

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The one thing about having foodie friends is that you know that when you ask them to sample butters, they won’t ask “Why?”. It’s taken as a given that you might want to compare the subtle tastes of butters and see whether country of origin or price plays a part in the enjoyment of the butter. Imported butters in Australia are astronomically priced, either due to the cost of importing them or sheer profit, indeed you can pay from $7-$10 for an imported butter that will retail overseas in London for £1-£1.70. So it was pre-planned with my sister that when I came to London we would do a butter taste test in order for the bank balance to not run dry.

We purchased butter from Waitrose (for the wider range) as well as Tesco (who also had some decent imports) from a variety of countries: English, French, Dutch, Irish,Welsh and Italian (unfortunately no Australian or NZ butter was available). The most expensive per weight was the Echire French butter in a basket at £13.80 a kilo or £3.45 per 250g basket. This was followed by the Italian butter, the Beppino Occelli at £1.52 per 125g which was also one of the fanciest in terms of packaging with a rivet seal and an imprint on the butter and instructions on how best to enjoy butters like a connoisseur and details of the 2 awards they won. We also had at the cheapest end, Tesco’s English butter. We wanted to try only salted butters (to eliminate the variability when salting a butter yourself) but there were more unsalted butters available so it was a mix. When tasting, we spread them on a freshly baked still-warm crunchy French baguette cut in 1cm thick slices, spread thickly with butter and then sliced up so that each taster got a bit of crust as well as the inside of the bread.

Beppino Occeli’s fancy pants butter

Our lineup:
1. President lightly salted butter: France £4.76/kg
2. Beppino Occelli butter: Italy £12.16/kg
3. Tesco English lightly salted butter: U.K. £3.76/kg
4. Maydew Kosher unsalted butter: Netherlands
5. Rachel’s Organic lightly salted butter: Wales £5.56/kg
6. Tesco Brittany butter with sea salt crystals: France £4.08/kg
7. Bridel Brittany butter: France £6.60/kg
8. Ste Mere D’Isgny Demi-sel extra fin butter: France £6.48/kg
9. Goat’s Butter: U.K. £5.16/kg
10. Yeo valley organic salted butter: U.K. £5.04/kg
11. West country salted butter: U.K. £5.16/kg
12. Kerry Gold salted butter: Ireland £4.48/kg
13. Echire butter: France £13.80

Our tasters:
1. Blythe
2. Candy
3. Kathy
4. Marc
5. Mr NQN

I wasn’t tasting this as I was administering the test.

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I’ll caution you that I was going to do Olympic cupcakes. But that time it rolled around, the last thing I felt like doing was fashioning Olympic rings in the various colours out of chocolate. Let the athletes train for it, I’ll just stay on the lounge and watch. So these are my little shout out to the Olympics.

My mum rarely gives out recipes. For some mums, revealing their best recipe is akin to a magician revealing how they have done their tricks. They prefer to keep these close to the chest and leave a bit of mystery. It’s not restricted just to mums and I’ve seen it in people my age too. Not that I blame them, they’ve probably been asked to keep the valuable family recipes a secret, a physical or mental “vault” if you will.

It seems that everyone is dumpling mad lately and sometimes you just want to whip up a batch of soup with some greens and dumplings without having to leave the house. And at night temperatures in Sydney reaching -1 degrees (aren’t we supposed to be the sunburnt country?) the thought of going out some nights just pushes me towards the heater and the snug quilt. So for these nights, my mum has open up her recipe treasure trove and revealed her famous Wonton recipe (ok famous among her friends and family) which can also be adapted to make Siu Mai. These are excellent to freeze (use greaseproof paper between single layers) and popped into boiling water to cook.

The easiest part of this of course is making the filling. I buy the prawns shelled but whole so I blitz the prawns, rehydrated shiitake mushrooms and spring onions in the food processor to make a fine mince. After making the filling, that’s where the fun begins. You may want to enlist others into this part as it can take up to an hour to make the wontons or siu mai. The biggest mistake in the past I’ve found was overfilling the dumplings. Please resist all urge to overfill them, especially when you’re halfway through and realise that you’ve still got loads to make (making a giant one when you’re well and truly over it isn’t a great idea).

How many this makes exactly depends on the kind of dumplings you make. The plain soup dumpligns require less filling but the Siu Mai and Gow Gees require more. Also make sure the ingredients are minced well, the finer the mincing, the less likely that the skins will burst from “sharp” or large bits. And either cook them once they’re made or freeze them, if you pop these in the fridge as is, they skin will become moist and stick to the bottom and split when you try and prise them off. The only thing I can think to counter this is to flour the bottom of the tray that they sit on although I haven’t tried this.

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