Slow food and local are two terms that are increasingly popular nowadays. I recently visited Daylesford in Victoria where I was lucky enough to meet The Lake House’s Alla Wolf-Tasker and her daughter Larissa who told me that within a few kilometres they have five organic farms selling them produce. One thing however I didn’t realise was that for a Sydney restaurateur, this sort of access is rare and more often than not, quite hard work. Steven Krasicki is Altitude’s executive chef and putting together a Hat’s Off dinner as part of the Sydney International Food Festival proved a little tricky-like pulling a rabbit out of a hat, chef style.
He tells me “When it comes to local fruits and vegetables its more what’s at the market on the day so the difficultly was in the way that we did the dinner because it was a menu that was dictated by what was available. This means any last minute changes were inevitable due to the supply. i.e. when it comes to locally caught fish, when the seas are rough or there’s bad weather the boats don’t go out and there’s a lack of supply.”
Tonight I am dining with the lovely Joanna from the Shangrila Hotel. The room is spectacular with floor to ceiling windows to take advantage of that view. Oh yes that breathtaking view. There are three breads to choose from, a wholemeal ciabatta, a white ciabatta and rye. I do recall some fantastically experimental breads the last time I dined here like a blue cheese bread and a sun dried tomato bread and they were so good that I had several serves thus putting my main meal in jeopardy. These ones are good but I’m still kind of pining for the other breads (although my dresses are breathing a sigh of relief I suspect).
Leather jacket brandade served with Thomas Braemore Semillon, Hunter Valley
Our first course is a brandade of leather jacket fish served with delightfully smokey heirloom tomatoes and rocket. Steven uses a mixture of tomatoes including black russians and Oxhearts and they are smoked using gum tree leaves from one of the chef’s family property on the North coast. The brandade which is a purée of fish, oil, milk and salt is usually done with salt cod but this leather jacket version is very good indeed with small flakes of the fish interspersed through the creamy, velvety brandade. He tells us that when the delivery of tomatoes arrived they were all wrong, in that they were too firm so he called his buyer and they hand picked one box out of 20 or so boxes.
Ballotine of spatchcock served with 2010 Benwarin Verdelho, Hunter Valley
Our next course is a ballotine (boned, stuffed and rolled) of spatchcock which is stuffed with carrots is lovely and tender and sliced into rounds. There are also some purple and yellow carrots that are lightly pickled and crunchy and the pickled nameko mushrooms are a good match for the earthy spatchcock.
Grilled Coffs Harbour Snapper served with 2008 Phillip Shaw No. 11 Chardonnay, Orange
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