A Perfect Day

When was the last time you visited Sirromet Winery at Mt Cotton?  We had a couple of vouchers for the winery tour that we needed to use so we visited last Sunday and let me tell you, there's a lot going on there nowadays.  As we drove in, we could see cars parked all the way down the drive and hear music drifting through the air.  Had we come on the same day as some special event?  Nope.  Just a typical Sunday arvo at Sirromet.  We walked up past the vines that had just finished been pruned hard for the winter and came across literally hundreds of people enjoying an absolutely gorgeous Queensland winter day with plenty of sunshine and blue skies.  The place was jumping.

 
The last time I visited Sirromet, they had a tiny cellar door operation where you could do a short tour and tasting and that was basically it.  Unless you had organised to visit Lurleen's for a fine dining meal, you had done all you could do.  Times have changed.  Lurleen's is still packing them in with fabulous food by Andrew Mirosch but the cellar door is now enormous and has it's own outdoor eating area with a substantial pub style menu as well as huge bar.  There's live music on the weekends when the festivities spill out onto the lawns with plenty of tables and umbrellas for the crowds.  On busy weekends, they have a second bar set up on the lawns.  There were crowds but it wasn't crowded.  With views all the way out to Moreton Bay and over to Stradbroke Island, who wouldn't want to sit on the lawn, let the kids run amok on the play equipment and share a bottle of wine?

Although the tour ahead of us had several people on it, strangely, there were only the two of us on our 2pm slot.  After an overview of the development of the winery and the vines planted on the property (Chambourcin), it was off to the Barrel Room to hear more about winemaker Adam Chapman and the Granite Belt vineyards that produce most of the grapes for Sirromet.  Close by is the climate controlled, private cellar of the owner TE Morris (spell it backwards...).  As I looked down at the enormous cache of old and new world wines, I could see at least five boxed bottles of Henshcke's Hill of Grace sitting on the floor and the tell tale red caps and white tissue paper of multiple Penfold's Grange cellaring in racks.  I want to be invited to one of his parties!



Show me the money!

We progressed to the wine making area proper, with fermentation vats, crushers and all the usual hoses, pipes, stainless steel that accompanies wine making these days.  There was a visit to the area where the sparkling wine is capped and disgorged, before being sealed and then it was on to the 'behind closed doors' tasting room, where the barrels are cellared.  There were 8 wines to taste, suited to a wide range of palates and pockets.  Many look down their nose at Qld wines and think Sirromet is too commercial.  This may well be the case but the many happy revellers enjoying the winter sunshine didn't seem to mind.  The other thing to remember about Sirromet is that it has demonstrated that it's possible to run a large scale winery in Qld and turn a profit.  This can only mean there are more wineries on the horizon and surely that can't be bad for the economy.

 

Tasting Room

After our tour, we spent 20 minutes listening to the band before climbing the tower for vistas over the bay and surrounding countryside.  On the way out we stopped at the Laguna, a large pond fringed with paper barks.  There's a lovely jetty and grassed area where wedding ceremonies are held as the wallabies sit on the fringes, grazing and checking out the bridal party.

If it's been a while since you been out to Mt Cotton, it may be time for another visit.  A voucher for winery tour and tasting would make a great gift for that someone who's hard to buy for.  Sirromet used to have a label called Perfect Day and you can certainly see why.  Don't think of Sirromet as a winery.  Think of it as a great destination that just happens to sell wine.

Sirromet Winery
850 Mt Cotton Rd
Mt Cotton   Qld   4165
http://www.sirromet.com/index.html
7 days a week 

Lunch Sized Adventures - OuterSpace Espresso

It's been a while since I've been on a lunch sized adventure as there are slim pickings down my end of town.  If you look hard enough though, there are a few hidden gems.  Tucked away behind a fence in the courtyard of a former church is OuterSpace.  There's a small area inside with stools where the counter and prep area are but most of the seating is located in the courtyard, around a small boab tree.  This is where OuterSpace draws it's logo from.  There's not too much sun on the courtyard during winter but they do have outdoor heaters to warm up the area and this is where most people choose to sit.  After all, it's not every day you find a bottle tree hidden in a courtyard in a cityscape.

Coffee is Toby's Estate with a house blend and single origin beans rotating on a regular basis.  I enjoyed a smooth blend without any bitter aftertaste and served with a smile. There are lots of good quality treats to tempt coffee buyers with croissants, bread and pastries made off site but freshly baked that day.

There was a tempting but not very portable special of Creamy Mushroom & Thyme Soup and I also loved, loved, loved the other special of the day, the Savoury Mince w Thick Toast a Fried Egg & Roasted Cherry Tomatoes ($14).   It was back to the office for me though so, I took a punt on the Middle Eastern Lamb flat bread ($10) that was being placed on the grill and asked that a second one be popped on for me.  'Sure', came the reply 'Too easy'.   A quick chat with the wait staff and my flat bread was in a container, with small side salad and I was heading back to the office.

The dinner plate sized flat bread sprinkled with salt flakes was folded in half with moist lamb meatballs squashed flat inside.  There were also a few spinach leaves and a soft melting cheese but  I  would have like a little more filling to make the meal more bountiful.  There was the small rocket and Parmesan salad so I put that into the flat bread too, making it a reasonable size for lunch. 

I have been lucky in that both times I've visited, it's been after morning tea or before the lunch rush but I can see that with so few options around, this place would be super busy during those times.  I'm sure too that sitting under that bottle tree rather than eating al desko, adds greatly to the experience.

OuterSpace Espresso
116 Brookes St
Fortitude Valley   Qld   4006
http://www.facebook.com/OuterSpaceEspresso

Visited: various throughout July 2012 - morning tea and lunch service

There's a Bookshop in My Kitchen - Random Recipes #18

Something A Little Different

In my fake day job, I'm a Project Manager and Process Designer.  I love structure and a good plan. This spills over into how I run my blog (see, I'm 'running' rather than 'writing' my blog - it's like a big project).  In case you haven't noticed, I blog twice a week on Tuesdays and Saturdays.  One post is a review, the other a recipe or adventure I've been on.  I like organise, write posts with common themes (Furious 5, Dispatches from Sydney) and curate collections (Pinterest).  I also like other people who are organised so I've joined the monthly Sweet Adventures Blog Hop and now, I've decided to join another challenge: Random Recipes.  I'm a joiner too.

The Random Recipes Challenge is set by Dominic at Belleau Kitchen.  In the past he's challenged people to cook the last recipe in a book, make a recipe from your first ever cookbook and, donate cookbooks to charity after making a recipe one last time.  I'm lucky this month, as Dom's #18 challenge is relatively simple and self indulgent.  It's called 'Something A Little Different' and is about the cookbooks we have on our bookshelves.

Cookbooks & Recipes

Literature & Magazines

My cookbooks are stored in Ikea Billy shelves in my dining room.  Two of the shelves are devoted to 'cookbooks proper'.  I have used my excellent project management skills to store them in height order with the same author grouped together.  As you can see, Nigella Lawson features - I can not deny her no fuss take on cooking.   How can you resist her slatternly approach combined with her delicious use of the mother tongue?  Other books I go back to time and again are Madhur Jaffrey, Joanne Harris (of 'Chocolat' fame), Feast Bazaar by Barry Vera and all of Charmaine Solomon's books.  I have lots of books I enjoy dipping into and reading but rarely cook from.  I read many for inspiration, such as the delightfully named 'Wog Food - An Oral History With Recipes' by John Newton.  Like many food friends, I could make three meals a day from my books and still never get through them all.  I've slowed right down on the purchasing and am concentrating on getting to know better the books I already have. 

On another shelf, I have all of my 'food literature'.  These are the biographies (Mrs Beeton et al), autobiographies (Nigel Slater's Toast is a favourite), collections, essays and observations about food (Michael Boddy's Good Food, Ian 'Herbie' Hemphill's Spice Travels and more). The final shelf includes food magazines that I rarely visit nowadays but can't bare to part with.  I have the first 24 editions of Donna Hay Magazine.  The styling is wonderful and has influenced a generation of food writers and photographers.

Finally, I have two cane baskets perched in between.  One contains recipes torn out of magazines, newspapers and printed from online.  Of course, who needs to buy new cookbooks when you have the internet?  I've noticed that I am doing more and more of my research online and cooking from recipes I read on blogs.  I cleaned this basket out only last weekend so it looks very spick and span at the moment.  In the bottom of the basket is a copy of Larousse Gastronomique that I bought at the Lifeline Book Sale for only a few dollars.  I keep it in the basket as it's the only place that I can store it (no room in those shelves!). The other basket contains my 'food memorabilia'.  Cards and menus from restaurants I've visited, wrappers from Tortas I enjoyed in Spain and from an orange purchased at the Lawrence of Arabia Supermarket in Jordan, coasters and sandwich bags and lots more.

Squeezed alongside this basket are hand me downs from a different era such as the Robert Carrier tome 'Gourmet Dishes of the World' and Graham Kerr's Cookbook (both 1967 - a great year!).

So that's my cookbook collection.  And that's another project, I mean challenge, done and dusted!

Local &/or General - Ashton & Old

Local &/or General is the title of a song by The Models.  Not when they were in their hipster 'Outta Mind, Outta Sight' phase but earlier on, in their edgy, urban grit phase, prior to James Freud joining.  It's a song that's always stuck in my mind and it seemed like an appropriate title for this occasional series of reviews about very local coffee shops that I can walk to from my house.

I read about Ashton & Old via a subscription.  The review was positive but basically said, 'avoid, avoid, avoid' between the hours of 10am and 2pm weekdays if you don't want to share you dining experience with gaggles of gossiping Mums and noisy kids.  Taking this warning on board, I've visited on two successive weekends, hopeful that most parents were shuttling their kids to sport or ballet.

A busy Sunday morning

We arrived at the relatively early time of 8.30am to avoid the crowds.  The greeting as soon as you walked in the door is friendly with plenty of staff on hand to seat you, take your order and serve.  On both visits we were offered a choice of places to sit and water without asking.  The room is basically the four walls, some windows that open out on to street and a mix of table and bench seating inside as well as some small stools and tables outside.  The decor is modern, minimalist.  I like the look and feel of the place but like most new fit outs, it's all hard surfaces so the noise bounces around and the volume in the rooms escalates significantly as the place fills.

Beans & Ham Hock

There's a good looking menu with plenty of savoury and sweet options and I'm pleased to see that if you decide to have a lighter option such as muesli trifle or fruit salad w yoghurt, they don't charge like a wounded bull at $7 a serve.  The most expensive breakfast main is $16 and there's plenty on offer for carnivores and vegetarians. Good to see some different breakfast options too such as the unusual pan fried black pudding, cheddar, avocado & corn salsa on tortilla ($16) that taps into the current mania for Mexican style flavours.  There was no question this dish was going to be my choice.  Others on the table ordered the braised mushrooms, poached eggs & marinated fetta on sourdough ($12) and, house made baked beans, ham hock, baked eggs & toast ($14).

Black Pudding & Corn Salsa Tortilla

Meals arrived promptly and my black pudding tortilla was just the ticket for a jaded breakfast palate.  Full of fresh flavours and a substantial size, I was happy to see the corn salsa had been made from scratch with corn straight from the cob.  That's the eye for detail and extra effort that I warm to.  The black pudding serve was generous and my oh my, it was peppery.  Perhaps, a little too peppery.  There was plenty of cooling avocado and creme fraiche to take the kick out but the black pudding maker had a very liberal hand with the pepper.  I suspect the pudding is made off site so I'm suggesting Ahston might like to try the Eumundi Smokehouse Black Pudding.  It's got a hint of sweetness with nutmeg and cinnamon and a bit of an easier hand with the pepper.  Having said that, it wasn't so spicy that I wouldn't order it again.

Where for art thou, fetta?

House made baked beans were served in a cocotte, straight from the oven and deemed substantial and enjoyable.  The mushrooms and eggs came with two well poached eggs but the fetta was not discernible.  Either it had melted into the pan fried mushrooms of they had forgot to scatter it on. The meal was deemed enjoyable but lacking some oomph so maybe some more fetta or another ingredient such as some caramelised onions could make it more exciting.  The mushroom eaters said they enjoyed their meal but would order something different next time.  Coffee and drinks ordered throughout the meal turned up promptly and although the place became busier, we were never forgotten.

By the time we left, the brunch crowds had arrived so we were happy to head off on our mini food safari.  I certainly recommend Ashton and Old for breakfast and brunch, and their lunch menu had some very promising items on it too.  I'm glad we can walk to this place as the destination makes it worth the exercise.

Ashton and Old
5/459 Old Cleveland Rd
Camp Hill   Qld  4152
@AshtonandOld

Visited: Sunday 8th & Saturday 14th July 2012 - Breakfast Service

Spicy Cashew Love Cake - SABH

Yep - it's that time of the month again. Another Sweet Adventures Blog Hop has rolled around and this time the theme is 'Nut's about Sweets' hosted by Nic from the fabulously named 'Dining with a Stud'.

I love, love, love nuts. I eat a handful of raw nuts every afternoon as a tasty, low GI snack.  My all time favourite is the Pecan (though I'm no big fan of Pecan Pie) closely followed by Hazlenuts and Cashews.  I enjoy nuts in their raw, cooked, savoury and sweet states. Last month I was struggling to create something within my limited pastry making abilities.  This month it was a struggle because there are just so many choices on offer.  Classic cake? Nutty toffee dessert? Petit Four?  In the end, I chose a recipe that I am always drawn too but have never made.  Charmaine Solomon's version of Sri Lankan Love Cake from the cookbook 'Hot & Spicy' (ISBN: 0864111673 - out of print).  Truth be told, it's the picture of the chewy, nutty, nicely browned cake that draws me in.

At first glance, the delightfully named Love Cake doesn't seem intrinsically Ceylonese.  Once you start considering Sri Lanka's colonial history, it becomes clearer how this constant at celebrations such as birthdays and weddings, came to be.  Both the Portuguese & the Dutch annexed Sri Lanka as part of their spice trading empire, bringing exotics such as nutmeg to the island from both Indonesia and Zanzibar.  When it comes to spices, there is 'fresh as you can get' and then there's 'fresh from the farm'. When I visited Zanzibar, we went on a Spice Tour.  Along the way we saw how various spices including cardamon were cultivated and had the opportunity to try fresh (green) nutmeg and wonder at the fabulous waxy mace covering.  In Australia, there isn't an opportunity to access these type of fresh spices but do try to make sure that your spices haven't been sitting the cupboard for months (or years)

Mace

Fresh nutmeg wrapped in mace still inside the fruit

Other flavours such as the rose water can traced as far back as 700 AD when the Moors invaded Portugal and Spain, bringing their taste for floral flavourings.   It is suggested that Love Cake may have been baked for Portuguese sailors who were setting out on long sea voyages as a reminder of family back home.  Certainly the spices in the cake would improve the keeping quality.  The use of ground cashews is likely to have arisen from the Dutch love of almond meal in their sweets.  When no almonds were available, they simply substituted another nut, the cashew.

This cake is very sweet, sticky, chewy and oh so delicious.  A small piece of this cake goes a long way.  At Sri Lankan festivities, it is cut into small squares and wrapped to take home in a similar fashion to wedding cake.  It goes perfectly with a cup of good quality Sri Lankan tea and freezes well if you want to store half for another time.

Spicy Cashew Love Cake

Ingredients

• 6 large eggs
• 1 1/2 cups caster sugar
• 150g unsalted butter, softened
• 250g raw cashews
• 250g fine semolina
• 2 tbsp honey
• 2 tbsp rose water or 1/2 tspn rose essence
• zest of 1 lime or lemon, finely grated
• 1 tspn nutmeg, freshly grated
• 1 tspn cardamon, freshly ground

Grated nutmeg

Method

• Line a shallow 25 x 30cm shallow cake tin/tray with foil and then a layer of baking paper.  Preheat oven to 150c.
• Beat eggs and sugar with an electric mixer on high for 10 minutes or until mixture is thick, creamy and light
• Add butter and mix until combined and creamy
• Chop cashews in a food processor until coarsely chopped.  You are looking for cashew rubble rather than cashew meal consistency.

Cashew rubble

• Stir into eggs mix along with semolina, honey, rose flavouring, zest, nutmeg and cardamon.  Combine.
• Turn mixture into cake tin and place in oven for 1 hour or until golden brown on top.
• If cake starts to brown too quickly (and it probably will because of the high sugar content), cover lightly with a piece of foil with cooking spray on it.
• Do not be tempted to over cook this cake.  It's a chewy style cake so a cake tester will not come out clean from it.  It may need another few minutes if your oven is slow but it will continue to firm up as it cools.
• Allow to cool in tin.  Slice in tin also.

Out of the oven

Notes

• Charmaine's original recipe called for 2 cups of sugar but I could tell that would be far too sweet as soon as I measured it out so I only added 1 1/2 cups.
• Ditto the honey which was originally 1/4 cup but that also seemed too much.
• Though not necessarily traditional, ground or crystallised ginger would be a good addition