Take a walk on the dark side...

Did you know that eating dark, semi-sweet chocolate not only makes you smarter but also builds muscles?  (You only have to look at Chef's pecs for evidentiary proof of mitochondrial action!)

...and just a gentle reminder that, apart from one wee table near a front door that blows open seasonally, all our seating at the cafe is communal...which means that you get to share your beautiful & interesting self with others.

However, if breakin' bread wid ya bros ain't ya thang, (and a chill blast from the deep south is), call us...we'll hold said table just for you.

And now, a word from our sponser.

Dear Skye Gyngell,

I'm tired.

 

Please buy ut si.

We have ricketty tables, dodgy loos & service that sometimes can be a little hit 'n miss...just like your former place of employ.

You'd feel right at home in our garden of big ass pumpkins & small brained chooks.

And, Tassie may well be la saveur du mois at the moment, but, trust me, the only star you'll see will be a for real one irregularly disposed in the southern night sky.

So, whaddaya say Chef Gyngell?

Cheers,

Colette

 .

A few faves from 2011

I loved our cafe last year.

I loved the ever changing menu and the garden it depended on

for produce delicious
though sometimes challenging.

And I loved Chef Reilly,
who completed her apprenticeship with us...
until she
moved to Sydney to work at bills,
leaving me with Chef Cabbage Head above,

whom only a mother could love.
...oh.

And Fi.

I loved Fi.

Who ran the front and made a thousand gingerbread persons in 2011.

Only this year, she too is leaving

...to work in Europe.

So I'm not feeling the love so much anymore (little sulk).

And even though last year you got really crabby when I couldn't sell you our bread because we got really busy and needed it for the cafe, I still loved baking with fire in our brick oven out the back.

Thank-you customers old & new, crabby & not...we've had a great year!

The Prof, the Chef and me.

Meet Barbara & Beverly...

So far these beautiful gals & their sisters Brenda, Beryl, Bertha, Bronwyn, Bernadette & Betty Barnevelder, have cost me to purchase, house, feed & fence about $1200...which is around $150 each or almost 468.75 eggs per bird.
Get to it girls!

Nature's darling thou!

Sunday, August 28 is World Kitchen Garden Day.

To celebrate this event we are establishing a proper composting area in our garden

We, as in me, (establishing with a shovel) & the Prof, (celebrating with an interpretive dance probably).

Sometimes  when I think of the Prof & me out in the garden I see Eddie Albert & Eva Gabor in the 70's sitcom Green Acres...only with the gender roles reversed!

In complete gardening ignorance we started a vegie patch for the caf about 6 months before we opened

...which was clearly not enough notice for the plants! 

However, as our third Spring approaches, despite a complete lack of horticultural savvy, we have a verdant backyard of garlic, onions, kale, chard & broad beans in neat little rows, and,

as a counterpoint to this orderliness, vast expanses of self sown randomness where nettles, violets, borage & mustard leaf free range with abandon. Oh, & beetroot ...which appears in creative groupings because I had too many seeds to sow & got bored with neat!

We have just found another free range farmer...

Well, actually, he found us...'followed' us on twitter yesterday in fact.

Two & a bit  years ago when we opened ut si, things looked pretty grim on the menu front...seriously, we had no idea that sourcing meat for our cafe from animals that were ethically raised would be so difficult.

Since then we have established a wonderful relationship with Guy Robertson & Eliza Wood and their Wessex Saddlebacks from Mt Gnomon Farm, and, more recently, Brendan & Natalie Rockcliff  from Skelbrookvale Farm, whose pasture raised beef we love.

Today Don Thomson of Black Ridge Farm, called in...at the end of a very busy service...and I was more than happy to leave the tea towel in Chef's capable if unwilling hands so we could chat. 

Don & his wife Keryn  run free range pigs, sheep & goats on their 217 acre family farm in Tasmania's north west  (I can't wait to try Capretto o Agnello al forno from our wood fired oven) and, so concerned are they for the welfare of their animals, that when they built outdoor shelters for their pigs they actually spent a night sleeping in them to make sure they were comfortable!

We had another phone call from Gourmet Traveller magazine today also, asking our permission to re-print our Wessex Saddleback pulled pork pizza recipe for an up-coming annual edition & wanting to know who to attribute the recipe to...Chef, or the cafe in general.  Well, if not for these amazing farmers there would be no such recipe...and, we would be running a vegetarian cafe. 

Let them eat grass!

The French have Appellation Contrôlée

We, however, have Papa!

Papa is currently taste testing our pasture raised beef stew, braised in

Real Tasmanian Apple Cider 

with dumplings.

The beef hails from Brendon & Natalie Rockcliff's small family run farm, Skelbrookvale, near the northern Tasmanian village of Sassafras.
Their beef, lamb & pork all comes from animals who free range on pasture until the day they are harvested, (no feedlots, no sheds or stalls). 

The cider is made by Ashley & Jane Huntington of the Two Metre Tall Company, a small farm based brewery in the Derwent Valley, using Sturmer apples (an old English cider variety).


And what does papa think of this coupling?
" Il est un mariage idéal!"

The proper way to eat a fig, in society...

Is to split in four, holding it by the stump,
And open it, so that it is a glittering, rosy, moist, honied heavy-petalled four-petalled flower.

And then you throw away the skin
Which is just like a four-sepalled calyx,
After you have taken off the blossom with your lips.

But the vulgar way
Is just to put your mouth to the crack, and take out the flesh in one bite. 

D.H.Lawrence

At last some of the figs on our trees ripen...however, demonstrating a lack of good breeding, we eat them immediately. The few that survive make it into this cake. But, I fear that by the time you read this, it too will have succumbed to our vulgar ways.

Fresh Fig + Fennel Cake

125g unsalted butter, room temperature

150g (3/4 cup) caster sugar

75g (3/4 cup) plain flour, sifted

2 teaspoons baking powder

3 free-range  lightly beaten

1/4 cup fennel seeds bashed around a bit

100g (1/2 cup) almond meal

50g (1/3 cup) walnuts chopped into small pieces

8 fresh ripe figs halved

Method

Preheat the oven to 180°C. 

Cream butter + sugar.

Sift together the flour + baking powder. 

Fold flour + eggs alternately into creamed mixture.

Fold in almond meal/walnuts/fennel seeds. 

Pour into prepared cake tin (one with a removable bottom) + place figs cut side up on top in an artistic fashion.

Bake for about 1 hour.

Leave to cool in tin.

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness...

Where you see pumpkins we see soup with crispy Mt Gnomon  bacon, risotto with Papa's roasted walnuts & our purple sage 

and spice cake with vanilla bean frosting.

Where you see quinces we see paste on a raw milk cheese, crostata with toasted almonds & Jersey cream 

and lamb tagine with chickpeas & a young Riojas.

And, where you see kale, we see

...kale!