What's New at Lochiel in Autumn

The Curd's Whey

Chefs are funny creatures. They get a thrill out of things that the rest of us would just ignore. Last week our Apprentice Chef Nathan came to work with one of those tiny little zip-lock bags, inside was contained five or six flakes of what I can only imagine was some rare and amazing product. Apparently it was some of the spiciest chilli in the world. He bought it on Ebay. It was shipped from the US and made its way into our little kitchen where I found Tony peering at it like a little boy who'd just discovered an ant's nest or something equally fascinating.

This week he's moved onto other things - milk and cheese. (Fitting, perhaps, because milk is supposed to put a dampener on chilli heat!) Having a restaurant in a place like the Hawkesbury means there is no end to the possibilities for growing your own produce, which of course, Monique and Tony have now been doing for years. We have lovely weather for growing all sorts of fruit and veges and in fact, the Hawkesbury has long been referred to as 'the food bowl' of Sydney. We have so many regular customers who also double as suppliers of local produce. Just today we had a bucket of organic jerusalem artichokes and ginger delivered from a customer who lives only five minutes away.

So it's only natural that an inquisitive chef like Tony has now tracked down a friendly and generous local farmer who has allowed him to try some of his own fresh Jersey cow milk. Twice now Monique and Tony have gone on a secret road-trip to an undisclosed location in East Kurrajong and returned with huge grins on their faces and a couple of buckets of the freshest milk you've ever seen. We all got to have a taste and this isn't the sappy stuff you get from the supermarket, no, this has delicious little pockets of cream floating in it. It's pure. With a higher butter fat content than a lot of fresh cow's milk, it really is delicious.

So then, if you're a Head Chef that's lucky enough to be able to go to a farm and meet those big, fat Jersey cows with the long eyelashes and caramel-coloured coats, of course you're going to go a bit gooey and start dreaming up all sorts of wonderful things.

This leads us to cheese.

Experimenting with using curds and whey, rennets and cultures, Tony has so far tried his hand at making ricotta and has made some beautiful latte coffees. Next he says he wants to have a go at making butter and sour cream.

 

Destined for cow modelling - the beautiful jersey cows from East Kurrajong

 

Caramel Coats

A Series of Things

Speaking of cheese, inspiration and experimentation, we have a new dish on our Autumn menu. Warm baby beetroots with organic chickpeas, kefir cheese and caradom zhoug (pronounced "zoog") oil. All I can say is - you have to try it. The colours and textures in this dish are more than amazing. Getting its name from a savvy lunchtime diner who saw the menu descripton and said "I'll have the series of things", this is a contemporary dish, fantastic in its appearance. With handmade wafers that customers have said look like coral, elk horns or twigs, deep purple beetroots and its bright green zhoug oil, the Series of Things is a dish Tony is proud of. After experimenting with kefir, which is a grain made up of bacterias and yeasts, he first developed a yoghurt-style drink followed by a soft cheese with a pure, clean taste and a texture much like goat's chevre.

Once discovering that kefir is used a lot in Eastern European cooking, Tony started thinking about beetroots. Borscht, a Russian beetoot soup, is often accompanied by kefir in its youghurt form. With such a wonderful marriage of flavours, Tony wanted to add some other elements to set his dish apart. "I really love beetroots with coriander," he says, "and I know of a lovely Middle Eastern spice paste called zhoug which is a mixture of cardamom, chilli and coriander and I thought it would work really well with the other elements". The use of chickpeas in the dish are also taken from Middle Eastern cuisine making it a well-rounded and well-conceived entree.

With beetroots being so plentiful in Autumn, this is the dish of the season, so we hope you get a chance to come in and try it!

 

Tony's new dish - A Series of Things 

 

An Autumn delight