Entries Tagged 'Apocalypse-Friendly Eating' ↓

I’m really good at missing open days – I missed one at Mountain Creek Farm in early November, and I’ve always managed to be out of town or doing something else when Glenn na Meala has an Open Day. Glenn na Meala (which means “Valley of Honey” in Gaelic) is the farm that provides much of the produce at Choku Bai Jo, the farmers’ outlet shop in North Lyneham where we buy most of our fruit and veg (and Capra goat cheese, and Shangai Yulin tofu, and Li Shen mushrooms, and Homeleigh Grove olive oils – here’s a list of the producers they stock.)

So I thought I’d let locals know that the Pentony family who run the farm and shop are having an open day on this Saturday, 21 November from 4pm, which will have tasting, tours and talks by Dave Pentony and other local producers.

We were lucky enough to spend last Sunday afternoon there, as Owy plays on an indoor cricket team with Ben Pentony who put on a do for the team and the 7 young Japanese people who work at the farm on a farm stay system. (A three month stint during their 12 month working visa gives them the right to stay in Australia for another year; they work in the gardens and receive board, accommodation and fierce ping-pong tournaments.)

You couldn’t have a succesful time with farm stay workers unless you liked the life of having a bunch of people around; the Pentonys obviously do, with most of the travellers extending their time on the farm. Hideko Pentony, farm den mother, is Japanese too, and makes an effort to help the kids understand Australian culture – things like entertaining friends and home and not double-dipping! (Sadly I missed taking a picture of the girls all photographing the blokes washing up after lunch.)

The party was in the big packing and hanging out shed; you can see the poly tunnel greenhouses in the back of this photo:

I went for a wander down to the greenhouses (which increase water efficiency and reduce loss to pests and environmental factors).

It was stinking hot, well over 30 degrees and Dave warned me it was probably near 50 in the tunnels – but it was worth it to smell this much basil:

And all this too (I’ve labelled the photos if you enlarge the thumbnails; let me know which ones I’ve misidentified ):

Kids are made very welcome, and the several kids in attendance got A LOT of attention from the Japanese travellers. The farm is half way through their organic certifcation process (although they’ve been organic for a very long time) and there’s a feeling of safety that kids aren’t going to getting into any nasty chemicals when they go exploring:

(he was searching for a ping pong ball – you’ve never seen a 7 year old be more impressed with his new found ability to slam a shot through).

Back in the shed are the big sinks where all the produce for the shop and stalls at the EPIC and Southside Farmers’ Markets are triple washed. The salad mixes are spun dry in giant lingerie bags in washing machines – I saw the bags line drying when we got there and for a moment thought that the Japanese girls wore REALLY big pants ;)

We got to eat one of the property’s sheep, cooked for five hours to unbelievable tenderness. Fortunately there are two big barbeques in the shed so there were plenty of veggies too – and Ben worked in flash gastropubs in the UK for several years and made some beautiful salads, including a killer caprese.

That’s Ben in the orange shirt, and the back of his dad Dave. Owy isn’t pulling a face there, he’s got a mouth full of lamb which he’s pretending he didn’t snaffle. And here’s everybody else getting into it:

I would really recommend a visit to Glenn Na Meala. We are so lucky to have local, organic produce of this quality, and to have a family so committed to bringing good food to us outside the stoopermarkets.

And don’t miss giving the extremely congenial farm dog Rex a pat – he’ll be waiting for one:

How to get to Glenn na Meala:

The farm is about 20 minutes drive from Canberra; travel down the Barton highway to Hall, turn left onto Wallaroo Rd, after about 3.5 kms turn left onto Gooroomon Ponds Rd, follow for 2.5 kms, go past an equestrian centre with prancing horse statues on the right and the farm is on the left. Parking is limited, so try and find a friend to carpool with.

Installments one , two, three, four and five.

It’s been a couple of weeks since I ran into Camel Man’s Wife and begged for a fillet of camel to play with in the kitchen but to date they have yet to deliver. The camp dogs have done better, with the Camel Man’s Boys dropping off enormous sections of back bone at various places around the community for them to chew on. We had one little dog drag a stinking piece of hump fat at least twice his weight into the arts centre last week in an effort to keep it for his own exclusive pleasure. He was most indignant when promptly chased back out.

I have nevertheless managed to get my paws on a little bit of dromedary on the sly. A friendly sparky called Richard had been staying with the Camel People while working on various jobs around the community, including fixing our hot water system (we had endured over two weeks of luke warm showers). Over coffee one morning before the sun had much of a chance to warm the day he offered me some freshly dried camel jerky. Marinated in sweet chilli sauce and coriander seeds, it was among the most tender, tasty jerky I’ve eaten – and having lived in Namibia for a couple of years where biltong from all kinds of bush meat is a fav snack, I’ve tasted quite a bit. Nice work, Camel Man. I almost forgive you for being so tight about providing meat for the rest of us.

Ever wondered what a camel’s oesophagus looks like?

Despite the lack of camel there have been some other unusual menu items to get excited about. Roo tails are a favourite camping meat out here and can be purchased frozen at both the community store or road house for $7 a pop. Surprisingly there is considerable variety in the quality of tails – I am reliably informed by a long time connoisseur that the black ones sold at the road house are a little tough.
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One of the things I really like about my house is an old Glowburn wood heater, which I’ve just lit up for the first time this year. A friend chided me for using it, muttering something about global warming, to which I responded that I am only interested in the warming of my lounge room, but in any case I don’t really contribute to global warming because I go to great lengths to source waste wood from local arborists. That means all I’m doing is accelerating the carbon cycle of dead wood and I don’t have to feel bad about burning 300 year old Ironbarks, which is something to feel guilty about.

So, while I was sitting in front of the toasty Glowburn this afternoon, supposedly writing, I decided that it would be wasteful to burn fossil fuel by firing up the gas cooktop or the electric oven to cook the stew I had planned for dinner. Why not use the wood heater? Would it get hot enough to actually cook a beef stew? Only one way to find out, and tonight I am child free and my intended dinner guest doesn’t mind waiting if it turns out to be a slow meal. So I decided to do it and, because I really should be writing something else, to blog the results of this experiment in fossil-fuel-free cooking.

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Instalments one , two, three and four.

I’m in lovely Warakurna community at the moment, located at the base of the Rawlinson Ranges in Western Australia. The remote Giles weather station, located just up the road, was built in 1956 and was the first permanent colonial occupation of the area for hundreds of kilometres in any direction. Many older people living at Warakurna now were children at the time, their families living independent existences centred around the myriad of rock holes and hunting grounds scattered throughout the ranges.

By virtue of its tenure as a piece of Western Australian Aboriginal reserve excised by the Commonwealth government fifty years ago, the weather station is the only place in the entire Ngaanyatjarra Lands where alcohol can legally be consumed, and officially only by the station’s six employees. Have I considered dropping into the weather station to say hi and flashing my big blue eyes in the hope of a cold one? Not for a moment. My research permit is far too valuable. Luckily for us, Coopers make a convincing birell (brewed without alcohol) that tastes great straight out of the freezer. While barbecuing steaks over our fire pit on Saturday night, for a brief moment I almost forgot it wasn’t the real thing.

With some time on my hands over Easter, some of the ladies organised to go out hunting for tirnka (little goannas). Armed with crowbars as digging sticks and billy cans as shovels, 8 women and 2 dogs packed into a troopie and made our way to tirnka country.

Tirnka country

We wandered through the bush for a couple of hours, stopping to dig at holes where there was evidence of recent action. It was a very successful hunt in the end, with eleven (!) tirnka bagged. We made a fire, sat down with a cup of tea and proceeded to cook up the catch. The preparation process involves removing gut then burning off the skin in the open flame for a couple of minutes. The lizards are then buried in coals and left to cook for about twenty minutes. The cooked flesh is delicious – pale white, smooth and tasty –hints of chicken (!) and fish and just a little bit smoky. No salt required. We got back to town on dusk, the ladies subsequently missing the Easter Sunday prayer meeting and making me three hours late for a sausage sizzle being hosted by the neighbours. Not good manners, but at the end of the day I think we were all where we really wanted to be.

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Instalments one , two and three.

It’s been a long and arduous couple of weeks of eating, but have finally found my way into the Ngaanyatjarra lands and some civilised eating options. I arrived in the tiny community of Tjukurla from the tourist resort of Yulara at Uluru a couple of days ago, and have been eating fabulously, if somewhat humbly, since.

My enthusiasm for food has been somewhat diminished over the past fortnight by a persistent stomach bug that left me feeling exhausted with nausea but thankfully with few other symptoms. Not that I was missing out on much. With the exception of some excellent home cooked meals with friends in Alice Springs, eating since leaving Adelaide has been a rather mundane affair. Under siege from a meat craving, I ordered lamb shanks and mash at the dubious Glendambo Road House, our overnight stop between Adelaide and Alice. These shanks were enormous – quite literally an example of the proverbial mutton dressed up as her younger sister. But they were rather tasty and quite possibly the only redeeming feature of a place that otherwise makes no apologies for the appalling state of their accommodation. The bunk-house we were offered looks so bad that my travelling companion and I opted for sleeping rough on a tarp next to the ute rather than risk bed bugs. A sprinkling of rain initially left us doubting this decision, but then a cold, strong wind blew the clouds away and we slept contentedly under the magnificence of the Milky Way.

Ginormous Glendambo Shanks

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Zucchini, how I love it. There is nothing more delightfully buttery or charmingly versatile, or, for that matter, quite so easy to grow. Mine are bursting at the seams right now, pushing over the chook wire, and trying to run over the ground, fruiting in black and green stripes, with a pattern like 1960s barkcloth. Having just had a quarter of a year’s worth of rain in one weekend, they’re turning into marrows. And, as I am dead broke until the arrival of the Kevin Bucks, it’s time to get working on ways to use this luxurious, yet cheap, food.

Zucchini Muffins look so damned good the boy recanted his anti-zucchini stance and tucked in. They are also easy. Take a giant marrow or a few small ones and grate until you have 400 grammes worth. Then add: 1 cup white flour, 1 cup of polenta or some polenta and wholemeal, 1 tsp of baking soda, 1 tsp sugar, a pinch of salt, 1 lightly beaten egg and 60g of butter you’ve melted in the microwave. You can add flavourings such as a big handful of grated parmesan; a small handful of shredded herbs; six semi-sundried tomatoes sliced up; a big chunk of crumbled feta; ham, bacon, salami or smoked salmon in chunks; a handful of lightly toasted pine nuts or walnuts. Or any combo. Mix it all together until it just comes together into a lumpy mess and put big spoonfuls, lumps and all, into a lightly greased muffin pan. Bake at 200 degrees for about 20 minutes in a shiny new electric fan-forced oven, if, like me, you have one (I truly love my oven), but any one will do.

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Today my sister, her partner Anne and their kids Ciara and Reece joined us for The Eating of The Hare. They took our bigger boy out to lunch and Owy went to cricket, so I had a couple of hours of uninterrupted kitchen time to potter while our smaller boy slept. There is nothing nicer than feeding people that you care about, and to be feeding them food which they’d been responsible for increased the pleasure. Anne is a bit of a spoiler, so things kicked off with spiders made with sexy ice cream and Cascade soft drinks:

I’m not sure if that’s sharing or territorial pissing that you’re seeing in that picture, but that’s five year old boys for you.

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We spent the weekend at my sister-in-law Anne’s farm on the Monaro Plains in southern NSW. There were all manner of country pursuits including feeding the sheep, watching the kids have goes in the tractor and letting the toddler have a go of the steering wheel.

(If you think that was just some crazy set up toddler diving shot, check here – and no, we weren’t on a road.)

There was lots of good food and more wine than was really necessary. And there was my sister Kelly heading out to see if she could shoot a bunny, back within the hour bearing a wild hare. She is an art teacher and decided to get all Dutch on our ass:

Then Anne dressed the hare while we (and the kids) looked on. We hung the hare for a day in the farm’s old “meat room”, and brought it back home on ice. We were a bit unsure about hanging it here – it’s not exactly a European climate, and we’d already gutted it. Fortunately Stephanie Alexander’s Cooks Companion had the answer – as it almost always does – and it was only necessary to rest it in the fridge for a few days.

I jointed it and rubbed the carcass with olive oil and it’s in the fridge on a rack, covered with muslin. I’ll cook it up tomorrow for the extended family on Friday, but we’ll need something else too as one hare won’t feed all of us.

We didn’t keep the offal because my sister was afraid of hydatids, but she’s not really an offal fancier and I wish I’d kept the liver. I’m thinking a braise with thyme, red wine, prunes, pepper and maybe a tiny bit of bitter chocolate. Your suggestions and expertise are very welcome in comments.

There’s a couple of photos over the fold (gore warning), and a lot more both photos and gore at my flickr.

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