One of the many things I like about writing this blog, is that it records (for posterity ?  hah!) some of my thoughts, opinions and memories.  We all change over time. People, fashion, tastes (and taste), politics, knowledge, restarants and chefs … and cafes too.
Six year or seven years ago I lived in (north) North Fitzroy.  A bit of a wasteland, the Loaded Dog hotel had recently closed and food and entertainment options close to hand were few and far between.

A new coffee shop, Growers Espresso, opened on the corner of St Georges Road and Holden street, serving locally roasted Australian grown coffee. My initial thoughts were … blergh – Australian grown coffee? locally roasted??  why would you bother?  Ten years ago, my Melbourne, and my taste buds were very much directed towards strong, bitter, Italian roasted espresso blends.   My tastes stayed this was for quite a few years; I like to think I was making up for the many years of Nescafe with frothed milk that was served to me in Queensland cafes. I tried Growers Espresso coffee once, but wasn’t really impressed.

So seven or so years down the track, I start going to the Farmers’ Markets occasionally, particularly Collingwood. There are three coffee choices at the market, the farm cafe, Dr Java and Growers Espresso. I would snub Growers (still!) and go to Dr Java.  Then one day, I changed. I dunno why, but I stopped at Growers and it was good coffee. Really good coffee.

Nowadays. I really look forward to the markets (I barely shop for food anywhere else) and my Grower’s coffee.  If I work out my morning schedule properly I can drop in for a morning coffee; if I don’t attend a weekend market I drop in, or walk down for coffee. And on Sundays when they are closed, I make a pourover with some of their single origin beans at home. You could say my tastes have changed over the years.

The “killer app” though for me was their change to a “Farmer’s Market inspired” menu. Here was provenance for my snacks and lunch. Many of the producers are local folks I know and trust from the Farmers’ Markets. Lovely heirloom vegetables (no unripe greenhouse tomatoes here); free range Milawa chicken, rare breed pork, local artisan cheeses, free range eggs, Mt Zero olives and all manner of good and delicious things!

The menu changes regularly, but the favourites are there whenever I visit. Coconut bread toasted, and served with Di’s rhubarb and Schultz Yogurt. muffins made in-house everyday, baguettes, frittata and Michele’s bikkies from Castlemaine.  The menu showcases fresh, seasonal and local produce, and delicious breed from Dench (also local). Regular features are Milawa Chicken, Gypsy Pig, Holy Goat Cheese, Lochelian Cheese I’ve even seen smoked barramundi.

I still enjoy a Genovese coffee fairly regularly (mostly from Liaison) but it sits nicely alongside my local – which offers an Aussie Grown Eureka Coffee Blend and someother interesting bean every day.  Espresso or pourover. So very “modern and third wave”. And yes, they roast on site.
Funny how things change … I’m sure Mark, Hamish and the team have been doing things like this for ages .. I just wasn’t in this “space” until 18 months ago.  Now I am, they’d better not go anywhere soon.

Follow them on twitter at @eurekacoffee

Did you visit a market this weekend? What did you buy?

Links:

Victorian Farmers Markets – find your closest accredited farmers market.

King Valley Free Range Pork

At the Collingwood Farmers’ Market yesterday I bought some duck, basically on a whim, from Milawa Chicken. I was remembering the gorgeous lightly smoked confit duck salad I’d had a Gerald’s a few weeks ago, and also I was looking for a filling for some dumplings to stock up the freezer.

The two plump breasts (about 500g) were just beautiful, firm in texture and a lovely colour.

I trimmed them a little bit, but not much, rinsed them and dried them well then with a sharp knife I scored through the skin and fat so that you could see the meat underneath.

Spice rub

• 1 tsp star anise
• 1 tsp black pepper
• 1 tsp sugar
• 1 tsp salt.

I started breaking these down in my mortar and pestle and finished them off in a spice grinder.  Rub the mix into the cuts and the underside of the fillet. Then I placed them on a rack in an open container in the fridge for a few hours while I went off to the movies.  The flavour will infuse in this time and the skin will dry out a bit.

So now I need to set up my wok as a smoker.  Line it with a double layer of foil and tip in ½ cup of my tea smoking mix.  Put the wok on a medium heat and in 5 – 7 mins smoke will start to form.  Brush most of the rub off the duck (I forgot to do this, which is why my duck looks so dark) Place the duck in a steamer (you can see I’ve used a clean Chux underneath it) and pop on the lid.  Smoke for 7 mins.

I’ve been asked about smoking inside: I smoked this duck, and the tomatoes previously in my small kitchen with the door open and the extractor fan on full.   The smoke seems to just curl around the food, it doesn’t go up in a plume, so it seems quite contained.  Although the rest of the house faintly smelled of smoke for a few hours afterward, it doesn’t smell like it now, a day after.

Pre-heat a heavy fry pan, and when the duck is smoked – pop it into a hot frypan, skin side down, and turn the heat to medium.  After 6 mins turn it over and cook for a further five.  Test the duck  by poking it – or using a meat thermometer.  I think duck should be served quite rare.  Let it rest.

Dressing

• 2 tablespoons soy sauce
• 2 tablespoons rice wine vinegar
• 2 tablespoons of Chinese cooking wine
• dash of sesame oil
• dozen pitted cherries chopped in half.

While the duck is resting, pour out the rendered fat from the fry pan and wipe with paper towel.  Toss in the cherries and  half of the dressing.  Season with pepper.

Slice the duck diagonally across, serve with salad (I used cabbage, cucumber, watercress and fried noodles) add cherries and dress with reserved dressing.

**Thanks for the inspiration Mario

Like much of Australia. Victoria has been having bizarre weather lately; hot and dry, hot and humid, pouring rain, it’s difficult to keep up.  What in spring looked like it was going to be a promising season, has ended up being a wash-out for many producers. I’ve heard of entire crops being washed away, fruit crops being reduced in quality due to too much rain/wind/heat depending on which week it was, and some very challenging growing conditions.

Thankfully – they keep on growing, and bring their deliciousness to the city to sell to us.

I’ve been really looking forward to this weekend’s markets as I had missed introducing myself to the delightful Naomi of the Myrtleford Butter Factory last month at the Collingwood Childrens’ Farm market (I walked straight passed her stall!)  We’ve been chatting over twitter and I was very keen to try some of her real buttermilk, which is the liquid left over after butter is churned from cream rather than the cultured yogurt-like buttermilk you can buy in supermarkets.

Showgrounds market is more of a “top up” luxuries market for me – I barely look at the “value-added” products available at the other markets, but somehow it all feels good at the Showgrounds.

You can get a spectacular coffee from the Eureka Coffee guys, and a delicious breakfast cooked from stallholder’s ingredients by Chef Michael.  We had a burger served on Red Beard Blonde bread, with water cress, and cheese, and lettuce and tomato relish.  Very satisfying.

Here’s what I bought:-

• Myrtleford Butter Factory Buttermilk and salted cultured butter
• Carrots, radish and lettuce for salads during the week
• Basil
• Red Beard Carmen Miranda fruit loaf and Stubble grain loaf.
• Some delicious treats from Treehouse Artisan Sweets

I’m planning to make some corn fritters using the basil and the buttermilk.

I’ll be using the grain bread and some ricotta from La Latteria, green peas, bacon and basil on bruscetta (maybe with some goats cheese?).

Fruit toast and ricotta for breakfast.

Christy from Treehouse Artisan Sweets sources all her products from the market stallholders. From left to right above. Sour cherry crumble tart, white peach and moscato pastry, Buttermilk and greengage plum cake sprinkled with Blackberry and rose sugar.   Like all good cakes, a little goes a long way, and the pure flavours of butter, vanilla and lovely “in-season” fruit make for a very satisfying treat.

This week, as I was leaving the Collingwood Farmers’ Market, I spied an interesting sign promising vanilla pods from Papua New Guinea.

Turns out it was a fundraiser for a small community off the coast of PNG which is being forced to move off their coral atoll, Carteret.  This atoll is about 80km from the coast off Bougainville, a larger island off the coast of PNG.  Carteret atoll has been submerging for the last few decades.

So their taro swamp is salty, their land is being eroded and the living conditions are such that an evacuation of the atoll is underway.  As they move to the mainland however, they find themselves without a source of income, or food. The elders of the community have set up an organisation called Tulele Peisa or “sailing the winds together” to help and support these villagers.

A group of villagers on a near by island grow vanilla orchids in their yards. With the help of the Australian Conservation Foundation, with sales facilitated by Friends of the Earth, and stall space from the Farmers’ Markets, this sustainably produced vanilla is being brought direct “to market” to support this organisation.

The pods aren’t as soft as some of the very expensive ones I’ve bought – but at $10 a bag – which in my case contained 10 long straight pods, and another 5 that were shorter of curlier, you can’t argue with the value.  I made a poaching syrup today with the pods and they smell quite delicious.  And I feel very ‘rich” with so many to use! (and a little bit virtuous).

The pods will be on sale again and Gasworks Farmers’ Market next week, and if there are any left, you might see them at the Twilight Xmas markets. A real case of buying when you see it at the farmers’ markets as it might not be around long.

If you’d like to donate to the cause you can do so via Friends of the Earth – or look out for some of this fabulous vanilla.

The first time I can remember coming across Clafoutis was in the early 1990′s and I had a housemate who knew a lot about food, and who tried lots of new dishes and loved to bake.  One afternoon we decided to try a cherry clafoutis recipe, which I think was from her Maggie Beer book.

I love what Maggie has done for the Australian/German cooking traditions of the Barossa, and have grown to love her style of cooking, but to a fairly new cook, some of her recipes were… well.. challenging I guess.  They can be quite loose with their measurements at times.   We’d had a few recipes that just didn’t really work until we played around with them a bit. From reading the description of the dish I was expecting a kind of tea cake around fruit, maybe like a lemon delicious?  But the batter, well  - it was weird, and very runny.  I think we actually threw it out, knowing enough about cakes to know that it was never going to bake, but not knowing enough about clafoutis to know that that was how it was supposed to be.

The Abbotsford Convent Farmers’ Market this week dished me up some gloriously ripe cherries from Smith’s, the Early Burlat variety.  I like to be inspired by what I can buy at the market, and a kilo of ripe cherries HAD to be inspirational.  As much as I like them fresh, I figured this was my chance to right the wrongs of the past, and be brave with the batter.

I consulted the french baking oracle, Michel Roux, but I didn’t like the sound of one single egg, and being baked in a tart shell, so I expanded my research and cobbled this together from a variety of sources.

• Ingredients
• 450g of pitted cherries
• 4 eggs
• 75 grams castor sugar
• 330ml single cream (I used Schultz Organic cream, which is quite thick, so I used 1/3 milk)
• 35 grams plain flour
• 1 tsp vanilla.
• Method:
• Preheat the oven to 160° Centigrade. Butter an overproof shallow casserole dish.
  Places eggs, sugar, cream and vanilla in a bowl and whisk until combined.
  Add the flour and whisk until smooth.
  Pour cherries into the casserole dish and spread evenly.
  Pour over the custard.
  Bake for 50 – 60 mins until set.

It was deliciously eggy and cherry-y and I can’t wait to make it again.

Another of the four Melbourne Community Farmer’s Markets, accredited, friendly and as one I only occasionally visit, a few stalls that are less familiar to me.  Here’s my haul.

Brussels Sprouts on the stem from Sarah of Peter Schreurs & Sons as she says, from the home garden.  They are also bringing “tamed” nettles to market as well – picked over and in a small plastic bag.  They bring insome really interesting vegies from “the home patch”, and it’s no secret that they grow fantastic, sweet leeks.

Gypsy Pig sausages (English Breakfast with a bit of nutmeg in them) and flavoured mince, which is sometimes available as patties.  I think I will do some meatballs with the mince.

My old favourite Sunny Ridge strawberries, a few weeks left of strawbs this season. These are Albions again.

I’m not purchased Family Homestay free range eggs before – but the passion of the woman selling them was quite encouraging!  They are farmed out Bacchus Marsh way, and there is lots of info on their website.   She highlighted some proposed changes to the free range egg farming criteria to allow a greater density of birds. I’m looking into this a bit more as well as the current trend to advertise cage-raised chickens (huh??).

I’ve mentioned before that I am concerned about the effect it could have if “Big Business” respond to consumer demands for cruelty free  / free range / organic products.  How can you maintain the current standards and supply many times more produce?  Another day; another post.

And some more Schulz’s Organic Milk and Cream; and some more fabulous “easy peel” chestnuts, the variety is Gourmet Lady.

Did you go to a Farmers’ Market today?  If you did, what did you buy?

Anorak, scarf, produce bags and carry bags – CHECK!

It got a bit muddy as they morning progressed, but it was heartening to see the line up of folk waiting when I got there just before 8:00 am, and a bit frightening to see the guy in front of my wearing no shoes, at all.

Here’s a list of what I brought home with me (an anti-shopping list if you will)

• 5 large beetroot
• 3 small leeks from Sarah.
• 1 large bunch of Trevor’s rhubarb
• 6 Mildura Oranges
• 1 kg of “Easy Peel” chestnuts
• 1 punnet of SunnyRidge Strawberries
• 1 bag of Bellengen organics loose garlic cloves
• a Slice of Holy Goat La Luna ring from Anne Marie
• Bunch of Parsley and bunch of bay leaves from Jill and Andrew
• Bag of chicken frames and 500g Chicken thighs from Milawa Chicken
• 1 litre of milk, 250ml cream, and 500ml yogurt from Schulz Organic Milk
• 12 Champion variety quinces from John “The Quince Man”, to celebrate the end of the quinces. I do hope we see John and his quinces next year, these were the best I’ve ever eaten.

Now to feed myself for the next week.

I’ve roasted the beetroot and skinned them.  They are sitting in the fridge.

• Beetroot, walnut and goat’s cheese salad
• Part of a steak sandwich (maybe – do I have steak anywhere?)
• Perhaps some Borsch?
• Beetroot and chocolate muffins maybe?

Chicken

• Frames and parsley wil go into stock.
• Thighs will become chicken soup (with the stock) and chicken and noodles.

Rhubarb will go into a breakfast crumble with some of the berries I have in the freezer, to be eaten with some lovely Schulz’s Yogurt for breakfast on these chilly mornings.

Chestnuts, having proven themselves to be truly “easy peel” were

• roasted and eaten with a bit of salt
• Sauteed with some Gypsy Pig streaky bacon and some Brussels Sprouts to have with soup for dinner
• Will be roasted for 20 mins at 200º and peeled, then frozen for further adventures.

The strawberries will be eaten with the cream over the next 3 nights as dessert.  It doesn’t do to try to keep the strawbs this time of year, I’m just happy to see them, and smell them. Forgot to ask what variety these are, last market they were Albions.

I’ll make some chicken soup with the Milawa chicken frames, and thighs, Sarah’s leeks and Jill and Andrew’s parsley (the stalks into the stock pot along with their fresh bay leaves)

The oranges will come to work with me to starve off office colds and afternoon snacks.

The quinces will get poached for 4 – 6 hours at 140º in a light sugar syrup with a star anise, some vanilla and a bay leaf.  These will then keep until next week to top porridge and have warm for dessert maybe?

The garlic and the milk will just get used during the week.

What would you make with my haul?  What did you buy this week that looked great!

This delicious torte is actually pretty easy to make, and works well with frozen or preserved cherries, but is perhaps best in the middle of cherry season.   The fresh local juicey cherries that I buy from the Farmers’ Markets  were my inspiration to try this recipe. That and I almost always have all the ingredients I need in my pantry, so it’s easy to whip up, and a good way to use up left over egg whites.

I was handed some egg whites by my neighbour the other day – 2 hours later I handed back one of these. 

What I really like about this recipe is that it uses many of the same ingredients as macarons, so when I’ve had a frustrating day baking them badly, I whip this up to build my self confidence again.

Sour cherries like Morellos are particularly good in this torte, which fills the house with beautiful smells of vanilla and butter – I wish someone would make a candle that smells like it.

This recipe originally comes from Karen Martini and was published in the Saturday Age recipe.  I’ve made a few minor changses to suit me better.

Ingredients

180 g salted butter

1 vanilla bean

5 egg whites

pinch salt

340 g pure icing sugar, sifted (extra for dusting)

110g plain flour

100g ground almonds

7.5 ml (1.5 teaspoons) almond essence (bitter almond is very good!)

40g flaked almonds

300g cherries, pitted and halved

Preheat oven to 180°C  (or 160°C fan-forced). Grease a 24cm x 5cm fluted tart tin with a loose base (or line with silicon paper).

Cut the vanilla bean lengthwise, scrape the beans out and place in a small saucepan.  Chop the vanilla pod into small pieces and also add to the small saucepan. Melt butter in the saucepan and cook over a medium heat for 4 -5 mins until the mixture turns dark and smells nutty. Be brave. It’s the nuttieness that makes this torte.

Strain the butter into a bowl, discard the solids, and cool to room temperature.

Whisk egg whites with a pinch of salt until soft peaks form.  Add half icing sugar and combine, then fold in the remaining sugar, flour and ground almonds.  Be gentle, but not wimpy (and don’t bother looking for le macaronnage thankfully that’s not necessary for this recipe).

Stir through the burnt vanilla butter and almond essence. Pour mixture into the tin and place cherries on top, scatter with almond flakes, reserve a few cherries for garnish if you wish.  The recipe makes a bit too much to be contained by my tart tin – you can fill to about 2mm from top, so I pop the extra into cupcake tins (makes 2 – 3) with sliced cherries and bake these for 20 mins. Make sure you fill the empty cupcake depressions with water to stop the cakes over cooking.

Bake for 1 hour, or until the tart is puffed and just set. Remove from oven and cool to room temperature.

Dust with icing sugar and garnish with a few cherries.