Quick tastes: a blog amnesty post

Time for another blog amnesty post! Here's an assortment of dishes I wanted to share on the blog, but rather than write individual posts I thought I'd stick them all together in the one place. Looking through the collection of photos, I realise that today's post has a strong focus on all sorts of weird and wonderful meats. You might like to look away, vegetarians...

First of all, how cute are these tiny native desert limes? Matt Wilkinson gave me a taste of them on my most recent visit to Pope Joan. At the time, he was experimenting with pickling them and putting them through a grain salad. Hopefully they'll also be muddled in cocktails at the bar he's going to be opening next door to Pope Joan, The Bishop of Ostia (named after the illegitimate son whose birth revealed Pope Joan to be female, if Wikipedia is to be believed).


The best thing on the current Auction Rooms brunch menu (apart from the knuckle sandwich) is the salmon pastrami on a potato and quinoa rösti (the quinoa gives the rösti a really interesting texture) with a poached egg, pink grapefruit, rocket and crème fraîche ($16). Auction Rooms has also added Bloody Marys to its brunch menu. This pleases me greatly.


The Japanese/French hybrid thing they've got going at Heirloom extends to their breakfast menu. When we visited on one of our recent Bourgeois Breakfasts, a highlight was the panko crumbed free range egg and asparagus with smoked almond, preserved lemon and burnt butter ($16).


Delicious horse tartare, at an Italian restaurant whose name I will not mention given that last year, following the legalisation of horse meat for Australian human consumption in July, death threats were sent to WA butcher Vince Garreffa from Mondo Butchers and to the other Melbourne restaurant which held a special horse meat dinner I attended.

I've eaten horse meat a few times in Italy and love the lean, mild, sweet taste of it. While I understand why some would have a cultural/sentimental aversion to eating horse (similarly, I could never bring myself to eat dog, because I love these two too much), I am bewildered by those who want to attack other people and restrict their freedom to choose whether or not to eat a meat which is perfectly legal (horse meat has been produced in Australia for human consumption for years, but prior to last July it was all exported). Given that these particular animals are slaughtered by Mondo Butchers under government-approved and closely scrutinised conditions, it also seems inconsistent to me that such people would protest outside a restaurant serving horse - as was the case at the horse dinner I attended last year - but not outside restaurants serving, say, lamb.

If dog meat were legalised tomorrow, I sure as hell wouldn’t be buying it (and would probably give Monty and Nessie an extra pat and cuddle next time I went to Mum and Dad’s) but I wouldn’t be protesting outside a restaurant serving it or sending death threats to the butcher!


Moving on to a different restaurant, the $15.50 vitello tonnato at Jorg consists of discs of poached veal interspersed with discs of pepper crusted, seared tuna. When I was taken there by M and Zia P, it was my favourite dish.


Mamasita braised veal tongue and ox cheek tacos with pickled vegetables and ghost chilli mayonnaise ($6 each). YES.


I've written before about the special four course Sunday lunch at Embrasse. What I didn't realise was that they also do lunch Thursday to Saturday, $38 for two courses or $45 for three courses - but of course in my opinion you MUST also order a serve of the aligot (crazily elastic, cheesy mashed potato) for your table to share.

A few weeks ago I organised a big group of people to have Saturday lunch at Embrasse to celebrate the lovely Chontoozie's birthday. The highlight for me this time was the dessert of local berries and cherries with honey custard - simple and beautiful.


How do you like your house martini? DECONSTRUCTED, that's how. From the new Autumn cocktail menu at Der Raum.


Gerald's Bar
386 Rathdowne St, Carlton North (map)
9349 4748

A few weeks ago I finally, FINALLY visited Gerald's Bar, the Rathdowne Village locale Gourmet Traveller dubbed its 2010 Bar of the Year (and which David Chang memorably likened to being on mescaline).

But I wasn't sampling the usual fare Gerald's has on offer: Matt Wilkinson had taken over the kitchen to test out some dishes from his first draft menu for the opening-later-in-2011 restaurant, Hen & Coq. The meal was a bargain at $55 for five courses or $85 for nine courses, and my charming dining companions were Matt C and (frequent Melbourne Gastronome hand model) J, both Gerald's Bar devotees. As we walked in we sniggered at the sign in the front window: "To showcase Matt's new venture, we have suspended our usual menu. Tomorrow it's back to the slop Gerald cooks".


The negronis were flawless. As we drank them, we munched on what Matt described on the menu as 'classic butcher pork scratchings'.


Other highlights were the Cuban sandwich, and a dish which Gerald insisted everybody eat first before he'd tell us what it was: smoked ox heart and crumbed sweetbread salad. While I'm quite partial to sweetbreads in small doses and guessed what they were right away, I confess that I'd've approached the dish rather more tentatively if I'd known it was heart. But ignorance is bliss - we loved it!


By this stage in the meal we'd moved on to a bottle of Mornington Peninsula lagrein (I hadn't been aware that much lagrein was grown anywhere outside of Northern Italy, let alone in Melbourne's own backyard!). The high acidity helped with the outrageous richness of the next course: Warialda Belted Galloway bone marrow, crab and caviar. Oh, MR WILKINSON.


We finished off with what the menu rather conversationally described as 'a pot of custard or as the French say “crème Anglaise” with doughnuts'. Once again, J acted as the Melbourne Gastronome hand model. It was a fun night that not only made me look forward to the opening of Hen & Coq down the track, but keen to return to Gerald's ASAP. I keep reading Essjay's tweets about her frequent meals at Gerald's, and they always sound so bloody good!

Embrasse me, night and day

Embrasse
312 Drummond Street, Carlton (map)
9347 3312
website


I visited Embrasse for the first time a few weeks ago, but that wasn't the first time I'd sampled chef/owner Nicolas Poelaert's food: that happened back in February, at the lunch that he and Provenance chef Michael Ryan prepared for the MFWF media launch. I met Nic at the end of the lunch and we talked about restaurants and his passion for growing heirloom and unusual herbs and vegetables to use in his cooking.

Nic's impressive credentials include time cooking with three Michelin star chef Michel Bras at his prestigious, eponymous restaurant in Laguiole, France (also home of everyone's favourite insect-adorned knives), at the original Vue de Monde in Carlton, and at Circa the Prince. His restaurant, Embrasse, opened in early 2009 in the building that was formerly home to Andrew McConnell's Three, One, Two and last September Nic was awarded Young Chef of the Year 2010 by The Age Good Food Guide.


I'd been saving a visit to Embrasse for one of my dinners with the charming A, who I hadn't seen in forever. When I arrived at the restaurant he was already sipping on a glass of bubbly and he immediately ordered one for me, cos that's the kind of guy he is. He's also the kind of guy who, when we are brought the à la carte and degustation ($90/5 course or $120/8 course) menus, decided with a smile that we just had to have the eight course degustation with matching wines. The wines were well selected by Embrasse's accomplished and congenial manager Camm Whiteoak (who was previously working his FOH manager magic at Attica).

Confession time: I never visited Three, One, Two (shocking, I know, given I'm such an Andrew McConnell fangirl), so the last time I'd been here was when the building was the restaurant Mrs Jones. I like the intimacy of the room, and the banquette seating in the front window.


To begin with, we were brought little balls of sweet buttermilk bread (studded with roasted raisins and dusted with red pepper powder) and pairs of cute appetiser spoons, filled with roquefort & apple and kingfish & beetroot jelly respectively.


The first dish knocked it out of the park in terms of presentation and subtle flavours: it's a méli-mélo ('mish-mash') of vegetables, emulsions and purées, homegrown herbs and flowers. Almost all of the vegetables, herbs and flowers Nic and his team use are grown in his gardens in Donvale and Warrandyte, and the importance of vegetables in the Embrasse kitchen is declared upfront in the menu's manifesto. The vegetables are blanched with a little salt and then cooked with a dab of butter. There were so many interesting things on the plate, at first I just tasted each paste, crumb and purée on its own before then experimenting with mixing them with other elements (as I like to do with Pierre Roelofs desserts). When you come to dine here, make sure at least one of you orders this dish, cos the vegetables need to be tasted to be believed.


The next dish was kingfish "steamed for just a little bit" (as the menu put it) and topped with panko crumbs and seaweed. It came with spinach leaves, steamed kohlrabi, rosy pearls of fingerlime, warm parsley water poured from a beaker into the bowl, and a pinch of powdered anis on the bowl's lip. The fingerlime gave the dish a zing and a pep that I really liked.


The kingfish was followed by one of Nic's signature dishes, which I'd tried at the MFWF media launch: john dory semi fried and semi steamed, stained with squid ink and served with pink grapefruit and a troupe of Daylesford heirloom beetroots standing at attention on a scrape of burnt carrot purée, which Nic makes in the Thermomix. The burnt carrot purée looks and sounds slightly bizarre, but tastes incredible (the recipe can be found here). The fish was just as moist and tender as I remembered it from last time.


After the dory plates were cleared, Camm approached us and murmured with a faux-serious expression on his face: "I've got a problem: my chef's gone rogue on me. He's sneaking an extra course into the degustation cos he wants you to try the pigeon. What would you like me to do?" Camm was tossing up whether or not to break with convention and serve a red before the white wine he'd selected to match the following pork dish. With a sommelier as capable as Camm, we knew we were in good hands either way. :)

And wow wow wow how gorgeous was the presentation of the pigeon?! Bendigo pigeon breast, Daylesford organic carrots, edible flowers and shiny coffee-flavoured dots that stuck to the plate like icing. The white kernels on the plate are last season’s dried apricot kernels (to be consumed in moderation, of course). The pigeon was full of flavour and went particularly well with the carrot, and the little bit of wrapped foil was a very cute touch.


After a palate cleanser of celery granita, the next dish was pork cheeks and crispy ear "cooked for a very long time", salmon roe, parsley root, wood sorrel and crumbled wasabi peas. Totally unctuous pork, and the unusual pairing with the salmon roe kept you on your toes in the texture department.


Next was the Jacksons Creek rump cooked sous-vide until perfect, served with a rich scoop of potato and yoghurt cream, toasted malt brioche crumbs, celeri rémoulade (my favourite French salad!) and a Thermomix-ed watercress and lentil coulis.


The beef was followed by an excellent cheese platter (which included more house made bread studded with sultanas) and then we were brought the first dessert: "taken on the idea of a snow ball... soft meringue, rhubarb cooked with elderflower, almond gateau, white chocolate". The meringue had a decadent texture and was a great match for the slightly tart rhubarb.


The final dish, which Nic brought out personally, was another I'd had the opportunity to sample previously: chocolate mushrooms (meringues with hazelnut parfait caps) on a chocolate crumb forest floor with tuile twigs and leaves and a sorrel and mint granita moss. BEAUTIFUL and DELICIOUS. Nic has just this week revamped the Embrasse menu, and I am relieved to see that this dessert survived the cut!

It was a sensational dinner, both A and I loved every dish.


Ah, but the other side of Embrasse that I also want to show you is the Sunday lunch, a relatively recent innovation. For $62 a head you get a four course French rustic lunch, served communally according to your table size. The week after my degustation with A, I went back to Embrasse with three girlfriends for a cosy, casual Sunday lunch.


Having been to a somewhat wanton 30th the night before, I arrived feeling wretchedly hungover and subdued. Camm sized up my condition and decided to prescribe a glass of pastis - STAT! - to send me on the road to recovery. Whaddya know, it worked and I was soon chattering away and able to enjoy the delicious lunch we were served up.


The soup course was pumpkin and pine mushroom soup, made according to Nic's mother's recipe. I loved that the bread rolls accompanying the soup were stuck together and arranged on a curved piece of bark, and that we were given a serve of shaved pine mushrooms and a jug of cream to add if desired.


The soup for our table of four arrived in a communal pot, which we ladled out between us.


For the Sunday lunch, wine is offered in 500ml carafes for $19.


The salad course had a base of burghul, buckwheat and green lentils. It also included little nuggets of crumbed pork belly and the most vivid purple potatoes I'd ever seen.


The meat course was a whole roasted wagyu rump cap from Jacksons Creek, with a jus gras. There was also Dijon mustard, relish and a side serve of heirloom carrots, braised fennel and potato croquettes. Hearty fare.


The dessert course, four pieces of pear and persimmon tart, was probably my favourite (though I do hate to play favourites): I think it's the butteriness of the pastry that did it. Added persimmon and Chantilly cream on the side.


Such a nice way to spend a Sunday afternoon! I'm keen to get a big group together and head back there for another Sunday lunch soon.


Oh, and if you're at a loss for what to do next Wednesday to celebrate Bastille Day, I heard through the twitters that Embrasse will be holding a special French traditional banquet ($90 a head, see details and preview the menu on the Special Events page of their website).