Posted by Circa on November 15th, 2010
Kitchen gardens are all the rage these days and we all know how fulfilling it can be having your own personal plot. Whether it be in the backyard or on the roof, planting your own vegetables and picking your very own fruit, with a little time and effort can provide a great sense of achievement. Some very good friends of mine look beyond the pretty edible flowers and beneath all the heirlooms vegetables to something our gardeners and chefs often consider a pest amongst the foliage, something that likes to get a cheeky head start on the seasons freshly grown produce – snails! Specifically the edible snail variety Helix Aspersa that are bred under careful guidelines. Helen and Rob Dyball from the Hunter Valley, NSW (known as Mrs. Snail and Mr. Slug to the locals) have been successfully breeding edible snails or escargot for just over 10 years now through their home based company Snails Bon Appetite.
I was recently invited to the Hunter to meet the regions young apprentice chefs at their annual encouragement and recognition awards night which was held at the TAFE Cessnock campus restaurant, The Vinery. This was not only a great opportunity to visit Helen and Rob at their home in the Congewai Valley but also a pleasure to meet and speak with the young industry professionals from the local area who prepared a fantastic three-course meal for all the guests showcasing the great local produce as well as some good local talent in the kitchen as well. It was a pretty wet old night up in the Valley and coming from Melbourne I had to take the blame for the bad turn in the weather, thankfully though the rain finally cleared and the following morning Helen and I donned the gumboots and headed down to the farm to check on the slow and slimy herbivores.
The snails are most certainly alive and after a long winter of hibernation they are on a feeding frenzy filling their stomachs with a special feed that Helen has put together containing protein and limestone. Have you ever seen a snail’s mouth? Don’t worry neither had I. Apparently a snail has something called radula in its mouth for grinding up its food. This radula is like a rough tongue, something like a file with rows of tiny teeth, which it uses to scrape up its tucker. Helen explains the careful and interesting process in the breeding of the snails from purging (to make sure all the snails are free from any unwanted impurities) quarantine right through to the cooking, packaging and shipment. Well all I can say is you either love ‘em or your not going anywhere near them, but personally I’m a big fan of the delicious escargot, quickly shallow fried in some garlic, parsley and butter and I’m pretty confident you’ll love them too. Some questions for Helen…
How did you get into Snail farming?
Back in 1985 Rob & I read an article in the Daily Telegraph about a man who was farming snails in England and thought … oh that would be a good thing to do!! When we moved onto our property in 2000 we looked at each other and said snails – placed an ad in the local newspaper for snails (breeding stock) and haven’t stopped.
Can I eat the snails in my garden?
We don’t recommend eating snails from the garden as you would have no idea of what they have recently eaten!
Is business a bit slow sometimes? Ha don’t answer that
How do you control the quality of the snails?
By feeding them a special diet of dried food mix, fruit & vegetables
What is your favorite way to eat snails?
With Extra virgin olive oil, garlic, butter, cream, fresh herbs, lemon juice, lemon pepper
Posted by Circa on October 14th, 2010
Seventeenth century writer Jonathan Swift is quoted as having said “he was a bold man that first ate an oyster” and I would have to agree. The common oyster is a complex little character, a filter feeder passing up to 5 liters of water per day, with a three chambered heart that pumps colourless blood to all parts of the body and two kidneys that removes the impurities from the blood. Chefs tend to treat oysters in many different ways - fried, crumbed, jellied, dressed in red wine, cooked with bacon, steamed, smoked and even made into a bavarois. In Spain I was shown how to remove the tiny skirts with scissors to make them look like flawless little plumps of goodness.
An oyster is such a versatile product, lending itself to a wide range of cookery and has the ability to add great contrast, flavour and texture to a dish. It is my personal opinion that the best oyster is freshly shucked by oneself and consumed immediately to fully appreciate the full flavor and that distinct aroma of the ocean from where it grew. Back in 2008 during the produce tour of South Australia for the Electrolux Young Chef award I had a great opportunity to visit Natural Oysters in Coffin Bay, where I met a great bloke in Jedd Routledge. Jedd took over his family business in 2004 after leaving behind his law degree at university. Following in his father’s footsteps, Jedd’s fondness for the bivalve molluscs led him to become a Coffin Bay oyster farmer. We went out on Jedd’s boat and he shucked oysters fresh from the baskets- they we not like any I had tasted before, the pure saltiness of the cold ocean and the sweetness of the oyster was simply undeniable. It was amazing. I wanted to serve the oysters just like the ones I had that day to our guests. That’s where our relationship with Jedd’s oysters began. Every Wednesday and Friday they arrive fresh from our own little patch with Jedd in Coffin Bay. The chefs anticipate the arrival of each new delivery- we treat ourselves to one each when they first arrive, they seem to get better as the season goes on. More juicy, more plump…
If I close my eyes for a moment I can be back on that boat in the middle of Coffin Bay…
Oh hang on, check on- gotta go!
Six questions for Jedd Routledge
What makes Coffin Bay so unique for farming oysters?
Coffin Bay has been a mecca for oysters with the first operations involving dredging the mud oysters in the 19th century. The pacific oyster was first introduced in 1969 and due to its success in these waters has been the primary specie cultured throughout the bays. The oyster industry in Coffin Bay, known throughout the world for exceptional quality, really took off in the late 1990’s, and the decade from 2000 to 2010 has seen the bay reach its full production capacity.
Coffin Bay also benefits from the nourishment provided by the nutrient enriched seawater from the Southern Ocean. Coupled with low rain-fall in SA leading to little run-off from roads or agriculture, and an incredibly low population density, these above factors combine to make Coffin Bay unique and great at producing world class oysters.
How has oyster farming in Australia grown and evolved since your family began in 1988?
Luckily for oyster growers in SA and Tasmania, the BST concept of oyster farming was developed in Cowell (SA) early in the picture. The adjustable long line system with round oyster bags which clip onto the line has been instrumental in making the industry what it is. Most oyster farming in SA and Tasmania (and indeed NSW) is intertidal and uses this technique or incorporates some element of the BST adjustable long line concept.
The BST system allows oyster farmers to have great control over the grow-out phase and conditioning phase involved in oyster aquaculture. Oysters are grown on sandbanks (intertidal) suspended above the sea floor on the long lines held in place by wooden posts (checkout Natural Oysters for pictures of ‘oyster racks’). The BST system allows for the clean shell and deep cup synonymous with pacific oysters from SA and Tasmania, and the great meat quality and fresh oceanic flavour.
Mechanisation has also improved production capacities, with the SED grading machine developed in Tasmania becoming a fixture in most of the bigger sheds in SA and Tasmania. This grading machine is capable of sizing and counting up to 400 oysters per minute, hence taking away a lot of hand grading done in the past.
Still, we use a combination of machine and person grading, as there is nothing quite like a final hand grade to ensure complete customer satisfaction.
The oysters seem to get better as the season goes on, what’s happening?
Oysters will exhibit different flavours over the course of the year, reflecting their own personal reproductive cycle and the algae present in the waters in which they are grown.
At the beginning of the season (generally March) Pacific oysters are just starting to recover their condition from spawning over late December and January. As the season goes on, especially over the winter months, pacific oysters put on more ‘condition’ (glycogen) in preparation for when the ocean warms up and they commence spawning again. This is an annual cycle which repeats itself over the life of an oyster.
In your opinion what qualities should we be looking for in an oyster?
Now, this is only MY opinion… bigger is not better when it comes to oysters. As a grower, I take home bistro and smaller to eat, and generally bigger oysters I leave to the guys to taste.
The size we sell to Circa is my personal favourite…….. I feel smaller oysters are sweeter and demonstrate all the necessary elements for a great entrée…. Namely, taste of the fresh ocean, but importantly a nice half dozen or dozen Circa oysters are a fantastic way to get the gastric juices flowing for the next course without filling one up.
In general, a nice shape and good clean shell are important. When shucking the oyster the harder it is to get into, the better the abductor muscle, which lends itself towards a longer shelf life. Once opened, the smell should be fresh and oceanic, almost neutral if unfamiliar with the ocean.
Once the abductor muscle has been cut and the oyster turned, the shell should be quite full of oyster, and there should be little or no gut visible.
The small muscle known as the abductor is commonly removed before consumption, what do you think about this?
An oyster is one of the most nutritionally balanced foods available*. It is also one of the few seafoods that you can eat straight from the shell. The abductor muscle can be the same size as a scallop and has the same texture, so it is soft and sweet, a nice inclusion into the overall taste profile.
*(oysters contain proteins, lipids and carbohydrates. They are a great source of vitamins A, B1 (thiamin), B2 (riboflavin), B3 (niacin), C (ascorbic acid), and D (calciferol). A half dozen oysters will supply the recommended daily allowance of iron, copper, iodine, magnesium, calcium, zinc, manganese and phosphorus).
Your business enables you to travel overseas to promote Australian oysters, is there a strong market for Australian oysters OS?
There is a strong demand for Australian oysters overseas, especially in countries that appreciate the qualities of Australian produce.
Our oysters are generally more expensive than oysters farmed in China or South America, of course due to labour costs but also farming techniques. Our end product is vastly superior in terms of shape and cleanliness, but more importantly, Australian oysters reflect the waters they are grown in…….. for pacific oysters, the clean, fresh ocean taste.
Posted by Circa on September 15th, 2010
As part of the Electrolux Young Chef of the year program I was given the opportunity to travel to Tokyo and work with Luke Mangan at his restaurant Salt and to visit the famous Tsukiji fish markets. Being a city that boasts more Michelin stars than anywhere else in the world, I was certainly looking forward to the trip.
After a busy Saturday night service at Circa I rushed home for an extremely early morning flight to Tokyo. Coming from Melbourne I was all rugged up, so when I was hit by the wall of heat at Narita airport I quickly adjusted into more suitable attire of shorts and thongs, as it was in fact 35 degrees with the humidity causing similar grief. I was immediately taken by the friendliness of the Japanese, they were so welcoming and the city streets were immaculate with not a piece of rubbish to be found despite the fact there are no rubbish bins!
After discovering the amazing quality of the local food I turned my attention from the top end restaurants to the lesser known eateries such as the sushi bars and underground izakayas. It was here that I found the freshest of sashimi, handmade soba noodles and sushi masters doing what they do best.
I made the early morning trip to the Tsukiji fish markets (the largest wholesale fish market on the planet) at about 4am which is when it’s all happening. The sheer amount of seafood was mind blowing, everything from seaweeds and caviar to the poisonous blowfish and live conger eels. The famous tuna auctions that begin at around 5am are now closed to the public but I managed to accidently wander in the wrong direction and catch a glimpse at what was happening. It was a flurry of activity, the tunas were massive with some weighing up to 300kg.
I was getting hungry and sought out a sushi bar called sushi dai which I had been told was the best around. I joined the small queue that streamed from just outside the little door of the bar. I was lucky enough to only have to wait for one hour as I’d heard a three hour wait was not uncommon. I knew I was in Japan when I finally made it inside and greeted with a green tea and a bowl of miso soup. The three sushi masters work from 5am until 2pm dishing up the finest of the mornings purchases, the rice was still slightly warm and molded with a touch that could only be produced with a wealth of experience and knowledge. Piece by piece they fed me; tuna belly, mackerel, sea eel, salmon roe, sea urchin, abalone ‘still alive’ they told me as I was handed a moving portion of shellfish. The fresh pickled ginger was offered as a cleanser between courses and as my stomach filled with the fresh flavor of such a brilliant attack of the worlds best seafood offerings I entered what I could only describe as a gastronomical sense of complete happiness. I don’t think we can expect to see the Circa menu flooded with seaweed or miso glaze, I’ll leave that to the masters but if there is one thing that can fuel the fire for me, it’s that understanding and respect for the produce that Japan does so well. That’s what I’ll bring back from this trip.
Posted by Circa on September 8th, 2010
We would like to share with you the recipe for this delicious salad by Circa’s Head chef Jake Nicolson.
Roasted carrot, grape, avocado and red quinoa salad, fromage frais, citrus dressing
serves 6
18 baby carrots (peeled)
1 teaspoon ras-el-hanout
1 avocado
200g red grapes (halved)
1 baby cos lettuce
1 red trevise
2 ruby grapefruits (juice and segments)
2 oranges (juice and segments)
120g fromage frais
100ml olive oil
200g red quinoa (cooked)
30g butter
Salt and pepper
Pan roast the carrots in a little olive oil, until nearly cooked. Dust them with ras-el-hanout to finish. Halve and peel the avocado, discard the seed then cut into wedges lengthways and place into large bowls. Remove the carrots from the pan and add them to the avocado. Segment and juice both the orange and the ruby grapefruit. Add the segments to the bowl of avocado and carrots. Mix the citrus juice, olive oil and red quinoa in a separate bowl. Toss in the salad leaves, red grapes and some salt and pepper, dress with the citrus and red quinoa vinaigrette, and finish with some dollops of fromage frais.
Posted by Circa on August 2nd, 2010
Apple, radish and watercress, honey yoghurt, buckwheat vinaigrette
serves 6
Salad
4 red apples, peeled and sliced
4 green apples, peeled and sliced
6 breakfast radishes, finely sliced
200g watercress, picked and washed
2 avocados
Vinaigrette
200g buckwheat cooked
1 cucumber, peeled, seeded and diced
2 tbs grapeseed oil
2 tbs olive oil
1 tsp lemon juice
1 tsp soy sauce
2 tbs rice wine vinegar
For the vinaigrette
Combine the vinegar, soy sauce, lemon juice. Combine the oils then whisk slowly into the vinegar mix. Placed the diced cucumber and buckwheat in a bowl and add the dressing.
Honey yoghurt
150g natural yoghurt
½ Tbs honey
Pinch salt
For the yoghurt
Slowly melt the honey on the stove, then mix through the yoghurt and season
Presentation
Smear each plate with a good amount of honey yoghurt. Arrange the apple, avocado and watercress neatly on top. Then spoon over the buckwheat vinaigrette. Season with a turn of black pepper.
Perfect with a glass of Pichot’Le Peu de la Moriette’ Vouvray Demi-Sec, 2007
