Analiese Gregory joins star chefs at Hamilton Island Race Week

The host of SBS’ 2021 series “A Girl’s Guide to Hunting, Fishing and Wild Cooking” will be plating up foraged fare on August 25.

Steve Meacham

Aug 17, 2022 – 6.27am

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Analiese Gregory, the New Zealand-born champion of Australia’s wild cuisine movement, is having a rare ‘tame day’ in the heart of Tasmania’s Huon Valley ahead of her gig at Hamilton Island Race Week.

After walking her dog and visiting her neighbour’s vineyard to deliver some tools she found “last week in France”, she’ll sit down to do her tax return.

Analiese Gregory is a return guest chef at this year’s Hamilton Island Race Week. From ‘How Wild Things Are’ Courtesy of Hardie Grant Publishing. Photo: Adam Gibson

It’s not what you expect from the host of SBS’s 2021 series A Girl’s Guide to Hunting, Fishing and Wild Cooking, which showed her clad in a wetsuit searching for abalone, tramping the local hills for herbs, or fishing in the tumultuous Southern Ocean.

“To be fair, I’ll be out at 6am tomorrow to shoot partridge,” she laughs. Yes, partridge are an introduced species, but unlike foxes they’re edible and end up on a well-garnished plate.

Just like the pigs she lovingly raises before “the local butcher comes out to slaughter them and I turn them into bacon and charcuterie”.

<p> — Two of Gregory’s hand-reared pigs. Alas for them, they are destined for the table.

The meal she’ll cook next Thursday on Hamilton Island will be a sunset alfresco affair over wood and charcoal alongside qualia’s spa on the north side of the island.

What makes it so special?

In Tassie, Gregory often dives for the scallops she serves. But for this meal, they’ll be Queensland scallops, “served in the shell with the wild wakame butter I make from Tasmanian seaweed”.

The other two canapés consist of chilled oysters with cumquat mignonette and – in a nod to Queensland’s beef industry – Wagyu skewers with angasi oyster sauce.

As for mains, it’s hard to choose. Charred octopus with smoked macadamia and kombucha pickled currants? Gregory’s signature lobster noodles with black garlic and burnt butter? Or the local mud crabs on spelt flatbread?

Gregory in wild cooking mode. From ‘How Wild Things Are’ Courtesy of Hardie Grant Publishing. Photo: Adam Gibson

“The whole mud crabs come from Hamilton itself,” the chef explains.

Race week will be a welcome break for the hunter/gatherer/ forager/farmer/chef. “This has been a very cold and wet Tasmanian winter. So my sous chef Jamie and I are looking forward to it being slightly warmer.

“Plus cooking with local produce like mud crabs. We have a few in Tassie, but they’re hard to get hold of.”

Peter Gilmore will be cooking for 140 guests at a dinner in the Long Pavilion this Sunday. Ken Butti

This is the second time the Wild Chef (and some of us thought Gordon Ramsay was wild enough) has cooked at race week. She last appeared with one of her many mentors, Peter Gilmore, award-winning chef at Sydney’s Quay. Gilmore is now as much of a fixture at race week as the starting boat.

As usual, he’s not revealing his menu until the 140 guests sit down for dinner at the Long Pavilion this Sunday.

Not that you need to be into fine dining to eat well. There are plenty of opportunities to tuck into a post-race sausage sanger or sample the delights of Eat Street – as the marina Front Street is designated for the week – with its food market stalls offering multicultural grub that James Cook would have relished when he sailed through this archipelago on what he recorded as “Whitsunday 1770”.

The grand opening of the foodie race week this Saturday is the showcase dinner by Paul Carmichael, with a focus on Caribbean cuisine: lobster curry, jerk lamb shoulder and banana rumali roti followed by Guinness and truffle.

Chef Paul Carmichael is cooking Caribbean fare at the opening dinner on Saturday night. Edwina Pickles

But each day is anchored by a key eating experience. Despite its name, men are also allowed at Sunday’s Wild Oats Ladies Lunch, while Monday sees comedian Cameron Knight perform at the popular Surf and Turf Dinner.

Yachtsman and businessman Sandy Oatley and winemaker Darren John host Tuesday’s Robert Oatley Wine Dinner, featuring five of their favourite vintages from the company’s vineyards in Western and South Australia.

The occasional male is likely to grace this year’s Wild Oats Ladies Lunch, too. Robbie Josephsen

A highlight of the Lay Day on Wednesday is the traditional Charles Heidsieck Champagne Lunch, with Will Cowper, from Brisbane’s Otto restaurant, presenting an Italian-influenced dinner on Thursday, beginning with cocktails overlooking Catseye Beach.

On Friday, qualia’s executive chef, John Kennedy, will be at the helm of the classic Paspaley lunch for 176, suitably featuring pearl meat: the succulent abductor muscle of an oyster usually discarded when divers find a pearl.

Pearl meat will be on the menu at next Friday’s glamorous Paspaley White Luncheon. Kara Rosenlund

Then the culinary week ends with Saturday’s Presentation Dinner, with live entertainment at the island’s conference centre.

But back to the ‘superchef in a wetsuit’. Gregory worked in some of the world’s most distinguished restaurants alongside legendary chefs including Yannick Alléno in Paris and Michel Bras in southern France, where she found her passion for foraging.

Did she ever imagine she’d become a TV star?

“No. We all go on a life journey and I never expected mine to take me to TV,” she says. “It’s difficult for me to do because I’m an introvert. But life is about what you have to share.”