Australia Day barbie with source
TOP chefs from around the country share their favourite BBQ recipes with us showcasing their home state’s top produce.
YES, yes, we know there’s no such thing as Italian food. Or Spanish food. Or Indian food. All those traditional recipes are not really national, they’re regional, and each country’s cuisine is a multitude of cuisines from a million discrete regions.
Well, guess what? Australia does regional, too. Spurred by a growing interest in the provenance of ingredients, we’re doing regional in a less hidebound way than most other countries. And with our golden soil, local producers’ wealth for toil, a home girt by seafood and all that land abounding in nature’s gifts … you can see where this is heading.
We asked a bunch of chefs from around our wide brown land to share a barbecue menu based on the produce of their home state. They have also given us a favourite recipe for you to try. So this Australia Day, don’t just have any old barbie. Have a West Australian barbie, or a NSW barbie, or a Tassie barbie … well, you know the rest.
SOUTH AUSTRALIA —
PHIL WHITMARSH
Cook. Daniel O’Connell Pub and
Dining. North Adelaide
Everyone loves a drop of seafood on the barbie in summer, and albacore is a sustainable and delicious fish that chars wonderfully. I love ox tongue; it’s cheap, has bags of flavour and after the initial cooking, only takes a few moments on the BBQ. Finally, there’s nothing easier than tossing a few stoned and halved plums on the barbie. I serve them with a good creme brulee.
MENU:
BBQ albacore tuna with fermented chilli vierge
BBQ Ox tongue (meat from Richard Gunner’s family farm on the Coorong), curry pickled Clare Valley egg, McLaren Vale silverbeet and walnut salad
Hot Plums and Bay leaf creme caramel
RECIPE:
BBQ Ox tongue, curry pickled egg, silverbeet and walnut salad
For the tongues (serves 4-6)
2 Ox tongues
2 carrots split lengthways
2 lge onion peeled and halved
2 celery sticks
1 tbsp each of:
White pepper
Star anise
Juniper
Coriander seeds
Fennel seeds
Place all in a pot, bring to a boil and reduce to a simmer. Cook for at least 2.5hrs or until a skewer goes through with no resistance. Cool in stock. Peel the tongues. Chill till firm.
For curry pickled eggs:
12 hard boiled eggs
600g white vinegar
300g malt vinegar
350g caster sugar
50g hot mustard powder
30g turmeric
Boil everything except the eggs. Place the eggs in a jar, pour over the hot liquid, screw on lid and leave for at least seven days.
For the walnut and silverbeet salad:
1 bunch silverbeet roughly chopped
Handful of walnuts roasted till gold
100g vinaigrette
Toss all together and season
To build:
Scatter the salad over a platter or board. BBQ tongue until nicely charred on both sides. Season and dress with vinaigrette. Lay over the silverbeet. Cut eggs in half and dot about. Serve with something boozy.
To drink: Max Allen recommends: Coopers Extra Strong Vintage Ale, Adelaide ($5)
TASMANIA — DAVID MOYLE
Franklin, Hobart
An Australia Day barbecue is synonymous with the ocean for me. An open fire and the beach, what could be better? Light the fire late afternoon, to get the grill up to heat after spending the day in the water. The menu is based on seafood and refreshing ingredients, a way to kid myself into thinking I am nourishing myself and guests when the reality is generally liver-punishing.
MENU:
Sauteed lettuce and cucumber with butter dressing
Whole wood grilled abalone in bull kelp
Grilled peach with geranium and almond milk
The lettuces are mostly celtuce, a variety we get from growers in Neika. Our cucumbers come from Weston farm in Broadmarsh and the butter and buttermilk for the dressing comes from Ashgrove. The abalone is wild caught from Ashmores, the kelp is gathered from the shoreline. Our peaches come from Caine orchards and the almonds are always Australian.
RECIPE:
Grilled peach with geranium and almond milk
3 whole unrefrigerated peaches
3 leaves rose geranium (you can substitute
lemon verbena,
flowering rosemary
or bay leaf)
60ml water
200g almonds
1l water
15g coconut sugar or unrefined sugar
For the peaches: Halve the peaches. Twist the flesh off the stone and flick the stone out using the tip of the knife. In a snug-fitting shallow pan (stainless steel only, otherwise the acids react) place the peach halves and the stone together with the water and the rose geranium. Place on a woodfired grill with a steel bowl over the top that allows for smoke to flow over the pan and be captured in the bowl. Cook until the peach starts to change texture without collapsing. Chill in the liquid then pull the skin off. Retain the juices
For the almond cream: Soak the almonds in the water overnight. Place the almonds and the water into a blender and blend for 3 minutes. Put the mixture into muslin cloth and push out the milk, ensuring you extract every last bit of liquid as the oils are held in the meal. Place the milk into a pot and bring to a gentle boil. Add the sugar, simmer until it reaches the consistency of thick cream. Continue stirring off the heat until the liquid has cooled. Serve the almond cream under the peaches with the roasting liquid over the top
To drink: Max Allen recommends 2013 Josef Chromy SGR Delikat Riesling, Relbia, Tasmania ($28)
WESTERN AUSTRALIA —
DAN MASTERS
Head chef, Rockpool Bar & Grill,
Perth
Fremantle Octopus and David Hohnen’s Arkady Farm lamb are both such unique and truly West Australian products, they are ideal ingredients for a BBQ. At least, they will be for me this Australia Day — we’ll be sitting around the pool at our friends Tubby and Jacqui’s place with a few nice bottles of pinot and some cold beers.
MENU:
Charcoal grilled Fremantle Octopus with hand pounded preserved lemon pesto, kipfler potato, almonds and olives
David Hohnen’s Arkady Farm lamb chops and cutlets served with roasted Royal Blues (potatoes), grilled Carnarvon asparagus and BBQ peppers and red onions
Watermelon granita with almond milk panna cotta, summer berries and mint
RECIPE:
BBQ peppers and slow-cooked red onion wedges with fennel paste
Peppers
3 Slow cooked red onions (wrap in foil with skin on then cook in the coals of the BBQ till soft, peel and quarter)
1 tsp fennel seeds, roasted
1 tsp salted capers, rinsed
2 cloves garlic, peeled and chopped
2 eschalots, peeled and roughly chopped
Extra virgin olive oil
FORVM cabernet sauvignon vinegar
Marjoram leaves
For the BBQ red and yellow peppers:
Quarter the peppers and remove seeds. Toss with some extra virgin olive oil and sea salt and cook on a hot BBQ till just tender and heavily caramelised.
For the fennel paste:
Make a paste by crushing the toasted fennel seeds in a mortar and pestle; add the garlic and capers, then eschalots. Fry the paste in some evoo in a shallow saucepan for 3-4 minutes until fragrant.
Mix through the slow cooked onion wedges and BBQ peppers. Season with FORVM cabernet sauvignon vinegar, marjoram leaves and salt and pepper.
To drink: Max Allen recommends (with the lamb and red peppers): 2012 McHenry Hohnen Rocky Road Cabernet Sauvignon, Margaret River ($50)
VICTORIA — BOB HART
BBQ expert and author
For Victorian barbecue enthusiasts, the quality of the local produce at this time of the year makes up our minds for us. First, small, black mussels from places like Portarlington in Port Phillip Bay are cheap, delicious, widely available, and second to none.
Second, Beef ribs are a magnificently flavoured “secondary” cut of beef that tend to be off the barbecue menu for those who cook over gas, which is most Australians. But they don’t have to be. I get great results by first searing the ribs, then braising them — in a grill-friendly baking dish at low temperature on a gas barbecue.
And finally, glorious stonefruit from Northern Victoria — at its best at this time of the year. Prepare on the barbecue, add raw, natural sugar and some creme fraiche, and there you have it.
MENU:
Portarlington Mussels, Asian-style
Dry-aged Black Angus beef short ribs from the Western District — chargrilled and then braised, on the grill, in White Rabbit wheat beer from Geelong
Grilled yellow Shepparton peaches with Yea creme fraiche
RECIPE:
Asian mussels on the grill
Mussels cook quickly on a hot gas grill. And if you prepare your sauce either on the wok-burner beside your grill on most good gas barbecues, or by placing an ovenproof pot on a medium heat and finishing the sauce before increasing the heat and cooking the mussels, so much the better.
Try this: Heat 100g of butter with a splash of canola oil in your large, ovenproof pot and, when foaming, add a finely chopped red onion and allow to soften. Add a minced (pressed) garlic clove, 5cm of fresh, peeled ginger root (with juice) forced through a garlic press, the zest of a lime and a finely chopped small, red chilli — seeded if you want to reduce the heat — and continue to sweat it for a further four or five minutes, easing the heat back a bit. Now add about 300ml of coconut milk and slightly increase the heat. Cook for 4 or 5 minutes to bring to a boil and consolidate the flavours, and then lift off the grill, swirl well to combine, and cover.
Increase the heat of your barbecue and tip 1kg of scrubbed and de-bearded (if you like — or simply trim the beards flush to the shells) mussels on to the grill. Cover briefly. As they open, lift them off the grill immediately and drop them into your hot sauce. (DO NOT be intimidated by mussels that don’t open: they are fine. The ones to avoid are any that don’t CLOSE when you tap their shells while scrubbing them. Toss those in the bin because they are dead.)
Now check the seasoning, adding freshly ground pepper but probably not salt, and eat — by tipping the mussels with their sauce into a large, warmed bowl and eating them in your fingers, scooping up the sauce with empty shells and mopping up with chunks of grill-toasted baguette, or serving them in bowls on a bed of cooked rice — sloshing the sauce over them.
Finish the dish with a squeeze of lime and a sprinkle of fresh chopped coriander.
To drink: Max Allen recommends: Flying Brick Pear Cider, Bellarine Peninsula, Victoria ($4)
Bob Hart’s latest cookbook is Heat and Smoke, heatandsmoke.com
QUEENSLAND —
RYAN SQUIRES
Esquire, Brisbane
Ever since I changed from the conventional standard gas BBQ to my coal-driven model, I haven’t looked back. It’s a little more effort to get started but it really takes you back to the roots of cooking and the feel of a more intuitive approach.
The quality of the seafood is key to a successful Australia Day barbecue, and fishermen’s co-ops are simply the best place to start. Where I live there are several co-ops within range, four of them within the greater Brisbane region.
Day boats are the key to their quality. The fish you buy will be less than five hours old and you will know exactly where they were caught.
MENU:
Mixed grilled local seafood
Highly marbled Darling Downs calotte (rib eye cap, aka spinalis) with perilla dressing and horseradish
Preserved apple, ginger, sorrel and macadamia nut milk
RECIPE:
Australian co-op mixed bag – eg calamari, king prawns, tiger prawns, Australian Bay lobster, blue swimmer crabs
3 large cloves of fresh Australian garlic, minced
5 tbsps extra virgin olive oil
Sea salt
Chopped parsley
Clean and prepare calamari — detach head from body, detach tentacles from head and discard head and eye part. Place calamari on a chopping board, wing side down. With a sharp knife, deeply score one side of the body at 1cm intervals from tail to tip (this is a traditional Spanish-style cutting method known as “calamari al blancha”). Rub this piece and the tentacles with the garlic/olive oil but do not season until after cooking.
On your coal pit with a baking rack set over the coals, test heat with your hand — you shouldn’t be able to hold your hand over the heat for more than two seconds. Place calamari directly on grill, cut side down first, and tentacles, for no more than 1.5 minutes, depending on size. Flip and grill for another 30 seconds or so, and remove. Sprinkle with salt and parsley and eat immediately.
To drink: Max Allen recommends 2014 Symphony Hill Gewurztraminer, Granite Belt, Qld ($35)
NSW — ROSS DOBSON
BBQ chef and cafe owner
Orchard crops in the south, tropical fruits to the north … and water, water everywhere. The vast state of NSW boasts some of the best oysters you’ll find anywhere, fabulous East Coast king prawns and schools of whiting found around sandbanks in any of the majestic river mouths that run along the coast.
For the prawn and chorizo skewers, I use pork chorizo from Trunkey Creek, south of Bathurst Trunkey Bacon and Pork Co are “nose-to-tail’’ suppliers of excellent, additive free pork products.
Figs are from the Hawkesbury region.
MENU:
Prawn and chorizo skewers
Grilled whiting
Grilled figs with sweet labneh
RECIPE:
Prawn and chorizo skewers
“Cheeky chorizo” is the name of the chorizo we use because of the extra chilli in it. Cook raw chorizo before eating. Chorizo should be a deep, rich colour and packed with garlic and paprika. Please don’t use the chorizo that looks like cabanossi.
SERVES 4
3 raw chorizo, about 350 g (12 oz)
16 raw large prawns (shrimp), peeled and deveined, leaving the tails intact
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons lemon juice
½ teaspoon dried mint
lemon cheeks, to serve
barbecued truss cherry tomatoes, to serve (optional)
Cut the chorizo into 16 chunks similar in thickness to the prawns. Put the chorizo in a bowl with the prawns, olive oil, lemon juice and mint. Toss the ingredients around to combine. Set aside at room temperature for 30 minutes or cover and refrigerate for 3–6 hours. Remove from the fridge 30 minutes before cooking. Preheat the barbecue grill or hotplate to high. Put 2 pieces of chorizo and 2 prawns on each of eight metal skewers. Cook the skewers for 3–4 minutes on each side, or until cooked through. Serve with the lemon cheeks and cherry tomatoes, if desired.
To drink: Max Allen recommends 2014 Krinklewood Francesca Rose, Hunter Valley, NSW ($24)
Ross Dobson’s latest cookbook is King of the Grill, published by Murdoch Books
UPCOMING BBQ EVENTS
The inaugural Melbourne Barbecue Festival, Queen Victoria Market, January 29 to February 1 melbournebarbecuefestival.com.au
The Australian Meat Industry Council’s annual National Sausage King competition is in Adelaide on Saturday February 7. amic.org.au
Melbourne Food & Wine Festival BBQ event The Smoker & The Butcher, February 27 and March 3 — A butchery and barbecue master class with chef Gary Mehigan, master butcher Eusebio ‘Joe’ Marcocci and pit master Andy Groneman from Kansas City, melbournefoodandwine.com.au
Noosa International Food and Wine Festival BBQ events: Asahi Beach BBQ lunch on Noosa Main Beach, Friday May 15, with chefs Morgan McGlone, Andre De Laine and American Andrew Evans; and 1970s Beach Party BBQ and Clambake, Noosa Main Beach, Saturday May 16 and Sunday May 17, noosafoodandwine.com.au