Tasting Australia: everything from forest, beach and bush
Wood-oven bread wafts over Adelaide’s central square. Tasting Australia, you’ve won me already.
Wood-oven bread-baking daily in Adelaide’s central square, the scents wafting over an autumnal city ... Tasting Australia, you’ve won me already.
The now annual (previously biennial) food festival features explorations of provenance and terroir, and everything from forest, beach and bush foraging to back-to-basics baking and single site vineyards.
While the 2014 event highlighted origins and nose-to-tail cuisine, next month’s eight-day program focuses on landscapes, regional produce and the exchange of ideas with international and local chefs, wine makers and authors.
Creative director and chef Simon Bryant says Tasting Australia is not based on “fluff, names or celebrity” — rather, it’s a festival where people can learn about and understand what they are eating. “We’re not putting the chef on a pedestal, it’s pack your boots and your knife.”
The festival will be immersive, Bryant says, with events held in city and suburban restaurants, on farms and in stone cottages, paddocks, vineyards and wineries. Guests are encouraged to participate in discussions and debate.
Throughout the festival, internationals will be paired with local chefs with similar philosophies to share ideas. Think former Noma head chef Matt Orlando and our own Jock Zonfrillo, both of whom make hyper-local produce and foraged native ingredients the stars on the plate.
And there are Californian identities coming to share philosophies, because as co-creative director Paul Henry points out, that region has a comparable climate to ours and has undergone similar cultural changes. But the Californian food culture has evolved differently. “The more we look at contemporary Californian cuisine, the more we can learn from it,” Henry says.
A festival highlight will be the Origins Dinner, where 30 chefs have been briefed to cook what they prepare for themselves at home (rather than, as Bryant puts it, “sous vide rhubarb” or “lobster foam”). Guests are urged to be curious and brave — the dishes will come out at different times. Eat a dessert first, if you want to!
The authors
Food writing stimulates the senses and provokes debate. American-born author of 28 books Mark Kurlansky will discuss the role of food in changing the course of culture and history at two separate events. There’s a five-course dinner built around his book International Night, which features 52 recipes he shared with his daughter Talia on Friday nights over a year. Talia would spin a globe and pick a location each week, and Kurlansky would cook a dish from that region.
Kurlansky will also create a lunch menu at Osteria Oggi based on his bestsellers Salt, Cod and The Big Oyster.
Another American, Lentil Underground author Liz Carlisle, will spend a day with River Cottage star Paul West over lunch at Kalangadoo in South Australia’s South East. Carlisle, a Fellow at the Berkeley Food Institute at the University of California, has helped revitalise rural communities through her work promoting the humble legume. She will cook an Indian meal using 15 types of lentils with chef Ragini Dey, and then talk about sustainable agriculture, seeds, grains and legumes at Pangkarra Foods in the Clare Valley.
“These little beans have a 10,000-year culinary history and are grown and eaten on all continents except Antarctica,” Carlisle says. “They have more antioxidant capacity than blueberries, and a low glycaemic index.”
The chefs
Californian-born Matt Orlando has worked as head chef at Rene Redzepi’s Noma, spent time working under Heston Blumenthal at Fat Duck, and with Thomas Keller in Michelin-starred European kitchens. At his Copenhagen restaurant Amass, he specialises in foraging and local ingredients at his industrial estate restaurant with its hip hop music and graffitied walls. Here, the chef will join Orana chef Jock Zonfrillo to create a six-course organic dinner, Natural, based on South Australian produce and matched with wines at Town Square.
Restaurateur and chef Anthony Myint has rewritten the guide on charitable restaurants in the US and donates profits from his sustainability ventures. Myint runs a stable of restaurants in the US including Mission Street Food, Mission Chinese Food, Mission Cantina, Mission Burger, Lt Waffle and Commonwealth Restaurant.
Myint co-owns The Perennial in San Francisco, known for its agrarian cuisine and pursuit of progressive and sustainable farming. With Botanic Gardens Restaurant head chef Paul Baker, Myint will create a garden-to-plate lunch, and a long-table dinner on sustainable production and ethical dining.
Western Australian export David Pynt, who runs the fiery Burnt Ends in Singapore, will cook with Magill Estate head chefs Scott Huggins and Emma McCaskill at a five course dinner prepared on their Molteni wood fired grill. Pynt counts Noma and Asador Etxebarri in Spain as his proving grounds.
The winemakers
With some of the best winemakers in the world within two hours of Adelaide, it’s no surprise that so many of the headliners are local.
Stephen Henschke of Henschke Hill of Grace fame will lead the Barossa Camino, a 7km stroll through the vineyards of Mt Edelstone and the green pastures of the Hutton Vale Farm, along creeks, up hills and to views of the Eden Valley church and its heritage buildings before lunching at Bootmakers Cottage.
“It has a beautiful creek line and red gums and rocky outcrops and within that we have beautiful vineyards and villages,” Henschke says.
The event is Paul Henry’s pick of the Tasting Australia program because it encapsulates locations, the uniqueness of South Australian produce and its climate, and how culture has impacted on winemaking, farming and food production.
“It demonstrates the intimacy of the people who live on the land and their connection to the land and it’s an enormous privilege to share that understanding,” Henry says. “When you walk through the Barossa with a Henschke across a vineyard that has vines on it that are 100 years old, I think that’s profound and I don’t think it can be replicated anywhere.”
Henschke’s Mount Edelstone Shiraz, which is a unique blend from one vineyard first planted in 1912, will also feature at the Single Sites dinner.
“It’s all about the lives and the blood, sweat and tears and the history of the Barossa, which makes it unique,” Henschke says. “Because of this site, it has a unique and exceptional flavour.”
The Single Sites dinner highlights definitive flavours from single origin vineyards, produced by seven South Australian winemakers including Kate Laurie from Deviation Road, Kym Schroeter from Penfolds and Jeffrey Grosset from Grosset Wines. Contributing local chefs include Fino’s David Swain, Africola’s Duncan Welgemoed and Lachlan Colwill from Hentley Farm.
The bakers
Dilapidated Hart’s Mill at Port Adelaide has been renovated for the Loaves and Fishes event, starring US bakers Jeffrey Hamelman and Josey Baker. The old mill beside the Port River wharves symbolises the city’s origins, complementing the synergies of ancient grains, species protection, land care and health.
Hamelman and Baker will craft bread and cook fish caught off the wharves while discussing sustainability. As the stars of the documentary The Grain Divide, the pair will also mull over the gluten-free movement, the history of grains and their impact on trade and diets, organics and the farm to table movement.
Baker and several others will also bake in Town Square throughout the week, pairing fresh breads and pastries with artisanal produce from cheese to olive oils.
“Back in the good old days, the communal oven was used to bake everybody’s bread that they’d prepared at home,” Baker says. “These days this type of thing is increasingly rare, so it hearkens back to a time when the members of a community were more involved with one another, when they relied on one another on a deeper level.”
Domenic Tiani will also hold an Easy as Pie interactive masterclass on pie making for pastry lovers.
But the event that might best epitomise Tasting Australia and its back-to-basics ideology?
That could be a masterclass run by the Country Women’s Association and author Belinda Jeffery — queen of cakes, baking, and simple recipes that work for home cooks.
Tasting Australia is on from May 1-8; more information at tastingaustralia.com.au