Taste: Winter a time to feast

HOBART’S Dark MoFo Winter Feast this month is sure to be the hottest event in town.

Jo Cook at last year’s Winter Feast. PICTURE: Paul County For Elaine Reeves Taste column for the Mercury

HOW little time it has taken for the Dark MoFo Winter Feast to burn off the competition to become the most popular Tasmanian food festival.

Three nights have been extended to five, starting on Wednesday, June 17, and finishing on the Sunday, the longest night of the year.

And as well as extending the time, other strategies have been employed to make it quicker to get in and “less squeezy” once you are there “now we know what to expect”, says Feast producer Gill Minervini.

At the first Winter Feast, there were 35 stalls. This year there will be a Taste-rivalling 65.

Finding stallholders, advising them and coming up with new entrants each year is the job of food curator Jo Cook.

She works on a six-month contract, but in reality is always on the lookout for talent.

And despite the efforts to spread the crowds, she suggests to me “that you go every night — there is so much to eat”.

Arriving at the site, you will have to move through the forecourt and around to the side to get entry to Princes Shed I.

The forecourt will be occupied by people cooking on flame and hot coals.

Gerard Crochon of pie fame at Nicholls Rivulet Organic Farm will be in the forecourt with his new bread dough “pies” and bread on a stick that you cook yourself over coals.

Krumbies has another DIY treat — toast your own marshmallow, add chocolate and sandwich it between two biscuits — it’s called a s’more.

“Go every night — there is so much to eat”

There is Istanbul street food at Laziko Kebabs, included hand-minced lamb kebabs and balik ekmek — barbecued fish in a bun.

“Outside, there will be a lot more seating and a lot more fire this year,” Jo says.

For the Winter Feast, the wickerwork Hothouse will accommodate a cosy whisky and red wine (early-release Moorilla cabernets) bar.

Also braving the elements outside and the theatre of flames are the visiting chefs — five this year, one per day.

Minervini says Jake Kellie, Martin Boetz, Sean Moran, Mike McEnearney and O Tama Carey, all “fit the ethos of paddock-to-plate or garden-to-grill”.

Steve Cumper makes his Feast debut this year, his first professional outing since his own brush with flames when a kitchen fire closed the Red Velvet Lounge in Cygnet last November.

The reopening of the Red Velvet will quickly follow the warm-up act.

Steve describes his feast offering as “nana food” and “not departing in the least from the RVL house style”.

His menu includes chicken pate in a glass bottle with pickles and bread, English-style fish cakes with a backbone of English mustard, capers and lemon served with a turnip remoulade, and a warm butter cake, served with vanilla custard and potroast quinces.

Gail Sellin, also a first-timer, is also keeping in tune with what she makes at Raspberry Fool in Bathurst St, Hobart — “food that your grandma might have made”, in this case puddings.

“I just love the whole nostalgia pull of food; and winter can be a particularly good time of year for eating nostalgia comfort dishes,” she says.

Each night, her team will make 800 serves of chocolate self-saucing pudding, a light lemon delicious pudding and the traditional plum pudding, always intended as a winter dish.

Silvana Taurian, a co-owner of Truckle & Co in Bathurst St, has her whole family involved for the Winter Feast.

Her father, Albert (owner of the first licensed restaurant in Tasmania), has been raising a pig and will hunt a deer.

Her sister, Nori, has been growing red onions.

And on the Monday of Feast week, her father, brothers and sisters will get together to make stag snags (venison and pork sausages) served with sweet chilli jam and pickles made from those onions.