Food review by James Hill and wine review by Stephen O'Halloran

Food

The room was full today for our first mixed lunch of the year with Bernard Leung in the kitchen today as Chef of the Day in our first “cook-off” for Chef of the Year 2022. He was assisted by member Alan Langridge who Bernie advised had spent four hours cutting vegetables in preparation for the lunch.

Today’s lunch had a Spanish/Moroccan theme and we started with a flavourful and textural gazpacho. It was made from de-seeded tomatoes, peeled cucumber, and capsicum with some red onion and a clove of raw garlic for some bite. Tablespoons of olive oil and sherry vinegar were added then ground cumin and blitzed in a blender along with a thick slice of soaked bread for a fuller thicker consistency. It was topped with some bread croutons and red, green and yellow peppers.

Next served were some perfectly made Serrano ham croquettes. Bernard explained he had to cook them twice as initially, they were too runny!

These consisted of Serrano ham diced into 5mm cubes, with béchamel sauce seasoned with nutmeg and grated Parmesan cheese. It was then rolled in egg and bread crumbs allowed to cool and then deep fried. They were served on top of aioli that secured them on the plate.

Very popular with our members today.

Our main course was quail with couscous and romesco sauce.

Tunnel-boned quail were marinated overnight in cumin, coriander, paprika, garlic, salt and pepper. They were then pan-fried to brown the outside, before finishing in the oven. This was served on a bed of couscous made with vegetable stock, and mixed with diced and de-seeded tomatoes, sultanas, cucumbers, chopped parsley and mint and finished with lemon juice and olive oil. The romesco sauce tomato, capsicums, and almonds oven roasted, and then blitzed with sugar, salt and red chilli. A good heat not overwhelming.

Extra bowls of sauce were served to our tables for those that liked a little more spice.

The quail was perfectly cooked, moist and flavourful. Not an easy task with 58 serves.

There were many favourable comments and the food presented was a worthy contender for COTY.

Well done Bernard.

Today's cheese presented by our Cheesemaster, James Healey, was Fromager D’Affinois Florette a white goat’s milk cheese from France.

It was soft, surface-ripened pure goats’ cheese made near Lyons, France.

This new cheese uses special microfiltration techniques that concentrate the rich solids in the goat’s milk ensuring a very smooth texture and delicious rounded creamy flavour.

Fromagerie Guilloteau are leaders in a modern process called “ultra filtration”. Ultra filtration is a technique co-created by Jean-Claude Guilloteau and occurs before the cheese making process. Pasteurised milk is forced through a series of membranes, extracting protein and removing water concentrating all other desirable components. This results in the production of consistent, nutritionally rich cheeses that have a silkier mouth feel and creamy subtle flavour.

Accompanying the cheese was a salad with a buttermilk vinegarette made from buttermilk, apple cider vinegar, white balsamic and honey and served with mixed leave salad and peaches.

Wine

A mixed lunch produced a bumper crowd of 50+ to kick off our second lunch of the new year. Two very smart Rieslings greeted us initially, a Holm Oak from the Tamar Valley in Tas 2015 and my old favourite a Seppelt Drumborg from 2016. I thought both were a treat.

The Holm Oak was a lot dryer than most Tassie Rieslings which usually have distinctive residual sugar /fruit overtones  The wine had an appealing flavour, was ageing well for an 8 yo and I really enjoyed it with the aperitifs. 

The second Riesling, the Drumborg, was by general acclaim a better wine and I have always thought that this Riesling is consistently amongst our top six Rieslings. This particular bottle was excellent 7 yo drinking probably at its peak but with no indication of fading. Let us hope that our Wine Master has plenty more in our cellar.

The next wine served on our table was the Yabby Lake Chardonnay 2015. A true delight. Complex flavours, restrained oak and delicate but very flavoursome. A beauty! 12.5 %. Drinking in my view at its optimum. Wish I had some.

The next cab off the rank at our table was the (wait for it) Malterdinger Spatburgunder, try to pronounce that!  2015 from Baden in Germany. Someone suggested it was a first cousin to Pinot Noir. Whatever its genealogy, the wine was enjoyable but a tad one-dimensional, sound but lacking in any varietal characteristic A nice wine that did not demand one’s attention.

The final two reds both from the vintage of 2012 were great choices by our Wine Master coming from arguably our best regions for Cabernet, Coonawarra and Margaret River. I think it is fair to say that by general comment around the room, the Leeuwin Estate was a clear favourite over the Mildara without any disrespect to the latter. The Leeuwin was superbly balanced and elegant, yet powerful and a wonderful Bordeaux style. By comparison, the Mildara was a bigger wine but lacked the elegance of the Leeuwin. As a matter of interest, the label on the Mildara made mentions the famous “Peppermint Pattie“ produced by the company in the 1963  vintage. I was fortunate to taste this wine from time to time many years ago and it was a truly remarkable wine. The overwhelming mint flavour was quite unique. The memory still lingers.