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Food review by James Tinslay and wine review by Chilly Hargrave

The President Nick Reynolds was in the kitchen today for the first of the Chef of The Year cook-offs. There will be six in all and members will be able to see who and when in the program details contained in the weekly lunch notice.

As befits a CoTY cook-off and Nick’s track history, the starters were beautifully presented. There were three of them being chopped egg and smoked trout tapas, prawn and romesco sauce pintxo and finally, a gazpacho bite.

Last item first, the gazpacho bite was a fascinating looking beast with cucumber hollowed out and replaced by a circular mould on the top which gave it somewhat of an eclectic look. The image above does a far better job of describing the plated outcome. The smoked trout was served on top of an egg-based sauce on toasted sourdough. The romesco sauce had a veritable legion of ingredients including almonds, hazelnut, peppers and cherry tomatoes. A small amount of chilli flakes along with the hot smoked paprika gave it a zippy and full of roasted tomato and pepper flavour.

The main was blue eye, served on a potato rosti with Canadian scallop, asparagus and soubise sauce with dill oil. The potato rosti was delightfully crispy as was the skin on the blue eye. The effect of the smattering of dill oil on the source was very effective. Even a poor fish eater like myself found the fish beautifully cooked, flaky and tender. The asparagus looked a little grey and may have been a little overcooked.

James Healey, in absentia, had selected a goat’s cheese from Holy Goat, La Luna, but in one of the new pyramid shapes. La Luna is always popular and at a retail price of well over $100 per kilo, it should taste excellent.

The coffee was Calibrate Coffee White Blend. This is a mix of Brazil Fazenda Imperio, Ethiopia Yirgacheffe, and Java Jampit 1X. The coffee was well received and is being adopted as our house blend for the time being.

An excellent start by Nick to the cook-off series and with larger numbers allowed from 23 February more members will get to enjoy these lunches.

Wine

A pair of 2014 Hunter Semillons were served with the entrée. The Brokenwood was a bigger style with more colour in the glass. It was developed with mature Hunter lemon curd notes. The Tyrrell’s Belford was a much tighter wine. It was fine and mineral although not showing the flavour intensity of the Brokenwood.

Two Chardonnays were matched to the main course. The first, a 2018 Domaine William Fèvre Chablis was quite a fruity wine that lacked the minerality we expect from Chablis. Similarly, the palate was full with low acidity - undoubtedly due to malolactic. The 2012 Seppelt Jaluka Chardonnay was for many the best wine of the day. Coming from a rather unique vineyard in the Henty region it was still a young wine. Citrus fruit was balanced by attractive barrel ferment characters. The palate was tight and long with fresh acidity. With this wine, there is no malolactic.

A couple of rather interesting wines finished the day. A 2012 Tyrrell’s Belford Chardonnay (covered in wine show award bling) was a big wine. Showing a lot of artefact of new oak, barrel ferment and natural yeasts, it was a real mouthful. A high acid level pulled the wine up on the finish.

The COTD had requested a Loire Sav Blanc to go with the cheese and it surprised many - the cellar master included. The 2012 Château de Ladoucette Pouilly Fumé was still fresh with bright gooseberry fruit aromas. These were complemented by a subtle apricot botrytis note. The palate was quite rich with obvious sweetness and proved a good match for the Holy Goat.