Food notes by James Hill and wine review by James Tinslay

Our room was packed for our first lunch of the year with a Greek-themed menu that celebrated the season.

Canapés

Prawns served on spoons with a tomato sauce.  Prawns are great at this time of the year and today a great example of good texture and flavour. They were medium-cooked tiger prawns served on a sauce made up of tomatoes, onions, white wine, dried Greek oregano, prawn heads and tails and parsley. This is normally a sauce to bake prawns in, today made separately and served at room temperature and used to add a flavour boost to the prawns 

Next up was some homemade hummus made with organic dried chickpeas and topped with Aleppo pepper and finished with a dash of olive oil. The hummus was made on Sunday to allow the flavours to integrate.

Last of the canapés was some whipped cod roe topped with avruga caviar and served on Jatz biscuits. Avruga caviar is a caviar substitute made from herring and other products. It does not contain fish roe however still has an aroma and flavour not dissimilar to caviar.

Main

Solomós Lemonato (salmon baked in lemon)

Some robust flavours on the plate today. Australian salmon marinated in garlic, green olives, thinly sliced lemon, a mixture of dried oregano, fennel seeds, salt and pepper and olive oil. It was cooked at 180C for eight minutes and came to the table perfectly cooked thanks to the supervision of our chef Rob Doll.

It was accompanied by orzo and spring onions, agrodolce, radicchio and a dollop of skordalia. The radicchio was cooked with EVOO and merlot vinegar, the cooking softened the bitterness and the vinaigrette adding a touch of sweetness.

Skordalia is purée of bread, almond meal, egg yolk, garlic and lemon juice and today the garlic wasn’t overly dominant.

Orzo, also known as risoni, is a form of short-cut pasta shaped like a large grain of rice. It is made from durum wheat. Once cooked it is added to spring onions that were cooked with EVOO salt and pepper till wilted.

Our Italian-speaking member Julian lead us in the proper pronunciation of radicchio (hard c).

Cheese

Cheese today, sourced by the chef of the day, was Kefalograviera a popular Greek cheese made from sheep's and goat's milk. Kefalograviera's flavour is slightly salty.

Source: sheep and goat’s milk.
Origin: Greece,
Texture: firm,
Colour: pale yellow.

The room was divided on the enjoyment of the cheese, some saying they wished the XCheesemaster was here so they could tell him it wasn’t liked.

It was served with a cucumber and tomato salad. The tomato salad was made with coriander seeds, fennel seeds, paprika, dried chilli and lashings of olive oil. 

Bread today was Iggys perfect to sop up the salad dressing.

Wine

Canapé wines

• 2019 Robert Stein Dry Riesling (Mudgee)
• 2011 Craggy Range Te Muna Road Riesling (Hawkes Bay)

Both of these Rieslings were enjoyed by all. However, there the similarities end. The Mudgee wine was already showing some development at four years of age with clear Riesling fruit with lemon and lime tones noted. The New Zealand wine at ten years of age was still in wonderful condition with bright fruit, despite its maturity. At first, the palate tricks you into believing it may be over-sweet but that feeling fades away when it apparently is just real Riesling fruit.

Main course wines

• 2017 Collector Wines Tiger Tiger Chardonnay (Tumbarumba)
• 2014 Shaw and Smith M3 Chardonnay (Adelaide Hills)

The two wines to accompany the salmon were well selected and both of them were rich and soft. The Tumbarumba fruit was full and rich and accompanied by some zesty overtones that made it a well-balanced wine at its peak. The M3 Chardonnay being a few years older was a little softer and richer with a huge mouthfeel. Some found it lightly reductive but given I find the struck match characteristic an unenjoyable and unnecessary part of a Chardonnay whilst others don’t, there was never going to be a consensus.

Cheese wines

• 2011 David Reynaud Crozes-Hermitage (Northern Rhone)
• 2009 Cherubino Shiraz (Frankland Rivwer)

These two wines had the room split on the preference and even the drinkability of the Crozes-Hermitage. I have not liked this Reynaud wine in the past, and this week my feelings were no different. However, at least half the room disagreed with this view. I found the wine over-extracted with a strange metallic edge. It was just weird. The wine showed vibrant black fruits of blackcurrant and blackberries with spicy overtones. Many enjoyed it including our well-credentialled winemakers. The Cherubino was a very good Australian Shiraz with well over ten years of age. It was elegant and smooth, a modern Australian wine, and much liked by all who spoke although some thought it may have been better a few years ago. Fruit versus age, the constant divide.