Food review by James Hill

Food

Steve Sparkes was in the kitchen today cooking an American-themed lunch based on the food of San Francisco.

Steve was assisted by our Cellarmaster Nick Reynolds.

Canapés

Nick prepared the canapés today. First up, smoked ocean trout on a bagel with cream cheese, onion and capers.

Then followed sliders or burgers based on the famous Shake Shack burger. If you have ever been to the States this is the go-to place. Very authentic. Nick used Martin’s potato rolls, fried the inside and then melted some Kraft cheese over not a quarter pounder but an eighth of a pounder and topped it with lettuce and tomato. The sauce was made with mayonnaise, ketchup, yellow mustard, dill pickle, garlic powder, paprika, cayenne pepper mayonnaise, ketchup and American mustard.

Who doesn’t love a burger?

We all did, the burgers were perfect and moreish as were the bagels.

Professor Mark Bradford told us the story of the name hamburger originated. It was the diaspora of the Germans in the late 18th century who used to walk around eating steak and bread. Most of them were from Hamburg therefore they became known as hamburgers.

Main

Steve presented a meal that he had when he was first in San Francisco, it’s known as Cioppino and is considered the signature dish of San Francisco, a seafood stew. The ingredients today were cuttlefish, gemfish, prawns, pippies and mussels. The sauce was made with tomatoes, onion, capsicum, celery, leeks and chilli adding herbs oregano and basil.

Loved the flavours and the seafood was perfectly cooked.

Steve says this is normally served in a loaf of sourdough however somewhat difficult to replicate at our lunch so he purchased provided sourdough from Baker Bleu in Double Bay to go with the Cioppino.

We had the sourdough country roll with the stew perfect for ‘scarpetta’ as the Italians say. This is the indescribable pleasure of sopping up the sauce.

There were some comments on the warmth of the broth. Steve advising it was it was boiling when it was plated and obviously lost a little bit of temperature between the kitchen and the dining room not so much as to the detriment of the flavour.

Loved the seafood dish today, plenty to go around. No one went home hungry another great meal from our team today.

Thanks Nick and Steve.

Cheese

Our Cheesmaster, in theme, presented a cow’s milk cheese from Vermont USA.

It came to the table at a perfect temperature, moist and creamy with a pleasant sweetness.

This clothbound cheese is the result of an unusual collaboration and is now recognized as one of the finest traditional cheddars produced in the USA.

Cabot Dairy Cooperative make the cheese with milk from a single herd of Holstein cows and their own unique starter cultures at their huge facility in Vermont. The wheels are then transported to Mateo and Andy Kehler’s picturesque farmhouse dairy at Jasper Hill for expert aging. After being carefully bound in cheesecloth and smeared with lard, the 16kg wheels are matured for at least 12 months in the underground caves carved out of the green hillside.

The result is crystalline-flecked, moist and crumbly cheddar with a sweet, tangy caramel flavour.

Steve served this with dried apricots and candied pecan nuts.

The crunchy and crusty baguette from Baker Bleu was the perfect bread to go with the cheese.