Are you a coffee or tea drinker? I know personally getting through the day without a couple of shots of caffeine can be difficult. As a nation we like to think of ourselves as an increasingly sophisticated lot, shunning instant coffee for a latte or a short macchiato. Evidence points, however to the fact that we have fallen in love with café culture rather than a classy tea or coffee. In our own homes we still drink instant coffee. In general I tend to be a tea drinker, I have limited my self in recent years to two coffees a day plus I find tea more refreshing and I certainly need those antioxidants. Tea unlike coffee is supposed to be good for your constitution! But have you ever thought about pesticides in your daily cuppa? Tests have found pesticide residues in a large number of teas, principally because the leaves are not washed after picking or as part of their processing. I suppose it should be no surprise, it’s a leafy plant and at the mercy of the environment just like any other crop of fruit and vegetables. Out of interest, I Googled “pesticides” for more information, the search reveals 25,000,000 results! It says something about the world we live in, doesn’t it. While no guarantee, eating certified organic foods, which includes tea and coffee, should reduce how much pesticide you consume. There is however no convincing evidence that at minimum levels pesticide residues are bad for your health. Walking down the street breathing in carbon monoxide and fine rubber particles for thousands of passing cars will certainly do more harm. Research isn’t conclusive so if you want to make some moves, evidence suggests source more organic produce. Peeling conventionally grown fruit & vegetables and discarding the outer leaves of things like lettuce, also make a difference. How much is hard to quantify. On the upside nutritionists tell us that the positive health benefits of consuming four to five serves of fresh fruit and vegetables plus your daily cuppa, far out weighs the risk of minute traces of pesticide. We hope! I had an old friend visit our other restaurant, The Boathouse recently, not a chef, a school teacher. She loved it, tasty food, quick and friendly service, I was very pleased with myself and all responsible. She did mention however that the menu was a bit wordy! There was at least a word a dish except for the “Fish & chips” that she did not know. Are you kidding I retort, its simple café fair, soft, luscious risotto, thin Neapolitan style pizzas – wood fired of course, rustic, simple and very morish! “So what’s panagratato?” She says. “It’s a type of toasted breadcrumb with a little garlic and thyme, a poor mans parmesan that adds a little crunch to pasta” She continued, so what is, Aioli, Fataya, chorizo, fiore de latte, brandade, romesco and harrisa? Ok, I get your point but in context of the whole menu it’s only a few words. I explained that at some point chicken snitzel and black forest gateaux would have been considered very fancy. A menu should entice and grab your attention, engage you in conversation with the person taking your order. She looked unconvinced and by then, I was too! So a quick boring but informative summary of the above – garlic mayonnaise, Lebanese pie, Spanish sausage, fresh milk cheese, creamy salted cod, red pepper & hazelnut sauce and last but not least, Moroccan spice mix. The jury is out on the glossary for the menu and we sincerely apologies to all of you that love your food but go out for a million other reasons other than to deconstruct menus. Bon appetite – Sorry - Grubs up! There is no better time to be at Fenix than summer. That’s not to say winter isn’t special, but nothing equals the explosion of life along the river as the days grow longer. Natives, wild herbs and little flowers, some of which have spread from near by gardens past and present. There is something mystical and intriguing about their proliferation along the waters edge and the life that they sustain. I am passionate about the discovery of new ingredients recipes and techniques and it was quite by chance that I found wild garlic flowers a stones throw from the restaurant. It is deeply satisfying to create and cook with ingredients you have grown or collected yourself. Unfortunately for the chefs at Fenix they are now sent on trips to forage for snow drops wattle flowers, nasturtium, water mint and herbs along the pathways and steep banks of the Yarra. There is an element of fun and an earthy connection that makes us feel special about our locality and these forgotten gems. In a similar way we have built up strong relationships with like minded growers ensuring our search for the best produce is successful. Our potatoes for example come once a week from a farm in Daleysford, they are beautiful and arrive crusted with red dirt in massive hessian sacks. Edible flowers are also collected from a little spot in Bundoora where I happened across a gardener keen to show me a wild chocolate flower that grows over his property. It actually smells like chocolate and the bulbs from the same plant are delicious. In the coming months I intend to hold a cooking class and share some summer recipes with wild herbs and flowers. If you would like to register your interest to hear and experience more please e-mail me at rcapaldi@fenix.com.au The word honey is engaging, luscious, soft sweet and oozing. I never really made the connection with the sweet stuff in the squeezy bottle and the very same stuff loaded into a waxy comb straight from the hive when I was young. I appreciated that bees made honey, lived in a hive and of course they worked very hard! At the restaurant I started to buy from a local farmer several years ago who would turn up at the back door once a month with a lovely wooden box containing four racks of soft waxy comb loaded with lavender honey. It is so evocative and absolutely delicious. Honey was used for thousands of years as a sweetener before sugar cane began to take its place. The best honeys are considered to be those that are scented with the flowers from which the bees collect the nectar, such as thyme, acacia, fennel or pine. Narbonne honey from Francefor example is scented with rosemary. Honey contains sugars, mineral salts and plant acids not in any exceptional quantity but there none the less and like ginger or garlic it is often a housewives cure all. The bee adds an enzyme to the nectar that it collects from the flowers and stores it in the chambers of the comb where water evaporates to concentrate the syrup into honey. And a quick tip - sweeten a simple salad dressing with honey – mix a tsp of lavender honey with a tsp of mustard, a splash of white balsamic vinegar and a good slosh of quality olive oil. Delicious |
