Moorabinda Station Part II - Sunday Suppers Winter Brunch

"Stuffing vegetables is a rare culinary experience in these busy days. It is time-consuming and provides pleasure that we don't often experience anymore - the kind of bliss that results from communal cooking, when time is not an object and the purpose is the process as well as the end result." - Ottolenghi. 

We started early, before light. It was cold, dark and the amount and size of wood that was sitting by the wood fired oven, our temperamental friend for the next few hours, was quite optimistic. However, this very morning in the shearers quarters kitchen on Moorabinda Station was not at all uninviting. In this basic, rustic, cold and dark kitchen, we had committed to prepare and enjoy a“winter brunch”, a menu taken from Karen Mordechai’s Sunday Supper Cookbook. This very morning was our idea of bliss and we were glad to be in among it.

As the morning sunlight began to flood in and the kitchen warmed up, the conversation and flour flowed freely and our communal brunch was well underway. Although our morning was moving along, somehow time had stopped. Out here on this rural property on this brisk winter morning nothing else mattered. Thankfully time was no longer running away.  Beyond the property gates the world was nonexistent and our agendas didn't go past the following few hours. This morning we would spend enjoying a slow winter brunch and in the afternoon we would visit a neighbouring farm on the search of chickens and ducks for dinner. We were all focused on the day’s tasks at hand and were firstly impressively invested in chipping into this morning meal. A very slow living day it would be. 

Three of us were pottering in the kitchen and the rest of us were pottering outside. We were collecting fire wood and manning the temperamental wood stove, setting and styling the table outside in the paddock, sharing the kneading and rolling of the dough and taking turns timing the bagels as they boiled, making coffee on the outside campfire for us all as we cooked and moving the table back to the veranda when the rain began to pour. Many keen, communal cooking hands – all in utter bliss – were invested to making this brunch very light work. 

As far as the menu went, we did a little local tweaking. To top the bagels, barramundi had become our perfect local fish substitute (and cousin) to the recipe recommended sea bass. It was cured with loose black tea leaves and pieces of fresh ginger and had been hanging out in its curing bath for an entire three days prior. We also replaced fresh figs with pecans for the honeyed tart. Our lovely host for the weekend, Annabelle of The Dailys, lives right down the road from Moorabinda with her husband and three children on their pecan farm. So, incorporating pecans into the recipe was a must.

Around mid-morning, we found ourselves by the outside fire, sipping on cardamom coffee while cracking pecans with a suitably beautiful wooden nut cracker, as though it was the most important job of our day. Meanwhile, the bagels were also slowly rising and being carefully shaped and soon after the blood oranges were being peeled and the tart shell was baking in the wood fired oven. The process, it seemed, truly was as exciting and important as the end result.  

When it was finally time to eat, there we sat - post cardamom coffee and pre chicken and duck farm visit - out of the rain and on the shearers quarters veranda. It was a peaceful, quiet winter morning and things were casual, yet intentional. The bagels were laden with olive oil infused cream cheese and the citrus salad was liberally dished out.

Or morning of communal cooking was savored – the winter brunch menu was perfection, and we were completely satisfied – not only with the spread on the table, but the process and communal effort it took to get it there. It was utter bliss.   

Sunday Suppers by Karen Mordechai
Winter Brunch

Homemade everything bagels
Whipped cream cheese
Tea and ginger cured barramundi
Warm citrus salad
Pecan tart with honey

[The photographs were a communal effort, too -
Image 8 of my hands by Clare Yazbeck, image 9 of the table spread by Annabelle Hickson, image 10 of the barramundi,11 of the citrus salad,and 13 of the cream cheese by Luisa Brimble]

Moorabinda Station Part I - Our Weekend with the Dailys

For more Moorabinda photos and stories, click here for our Weekend With The Dailys E-book!

We passed the last town a while back. Now, as we followed the black lick of a line out deeper into the south, out to the west and into the Dumaresq Valley, we watched the landscape blur. The limbs of trees sagged heavy with prickly pear, mistletoe and wattle. We couldn’t help but forage. We stopped to pick some of each, reaching, jumping high up for the best branches and tasting the pears and their prickles on our lips. Our bounty was rich, but knowing the place and the people we were about to meet, our bounty was about to grow richer.

Driving into Moorabinda Station, we were greeted with the quintessential beauty of a rural, wintry Australia. Rusted metal gates, corrugated iron and a huge wool shed come dance hall come whatever. There were ancient towering gums and kelpies lying beneath them. Utes and farm houses and thousands of acres with neighbours nowhere to be seen. There were also shearer’s quarters, a place for us to sleep and make our home for the next two nights. Here, rustic and wooden bedrooms opened out to one long veranda. The common place was the kitchen, with an old wooden farm table tucked between the wood fired stove and a stores cupboard. There was also a dining room fixed alongside that housed a long dinner table, which in the evenings was full of flickering candle light and warmth from an open fire.

There was content here to feast on for the whole weekend. Our company, nine likeminded ladies (most somewhat new but all very dear friends) came together to do just this. To share the time away, to live slowly, to photograph and to feast. We cooked, we talked, we ate. We tended to wheelbarrows of wattle and our other foraged bits, sipped hot toddies by the campfire and stared at the stars. We learned what it means to wake early and build a fire on the wood fired oven before we could have tea. We ate brunch on the veranda, searched for brumbies on the station and killed and prepared chooks and ducks for our dinner on a farm nearby. Our days were full, full, full. And our evenings were slow and long and delicious. We couldn’t possibly want for anything else.

Out here, among the wintry rural landscape, everything felt calm. There were moments, so many moments, where it was nice to stop and remember just that. That moment. For its smell. For its goosebumps. For its rhythm. Ichi-go ichi-e was so apt right here. This weekend, so special but soon gone, was a place to be present, fully. And so easily done. The bounty here among us was just so very rich.

These were our friends, this was our food and this stunning place was ours for the weekend.

A big thanks to Philip and Julia Markham for letting us stay on your farm. To Paul and Jenny Magna for the birds, for the pizza and for the inspiration. And the biggest thanks of all to Annabelle, for preparing it all, for letting us come visit and for giving us a glimpse into your daily life. 

A Truffle Hunt

ingredient profile
n: black truffle
l: majura valley, act
s: june - august

Interview with truffle farmer: Jayson Mesman

From planting to the plate, what is the life span of a French black truffle?
The truffles appear in the ground early in the year, January and February, but will not start to put on weight, size and all important aroma until truffle season, early June to late August. Once a truffle is harvested from the earth and the mycelium is broken, the truffle has a very short life span. Restaurants will typically not have a truffle longer than 10 days, whereas a home cook may be able to use a truffle for up to 21 days.

Where do truffles like to grow and when are they in season?
Truffles like to grow on the roots of inoculated oak and hazelnut trees. They are in season on the majority of truffle farms on Australia between early to mid June and mid to late August.

Something interesting about truffles that we may be surprised to learn?
Traditionally in Europe pigs were used to hunt for truffle. Many people believe that pigs are drawn to truffles because to odour mimics that of the pheromones of a male pig. That has been disproved but many still quote it as a fact.

Where did your interest in farming come from?
My interest came through my work with the dogs. I was in a position where I had the opportunity to work on a significant proportion of the truffle farms (trufferies) in Australia and saw varying degrees of success. As a dog handler I have been exposed to a number of different truffle farms. Through my experience I noted each farm had different soils, different plantations, different watering systems and as a result different smelling truffles. I become very interested in the role these aspects play in the production of truffles and became more involved in the farming side of the truffle industry.

As a farmer, what are your thoughts on better understanding the process and origins of our food?
Working in the truffle industry has really made me appreciate how we should all just take only what we need, understand the origin of our food, and buy locally. As much as there is demand in Europe and Asia for our produce, the life span of a truffle in not necessarily conducive to being transported great distances, so we must work with local suppliers to ensure that we maximise the time spent going from paddock to plate. Understanding how to get truffles to the customer really made me understand and examine what every farmer must go through to get their product to market. Many farmers in the truffle industry try to produce as much truffle as they can to maximise their profit margins. But this doesn’t work well with truffles – they cannot be harvested quickly on mass with vast numbers of unskilled (and cheap) labour – hence their price tag. The way some farms operate to maximise profit cause huge destruction to the natural environment and overall to their own ongoing production levels. For a truffle farm to be successful you must work in harmony with the surrounding environment to push production past a few years.

What is the best part about being a truffle farmer?
Working with the dogs and being outside is the best part for me. Also never knowing whether you are about to uncover a huge buried treasure! The hunt and the digging are still very exciting for me, even after a decade of working on truffle farms. I also enjoy sharing my knowledge about what is a very secretive industry with the public when we take them out on hunts.

The worst part?
The cold. Even though I don’t really feel the cold having grown up in Canberra my entire life, I often have to hunt in the most freezing temperatures and dig in the cold dirt with my bare hands. The truffle season runs only through winter so unfortunately we must hunt no matter what the weather outside.

Whats your favourite way to eat truffle?
My favourite way to eat truffle is probably in truffle butter. It is a little cliché, I know, but the butter is so versatile and lasts for a long time when you freeze it. You can have it just on a crusty loaf of bread or use it under the skin of a roast chicken. Or you can more complex and sear fresh local Australian scallops in the butter or use it to make your own truffle puff pastry or pasta. 

Jayson Mesman is the farm manager and dog trainer of French Black Truffles of Canberra.  French Black Truffles of Canberra is located in the Majura Valley, Canberra, and run truffle hunts for the public during the winter season.    

coming soon: a recipe for black truffle

Kinfolk Sydney - In Praise of Slowness

It’s always packed full of a surreal flavour and humming with yum. The individuals, the space, the intention, the meal. This time however, I wasn’t surrounded by the sultry late spring air of Nashville, Tennessee, or a brisk fall evening in Charleston, South Carolina. I wasn’t swinging on hammocks and looking out over the Oregon coast in Portland. I was in Sydney. And it was all the good parts of surreal. A Kinfolk Magazine dinner, no matter the location, will always make a belly grumble and a heartbeat hum.

We gathered at Saint Cloche, a thoughtfully curated gallery in picturesque Paddington. The evening was hosted by Natalie Hayller of Eat Read Love and Jaclyn Carlson of The Blog Society. We were there to reflect and coddle slow living and the fitting theme, ‘In Praise of Slowness’. The space echoed of an environment shaped by the bespoke hands of Lisa Madigan. Walls were hung with Italian inspired paintings by Monique Lovering and surfaces were graced by the textured, distinctive ceramics of Tara Burke. Chomp prepared us all a delicious winter meal, all paired with bubbles, whites and reds from Logan Wines.

 Always a pleasure, always a lived for moment. Always excited for more...

Keep an eye out for a video by Katrina Parker and David Child to educe the slowness and supper all over again.