Author: Alex

Great South Australian Wine Adventure

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A couple of weeks ago I received a mysterious invitation to the launch of the Qwoff Boys‘ next venture – complete with personalised link for RSVP and enigmatic clues.  Earlier this year I’d very much enjoyed participating in their Semillon tweet-up from the Landmark Australia tutorial so I figured that even though information was scanty (Adelaide CBD, 2:30pm, Friday 19 November) it would be churlish not to attend.

After RSVPing clues filtered through during the week preceding the big day … attendees needed to meet at the Franklin St bus station, we needed to have our social media skills at the ready (I suspect Adelaide had not seen a greater collection of iDevices and other smart bits and pieces prior to this) and, finally, that our first stop would be Petaluma’s Bridgewater Mill.

So 2:30 Friday arrives and the 60 odd invitees pile themselves in to Des’s minibuses and head off out of Adelaide for the launch of the Great South Australian Wine Adventure.

Now, I’m a teensy tiny bit over the social network thing … some of it I find valuable, some annoying but necessary and some a really irritating duplication of several other networks. So I take some impressing. But impressed I am because in the Great South Australian Wine Adventure, the Qwoff Boys, in conjunction with the South Australian Tourism Commission, have come up with a promotional tool for the South Australian wine regions which is genuinely useful for both locals and visitors.

At present, only the Adelaide Hills region is live (the Barossa is going live on Friday) but this gives you a good idea of what the site will eventually offer for all our great wine regions. There’s the usual ‘useful’ stuff – like a listing of cellar doors and an events listing but (and this is the bit I really like) there’s also a selection of ‘trips’ for each region. The trips cover a handful of cellar doors (that are close to each other!) and at each cellar door visitors can check in and, potentially, earn rewards (for example, today, you receive a glass of The Local Sav Blanc if you check in at Golding Wines). If you check in at all the cellar doors on a trip you unlock a badge and (of course) there are also prizes to be won.

The trips are a real bonus – if you’ve ever found yourself entertaining guests from overseas or interstate, visiting wine regions (especially spontaneously) can be tricky. I find that the wineries I like are widely scattered and we spend more time driving around than wine tasting and we always end up missing lunch. The Great South Australian Wine Adventure allows you to look like you’re vaguely organised. And if you’re not in to the whole social media thing, there’s no requirement to check in.

That’s the idea behind the Great South Australian Wine Adventure and, like all good launches, we got to try the idea out for real … jumping back in the bus and heading off on one of the trips. My bus took us on Northern Exposure.

We started at Golding Wines where we enjoyed a few of their wines along with some tasting platters. Of special note was their sparkling (sensational value at something like $18 a bottle) and their Francis John Pinot Noir. Next we headed to Chain of Ponds, where we were spoilt with more food and wine: their little beef pies were amazing and this is definitely a winery I’ll be heading back to for lunch at some point. And we finished up at Barristers’ Block, where the wines had been matched with cheeses from Woodside Cheese Wrights.

At each winery staff went out of their way to accommodate us and make us feel welcome and I think everyone involved in the launch should feel well and truly chuffed: it was a great day.

And I can’t wait to try out the Barossa trips!

Chocolate Fudge Cake

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Chocolate Fudge Cake

Well, it’s Chocolate Week in the UK so it’s a happy coincidence that, at the last minute I decided to make a cake as an additional dessert for a BBQ with friends.

As I still subscribe to (and read!) a lot of UK based food newsletters chocolate was featuring heavily and this simple fudge cake recipe from the UK’s version of Delicious magazine stood out as something I could put together in a very limited amount of time.

I have to confess that part of the reason I was attracted to it was the use of red wine vinegar. There’s something about cake recipes with unusual ingredients that always makes me want to try them out!

The cake hit all the spots … it was super quick to make and everyone liked it (I even packed up a doggy bag for a missing husband!) so it’s definitely one I’ll be making again.

I followed the recipe pretty closely and was a bit scared by the ‘chuck all the dry ingredients’ in the food processor approach but it turned out OK. However, next time I might adopted a slightly more conventional ‘cream butter and sugar’ method …

Begin by greasing and baselining a 20cm spring form tin and preheat the oven to 160°C fan (or 180°C).

In your food processor (or mixing bowl) combine 100g unsalted butter, 15g cocoa powder, 300g self raising flour, 1 tsp bicarb soda, 225g caster sugar (use golden or unrefined if you can) and 2 eggs. If you’re mixing by hand or with an electric hand whisk you might want to sift the flour and bicarb first. The add 100g of melted dark chocolate (I am a new convert to melting chocolate in the microwave – but you do need to watch it very carefully!) and finish by mixing in 250mL of milk mixed with 1 tbsp of red wine vinegar.

Pour the batter in to the cake tin and bake for 1 hour, until firm in the centre and a skewer comes out clean (with my oven I think next time I’ll check after 55 minutes). Cool in the tin for a few minutes and then turn out to cool on a rack.

When the cake is cool, it’s time to make the ganache and finish the cake.

For the ganache, melt 225g dark chocolate with 100g unsalted butter (be careful with the microwave – watch carefully and mix every minute or so to keep an eye on things – you don’t want the microwave coated in butter and chocolate!). Stir this mix until smooth and then add in about 150mL of thick (not thickened) cream. As this is an English recipe it specifies a 142mL carton of double cream so I just guessed approximately 150mL from my 200mL carton of pure cream.

Allow the ganache to cool to a good, spreadable consistency and then slice the cake in half. Use approximately a quarter of the ganache for filling and then use the remainder as icing. Make sure you resist ‘tidying up’ the ganache until you’ve finished with the cake!

The cake kept well for about 2 days … by that time it was all eaten (mostly served with cream!).

Sugar Cane Vietnamese Restaurant

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THIS RESTAURANT IS NOW CLOSED.

date of visit: Friday 24 Sept 2010

Like our visit to the King’s Head Hotel, another Friday night, another unplanned restaurant visit. We settled on Vietnamese very early in the piece and toyed with heading down Gouger Street, before wandering down King William Street to check out Sugarcane. Our logic was that if it was full or didn’t appeal we could nip around to The Greek on Halifax. OK – that’s slightly weird logic, if you’re after Vietnamese food, but bear with me.

Sugarcane is a very visually appealing restaurant – when it finally warms up there’s an outdoor seating area (it’s far enough down King William Street for sitting outside to be contemplated) and the restaurant itself is large, reasonably spacious and with decor that, while perhaps not to everyone’s taste, is clean and coherent with a definite Asian theme.

The meal started in a promising manner, when the restaurant door was swept open for us and we were ushered to a table. Well, the door part is true … and we were whisked through the restaurant only for the waiter to reaslise, suddenly, that there was no table for two ready. We were instructed to wait while a table was sorted out – and of course, while waiting we managed to confuse at least one other waiter who also tried to fix us a table.

Confusion was very much the theme of the service throughout the meal. One waiter had a minor panic attack when he realised we’d been seated for a while but did not have drinks. He could have stayed calm and taken an order … but he rushed off to get us water and then forgot to take a drinks order. Another waiter eventually took the drinks order, by which point we were ready to order food … which was a mistake, because our food order ended up confused. My entrée and main arrived together, leaving Andy foodless. While quite a few waiters observed us with food at our table but not touching it, none approached us and when we did attract attention, the waiter rushed off only to rush back to find out what we had actually ordered.

As the restaurant wasn’t packed (I’m always prepared to cut some slack if I can see staff are genuinely run off their feet) I can only assume that someone at Sugarcane doesn’t take customer service seriously and certainly isn’t instilling good customer service practices in the staff.

While service is a large part of the restaurant going experience, we can’t ignore the food. Although billed as a Vietnamese restaurant we were a little disappointed by the route the menu took. While I can’t claim to be an expert on the regional cuisines of either China or Vietnam the menu has, to the untrained eye, a very definite Chinese feel. In fact, every dish has its name written out … in Chinese. Not a jot of Vietnamese roast pork in sight, although there are hot pots.

My original order was to start with pork and prawn cold rolls followed by a beef salad, while Andy was going to start with a chicken pancake and enjoy Mongolian sizzling pork for his main course. After a long period of contemplating my food, we ended up with all the food on the table at once. Of these dishes, the beef salad was definitely the stand out – very fine slices of beef, barely cooked, with a lime and chilli dressing, tossed in amongst green salad. The level of heat from the chilli was good, the salad was fresh, and the dressing was light and oil free … perfect for mopping up with a bit of rice when everything else was finished. In fact, I enjoyed it so much that I came home and looked for recipes so I could make this myself (perhaps with a hint more coriander and mint though …).

I was less impressed with the cold rolls: they were too heavy on the noodles and too light on the mint. Very definitely in the OK basket rather than something to write home about.

Both of Andy’s dishes were too sweet for me although Andy didn’t have a problem with them (I am very picky about sweetness in savoury dishes). The chicken crepe was served in the same style as crispy duck pancakes – without the crispy or the duck, as the chicken was in a plum style sauce. The Mongolian sizzling pork was dished on to its sizzling plate at the table, covering the table (and, to a limited extent, us) with a fine spray of hot fat. From Andy this dish rated a ‘quite nice but nothing special’.

That does quite a good job of summing up the whole experience. Aside from the shambolic service, everything was ‘quite nice’ but certainly not special enough to warrant a return visit.

Bottom line: $66 for 2 people, 2 courses, 2 beers and green tea.

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