Kersbrook Hill Shiraz 2005

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Kersbrook Hill Shiraz
Kersbrook Hill Shiraz

Our household has been submerged in a fug of early winter colds for about 3 weeks – at one point, all three of us were ill at the same time which was fun. Needless to say, this put a significant dampener on our enthusiasm for eating out, cooking and drinking. I kid you not but at one point I felt so rough that I didn’t even eat any of the chocolate cake that was in the house!

So, yesterday, I was quite thrilled to come across a random piece of paper with a tasting note on it …

Our local bottle shop is a pretty stock standard affair: there’s plenty of cask wines, a walk in beer fridge, a range of cheap wines (usually on some kind of deal) in the west facing window (don’t get me started on how wrong that is) … Fortunately, the staff are enthusiastic, friendly and helpful and the shop stocks a tiny selection of wines from boutique South Australian wineries. I picked up the Kersbrook Hill Shiraz because I had been impressed by their Riesling and the wine was marked down from $24.99 a bottle to $16.

Kersbrook Hill, which describes itself as an “ultra premium five star winery” makes use of the contract wine making services of Ben Jeanneret, of Jeanneret in Clare. So that explains why the Riesling is so good. I’m not sure whether it was him or Harry Dickinson who made this single vineyard Shiraz – but whoever made it clearly knew what they were doing.

The wine still looks young and there’s very concentrated, almost preserved, black fruit aromas accompanied by black pepper and even star anise. On the palate the wine is a lot spicier again, with black pepper dominant and plenty of ripe, full black fruit. The wine has lovely weight, with very soft tannins and some acidity. I did feel that the wine was just the slightest bit too hot, suggesting that the alcohol was just a tiny bit unbalanced – but that’s also a very common criticism of mine, so I wouldn’t give that too much weight.

The Kersbrook Hill tasting notes suggest drinking with with veal or white meat. I think you’d want to be careful taking this route – ensure you have some reasonably big flavours in your sauce because the wine could swamp a delicate dish. We drank some last night with spaghetti bolognese – the wine having made an appearance in the sauce – and it was a good match.

Even if I’d paid $25 for this wine I would have been happy, so $16 represents something of a bargain. Of course, now I’ve paid $16 for it, I’d probably blanch at paying full tote odds. But that’s just me!

Naan Bread

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This is my go-to naan bread recipe that I use whenever I need a flatbread.  It doesn’t have to go with a curry and they’re quick enough to put together for any mid-week meal.  This recipe comes from The Big Book of Bread which I won a few years ago through the excellent Baking Mad website. This is an English site run by the Allinson flour people but it’s a great resource and worth checking out wherever you are.

Take 300g of strong white flour and add 1½ tsp of dried yeast and 1 tsp of salt. If making this by hand, make a well in the centre and add the wet ingredients. If you’re using a stand mixer, you can get away with just dumping everything in the bowl! Add 4 tbsp of natural yoghurt, 1 tbsp of neutral vegetable oil (the recipe specifies sunflower but we rarely have this at home so I often use peanut oil – you just don’t want anything with a strong flavour so leave your best extra virgin olive oil in the cupboard …). Mix this together and blend in 125mL of warm milk to make a soft dough.

I usually add a 1 tsp of nigella (kalonji) seeds to the mix too. Or you can sprinkle them over the naan before baking. Or you can add a clove of crushed garlic, a teaspoon of ground coriander … you get the idea.

When the dough has come together and been kneaded (by either you or the machine) leave the dough for an hour or so to rise.

Preheat your oven and your baking trays to HOT (I usually go for 220°C fan, the recipe specifies 230°C convection). Make sure you preheat the baking trays – it helps the naan cook more quickly and prevents them from sticking.

Punch down the risen dough, knead it and divide it in to four. Roll out and stretch each quarter into a tear drop shape. The recipe specifies leaving the naan, covered, for 15 minutes. I rarely do that because by the time I finish rolling them out and getting them on trays I figure that’s rest enough. If you’re organised enough, brush the naan with melted butter or ghee before baking.

Baking for 10 minutes – the naan will be puffed up and golden. Wrap them in a clean tea towel and serve.

The naan will keep til the next day but they are better eaten straight away. They are just such an improvement on the shop bought ones that you’ll never go back!

Enoteca Italian Restaurant, Adelaide

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date of visit: Saturday 4 June 2011

Something of a delay in this review hitting the web, not dissimilar to the delay in getting to the restaurant in the first place. We’ve been saying we must go to Enoteca for well over a year now and the closest we’ve come was me trying to book a table on a Tuesday night way back in late 2009. You guessed it – Enoteca isn’t open on a Tuesday: lunch is Wednesday to Friday and dinner is Wednesday to Saturday.

But we finally got our act in to gear and took some visitors from interstate there for dinner on a damp, cool Saturday night. Enoteca lives on Carrington Street in the Italian Centre (formerly the Italian Club). When I was little my parents used to eat at the Italian Club quite regularly: it was a reasonably basic setting with the restaurant at the rear of the building and food being delivered to the table on those plain aluminium platters. Not a lot of glitz or ceremony, but the food was incredibly good. Years later a friend and I held our joint 21st birthday party at the Italian Centre in the same room which is now Enoteca. Let me tell you – it’s changed quite a bit.

So many Italian restaurants in Adelaide are all about hustle, bustle, noise, clatter and Italian staples so it was an absolute joy to enter a restaurant that was still, calm and quiet. The tables are spread out and the room is divided into a couple of sections by drapes. You don’t have your neighbours in your lap, you don’t have to hear their conversation. I’m sure they could fit more tables in if they wanted but as it stands, Enoteca is a triumph of customer experience over accounting.

We settled at our table and began deliberations with a bottle of Prosecco. The wine list at Enoteca is interesting without being too unwieldy. There’s a good selection of by the glass options and they are not limited to one or two grape varieties or price points – there’s even a choice of four sparkling whites. By the bottle, there is plenty of variety across both Australia and Italy, with a few other countries making brief appearances. The wine list does need a bit of a spell check and I also question the wisdom of its alphabetical arrangement. It’s vaguely alphabetical by grape variety, but Burgundy and Petit Chablis are both listed separately from Chardonnay and Syrah and Shiraz are separated. As there are no tasting notes this makes it a wine list where you either need the help of a good sommelier or you need to know your stuff. Assistance with the wine list was not forthcoming on our visit which is definitely something that needs to be rectified. But, we were interested in unique wine options, with newly introduced vegan wine uk, which caught our interest.

Food wise (and let’s face it, it’s not all about the wine) the menu is a collection of dishes showing clean, simple flavours. Most things I would have been more than happy eating, but I opted to start with the whitebait and follow this with the tagliatelle con funghi svizzero (tagliatelle with Swiss Brown mushrooms).

The whitebait came with a roasted garlic aioli which was really delicate. The little fish were perfect – fresh, crunchy without being greasy or overly fishy. My pasta came with, unsurprisingly, plenty of mushrooms and was dressed with a thyme brown butter and Parmesan cheese. Now, I know to a lot of people this would be too simple but this is my favourite type of Italian food. The balance between the amount of brown butter and everything else was spot on (after all, even I don’t want my food swimming in butter) and, as with the whitebait, the portion size was just tipping towards generous. I don’t want to end a meal feeling hungry but neither do I want to feel as though I can’t move.

Around the table other dishes ordered included a prawn and crab risotto, orrechiette with sausage, char grilled prawns, gnocchi with slow braised lamb, braised veal shank (the braised meat of the day) and the chargrilled pork rib eye. We did a good job of covering the menu and all the food received a thumbs up. Unfortunately I can’t report on the desserts – we teetered on the edge and a couple of us almost succumbed (apple and rhuburb crumble with Calvados custard and cinnamon icecream anyone?) but prudence won out and we finished our meal with coffees alone.

The service at Enoteca was good but not flawless: no help with the wine list, plates of food presented to the wrong people, and some of the friendliness was a little stilted. But, to be honest, mentioning this makes me feel a little mean because it really wasn’t significant.

Other downers on the evening? Two trivial (and easily fixable) niggles: the music was just a tad too loud and the airconditioning a trifle too warm.

But a very big positive was the price which came out at around $75 a head, which, while not cheap per se, definitely marks Enoteca out as excellent value for money.

I’d be more than happy to go back to Enoteca and take guests with me. I wonder if it’s going to take another two years, because that would be a shame.

Enoteca on Urbanspoon

Enoteca
262 Carrington Street
Adelaide SA 5000
phone: +61 8 8227 0766