Coopers Artisan Reserve

- Alex Prichard Leave a comment

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Coopers’ marketing people put together the best packaging!  The Artisan Reserve came in a box shaped like a book!

Disclaimer: Coopers sent me some of the new Artisan Reserve to try.

It’s been a very busy start to 2014 for South Australia’s Coopers Brewery. The family owned brewery ended 2013 having sold a whopping 72 million litres of beer, up almost 5% on 2012’s sales and a company record.

2014 will also see Coopers enter the booming cider market. The company has just signed an agreement with UK cider company, Thatchers, to keg and distribute Thatchers Gold (the second largest draught cider in the UK). Thatchers is also a family owned business and creates, in addition to its Gold, a range of single varietal and even vintage ciders. We all know that the Australian cider market is booming but unfortunately much of what is available is actually mass produced (see Max Allen’s excellent dissection of the cider market, published just before Christmas) so it’s great to see that Coopers has been able to enter the market by taking a different route.

And finally, 2014 sees the launch of Artisan Reserve. This is an unpasteurised pilsner, so it lines up well with Coopers’ bottle conditioned ales (such as Sparkling and Pale), which are also unpasteurised. I’m already a bit of a fan of the Celebration Ale so I was excited to try out this new beer.

Very generously, I shared one of my bottles with Andy, who is really the resident beer (rather than ale) expert in our household. Andy is already a fan of Coopers 62 (although he is not keen on the 355mL bottles!) and Coopers Lager is one of his ‘regular’ beers. However, his favourite beer of all is the Czech Budvar. As that’s a pilsner and Coopers has used Bavarian hops in producing the Artisan Reserve the Coopers offering was up against some stiff competition!

The verdict? Fortunately – extremely positive all round! The beer is dry, crisp and citrussy and, despite coming in at 5.5% alcohol, the beer is not dominated by the alcohol. We both thought it very similar to Czech pilsners such as Budvar and Urquell – which is high praise in this household.

The Artisan Reserve is widely available (cases of 355mL bottles retail for around $55) and you will see it in some bars on draught. During the week I spotted it at Regattas, where it was $6 for a schooner.

I know this, because I bought one!

Keane’s Organic Food and a Simple Zucchini Salad

- Alex Prichard 1 Comment

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Disclaimer: Keane’s supplied the fruit and vegetable box free of charge.

A couple of weeks ago, I was approached by Keane’s Organic Food, who offered to send me a box full of organic fruit and vegetables. Compared with the UK a few years back, the availability of organic greens is pretty limited here in South Australia. The major supermarkets stock a small (but increasing) number of organic products, our small local supermarket stocks none. None of the local greengrocers (where we do buy most of our greens) focus on organic produce and we are just not the kind of family to manage regular outings to farmers markets bright and early on a Sunday morning. At least one of us is having a lie in! Make sure you have a look at this guide from utilitysavingexpert.com to learn better and mor efficient way of delivering goodies.

Keane’s Organic Food is a South Australian owned and operated business that started in Unley in 2008 and has since expanded (which forced a name change) to cover much of Adelaide’s metropolitan area. Keane’s delivers fruit and vege boxes as well as a range of ‘extras’ such as bread and eggs. The boxes are all $55 each (and you can order top ups of either fruit or vegetables for $15) and they come in a variety of configurations so if you only want vegetables and no fruit, that’s not a problem. You also don’t have to make an ongoing commitment – you just order what you want/need for that week.

I received the ‘mixed box’ – which is about 2/3 vegetables and 1/3 fruit. The first thing I liked about the box was how well packed it was. Nothing annoys me more than spending time picking the best fruit or vegetables in the supermarket and having the milk dumped on top of them at check out. My box contained a single (absolutely perfect) peach which was securely perched on top of everything else and came out of the box in a pristine state.

The quality of that peach was reflected by all the produce in box. Andy was very impressed by the young, tender bok choy (which also lasted extremely well in its stay fresh bag), the broccolini was beautiful, the avocado was spot on after only a day or so and the strawberries also received top marks.

Value for money wise I thought that box rated quite highly.  I easily spend $20 a week at the grocer’s for about half as much non organic produce and of course there is the convenience of having your shopping delivered to your home or work.  If, like us, you have a toddler that inhales grapes and rockmelon and one person who takes fruit to work every day you may need to tweak your order to include extra fruit or a more fruit heavy selection.

I also really liked the fact that nothing in the box came in gargantuan quantities. While it was a challenge for us to get through everything in a week (we failed) we are only a family of two and a half but there was such a broad selection of vegetables that most could be used fully in one meal. I thought this was great because it meant that you could plan out how you were going to use your box and, if you came across a vegetable you didn’t like, you didn’t have a mountain of it to get through. Critical in our household where only one of us likes mushrooms!

Added bonuses in the box were a fridge magnet illustrating the ways in which the fruit and vege could be used and a flyer with production details of the produce (including its certification programme and where it was grown). In my box, approximately half of the produce was South Australian.

I’ll wrap up with a very simple zucchini (courgette) salad based on a Jamie Oliver original. Not only did my vege box include zucchini but my mum’s garden is currently overgrown with them! I love this salad – I’d be quite happy to eat it on its own as dinner!

The quantities given will serve two as part of a selection of side dishes. And, as usual, there’s a pdf.

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Print
Simple Zucchini Salad

Ingredients

  • 1 zucchini
  • ½ red chilli
  • small handful of chopped chives
  • 1 small clove of garlic, crushed
  • ¼ lemon
  • generous splash of olive oil

Instructions

  1. Finely slice the zucchini lengthwise. You can do this using a mandoline or a vegetable peeler.
  2. Place in a bowl and mix through the chilli, garlic and chives and finish with the lemon juice and olive oil.
  3. Season with salt and pepper to taste.
  4. Best if made a little ahead and served at room temperature.
https://eatingadelaide.com/keanes-organic-food-simple-zucchini-salad/

Olive Green Kitchen

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date of visit: Sunday 5 January 2014

Let’s not beat about the bush – Olive Green Kitchen, a tiny Indian restaurant in Belair gets a bit of a caning on Urbanspoon. Something of a veteran user of crowd sourced reviews, I know to take them with a pinch of salt and to discard reviews at either end of the spectrum and to give less weight to those reviews which are the contributor’s only contribution to a site.

Even so, I ummed and aahed about Olive Green, particularly because so many of the dismissive reviews came from customers who had used a group buying voucher … which was exactly what I intended to buy. In the end, we decided that $39 for dinner was worth the gamble.

If you’re a long time reader, you’ll know that not only do I love a bit of a bargain but I also regard vouchers and deals as excellent ways of gaining the true measure of a venue. If a restaurant is any good, then the management will be taking the opportunity to convert people into return customers. A rubbish experience? Well, they’ve got your money once, but the damage is done – and the chances are you’ll tell your friends.

One of the Urbanspoon criticisms is that people have found it very hard to book tables with their vouchers. The voucher I purchased had both a very narrow booking window and a very narrow using window, which was complicated by bookings closing on 27 December. I did have to ring a couple of times (and, forewarned, I did actually make note of when I called!) and I did find that my call wasn’t returned but I did make a booking without quite the hassle I was expecting.

Now, as we were dining out with the toddler in tow, we made our booking for 5:30pm on a Sunday so when we arrived the restaurant was empty and we had no problem with slow service. We were seated, our orders were taken promptly and food arrived in a timely fashion. How things function at a busier time, I cannot say.

The voucher we had bought entitled us to a shared entrée, with main courses of our choice served with rice and naan, desserts and glasses of wine (you can see why we were prepared to risk $39 on the exercise!). The great thing about this kind of deal is that we can share the entrée with the toddler and not need to buy him his own main course.

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The platter consisted of onion bhajis, pakoras, chicken tikka, seekh kebab and fish amritsari. This was generally pretty good – it was let down by the fish amritsari which was really quite bland and also watery (I’d put money on it being frozen fish) and the chicken was a little dry, but the seekh kebab was a big hit with the toddler and we both enjoyed the bhajis and pakoras. The platter was served with a simple salad (that was a lot better than the sad lettuce leaf that often accompanies these things!) and some mint chutney and mango chutney.

For main course, I chose the beef masala. Well, I say ‘chose’ – in reality, the toddler announced he wanted beef and this looked like a reasonably mild choice (he’s not quite up to a vindaloo!). Andy picked the lamb roganjosh. OUr main courses came with rice, naan and, of course, we were munching our way through pappadums.

The main courses were really good. The meat was tender, the two sauces were not only different heats but also tasted different, and while the portion sizes weren’t massive, they were certainly ample. The naan wasn’t bad at all (perhaps not quite as puffy and crisp as it is in some places) but the pappadums were a little greasy. Overall, it was a more than fair spread of food.

Our deal also included dessert which is not normally something I’d for. In the past I’ve found Indian sweets far too sweet and, anyway, by the time I’ve scoffed a curry and a naan I’m always far too full to consider it.

But, this time, in the interests of ‘research’ I stretched myself. OUr waitress brought three mango kulfis to the table: umbrella shaped ice creams that sat atop little handles to stop the drips. The toddler thought it was Christmas (an ice cream shaped like an umbrella? whooooooah!) and even I really enjoyed it. Given this is my only experience of mango kulfi, I’m not sure I should pass judgement on how excellent or otherwise it was – but it was extremely tasty!

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For $39 we thought our dinner was excellent value for money. We’d be happy to go back, either on a deal like this, or just as ‘normal’ customers (admittedly, we’d probably just have mains in that case).

This restaurant illustrates perfectly why you need to exercise just a touch of critical thinking when using social review sites. After all, there’s nothing quite like finding out for yourself …

Olive Green Kitchen
Shop 1a 16 Main Rd
Belair SA 5052
phone: 08 8278 8366

Olive Green Kitchen on Urbanspoon