SYDNEY chef Dominic Angelucci has turned his skilful hand to the production of smart, cultured vegetables that he’s aptly labelled ‘Life in a Jar’. These foods — under three labels — are made from certified organic produce including cabbage, carrot and ginger using lacto-fermentation and are now available at Granny Smith.

Dominic says that many foods undergo lacto-fermentation, including tea, coffee and chocolate. ‘The benefits of eating these foods can be huge,’ Dominic says. ‘Eating a little with each meal may help to add probiotics and vital micro-organisms to the digestive tract, promoting healthy digestive flora throughout the intestine. This may lead to improved digestion, absorption of oher neutrients, and generally supports the immune system.’

Dominic says lactobacilli are sometimes mistaken for dairy foods. ‘This is probably because we know of them in dairy foods, such as cheeses and yoghurts. Lactos is milk sugar. Lactobacilli are bacteria, not dairy food,’ he says.

Life in a Jar’s range includes a preparation with turmeric and ginger, another with fennel, and a third with herbs. You can also use the liquid in the jars: ‘Vital nutrients in every bite,’ says Dominic.

WEEK 6 / 2013 — Woodside Cheese Wrights’ maker Kris Lloyd must draw inspiration from the extraordinary beauty of the Adelaide Hills for her glamorous (the only word to describe it) ‘monet’ goat milk cheese. Kris uses only the freshest and finest curd which is only available to her in spring and summer to make this seasoned chevré. When set, it’s creamy white paté is strewn with edible flowers growing at the same time: nasturtium, fennel and dill flower, lavender, violets and marigold. And once a year, for the celebration of Saint Valentine’s Day on 14 February, Kris makes this cheese in the shape of a heart and adorns it with red and pigeon’s blood-coloured petals. Pair Monet, with its luscious tang of citrus, with a gentle biscuit. And try it this Thursday with your lover and, perhaps, an Italian pinot grigio (for Saint Valentine, either one or the other of him, was Italian).

Our cheeses
Granny Smith’s weekly, numbered ‘cheese choice’ is part of a series featuring the varieties in our cheese cabinet. We stock Australian-only fine cheeses and dairy products as a matter of principle. We think that this is a first for any grocer or cheesemonger in the country. (We make an exception only for organic parmesan from Italy, as we’re yet to find an Australian-made cheese to match it, but when we do we’ll offer it.) We’re also working in our quiet way to try to encourage change to Australia’s dairy regulations that would allow our farmers and cheesemakers to offer responsibly-produced raw milk products to grocers and eaters.

Links
Granny Smith’s Australian ‘first’

THE first 117 kilograms of the new season’s heirloom apples were picked at Borrodell orchard at Orange on Sunday and on the fruit stand at Granny Smith yesterday morning and the great, blood-red Tydeman’s Early Worcester had — by this evening — all but sold out. Granny Smith is again delighted to confirm that ours is the only grocery in Sydney to market Borry Gartrell’s and Gaye Stuart-Nairne’s heritage fruit, and our First Bite loyalty card members enjoy a five percent price advantage on the purchase of these first of the 2013 season apples. This gives these customers ‘two bites’ at this fruit, as they also accrue points on purchase.

The range in this first picking includes some early Cox’s Orange Pippin – the world’s finest dessert apple – and Bramley’s Seedling, which is considered to be the finest English-style cooking apple. (English and French cooking apples are distinctly different, but that’s for a later post.) We also have the big, green, delicious saucing apple, Dr Hogg, the red-flushed green 1740s English Blenheim Orange, and the French-bred King of the Pippins, or Reine de Reinettes, from the 1770s. But it is a wonderfully crisp, pale green, ‘five crown’ — or pointed — apple known only as ‘Saint Willy’ that is the most intriguing. It was given to Borry as a seedling. It has grown solidly and cropped very well, and Borry says that he decided to call it Saint William as Willy seemed undignified for such a splendid fruit. It is sharp and smart to the palate as fresh fruit and we imagine that it will work magically as pie-fruit when it ages.

Borry says that the Borrodell orchard, on the northern slope of Mount Canobolas, has endured a difficult mid-summer with very high temperatures. As a result, the fruit is smaller this season but, like grapes, the trees’ thirst for water on the hottest days seems to have enhanced the apples’ flavour.

For the aficionado, here’s the detail of the first delivery:

Blenheim Orange
Origin: England, United Kingdom, c.1740
Parentage yet to be identified
Colour: Red flushed green
Type: eating fresh, cooking. Cooked fruit yields a stiff puree.
Flavour: nutty, sweet

Bramley’s Seedling
Origin: Nottinghamshire, England, United Kingdom, 1837
Parentage yet to be identified
Colour: light green
Type: the definitive English cooking apple – one of the world’s finest culinary apples
Flavour: sharp

Cox’s Orange Pippin
Origin: England, United Kingdom, 1825
Bred from what is believed to be Ribston Pippin
Colour: red and orange flushed
Type: eating fresh, juicing and as a dessert apple as it ages. Cox’s Orange Pippin is regarded as the world’s finest dessert apple.
Flavour: highly aromatic

Dr Hogg
Origin: Sussex, England, United Kingdom, c.1880
Bred from a sport in an estate orchard at Leonardslee and named in honour of the Scottish pomologist Dr Robert Hogg, who wrote The Hereford Pomona, a history of Herefordshire and west country apples.
Colour: light green
Type: cooking apple. Large.
Flavour: sharp

Irish Peach
Origin: Ireland, c.1820
Parentage yet to be identified
Colour: rose-red flushed and smooth green
Type: eating and dessert apple. Doesn’t keep long as a fresh eating apple.
Flavour: sweet

King Cole
Origin: Australia, 1912
Bred from Jonathan and what is believed to be Dutch Mignonne
Colour: smooth-skinned bright red with some green
Type: dessert apple, crisp and sharp
Flavour: sweet-sharp

King David
Origin: Arkansas, United States of America, c.1890
Bred from Jonathan or Winesap and Arkansas Black
Colour: red with green striping
Type: eating, dessert, juicing and cider apple
Flavour: sweet-sharp

King of the Pippins / Reine de Reinettes
Origin: France, c.1770
Parentage yet to be identified
Colour: red, russet, orange and light green striping
Type: eating and dessert apple. Keeps shape when cooked.
Flavour: sharp-sweet, juicy. Sweetens with age.

Saint Willy / Saint William
Origin: given to Borry Gartrell at Borrodell orchard, Orange, NSW, as a seedling
Parentage yet to be identified
Colour: pale green with demure rose flush
Type: eating and dessert apple
Flavour: sharp, crisp

Tydeman’s Early Worcester
Origin: Kent, United Kingdom, 1945
Bred from McIntosh and Worcester Permain
Colour: red flushed dark red
Type: eating fresh
Flavour: sweet

More information
See the excellent Orangepippin website.

THE last of the summer season’s Prunus persica — peaches and their cousins, nectarines — are making their delicious perfume known in-store at Granny Smith. We have queen peach and yellow nectarine in early February. Both stonefruit make a very smart fruit salad when combined with (frozen, sadly, at this time of the season) strawberries, thawed and diced, and a light sugar syrup made with fresh valencia oranges and a good rosé. Here’s the how-to:

Add one and a half cups of sugar to a saucepan containing one and a half cups of cold water. Section an unpeeled fresh orange into eight pieces and remove any stem pith and pips. Add the orange segments to the combined sugar and water and bring gently to the boil, stirring occasionally. When the syrup is clear remove from the heat. When cool, add a good cup or so of rosé, stir, and place in the refrigerator to chill. Later, wash and dice the stone fruit — you’ll need seven or eight in total — and combine with 500g thawed and diced strawberries in a large ceramic and stainless steel bowl. Mix and then add the chilled syrup. Mix again. Put the bowl in the fridge for about two hours. Serve with Kohu Road french vanilla icecream and dash it with the orange and rosé syrup. Dreamy. Lovely. Serves six.

RABBIT remains a largely forgotten meat in a country that once was overrun with these lovable but pesky and still tasty creatures. It was a staple during the 1930s Depression, when it acquired the epithet ‘underground mutton’ as a more affordable — and often free — alternative to sheepmeat. It has enjoyed a small revival since rabbit-farming was licensed but the availability of wild rabbit remains something approaching a rarity. Yet you can order wild rabbit from Granny Smith and if you try the pork and rabbit rillettes of the English doyenne of French provincial cooking, Elizabeth David, you are sure to discover a smart and very contemporary marriage of meats.

Gourmet Chick blogger Cara Waters gives her ‘tweaked’ version of Mrs David’s recipe. Here’s Cara’s how-to:

Ingredients
900g rabbit meat with bones removed (wild rabbit is best)
1.8kg pork belly with bones and rind removed (keep the fat on)
couple of sprigs of thyme, rosemary, parsley and bay leaves
3 cloves garlic
salt and pepper to season

Method
Preheat the oven to 140C. Cut the pork belly and rabbit into little strips and place it in an oven proof dish like a Le Creuset stock pot. Add 300ml of water and create a bouquet garni by tying the herbs in a bunch with string. Bury the bouquet garni in the meat along with the garlic cloves and season with salt and pepper. Put a lid on the dish and cook in the preheated oven for four hours. By this time the meat should be very soft and swimming in limpid fat. Taste to see if more salt and pepper is needed as the rilletes will be insipid if not properly seasoned. Turn the contents of the pan into a wire sieve placed over a bowl so the fat drips through. When well drained, set aside the fat and shred the pork and rabbit using two forks until it is almost like a paste. Pile lightly into glazed earthenware containers and then pour the fat over the top of the rillette completely filling the container. The rillettes should be served at room temperature so if they have been refrigerated they should be removed a couple of hours prior to serving. Feasting on the rillettes placed on top of toasted baguette and teamed with cornichons is one of the easiest ways to feel like you are truly in France. Serves 12 with an aperitif or as an entree.

Note
Cara writes that the rillettes were meaty and moist and could easily be kept in the fridge for a week before serving.

Pork belly from Tim Elwin at Urban Food Market butcher can often be bought from Granny Smith’s meat fridge, but it is best to order in advance to make sure that we have stock to hand. Wild or farmed rabbit can be ordered from us, too.

Links
Gourmet Chick
The New York Times: Rillettes: the pride of France’s Touraine