Rib Eye Fillet and Hunter Shiraz By The Fire

Let’s have a look at food and wine pairing. Just in case you haven’t been outside all week – Winter is here!

What better way to celebrate the change in season, but to get stuck into a big piece of red meat, with a Tower Estate Shiraz and settle in by an open fire.

Now that we have your attention and your mouth watering, we have a great recipe for you. Executive Chef George Francisco has got a fantastic Rib Eye fillet recipe for you to try out.

And if you are in the Hunter Valley this weekend, you can always call into Roberts Restaurant and get George to cook it himself; after all this awesome dish is on the current menu.

download it here

Enjoy.

Rib Eye Fillet and Hunter Shiraz By The Fire

 

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Oven roasted Ranger’s Valley rib eye Black pepper blistered green beans, rich puréed potatoes béarnaise sauce, jus.

Author: George Francisco

Recipe type: Winter Meal

Cuisine: Comfort

Serves: 6

Ingredients

• Oven roasted rib eye:
• 2 kilos Ranger’s Valley rib eye
• sea salt
• black pepper
• Black pepper blistered green beans:
• 480 grams green beans
• 100 grams butter
• 10 grams freshly ground black pepper
• 8 eschallots
• 30 grams corn flour
• 120 ml vegetable oil
• sea salt

Instructions

1. Oven roasted rib eye:
2. Rub sea salt and black pepper all over the rib eye. Warm a thick large pan or barbeque until very hot. Place rib eye in pan and brown each side very well. When all sides are browned. Place on baking pan and roast in 200 degree oven until it is cooked to your liking. The recommendation is 40 minutes at 180 degrees and then rest the beef in a warm place for 30 minutes.
3. To serve re warm if necessary in the oven or just slice and plate as it is.
4. It is recommended to serve the roast rib eye with black pepper blistered green beans, rich pureed potatoes, béarnaise sauce, jus and any condiments you find necessary.
5. Black pepper blistered green beans:
6. Trim the green beans of any woody ends. Slice 4 of the eschallots thinly and toss in the corn flour. Heat the oil in a sauce pan until 170 degrees. Fry the  schallots in the oil stirring carefully to ensure they brown evenly. When light brown and toasted remove from oil. Blot dry on paper towels and season lightly with sea salt. Reserve until ready to serve the beans.
7. Soften the butter. Dice the remaining eschallots.Sauté lightly in a sauce pan with a touch of oil until transcucent. Remove from pan and add to softened butter. Add freshly ground black pepper to the butter. Season lightly with sea salt and then mix the butter well.
8. Bring water to a boil in a pot and heat a sauce pan to very hot. Add the trimmed beans to the water and cook until al dente. Remove the beans from the water and immediately add to the very hot sauce pan. This will blister the beans. Saute the beans for a few seconds and then add the butter mixture to the beans and season with a bit of sea salt. Cook the beans until they are well blistered and coated with the butter.
9. Serve in a dish with the fried eschallots sprinkled on top.

State Of Origin - NSW Wine Vintage

With vintage well and truly done, it is time for a bit of review from Andrew Thomas at Thomas Wines via Gourmet Traveler Wine.

For the full article check it out here.

Mike Bennie takes us on a tour of NSW’s wine regions, talking to winemakers about the 2013 red vintage. 

Andrew Thomas, Winemaker, Thomas Wines, Hunter Valley
"Well, despite some challenging conditions with all that nasty weather up north, we've actually come through relatively unscathed," says the affable Andrew Thomas of Thomas Wines. "It seems much of New South Wales didn't get smashed by rain and talking to winemakers around the area, everyone is extremely happy with the quality of the reds this year," he qualifies. This comes off the back of the red wine disaster in the Hunter Valley in 2012, where summer seemed to pass unnoticed, quashed by incessant rain.

Thomas, affectionately known as Thommo by most in the wine community, says that red wines from 2013 offer respite. "This year it's so good to have high quality reds in the house - I am pretty impressed. I talked to people in the supermarket or pub, winemakers like Jim Chatto, Mike De Iuliis and PJ Charteris, and everyone is punching the air and saying it's all looking great."

So why the turn around in 2013 for red wines of New South Wales? "Well, a lot of it comes down to vineyard management, pedigree of vineyard, vineyards we hear about that might have that something special to get them over the line," explains Thomas. "It also comes down to crop levels, anything that was too big a crop struggled to get ripe. We go through and thin down anything that looks on the higher side."...

The Hunter, of course, still holds Thomas' biggest interest for red wines. "The contemporary style of Hunter Valley shiraz is more fruit driven with aromatic vibrancy and it's elegant, medium bodied and savoury," he says. "Across a lot of New South Wales we've seen producers following this lead with unforced wines which are ticking the authentic-to-region box, which is something often overlooked." Thomas cites Clonakilla, particularly Tim Kirk's work with shiraz, as iconic wine of New South Wales. He also elevates Canberra District producers Ravensworth, Nick O'Leary and Alex McKay as "doing great stuff with red grapes". He earmarks Winburndale, Chalkers Crossing, and Lowe from Mudgee as heirs apparent.

Winter In The Vineyards

Winter in the vineyards is not everyone’s favourite time of the year; cold mornings and late sunrises aren't always fun. Grape vines look like they are having a hard time too; bedraggled with intertwined canes devoid of leaves.

But it is such an important time of the year.

The vines have worked so hard producing fruit, drawing water and nutrients all summer to make the perfect grapes; the sap that is so important to sending the nutrients to the leaves and fruit has now stopped flowing.

It is time to rest.

Pruning of the vines has started. With no sap in the vines, the canes can be safely pruned, ready for the spring burst of heat. The pruning process is not mechanical. Yes. Not mechanical.

This is a job for the keen eye and a perfectionist who loves the outdoors. Remember that they are pruning in the fresh winter mornings. Pruning controls the quantity and the quality of fruit for the coming year. Too many buds left on the vine and you have excess fruit, struggling for nutrients. Too few buds and you have cut your crop and your income in half. These are important decisions being made. Decisions that we will rely on over the coming years.

For the benefit of your wine.

Drag Out The Old Blanket.

This blog is my little security blanket that I come back to time to time.  In many ways I have left it behind because my day to day activities don't rely on it. Facebook, Instagram and Twitter with their immediacy have taken precedence.

In my work circles I have been coming back to blogs as a method of communication. The opportunity to discuss a subject in less that 140 characters is quite liberating. I have been challenging myself to write in a creative and engaging way. I hope I am succeeding

The aspect of writing that initially made me anxious and at times furious, is how formally trained PR people always want to modify the written word to glass half full; always positive always perky. While I do write in a PR style for employers, I do occasionally like to write from the gloom of the occasion and build to the light at the end of tunnel.

Humans are a rich tapestry.

When Good Neighbours Become Good Friends

Almost everyone loves a good wine and cheese session. And yet sometimes you wonder whether you got it right. Was it great? Was it what you were hoping for? Rarely.

Unlike matching wine with a dish; neither the wine nor the cheese can be adjusted to make the perfect match. And I mean perfect, not close, not pretty good - I mean perfect. Fine dining perfect.

So now we get complicated, because there is no way that you are going to open every bottle in the cellar to find that match that is cheese heaven. A good place to start is to look at traditional regions that have been pairing their cheese and wine together for what would appear to be the dawn of time. Usually white mould cheeses like the Ile-de-France Brie are matched with bubbles from the neighbouring Champagne for that perfect match. English Apple Ciders with musty, cloth wrapped Cheddars usually do the trick too.

Lincet Delice de Bourgogne

Saturday was the day to do a bit of wine and cheese matching with the gang at McWilliams Mt Pleasant in the Hunter Valley and we dragged out a range of bubbles from Europe to try with a fun triple cream; the Lincet Delice de Bourgogne. The bubbles to go up against it were Serafini & Vidotto Prosecco, Champagne Taitinger and Soleil Cremant de Bourgogne.

Lincet Delice is not your typical Aussie triple cream full of butter and fat on the pallet. Delice is made tall and maturation is slow. The result is that the edges soften with creamy notes and the centre stays firm, with bright acidity to find the balance. If you wait for the cheese to soften all the way to the centre, you are going to get disappointed. In the time it takes to fully mature, the rind will be funky and full of ammonia and bitterness. The best tip is to look for fully white mould and not wrapped in plastic because this will add to sweating and the mould will keep making the ammonia.

The cheese I bought for the tasting was cut off a fresh wheel so it was in perfect condition for matching with bubbles. McWilliams are the importers of Champagne Taittinger so these guys are huge Champagne fiends and no complaints from me. The desire to hook into the cheese and champagne was high on the agenda, but disappointment quickly sunk in. The tight acid structure of the Champagne just drew out ammonia from the mould rind and what a clash. Harsh astringent bitterness.

The Prosecco did the same thing. Big tight acid structures did nothing for the creamy triple cream. Now the tasting crew had looked at the bubbles first and of course the Champagne Taittinger had got some deep and adoring love, with the Soliel Cremant lagging at the end of the favoured list. Easy drinking for sure, with a dense foam but no way was it going to match food, especially a creamy triple cream. This is where good neighbours became good friends...

Soliel Cremant a 50% Chardonnay 50% Pinot Noir comes from a number of Burgundy regions including Auxerre, which is also the home of Fromagerie Lincet. It doesn't take long reading Lincet's web page to see how much they love the cheese and wine match http://www.fromagerie-lincet.net/an/index.asp .

Did it match? Well yeah! The light acid pallet of the Cremant drew out the creaminess of the Delice with no arguments on the tongue anywhere to be found. The green apple hints of the Cremant lifted to balance. Delicous and satisfying, the McWilliams crew didn't want to go back to work - mission accomplished.

Let me know what your favourite wine and cheese match. Always happy to do a test run.

Creamy Blue's Hit The Spot

Blue Vein is a pretty polarising cheese. Like Angelina Jolie to some, running your fingers down a black board for others. It usually takes time, patients and little bit of subliminal dirty work from a friend to introduce blue vein styles to the unsuspecting.

I normally like to sneak blue cheeses in somewhere, like a salad; unseen, unknowing and slowly but surely BAM! you've got 'em: hopefully.  But it does take practice.

No one would expect to jump into a Barrossa Shiraz when normally all they drink is Moscato. Find the place and find the time. A nice crusty bread and a smooth Muscat to round off the edges will hit the spot.

Saint Agur, made by the French dairy giant Bongrain is not likely to be one of those cheeses that is made for your newbie. This is for the keen foodie ready to take a step up from the simple creamy cheeses to something special without trekking all the way to the peak of cheeses like Roquefort. A double cream style, the creaminess of the cheese rounds out the pepper hot notes and leaves a sweet but pecant length that will hang around for ever.

Being a French cheese there is always advertising: didn't know cheese was an aphrodisiac, but check this TV ad out;

Regional Heroes



Peter Howard



Recently I wrote about Rick Bakas who is one of  the new social media heroes. While it's fun to talk about the latest new hero, it is less frequent to celebrate those that have come before us - quite an Australian thing to do really.  When I think hero I don't look to the TV, I look to the hard workers behind the scences: Peter Howard and Alison Alexander.

Peter has been a great champion of food and wine for decades, running cafes, catering companies and even an impressive stint as TV celebrity chef for the 'Today' morning show during the 80's. But it's Peter's involvement in education that has been his enduring contribution to the Australian industry.

Alison Alexander

In the 70's Peter was a teacher at the North Ryde TAFE and has generated an enormous catalogue of text books and consumer cooking books to inspire and encourage hands-on participation. After 30 years of TV, exhibitions and food shows Peter is finally retiring. It seems impossible to me to have a food or wine show without Peter. After all Peter gave me my first medal back in 2002 at the Australian Specialty Cheese Show and he has been there ever since.

 

I love characters like Julia Child's; brave forerunners of the crowd. Alison Alexander, a champion of Queensland food, is one of these forerunners.

 

She has done everything in food and relentlessly cajoles government to support regional food and wine: and succeeds. A tireless leader, I love how strong she is both professionally and personally. She challenges others to be that committed to excellence as well, and often fills me with fear if I don't meet the mark. Alison's most notable leadership is in the production of the Queensland Masterclass now in it's 15th year. Most importantly though, she tried my very first batch of cheese before anyone else(nearly s**t myself that day).

 

 

After being in the business for 20 years, do I have another 20 years in me - hope so, good examples have been set.

PS: Alison is pictured with me in the Masthea. This photo was taken at the Royal Brisbane Show in 2007
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