Range at Myrtleford

258 Great Alpine Rd, Myrtleford; 03 5752 2885

When you're hot, you're hot. When Michael Ryan opened Range at Myrtleford, the plaudits rolled in and the restaurant filled a fairly broad gap - geographically speaking - in fine dining in the northeast (Simone's at Bright notwithstanding). Range earned two hats and Country Restaurant of the Year in 2008 thanks to Ryan's 'regional contemporary' food.

Range was, and is, attached to Motel on Alpine, one of Myrtleford's more modern accommodation options. Ryan and the motel have parted ways, with Ryan taking his chef's tools - and a lot of Range's cred - to Beechworth to open Provenance. Sean Ford has picked up the tongs at Range. Like Ryan, Ford brings interstate experience and a long resume to the restaurant.

Locals seem sceptical about the change, using the past tense when describing the restaurant as good. I query that assessment for two reasons: 1) Myrtleford is a town un-awash with food not branded as 'bistro'; and 2) having eaten there Ford seems a dab hand at handling the local produce.

Where Range is difficult is in its kitout. Maybe it worked better when it was pumping every night with long-distance culinary fans. The night we were there, the carpeted room - more reminiscent of an art gallery than a dining room - housed but two other couples and two lone diners, most of whom were guests at the motel.

It's a small space, but one that was worked efficiently by a lone member of waitstaff. The menu undoubtedly focuses on regional produce, which is what you're after at an expensive regional restaurant.

Having said that about regional dishes, our starter was baby calamari, served with a white bean, olive and parsley salad, plus a 'spicy' coriander dressing that presented more like pesto.It wasn't picked for its local-ness, but rather the fact that it was something we could share! The squid was lightly charred and nicely pliant, and offered a good amount as a starter. The accompanying salad was suitably light and fresh.

Other more local entree options included Milawa quail with polenta, and fried zucchini flowers from Merriang.

That afternoon we'd driven down to Lake Buffalo, past a turnoff to the delightfully named Nug Nug. The village showed up on one of the main options: braised Nug Nug kid with local forest mushrooms, baby carrots and kipflers.Chef Ford slow cooks two cuts of meat - loin and flank. I'm used to goat on the bone in a curry, but this was quite different. The meat was juicily sinewy, melting like a three-hour lamb roast. The starchy veg nestled alongside the kid made it a wintry dish, sure, and it could have used something a bit lighter to mix it up - a spark of green or crunch on the plate (supplied, as it happened, by a side order of steamed beans with almonds).

SG went for a rather more exotically described main: greta saltbush lamb (Greta being a town about 50km west of Myrtleford), with eggplant caviar, white bean puree, parmesan crisps, fresh peas and rosti potato. Believe it or not, it was all there on the plate! The lamb was lovely - a generous serve of eight moist, pink slices, just crisped on the outside. The accompanying jus worked a treat with the house bread - an unbelievably aromatic bake served with creamed butter. The whole dish was perhaps a bit busy - the eggplant caviar (slow-cooked strips of the veg) probably an obvious element to forego.

Earlier in the night we'd seen the waitress take a shot of gin out to the kitchen, which led me to think that this was my kind of chef! The dessert menu revealed the reason, however: a savarin with gin and rhubarb syrup. My gin requirements had been quenched with a gin and tonic to start the evening, and I was keen to continue my indulgence in the region's autumnal affair with the nut, hence selecting the chestnut souffle with dark chocolate parfait.
I'm not a regular souffle eater, so can't rate this one against many others. It's innards crumbled satisfactorily, but it was also scaldingly hot. (Our dessert order had anteceded the departure of the penultimate guests by at least 20 minutes.) The parfait was excellent though - firmish on the outside and gooey inside, and made with the quality dark chocolate that you just know is good for you.

The parfait was drizzled with Beechworth honey, an establishment we'd visited that day. Their hometown store offers help-yourself samples of dozens of honeys, a worthwhile way to ascertain the different between a leatherwood and a messmate (our fave).

SG thought he was taking the more straightforward dessert option, with a simple order for the lemon meringue tart with vanilla anglaise. But here it was the execution that was more exotic.
The tart was deconstructed into biscuity rounds topped with a puckering lemon curd, flanking a somewhat charred rectangle of meringue. It luckily tasted less scorched than it looked! (But again, perhaps the chef was too keen to finish up the last service of the night?)

A particularly commendable aspect of dining at Range was their commitment to not only local food produce, but wine as well. Most of the wines available by the glass were from vineyards very close by, and more often than not for around $8. The menu also featured a dish of the month, with suggested local wines by the glass or bottle to go with it.

Both our wine selections introduced us to new vineyards to seek out: the 2008 Annapurna pinot gris, and a 2008 pinot noir from Bogong Estate (who exclusively produce pinots).

Glancing over Michael Ryan's menu at Provenance, I can see that Range may have lost some sexiness with his departure. Ford has continued the commitment to local produce, however, and he's handling it with aplomb.

Tea Rooms at Yarck

6585 Maroondah Hwy, Yarck; (03) 5773 4233

Pietro Porcu has crafted his own style of Sardinian food at Da Noi in South Yarra for over ten years. It's a style that truly celebrates the seasonal, cooking what's good there and then and eschewing the need for a rigid menu. It's more what you might expect in a hailed trattoria in an obscure Italian town; all it lacked was the isolation.

Since opening his second restaurant at Yarck (open on weekends only), Porcu has added that missing piece. Recreating the subsistence lifestyle of his childhood with his own farm near the speck-on-the-map town, Porcu has created a gorgeous outpost of authentic, field-to-plate eating.

As at Da Noi, guests are welcome to discuss their likes and dislikes with the waitstaff and have the chef prepare an impromptu meal accordingly. The chef's menu is $78, priced around four courses, although the final cost can be adjusted if you end up eating more or less. A group dining near us were overwhelmed when their main course arrived: an enormous, overflowing bowl of crab claws, beautifully presented with the terracotta shells contrasting the traditional blue, yellow and white pattern of the plate.

A brief blackboard menu of daily specials is also available: antipasti, two entrees, two primi, three secondi and a handful of desserts. The waitstaff were happy to talk through the menu in some detail: these are dedicated people on the floor, who understand Porcu's love of food and his ability to share something special with each diner.

We managed to get the best of both worlds, ordering two unmissable entrees, and one a la carte and one special main - more on that later.

Before ordering, the visit started with some fried and battered broccolini - impressively fresh after obviously just kissing the oil. Between ordering and receiving entrees, we nibbled on bread and some simple marinated capsicum.
SG's entree of rolletto di coniglio was equally tantalising to us both: rolled rabbit, stuffed with mince and speared with beans, served with a rich, syrupy drizzle of balsamic reduction. My entree was the crespelle: crepes with fontina, ham and broccoli, served straight from the oven. Broccoli can be a steamed disaster or, as in this case, it can be a sparky foil to richer companions such as the cured ham and gooey cheese.

For main, SG chose the cervo con polenta. Venison, like veal, is a meat I avoid, since it's so hard to vouch for the care and upbringing of the animal. In a restaurant like this, however, I feel differently. The venison was marinated overnight in a red wine sauce, and came to the table oozing over a polenta mush, studded with carrots so soft and sweet they tasted like poached pears.

My main is something it will take me a long time to forget. I had gone for the lasagnetta, but the waitress advised it was a bit similar to the crespelle and suggested a dish not on the menu: chestnut pasta, with a duck and orange ragu. The pasta noodles were astounding. They hardly dominated the dish, but the richer flavour and slightly grittier texture were so noticeable. And the ragu was just a dream, a wondrous blend of flavours that, while rich, demanded I make as much room as possible and just keep eating.

I was, not surprisingly, sated after those two courses, but SG ploughed on with a serve of pineapple sorbet, perfectly sweet and expertly creamed, topped with a couple of curves of candied fruit. I pushed the boat out with a serve of Mirto, a Sardinian myrtle liquor that is bang on for a mix of sweet and herby, but at $15 a glass not something I'll chuck back just anywhere.
But this was absolutely that kind of meal - where you revel in the food, the atmosphere of the place, the knowledge and skill of the chef and his staff, and the pure enjoyment of a well-prepared meal.


Also recommended near Yarck: Mansfield Traveller's Lodge. Mansfield is about 40 mins from Yarck and this motel offers fantastic value - big rooms at under $100, with tips for local places to visit, a communal kitchen and DVDs to borrow - and exceptional service (eg jump-starts and recommendations for mechanics when your car breaks down!)

Human frailty: 'Blindness' and 'The Children of Men'

A dystopia is a powerful world for an author to evoke. It is made all the more potent when created through a single permutation in normality, revealing how fragile our hold on security has been made by 'progress'. P.D. James' Children of Men and Jose Saramago's Blindness both explore a world wracked by a single failing that - slowly or quickly - is the undoing of mankind.

(Coincidentally, both books were made into movies within two years of each other, both starring Julianne Moore.)

In P.D. James' The Children of Men, humankind has lost the ability to reproduce. Rather than presenting a post-apocalytpic world, James' is mid-apocalyptic: humanity is dying, not suddenly through a cataclysmic attack, but patiently, as the population inexorably ages.

Hers is a fascinating concept. Just what would we do if the human race became infertile? What would be the first industries and services to suffer? The social implications are so forseeable and worthy of scrutiny that the outcomes of such an event could be explored systematically, in a future-doco format.

James instead creates a protagonist, Theo Farron, upon whom to hinge the plot. His centrality to events past - his childhood with Britain's ruler - and present - a splinter group's choice to ask him to help them - is unfeasible and stalls the book to an extent. James concerns herself solely with the situation in England (and a small portion of that country at that). The book offers no explanation for the infertility, and the fact that births simply stopped in 1995 is conceptually problematic.

Those born in 1995 - all 25 years old at the time of the book's setting - are known as Omegas, and bear an uncanny resemblance to today's Gen Ys. They are described as 'indulged ... arrogant ... without animation or energy'. The similarity can only be inadvertent since the book was written in 1992. It's an intriguing device, imbuing this unprecedented consciousness into the last-born, but again relies on society functioning a little more neatly and uniformly than it does.

The protagonist Theo is a professor at Oxford, and cousin to the Warden of England, a benevolent dictator who rules the country assisted by a council of four. James' choice of governance warrants further consideration. What would happen to our governments if our race were not to see out the century? The cynical thought occurs that we're already ruled like a nation with noone under 25 and 90% of the population over 50. But would parliament be disbanded? Would one person emerge to take on responsibility for keeping order, keeping the electricity running, finding something for the schoolteachers, childcare workers and children's retailers to do?

Theo's world is a strange one, straddling two genres: it is neither a futuristic rendering from sci-fi, nor a barely recognisable, post-apocalyptic wasteland. Many scenes feature derelict buildings and nature overrunning man-made structures - with fewer people this world has finally solved the housing crisis - alongside normality as Theo drives to work and shop.

The story was significantly altered for the movie verson (Theo Farron is no Clive Owen!), but the filmed version provoked a similar ambivalence of criticism, with many respecting the premise but questioning the execution.

Blindess explores a different calamity: an epidemic of non-seeing, which rapidly reduces the world to barbarism and criminality. Again, it's a singular change, yet its ramifications are feasibly encompassing and horrific. The blindess is contagious, and the first couple of hundred people afflicted are quarantined. Very quickly, though, they must fend entirely for themselves. Just as quickly, their quarantine station descends into the most basic of barbarism.

The descent is both quick and total. Saramago spares no attention to detail of the excrement, the despair, the violence, and the lust, of both the requited and forced kind. The book featured scenes I found difficult to read; from discussions with others who've read it I think most will find something hard to get through, but what it is depends on your personal sensitivity.

What I found difficult was the notion that we would necessarily descend to rape and pillage, if 200 random humans were left alone in desparate circumstances. The quarantine station Saramago creates serves as a microcosm; when the sequestered get out, they realise the quarantine was a fruitless ordeal, since the plague of blindness has spread universally. The group in quarantine, therefore, serve Saramago's literary licence, as they must display what is worst - and in the case of one or two characters - what is best in us.

Saramago's writing style is peculiar - he believes in long paragraphs, with no visual distinction between dialogue and prose. I haven't read other books of his to know if this is his standard, but in this book it's effective in disorienting the reader, and bringing them closer to an empathy with these characters who have also lost their orientation.

It's astonishing to consider how fundamentally that one change would alter existence. How would we eat if noone could distinguish between the packets? Who would manage our utilities if noone could see the dials? How would you find your way home if you were out when the blindness struck? Saramago describes the blindness as a white world, reinforcing the point that everything we have built is still there - and illuminated, if the people could only see.

L'Angolo

350 Nicholson St, Fitzroy; (03) 9077 2013

(Note: the pictures in this post are of a notably higher quality than my usual - because I didn't take them, and the person who did has better skills and equipment! Many thanks to JC)

What is a 'true' Italian restaurant? One of Fitzroy's newer additions, L'Angolo, claims it opened in response to Melbourne's need for one. It's a disingenuous term, since in Melbourne we tend to be savvy enough about Italian cuisine to sneer - albeit discreetly - at places that try to cover the whole boot. We embrace restaurants that declare themselves to be all about the toe, heel and, most commonly, the poor little island about to get a kicking.

What is setting L'Angolo apart at the moment is its (hopefully) monthly themed nights, where it zooms in to a particular region of Italy. In March, the region in the spotlight was Sicily, in particular Palermo. For $60, guests feasted on four signature dishes and supped a glass of Sicilian wine. Brilliant value. Notably too, the dishes on offer are not merely a re-ordering of their everyday mains. This shows a commitment to making the event special, though it's also a shame when a stand-out dish isn't one you can go back for later.

First out to the table were the antipasti palermitani. Note that this is one of two platters that came to our table of four. This platter isn't on their regular menu - if it were, this plus a glass of wine (starting at $6.50 for a house red) would make for a wonderful, cheap night out.
Let's start at the front: baby bruschetta with a dollop of caponatina (eggplant cooked with tomatoes and olives); going anti-clockwise, the next items are torta salata di spinaci (probably the least exciting item); at the back nestle panelle, little buns filled with wonderful chickpea fritters; and sfincionello, Sicilian focaccia topped with caramelised onion and tomato - delicious, but a little hefty given there were three courses to come! In the middle are two fine arancinette, as well as some rocket and pecorino. As a group they made for a lovely presentation, and each one highlighted its own distinct Sicilian flavours.

Both the primi piatti and secondo featured swordfish, but in two very different fashions. The primi piatti was a triumph. Spotted from a distance heading to other tables, it looked like a delicious dessert. Instead, up close, it revealed itself as slivers of eggplant elegantly draped over a skein of spaghetti, within which hid morsels of swordfish, delightfully set off by a touch of mint. L'Angolo call the dish a timballetto, which is normally pasta in puff pastry, but their own take on encased noodles was superb.

In the main dish of involtini di spada the swordfish held its own morsels, this time of breadcrumb dotted with raisins and pine nuts. Alongside were some so-so prawns alla palermitana (the flesh was a little gluggy) and a fennel and orange salad, a welcome aid to digestion at this point in the meal.

What was notable about the savoury courses was the lack of red meat. While doubling up on the main flesh (swordfish) at first seemed surprising, it in fact made the four courses far easier to stomach, and made a welcome change to having to leave half a scotch fillet behind by the time you get to the main course.

For dessert it could only be one thing: cannoli, filled with ricotta, a hint of marsala and 'scaglie' (shavings) of chocolate.As with the swordfish in the timballetto and the raisins in the involtini, those little studs of choc were a treasure of taste, ensuring that these richer ingredients didn't overpower the bulkier ones - perhaps therein lies their claim to be purveyors of 'real' Italian food.

Figtastic

Trunk: 275 Exhibition St, Melbourne; (03) 9663 7994
Pizzeria Amici: 100 Burgundy St, Heidelberg; (03) 9459 0907

The fig. An intriguing fruit, one with a brief but abundant seasonality, and one hailed as much for its partnerships as an item to eat solo. Also, a fruit reputably worth little, if the phrase 'to not give a fig about something' is taken literally. It's an ancient fruit too: the asp is brought to Cleopatra in a basket of figs. Interestingly, the word sycophant derives from the Greek for 'showing the figs'.

But enough of the trivia, let's get down to the eating! Figs featured in two dishes I enjoyed last week, the first as part of an Express Lunch at Trunk. Here it was served for entree in the peerless pairing with proscuitto di parma, with some witlof, aged balsamic and a smear of goat's cheese. The flavour match of proscuitto and figs is just exquisite, particularly when the restaurant takes the care to source quality ham.

For me the strange thing about figs is that I would never sit down to one on its own. I don't mind the flavour so much but the texture isn't one I enjoy. Yet, when properly partnered, it's a joy. I much prefer the combination of proscuitto and fig to prosciutto and melon; the latter has always seemed a step too far in terms of texture and taste contrast.

Figs also featured in a Friday night dinner at Pizzeria Amici. With the return of the fig season, their most famous pizza gets its annual reprise: figs with gorgonzola, speck and rocket. It is a superb combination. Amici get the cheese spot on, so it covers the base but doesn't overwhelm with its own richness. The figs and speck are a natural pairing and the rocket brings the bite and roughness to even it all out.

If you're craving magnificent, authentic pizza, served up with conviviality, get to Amici. Best to phone for a booking too: the locals can't believe their luck and the place is pumping every night.

Tinning the toms

For some it was a tradition to be endured then ignored; for others it's a logical conclusion to the bounty of summer produce. For me, it's a ceremony just begun, for my own fulfilment.

Tomato Day

The idea of chopping, seeding, cooking and canning tomatoes at the end of summer has appealed to me for years. I've read and heard numerous accounts - positive and otherwise - of traditional family days that produced cases of lustrous red sauce. Truth be told, it's a tradition deserving of company, of allocated roles, and a matriarch to direct proceedings.

I didn't even have a tomato plant.

The lack of produce wasn't a problem. All year I'd planned to head to Gateway Estate in Coldstream to pick up one of their 10kg, end-of-season boxes of roma tomatoes, grown on site. Gateway's store is dwarfed by their greenhouse, which is vibrant with capsicum, eggplant and tomato plants. The small retail area is crammed with firm, luscious fruit and vegetables, as well as local preserves, oils and sweets. It's also the cellar door for their own wines. These eggplants, grown on site, were magnificently firm, weighty and glossy:While up there we headed to Gruyere, for lunch at the Red Shed Cafe, a thoroughly recommended spot.

Back home, it was time to take a knife to this lot:In the course of the day I cooked four batches, each with a slightly different preparation. One decision to make when preparing tomatoes is to skin or not to skin. It's quite fun getting the skins off, but does add time and effort to the process. Aunty Stephy doesn't skin, but she does pass her sauce through a food mill, so she gets rid of them at the end. There's nothing wrong with leaving them on, but obviously you'll end up with a chunkier sauce.

Skinning tomatoes is quite fun, if you have the time and inclination. Cut a shallow cross in the bottom, then drop each tomato into boiling water for 10 seconds. Dunk them in cold water, then peel the skin right off. If you cut them in half after taking them out of the cold water, it's even easier to get the skin off. You're left with something that closer resembles a ball of watermelon:
Once they're peeled (or as the first step if you're leaving the skins on), cut the top (the calyx end) off the tomatoes, then cut them into quarters. Use a small knife to cut out the core, taking the seeds with it. Discard core and seeds. It can feel like you're getting rid of a lot of tomato, but you keep much more than you throw out. (Leaving the seeds in can make the sauce too bitter).

For each batch I sauteed onion in plenty of olive oil, then added the tomatoes and chopped garlic, along with a dash of red wine vinegar and plenty of dried oregano. That bubbled away to itself in a simmer for 40-60 minutes, before I added some seasoning at the end along with torn basil leaves. After that, it was time for a whizz in a food processor, then an awkward funnelling into recycled, sterilised passata jars.

A note to aspiring saucers: heat is an important part of sterilising. Add hot sauce to hot jars. If you're boiling your filled jars to form a seal, they need quite a while in the hot water (and the 'button' should pull down to indicate it's sealed).

Batch 1 was skin on, so came out a deeper red, and quite chunky. Batch 2 was skin off, and notably smoother. Batch 3 I passed through a 'sieve' (actually just a very fine strainer), creating quite an impressive jar of passata. The skins and extra bits from Batch 3 went in the food processor with Batch 4, making a last lot that stayed in the fridge for use that week.

Homesun goodness: sun-dried tomatoes

I tried growing tomatoes last summer. The plants too quickly outgrew their pot (I admit I'd been stingy on their living quarters), and while they tried valiantly to deliver up a couple of red goodies, one couldn't call the first try a success.

Later that summer, I heard Rosa Mitchell, chef at Journal Canteen, talking about making sun-dried tomatoes, something she does every year. Simply put, one cuts the tomatoes in half, removes the seeds, sprinkles them with salt, then lays them out in the sun for a few days.
And it is that simple. For three days I trotted out into the garden every half an hour or so to move them in alignment with the sun. It didn't take too long for the sun's effect to become obvious, the skins to wrinkle and the tomatoes to start to pucker as they dried out.
By the second day the smaller ones looked exactly like...well, the ones you'd buy in a shop. By the third day they'd all shrivelled and darkened, and a quick taste-test revealed they were bursting with concentrated tomato flavour.

This to me is the best kind of 'cooking'. It requires very little skill and even less equipment. What it does need is a good dash of time and a pinch of patience. But these are the ingredients I most like to bring to my food, to create things that use a bit of a nature and that are enhanced by the seasons.
The natural extension of this project was to finally instigate Tomato Day, and evoke my non-existent Mediterranean ancestors in the production of tomato sauce. Read all about it...

Bar Idda

132 Lygon St, Brunswick East; 03 9380 5339

With the launch of Cheap Eats 2010 last week, Bar Idda in Brunswick East found itself in the limelight, picking up the Cheap Eats Champ award. The plaudits reminded me of our early-summer meal there, which I hadn't got to writing up.

Bar Idda opened unobtrusively into the space formerly occupied by Rumi (who moved down the street a bit to bigger premises) and replaced the space's Persian focus with a Sicilian one. With all this publicity, Bar Idda may soon have just as much trouble fitting in the hordes as Rumi did.

The menu of primi, secondi and contorni is, of course, designed to be shared. Starter options feature olives, sardines and the traditional arancino ($7.50 each).Filled with beef and pork ragu, peas, egg and mozza, it's good to share and save space for the bigger dishes to come.

Macaroni with sugo Siciliano comes with a second slug of beef and pork ragu. It's undoubtably a hefty dish, with those flakes of beef, but the macaroni is fresh and light.

The slow cooked purpetti dolce with cinnamon and tomato are exceptional. The sauce is redolent of cinnamon, but remains sweet and delicate - worth eating alone with a spoon, never mind the meatballs (particularly given we're now up to a triple serve of the signature meats)!

As soon as we'd glanced at the menu, I knew we couldn't go past the frittedda: warmed broad beans, asparagus and peas are tossed with crispy, olive-oil-fried breadcrumbs, and topped with the tiniest of red onion shavings. Eaten at the height of broad bean season, this was a dish I'd be happy to sit down to at every meal.

Wine is available by the carafe and the white walls and tall windows bring in plenty of light - two factors that always contribute to welcome atmosphere.