The Dirty Chef

by Matthew Evans

  The strain started to show in the others too.

  When Ross cracks it, he really cracks it. Trained as a chef, he can handle some pretty stressful situations. But you always know where you stand with Ross, and if he’s got the hump, he’s seriously got the hump. His language, his body language and his attitude all make it quite clear he’s not going to put up with crap anymore.

  And so it was on day four of filming. Nick and I had been out to Big Dog Island, off the south of Flinders, mutton-birding. We’d scoured the coast for cockles. We’d annoyed local lettuce growers and the council and the plumber who doubled as a Manuka honey collector and tripled (in my view) as the invisible man. We never did meet him, though we did find his honey at the local shop. All the while the film crew had their demands which had to fit around the need to actually organise the event.

  Ross, when we came back from Big Dog, had managed to bag a few geese and we were with him at the abattoir trying to sort out where they had gone, where the lamb was, what had happened to our wallaby, when the plane bringing in our families was due at the airport. Because we were in the middle of filming, and for storylines that didn’t need Ross on screen, it was deemed that Nick and I should go and pick up the families. Ross felt miffed at being left behind, and stormed off in a huff. Rightly so; he would’ve missed his family as much as any of us did, and we let filming get in the way of the personal—not rightly, and not for the first or last time. So after using some fairly colourful turns of phrase, he walked off and we didn’t see him again for quite a while.

  And did we feel guilty? You bet. Guilty that Ross wasn’t at the airport to greet Emma and their one-year-old son Felix. Guilty that he wasn’t back at the house we were renting when we got there. And really, really, really guilty when he didn’t show up for dinner or, for several hours afterwards, failed to answer his phone and gave us all the cold shoulder and the first of our ulcers.

  But Ross’s tale is quite different from what we imagined. Angry with us, he went back to Partridge Farm to do what he does best when under pressure—cook. He had found the geese and took them back to the meat room at the farm. He boned out the necks for sausages and salted the legs to make confit. And while he worked, Lorraine conscientiously and quietly went about her nightly routine, locking all the outbuildings on Partridge Farm. From the outside. And there was Ross. Simmering and seething away for a couple of hours. A man denied his family by our thoughtlessness. Then trapped inside the confines of a commercial-style kitchen with no mobile phone reception and nothing to do but cook. He had no choice, so he minced the goose breast with some venison to make a cracking sausage.

  It may’ve been a good thing. It certainly was for the menu. Ross laboured at his tasks, and somehow managed, hours later, to crawl through a small open window to raise the alarm. By the time he drove back to where we were staying, Nick and I were sick with worry. But Ross had calmed down and was quite civil, and made us look not only like the selfish blokes we were, but also quite lazy by the amount of work he’d done after dark.

  We would still have had food to serve at the lunch without Ross’s incarceration, but some of it wouldn’t have been quite so well executed.

  One thing we wanted our guests to find when they arrived was some kind of sense of theatre. Not content with our tree-fringed paddock, the livestock, the orchard and the vineyard that would frame the lunch, we wanted something more. A bit of culture, perhaps. So we booked Jon the Juggler and tried to fly in a mate who plays in a band.

  Now, Dean Stevenson is a well known Hobart musician and singer. And we really wanted him to come to Flinders for the lunch. But Dean insisted on bringing his double bass, an instrument well suited to the outdoor location and needing no amplification. That would’ve been fine, if we weren’t on an island. We looked at the commercial flights. They couldn’t guarantee they’d get the instrument onboard at all. We looked at charter flights. Nobody seemed to be able to say if the double bass would fit. We asked a mate, a pilot, if he could bring Dean and his mate over to play for the lunch, but his plane was simply too small.

  It took three days and about 50 phone calls, but Nick organised it just in time. In the end, we did find a charter plane that could do it. And Dean’s music was absolutely perfect for the occasion. But adding one more complication to the lunch nearly did me in. I’d recommend using local talent next time. Or someone with a penchant for the ukulele.

  With most of the food and, finally, the entertainment sorted, things were looking up. But, still, we nearly had to can the lunch at Partridge Farm. All week the weather threw it at us. From sloping rain to annoying drizzle. Even the day before the lunch it was wet. I started to ask about options for wet weather. Partridge Farm didn’t have a building big enough for the crowd we were expecting. The shearing shed we’d checked out up near Elephant Rock, it turned out, was actually being used for shearing that week, so luckily we weren’t relying on that. The local hall, a good half-hour drive from the farm, was going to need a lot of set-dressing to make it work. The forecast was for a moderate wind, but no rain. Every time I asked Nick and Ross what they had in mind if the weather turned, I was met with stony silence.

  On the day before the lunch, while the rain came in fits and starts, there was plenty to do besides cook. We helped set up the service marquee, and a friend, Simon Thomsen, flew in ready to enjoy the lunch. As a treat, his wife had bought him a ticket for a pricey flight over and the lunch itself. As we finally knocked off work at about midnight on the Friday, however, Simon, a former hospitality worker himself who was probably thinking more clearly than we were, realised we didn’t have any plan, yet again, for the front of house. Yes, I’d rung a few people to work as waiters, but only three had answered their phones.

  Over a few nips of Scotch, the reality of what we’d done, and what we had yet to do in terms of both cooking and service, settled over our heads. When Simon offered to run the waiters and organise the whole front of house, not one of us murmured any objection. I think we were too tired and grateful to object, even politely.

  Early the next morning, with Simon conscripted to help, we suddenly realised we were 60 glasses and several sets of cutlery short. A few panicked calls later, and everything arrived just in time (thank you, Flinders Island council!).

  The call out for more staff went across the island yet only three waiters and a couple of kitchenhands came to help. Decked out in shoes you wouldn’t normally wear in a paddock, the waiters dressed a curved table that snaked up the middle of Partridge Farm’s deer paddock. Together with Simon, they set the table for the 98 people we had on our bookings list.

  Of course, 104 showed up.

  Worse than that, we really didn’t think through the logistics.

  The kitchen was 300 metres from the table. It was also 300 metres from the firepit, and although you could see the table from the firepit, through a 3-metre-high deer fence, only about 20 metres away, you couldn’t actually get to the table without a 600-metre jog back past the kitchen.

  Now, when I was young I used to run. Up to 20 kilometres a day was the routine. But at 45, with a dicky knee and a (well, just slightly) bigger gut than in my twenties, running wasn’t really on the agenda. Especially after a long, grinding week of work. So as I flame-grilled my knuckles and 200 mutton-birds over coals, I was already sweating. I sweated more as I passed platters of finished birds through a small hole cut in the deer fence and watched, helplessly, as the enthusiastic but all-too-few waiters ran themselves ragged trying to look after our diners properly.

  We did have walkie-talkies, but Ross stopped answering his. So messages were passed by the film crew, by our waiters. At the serving marquee close to the table, we served the soup and could carve the meats. We enlisted Rob and his quad bike to help spare our legs. In the absence of any jugs or more glassware, we sent out Gourmet Farmer’s producer, Aline, to buy up all the island’s bottled water.

  We wanted to try to cook local produce in a way that the residents of Flinders may n
ot have seen before. We didn’t think there was any point serving them their own produce in the same way they cooked it themselves. So it was a light tomato soup of cockles, abalone and lobster. Ross turned those Cape Barren Geese into a very smart confit and intense, meaty sausages (the bangers he’d slaved over in the locked kitchen). We had poached the mutton-birds in the Cape Barren Goose stock before I grilled them over the flames. Nick wrapped garfish in vine leaves, which were then seared on the barbecue back at the gazebo. Lamb from two farms was braised with garlic and tomato and red wine and olives (a few we stole from Lorraine’s larder at Partridge Farm). And we nicked some figs from the oldest fig tree on the island, which is just outside the council offices, to bake with Manuka honey and serve with an apple and pear compote.

  Let’s hope those who came to the lunch found they got value for money. Those locals who reckoned it was too expensive held a short-table 170-cents-a-head lunch on the other side of the island. They have a good sense of humour, Flinders Islanders.

  All things considered, we were pretty happy with the way the meal went. The sun shone on the guests as, a glass of sparkling and a little parcel of Killiecrankie crayfish in hand, they were greeted by Jon the Juggler and Dean on his double bass, then made their way down the paddock to the long curved table overlooking a sparkling blue bay.

  A Common Ground Lunch Menu

  Flinders Island, April 2011

  • Killiecrankie crayfish washed in moonshine and wrapped in fresh wasabi leaves

  • Seafood and green tomato broth, with green lip abalone, crayfish, cockles and samphire

  • Chargrilled garfish, wrapped in vine leaves, with fresh tarragon and lemon

  • Mutton-bird arrostino (twice-cooked then chargrilled over local hardwood)

  • School kids’ salad (greens grown and served by Flinders Island primary school with a bit of help from Jon the Juggler)

  • Cape Barren Goose—confit leg, smoked breast and goose neck sausage with sour grapes

  • Two breeds (Coopworths and Dorper) of braised lamb with chilli and olives

  • Wallaby baked in hay

  • Wood-roasted whole organic pumpkin

  • Honey-roasted wild figs with apple and pear compotes and sabayon

  All up, not bad for a meal cooked by three blokes out of a shed, really.

  The weather ended up being glorious, especially with the dining table tucked behind some trees away from a light breeze. It was probably ideal to dine in that paddock on Partridge Farm, with glimpses of Big Dog Island to the south and deer, sheep, grapes and pheasant closer to home.

  The locals seemed to like the lunch; many quite dressed up for the occasion. A few Islanders even noticed the winemaker’s new trousers. Having not been allowed a firepit in the paddock near the table, Rob decided to light a bonfire to warm up the stragglers as night set in. Only those of us from off-island looked ill at ease as the flames climbed 10 metres up a nearby tree.

  All up, we went through two and a half bottles of wine per person that day. And at least two of the guests were teetotallers. Looking back, with only four on the floor to serve food and pour the wine, perhaps things got a little out of hand.

  After a long, hard day that was heading into the night, we started to relax around the fire and have a cleansing ale, leaving the last of the tidying up for the next morning.

  It took all of the next day to pack up the gear and put Partridge Farm back to how it was (or as close as possible to its previously neat state). We were still washing up more than a day after the event, using the island’s hospital kitchen after it had finished serving meals on the Sunday night. Even Ross had started to look a bit worn.

  Part of our charter at A Common Ground is to engage with producers and to nurture artisan industry. So our initial aim was to give $1000 of our proceeds to the Flinders Island Primary School kitchen garden as a thank you for helping with our salad. But because of our expenses (you can blame a blowout in the alcohol budget for that), and despite the high price tag for the lunch, there was very little profit. Five hundred dollars to be exact. We gave it to the school.

  We spent the second day after the lunch with our families. The three of us boys pale, drawn and falling asleep on the beach while our children and wives frolicked in the sand at a stunning location on the north of the island. The long-table lunch had taken a huge toll on our bodies, with the family holiday at the end of the week turning into something more closely resembling convalescence.

  Apparently Flinders Island is a spectacular holiday destination. Ross, Nick and I wouldn’t know about that. It certainly is a great place to host a feast. Though we left with the opinion that the locals have a fairly heroic thirst.

  Growing and making your own food gives you the chance to try stuff you’d never find commercially. The big jar is sauser, a lightly spritzy apple juice you drink just after it starts to ferment.

  I never knew garlic could be as crisp as an apple and as sweet as honey until I grew my own. We are surrounded by great garlic, usually known as ‘Tassie purple’ because of its trademark colour.

  The first egg from Puggle Farm was a tiny, brown speckled thing that barely poked above the eggcup. What it lacked in size, it made up for in flavour.

  My sunroom became the setting for a lunch where everything would be illegal if served in a restaurant, from the prosciutto to the smoked duck and raw milk.

  A lot of the milestones at both our farms have been witnessed by more than just the sheep. Here we’re about to cut up a pig next to our wooden barn and turn it into pancetta, cacciatore salami and truffled snags while a camera crew watches. PHOTO COURTESY OF ELAINE REEVES

  Twins are fairly common when you have lambs. While these two were born in early autumn, it was still mighty cold that first night.

  Wilbur had no trouble being born, a sight I witnessed in the early pre-dawn light, but I had to teach him to suckle off his mum.

  Black, svelte and forever interested in stalking things, Cari spends most of her time pacing the boundaries of our yard, waiting for a chicken to fly in so she can round it up for the remainder of the day.

  Mud, mud, mud. It comes every winter, and yet it’s always a surprise. You can see how the ute finally stopped halfway up to the pig paddocks, meaning we had to lug 1000 litres of milk (and many hay bales) by hand up the slope.

  One winter I put in a new fence at Puggle Farm to try and create more usable land. In sleet, rain and terrible winds, I helped lug wire, fix in posts and secured a new, if rough, 5-acre patch for the sheep and pigs.

  At our big place, Fat Pig Farm, we had to turn a one-time apple orchard into a series of garden beds. We did most of the digging and clearing by hand, something I’d probably think twice about next time.

  My little family is very lucky to live in the country. We hope others who share the dream can find their own bit of paradise to raise sheep, plant carrots and wrangle kids. PHOTO COURTESY OF ALAN BENSON

  Flour

  One of the first Tasmanians artisans I knew, well before I moved to Tassie, was John Bignell.

  John is a farmer. A proper farmer, unlike me, despite the name of the show I present. He has lots of deer. Lots of sheep. He’s grown salsify, Jerusalem artichokes, barley, wheat, wasabi and plenty more on his property, Thorpe Farm, up at Bothwell in the state’s Central Highlands.

  I first met John at a cheese show in Melbourne in the 1990s (there’s that cheese connection again). Standing in front of a few oozy scraps of curd, with his ruddy cheeks and farmer’s tan, with his hands the size of paddles and something sturdy about his demeanour, John wasn’t like the other exhibitors. Neither was his cheese. Around the room I’d found bland, rubbery, stabilised brie, full of fat to make up for the lack of runny ripeness. I’d found blue so sharp that it made your tonsils tickle. I’d found cheese so sour it could suck your undies up your bum and cheese so boring I nearly dozed off eating it. I found all manner of rudimentary cheeses, but nothing that looked like the stuff in front of John.


  At that stage, John was hand-milking Merino sheep, not famed for their milk production, to make his cheese. The results of his efforts were naturally rinded, quite ripe and spectacular cheeses, in such small quantities he couldn’t even sell me some. I caught up with John a few years later when I was working at Vogue—I flew down to do a story on Tassie and was on the prowl for producers. His wasabi, a crop in, let’s say a stage of experimentation, didn’t make the photographer happy. But again his cheese was the goods.

  These days I consider John Bignell to be the finest blue-cheesemaker in the country. The sheep he milks, when he has the rainfall to feed them, are now specific dairy breeds, and he also supplements his efforts with milk from a goat dairy. He makes fresher, simpler cheeses too, but if you get a chance to try his blues, they really are something else.

  John and Jill Bignell’s farm, in the family since the 1820s, has its own water mill. When they were courting John worked with Jill to renovate the long-abandoned flour mill. They even replaced the wonky-looking old glass in the windows—by heating new glass and wobbling it just enough to give the old effect. For every piece they managed to do, without breaking the glass, she would get a kiss.

  The glass wobbling obviously went well. John and Jill are still on the land together, even though the old water mill no longer runs—though a few weeks’ work by someone who knows about these things could possibly get it working. But the Bignells still produce flour at their nearby stone mill (much smaller, less ancient yet still old), now run on electricity. They also grow the grain they put through it.