Vue de Monde

I can forgive owner/chef Shannon Bennett for not passing his French language CSE and his grammatically mis-spelled Vue de Monde. I can forgive him for the bad haircut. I can forgive him for defecting from Mother England.....all of the above for this was the best fine-dining meal I have experienced.
My first visit to VDM was over 8 years ago in Carlton in Bennetts early Melbourne days. It was good then, but times, styles and techniques have changed and things have just got even better!
A flawless 9 course gourmande menu and I shall just mention a few highlights.

-an amuse of oyster with silver caviar, sitting atop a glass of seaweed broth with grapefruit air.
-open ravioli of avocado filled with redclaw accompanied by a pumpernickel, watermelon, avocado jelly with raw salmon and osetra caviar open sandwich.
-mushroom gnocchi. Sphericised cepe soup which deliciously pop in one's mouth topped with oyster mushrooms and a reduced tarragon sauce.
-roast Kurobuta (the Wagyu of the piggy world) pork belly with pork rillette pancake and pananda stuffed apple.
-cheese course 1. Goats curd with sugared rose petal and rose jelly topped with goats curd icecream....awesome!
-cheese course 2. Cheese & ham sandwich-thinly sliced deep-fried ciabatta, cooked cubes of jamon, parmesan cheese, sour cream and crispy lettuce...made my arteries squeal for joy!

Top nosh doesn't come cheap at $250/hd for the set 9 course meal plus we drank wines by the glass from an impressively small fonted winelist bringing the total to around $300/hd. But for 5 hours of eating and drinking with good understated service that works out around $1 aussie/minute (or 30p) which I reckon is good bang for your buck!

Homecoming

6 months on since slaughter the jamon has just been coated in a protective layer of lard and has been strung in the wood shed for the remainder of its 3 year cure.

how to create your very own kitchen belfry tower

What to do whilst away in Europe for 4 months?
Despite the pending wintery months in Melbourne, and after much thought it was decided to create a special storage device to keep the legs at an even temperature and in a fly- and maggot-proof environment. Made a hanging device from an old chair and stuck it in the fridge at a constant 4 degrees C. The nearest thing to the equivalent of a church belfry in the mountains of Spain.

Jamon-boree

Finally did it -
Spurred on by recent new Australian silly laws governing the ban of importing 'raw' animal and dairy products. Purchased 2 beautiful female Otway free-range organic pork legs (Bill the organic butcher, Belgrave Vic) today. they look so shapely I thought about swapping them for mine.
Got to work in the garage with my 10kg of salt in the dark rubbing it into the meat.
If the possums don't get there first, in 18 months to 3 years time I hope to be eating my own home-cured jamon.

Fire up the oven

A morning spent chopping & stacking wood ready for the tail end of a Melbourne winter in the hills when we arrive back early September after a British indian summer (sic). We fire up the wood oven to bake some tasty things for tea. It takes at least an hour for the oven to heat fully and retain its temperature. Once the oven has reached around 550 degrees C the red-hot embers can be swept to one side and this makes room for the food.
First in was a beef bone to char before making stock for soup. A nice surprise there was the amount of beef dripping that oozed so that went into a little pot to smear onto hot toast at a later date.
Next is some saganaki, quickly achieving those crispy edges in the heat we eat straight from the dish with a big squeeze of lemon and some chopped up tomatoes, garlic & basil from the garden.
By now the bread dough has risen and we assemble 2 large rectangular pizzas - one with Gruners chorizo, olives & green pepper and the other plain tomato, cheese and fresh basil. They take around 30 seconds to cook.
Devoured greedily with our fingers with a bottle of Dalzotto Sangiovese we picked up cycling through the King Valley last weekend.

Let's get this show on the road

Just 8 weeks to go before heading off to London. Its 38 degrees today in Melbourne and due to hit 40 by the weekend. Just the weather to eat a meltingly tender slow-cooked leg of goat wrapped in homemade pitta bread & salad. The garden is producing log-jams of zucchinis, tomatoes, cucumbers and aubergines at present and I am challenged in evermore inventive ways of disposing of these in alimentary ways.