Cheese Club Eight - Night of the Living Curds

The gear

When a barman knows your name it's probably time to reflect on your life so far and wonder if the next few years should be quite as well lubricated as the last few (which, when you think about it, have gone past in a bit of a blur). I was having similar thoughts earlier in the week when Parma at the cheese shop not only recognised me but called me by name. Yes, I realise that I know her name as well, but that doesn't really make it any better.

Two of the Cheese Club 7

Nevertheless, Cheese Club carries on and, like my cholesterol levels, is ever growing. This month the Cheese Club crew grew to seven, so there was no shortage of opinions and definitely no shortage of wine. Team Cheese was textile seahorse, Tom, Francesca, Dandy, Scott, Eat our Way stalwart Elisabeth and myself. The challenge was facing six Italian cheeses with no assistance except for some wine, bread, cornichons and a few biscuits.

Revolutionary biscuits of Italy,
Rise up out of your box,
You have nothing to lose but your wafers
Yum, yum, yum.

(Alexei Sayle)

Two more of the Cheese Club 7

So without further ado, and definitely without any further revolutionary poetry, we begin...

Occell- Tuma dia Paja - like the Easter Show, but flatter

Occelli Tuma dia Paja - This is a humorously flat, striped white-moulder that looks like a Camembert that was sat on by a pig wearing corduroy. The texture was soft like a perfectly ripened Brie but not as dense, while the flavour was mild and rural. Scott described this as "smelling like the Easter Show" - a mixture of hay and farm animals, not surprising given these are ripened on straw. It's made from milk from cows, goats, sheep, ducks, sparrows and... sorry, got carried away there... No duck or sparrow milk, but it does have cow and goat, and the sheep milk was clearly evident. A very good cheese to eat before getting down to the real business of eating cheese.

Ribiola de Grotto - the 1960 station wagon of packaging

Ribiola di Grotto - The most surprisingly packaged cheese I've seen yet. Wrapped like a bar of soap and then a layer of thin wood laminate on top and bottom, it looks like the lactic equivalent of an 1960's woody station wagon. A washed rind, cow's milk, this is one of the best washed -rinders I've tasted in a while. The texture was perfectly smooth with the slight crunch of salt(?) crystals while the flavour was salty and creamy but balanced with the bright orange pungency. Described as "excellent drinking cheese", as each salty bite needed a mouthful of wine.

Occelli crutin tartufo

Occelli crutin tartufo - Regular readers might get the impression we've gone a little truffle-mad here at Eat our Way Up High Street and honestly, it's hard to argue otherwise. This is a cylinder of truffle infused, semi-hard cheese made from cow and goats milk and it left us all reeling. Crumbly, and without the truffle it would be a nice enough - medium fat with a goat tang to finish with. With the truffle though... Phroaghhhhh.... Like a boardroom in a 1980's advertising agency, we passed the plate around from nose to nose, snorting deeply and talking rubbish, such was the intensity of the aroma. Somebody said, "Christmas in July!" Truffles really need fat to help spread the love, and truffle-in-cheese can be even better than the otherwise madcap truffle butter. Pecorino with truffles has been a favourite for a while, but the Occelli is its glorious, scented peer.

Sovrano

Sovrano - a hard cooked cheese from Lombardy made from cow and buffalo milk. A slice from a much larger (35kg) wheel, this is a lovely, pale coloured hard cheese with a bright, slightly sweet flavour. It has a slight crystalline crunch and a long, rich finish balanced with a little tartness (but not too much). This was a hearts-and-minds cheese - a lovely hard cheese for shaving that's not so intense that it can't be used with reckless abandon (and you know how much we love reckless abandon).

Pasti with crumblepaste. Weird.

Pasti - Another hard cooked cheese, this one quite a bit more intense than the Sovrano. It was a much darker, almost orange colour and had a flavour was deep and complex - rich and buttery but with esters that emphasise tropical fruit fragrances. Very intense and crumbly but with an odd textural finish. There were a few awkward moments as we looked at each other wondering, "am I the only one?" but it was consistent for all of us. The cheese 'clumped' and stuck in lumps to our back teeth. Nothing a cleansing raisin or bit of bread wouldn't fix, but disconcerting nonetheless. An intense success, but don't say I didn't warn you about that finish...

Erborinato

Erborinato - A cow's milk cheese attacked with all sorts of wonderful infection, being both a washed-rind and a blue-moulder. This was a cute, fist-sized cylinder with a cute, fist-sized punch. Soft, but the smooth, creamy soft of a washed rind cheese rather than a buttery blue. I can imagine the battle between the blue mould and the orange mould could leave large tracts of land uninhabitable with fall-out, but this cheese brings them together in a controlled way, balancing the competing forces into something pretty special. The blue is intense but it's a broad intensity, like a punch in the head, rather than a scalpel-scythe to the palate.

Another great moment in Cheese Club history.

Baccala al Prezzemolo

This recipe is a long-time favourite from Elizabeth Romer's "The Tuscan Year", and attributed to her friend (and subject of the book) Silvana. It takes a bit of preparation and time but not a lot of effort - it's a good one for the weekend.

Baccala

It always feels slightly ridiculous to pay more for baccala than for most kinds of fresh fish but it should be no great surprise. After all, prior to refrigeration a lot more effort was required to make sure fish could be kept for the innumerable Catholic fasting days (which, for Fridays at least, are still recommended).

Cod was plentiful through the middle ages, but not everywhere and not throughout the whole year, so for many centuries baccala was a major source of Friday protein. Baccala can safely be eaten during Lent without fear of The Man Upstairs Who Could Visit You With Plague And Could Do Scary Stuff With Lightning, so for most of history, baccala was what you ate when you were doing penance or abstinence. It is to fresh fish what ham is to pork - a means of once tiresome preservation, no longer required but still desired for its flavour.

Ingredients

Pellegrino Artusi, the nineteenth century author of La scienza in cucina e l'arte di mangiare bene (The Science of Cooking and the Art of Eating Well) managed his reader's expectations by telling them not to expect too much of baccala, and that seems to have been the spirit of the times. Like going to Church, it was dead boring but you did it because you had to. Artusi actually says at the end of his recipe for Baccala Fritto, "If ... you still find this to be an inferior dish, it is your fault for wanting to try it." So, having dampened your enthusiasm, why not try this wonderful dish? The fish has a dense, almost chewy texture and soft, creamy-fish flavour.

Layered fish and potatoes

So, the recipe.

• 1kg or so of baccala. Whatever you do, remember baccala's the salty one - don't try and use stockfish which have been mummified instead of salted.
  
• 500-700g potatoes
  
• an onion
• half a bunch of parsley
  
• olive oil
• a few ripe tomatoes
  

The day before, take the fillets of baccala and soak them in a lot of water for a day. Change the water a couple of times - there's a shirt-load of salt in them and things will get nasty if you don't. Gently simmer the fish in just enough water to cover for about 30 minutes and cool in the liquid. Flake the fish (removing the bones) but not too finely. Chop the parsley finely.

Hmmmmm....

Thinly slice the potatoes and the onion, and in a heavy casserole lubed up with olive oil, make layers of potato, fish, onion, parsley, anointing each layer with a drizzle of olive oil and a grind of pepper. Drizzle a little (a few tablespoons only) of the liquid the fish was cooked over the top and then add the sliced tomatoes. Stick into the oven for an hour or so until the potatoes are soft and have absorbed the flavours of the fish, onion and parsley. Fragrant and comforting - not a grand and pretentious dinner, but a warm and friendly dish for a cold winter weekend.

Supermaxi

Yeah yeah, so Supermaxi's not on High Street, but it is on St George's Road, a ten minute stroll from the Westgarth end of the Street Referred To In This Blog's Name.

Cool.

It's also in North Fitzroy; it's right next to the bike path; it's only been open a few weeks; and, between us booking and eating, got a good review in the broadsheet. In other words, it's exceedingly hip, extravagantly groovy and crowded with coolhunters. Which suits me just fine, because I am a coolhunter hunter, focused not on the next cool thing, but on the people who will find it. It's all very meta and self-referential, so from time to time you'll have to forgive me for talking total wank.

Somebody's talking wank here.

On this night we'd been invited by Suzanne and JB, who were seeking out my coolhunter hunter skills not because they needed them, but because are specialist coolhunter hunter hunters. Amazing really - sometimes I can't remember if any of us really exist or who's following who. Also in attendance was Mel* and Matt, who are just cool, three teens (or proto-teens) and two small humans.

Supermaxi 's minimalist decor and maximalist crowd noise provide an intense backdrop for the food and for a cheerful shouted conversation. Being coolhunter hunter hunters, Suzanne and JB reported that they'd been there a week or two earlier and that the food was worth the layers of self-referential, nested conversations about who was a coolhunter/hunter and who was just hungry and wanted dinner.

Battered Beetroot - earthy, powerful and red with an attractive exterior.
(Insert Julia Gillard reference *here*.)

Organising a table of 11 to get their act together to order is hard at the best of times, but Suzanne took charge of the situation and the entrees. The Cauliflower fritters were creamy and soft in the middle while still firm and the batter was perfectly crisp. The onion jam that came with them was sweet and tart. For a glorious colour hit, the Beetroot fritters were earthy and sweet. Simple, smoky grilled prawns in their shells quickly followed and were promptly devoured. Cool.

Cauliflower Fritters

The only thing that arched an eyebrow or two was the Oysters Kilpatrik, mainly because no-one could remember if they are meant to be retro-cool; nostalgically comfortable; neo-seventies or whether they've gone right through to "were popular years ago, then shunned before passing through charmingly naff and retro but are out the other side back to being mocked". That's the problem with being a coolhunter hunter - sometimes you have to draw a flowchart to remember where a particular meme is up to.

Anyway, although these were good, I prefer oysters to be a bit more like Ursula Andress - not covered in much and fresh out of the sea.

We ordered a mix of pizzas and other dishes. The pizzas are the best we have had yet in the area, edging ahead of both I Saluti and Pizza Farro . With thin and asymmetrical non-conformist bases, all were both comforting and interesting enough to hold your attention to the last bite. I had the pizza de jour, which had broccolini, anchovies and chili, and thanks to a mix up in the order, got to share it and the fish of the day with Matt.

The pan fried fillets of white fish had a glorious crispness and a lingering taste of butter. It was cooked perfectly.

Fish of the day, but I can't remember what kind it was

Others ordered the pescatore pizza, which was described as perfect; a "GTV" with eggplant and which was named after the chef's Alfa Romeo; and a beautiful pancetta and Gorgonzola pizza which I will definitely be ordering at some time in the future.

Idiosyncratic like an Alfa Romeo, but more reliable

I didn't get to taste Emily's artichoke ravioli, but after she'd eaten it she was sitting back in her chair and black leather coat, looking both satisfied and, of course, cool.

Put the camera away mum - it's very uncool

We had some beautiful Italian wines, but don't ask me what they were. Remembering wine labels is passe and verges on the gauche.

We almost all ordered dessert, which is a damn good sign, and these didn't disappoint. The fried custard was thick and gloriously unctuous, and was served with a drizzle of honey giving it a beautiful Moorish sense of mystery. Emily had the chocolate panna cotta and raspberry, and it had the light touch of a great panna cotta, perfectly balanced between richness and light with the slight bitterness of good cocoa.

The skeptical looks typical of coolhunter hunter hunters

In summary, Supermaxi has cool food, good service (although the night was frantically busy) but is amazingly loud and required some uncool raising of voices. There were no surprises either way with the bill, and in the best sign of a good night, it wasn't until I got home that i realised how amazingly tired I was. I'd go again, but once I've been somewhere it generally doesn't stay cool for much longer. However, I will be going again once it becomes passe, because that's when I feel most at home.

A Night at Home

We haven't eaten out in quite a few weeks. We've talked about it, but middle child has a whooping kind of cough, and although vaccinated against just such a situation, our GP tells us not to be surprised. "It's OK", he says. "It just a mild variation from the standard", implying it's the medical equivalent of one of the more dull Bach cantatas. Oh.. that's alright then. She's only got one of the four diseases she's not supposed to be able to get, but I'll accept that this might be ok....

So, as I'm not keen on leaving the house, tonight I offer two courses cooked at home.

Asparagi di Campo con Acciughe e Limone

This is, without any pause for thought, the best asparagus dish this side of something that's a long way away. It's gutsy and earthy, but still manages to emphasizes asparagusness, which is important for something that's ultimately a vegetable. The original recipe came from the book "Verdura: Vegetables Italian Style" by Viana La Place, but I've modded it over time and with considerable love and respect. It contains:

• Asparagus
• Anchovies
• Parsley
• Olive Oil
• Lemon (Lime)
• Garlic
  

Take a shirtload of asparagus - you know how much you like, but at least 4 or 5 stems per person. Steam or cook in water until *just* tender. Drain in a colander and refresh in cold water. Stop it cooking and keep it green.

A big slug of olive oil now goes into the dry pot the asparagus was cooked in... Once it's warm, drop in some finely chopped anchovies - at least two per person, and a finely chopped clove of garlic (one is enough). Let this gently frazzle for a few minutes. Add the grated rind of a lemon and the asparagus.

Toss the asparagus to make sure it's covered in the oil/anchovy/garlic/parsley/lemon/Sex God mix, splash on some lemon juice and serve. It's earthy, dirty, sexy and asparagussy...

Chicken, Chorizo and Paprika Stuff Hopkinsii

It would be jolly to claim that this is a classic Spanish dish that was passed to me from a Great Second Uncle's Third Aunt's Daughter's Neighbour, but, truth be told, I made this up and while it's still evolving, it's still damn good. It's part casserole, part soup, rich with garlic, sausage and paprika. For four, we used:

• about 500g/a pound of chicken thighs, chopped into bite-sized pieces
• two chorizos (the Spanish sort, ie dry like salamis, not fresh like sausages)
• three decent sized potatoes
• two red capsicums/bell peppers
• a brown onion or two
• three(ish) cloves of garlic
• smoked paprika
• cumin
  
• some saffron threads (optional, but should be dropped in a scant cup of boiling water)
  
• 500ml/two cups of chicken stock
• bay leaves
• salt, pepper

Chop the onions coarsely into strips and gently saute in a heavy casserole. Add the finely chopped garlic and capsicums after a couple of minutes, then the chorizos, which have been chopped into bite-sized pieces. Fry for a bit until the smell forces you to taste a bit of sausage. Hmmmmm....... By this point you should be hungry.



Add a tablespoon or so of smoked paprika and a teaspoon of cumin and gently fry for a few moments. Add the chicken and stir-fry a bit longer. Once the chicken is coated with spices and coloured, add the stock, two bay leaves and the chopped potatoes, which have been chopped into large bite-sized chunks (and peeled, if you like), and the saffron with its water. Salt (a bit) and lots of pepper...
Simmer on a low heat (*just* bubbling) for about 35-40 minutes. Test the potato, and when it's soft, crush a few bits if you like (I do) to thicken the liquid.


Serve in bowls, sprinkle with a small handful of roughly chopped parsely (don't skimp on the parsely - this is important!) and pour yourself a glass of cheerful and assertive vin rouge. "Huzzah", he said, through wetted and slightly oiled lips. Nom nom nom......

I Saluti

At last, we're back on High Street proper. We're not somewhere else, we're not having take away, drinking beer or shopping at the market. We're doing what we set out to do, which is to enjoy and record the restaurants of Northcote and Thornbury.

Arriving at I Saluti also means we are getting ever closer to the glorious summit of Rucker's Hill, and will soon have to cross the street, descend and start heading north.

I Saluti celebrates its wood-fired pizza oven by literally raising it on a pedestal. A cheerful space with perky, good-humoured staff, it's a bit more casual than its almost-neighbour, Cafe Bedda, but just as warm and inviting. Racket, but chipper racket; not the sort that makes me realise how old my hearing has become.

Action packed!

In a mix of opportunism and willingness to share, we were joined by Penny, Kent, Elisabeth and Cameron. Cameron and I both Joined Up In Canberra All Those Years Ago at the same time in the early 1990's, and now he was visiting from Oop North; Lis is one of my joyfully madder colleagues; and Penny and Kent are, wonderfully, family.

Cameron and the author, seen here dressed as the white person he is.

Kent, Pen and Al

The greatest challenge of the evening was the calculation of optimal seating. Far more complicated than a garlic-tinted version of the traveling salesman problem, we ended up moving at least once, but still ended up with Al and Em feeling they'd been isolated at the junior end of the table. Both fiddled with phones. Thus is the way of the world.

We all opted for pizza, pasta or risotto, and all were pretty damn happy with what they received. The pizzas all had the right balance of thin/crispy/chewy crust without overdoing the top layer. I'm a bread fiend when it comes to pizza and there's nothing that turns me off pizza more than the "too much ain't enough" approach to cheese and foamy, dull bread. But these were perfect - mine was mostly Mediterranean vegetables with hot salami and a chewy, thin base. This is closest I get to a vegetarian pizza. I take the Bill Bailey, post-modernist approach to vegetarianism: I eat meat, but I do it ironically. And these were worth the irony.

My pizza

Cameron had a Lebanon-inspired lamb kofta pizza. Lamb good, sweet chutney a little out of place, but overall a worthy crack at the pizzorial arts.


F and Al were happy with their seafood risotto and Lis thought the chorizo pasta was pretty fine.

Dessert, alas, was a mixed fare. The bread and butter pudding, if it was bread, was the sort of bread where the use-by date on the packet says, "don't worry - you won't live that long." Although the stodge was interleaved with dried fruit and drizzled with a good custard, it was still stodge.

And when I say "dried fruit", I mean the brand-free boxes of mixed dried fruit you get to make a boiled fruit cake. Sultanas? Check. Currants? Yup. Peel? Oh yes (but never enough). Cherries? Well..... There are at least lumpettes of cheerfully coloured jelly disguised as cherries - that's close enough, surely?

On the other hand, Em and the Wubbleyou shared a chocolate and pistachio pizza that looked pretty fine, and A's panna cotta was perfect - judiciously sweet and the right balance of lightness and girth.

Yes, the food was great, and the atmosphere and staff were warm and friendly. But what really set the night apart; what really made it special was the company. Oh, and the weird hands. Weird stuff.

So if there was a lesson from the night, it was that taking friends makes the food even better. It seems pretty obvious in hindsight, but it's important to remember that, although it might seem like I'm writing about the food, it's the night that's far more important. And this night was fun. Conversation that never waltzed but occasionally pogo'd; company that was friendly but never demanding; and food that didn't demand respect but earned it anyway.

From left: Em, Cam's nose, F, Lis, a glimpse of Kent, gesticulating Pen

Cafe Bedda

Let's start with a couple of confessions. First, F and I went to Cafe Bedda some years ago and I had forgotten all about it. So this isn't a first time, but other than "it was good", I have no real memory of the place. Second, we forgot to take a camera, so the photos are taken with phones and correspondingly look like they we taken by the food stylist from Alcatraz. Nevertheless....

The magical blackboard. Not at all grumpy

Cafe Bedda is high on Rucker's Hill and has quite a few tables crammed into its small space while still having room for a big pizza oven in the front (and centre) of house. When we arrived at 6.30pm it was obviously a first sitting, and before we left most tables had emptied and been refuelled with gleaming new patrons. Despite at least 4o percent of our fellow diners wearing black (ummm.. including me), it was a perky, jumping vibe with much laughter, families, hilarity and somesuch, as well as a Northcote couple of handsome women with strong chins.

We shared a few entree dishes - baccala fritters and a small dish of warm, marinated olives from the a la carte menu; and tripe cooked with tomato, eggplant, onion and anchovy, and an artichoke stuffed with cheese and breadcrumbs from the day's specials.

Artichokes. Funny, when you finish, there seems to be just as much on the plate as when you started.

The tripe was the stand out dish for me, although I scarfed my share of olives (which I love warm) and the baccala was popular all round. The artichoke was cooked perfectly and while its filling was ok, it's not easy to improve on a fresh artichoke and I'm not sure the filling did all that much.

W dipping bread in olive oil for the first time. It's all inner city middle class from this point

The tripe, on the other hand, had been cooked long, slow and was rich and strongly flavoured with anchovies, those perfect pixies of the salted seas. The tripe itself wasn't much more than a lovely soft texture to carry the sauce, which is all it needs to do as far as I'm concerned. Everyone enjoyed it, everyone went back for another taste and everyone was pleased when F committed to cooking it at home. Although perhaps we should wait until I tell the kids what tripe is; that it's the intestines of a young boy band, untimely ripped. Although, to be honest, that's unlikely to make it any less popular. Pass the pepper please.

At the end of the entree we all sat there with the sorts of satisfied smiles that verge on the manic. This was good. Very good.

A rich, plummy Nero d'Avola by these folks was decanted into, well, a decanter, by our waiter, a Sicilian Jeremy Clarkson in looks, but not in attitude. Let's face it, if a waiter is going to be like Jeremy Clarkson, better it's this way than the reverse.

Alex's ricotta gnocchi was like a Neighbours starlet, simultaneously cheesy and impressively lightweight, although with a much more buxom shape than the actresses playing our favourite nasal characters like Kazza, Shazza and Dazza. Impressively light, it was like melting clouds, only without the hassle of opening the window of a 737 at 10,000 metres.

Gnocchi of the gods, albeit the lightweight household gods. Photoshopped into submission

Shut up, I'm eating

Felicity's saltimbocca was obviously from the sort of veal that should make me feel guilty but doesn't. It came with a balanced, intense sauce and two triangles of fluffy polenta as light as the gnocchi. I had thinly sliced and grilled yearling (I think) under a cover of bitter rocket and a light sauce with pink peppercorns. It was almost a warm salad, with the leaves mixing with the meat juices, and the chunks of perfectly roast potato with whole garlic cloves were a perfect match. Of course, the vultures settled on the potatoes pretty quickly, so I say that based on only a couple of mouthfuls.....

Emily had paccheri con ragu maille - a penne-style pasta with a thick sauce of tomato, slowly braised pork and fennel. This was a real winter pasta dish with the tomato and red wine just balancing the richness of the pork. Wow. Oh, and if you don't know what paccheri is, here's a wonderful story...

"The commonly held belief that Paccheri was Italian for 'squid' (the shape reminds most of calamari) is a urban myth, and one that needs to be dispelled once and for all. This myth, part of a much larger plot by the originators of the Paccheri Pasta, served to obfuscate and hide the Paccheri's true place in history.

In fact, Paccheri served as a vehicle to smuggle banned garlic cloves across the alps from Italy into what is today known as Austria.To hear the story is to delve deep into Italian culture. In the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance, Prussian garlic (Austria, today) was known to be small and rather weak. In contrast, Southern Italian garlic, with those large robust and pungent cloves, was highly sought after by Prussian and Hungarian Princes. In the early 1600's, in order to protect their own garlic farmers, the Prussian Excellency closed the border between Prussia and Italy to Italian garlic. Trade in Italian garlic ceased.

Southern Italians garlic farmers, whose livelihood depended heavily on the Prussian Garlic Trade were incensed.

Quietly, and now we know, quite successfully, Sicilian pasta barons created Paccheri pasta, perfectly shaped to hide a ducat's worth of Italian garlic (four to five cloves). Concomitantly, the pasta barons disseminated a litany of propaganda about Paccheri pasta designed to obfuscate Paccheri's true role." (source)

I don't care how true that may or may not be, it's a great story.

Photoshop, and the other one, two , three, four, five, senses working overtime

Dessert was a great story in itself. F had a rhubarb and marscapone tart which she raved about; Al a white chocolate and hazelnut semifreddo, which, if he was more talkative, he would have raved about; E a thrice-cooked chocolate souffle, although it was more a moist cake than a souffle; while I had a cannoli with a blintz-like ricotta and lemon filling. None of the desserts were rip-roaringly sweet, and so were exactly the way I like them.

And the coffee was perfect.

(Photo in black and white to hint that the photos are crap because we used clandestine technology, rather than crap phones)

Cafe Bedda is, to date, the highlight of our adventures on High Street. Warm staff, warm environment and beautiful Sicilian food that is both forthright and refined. Oh, and they trust the clientele enough to have little pepper grinders on each table, just as the gods intended.

They've also got a take away menu as well as a pretty impressive pizza list which we will, no doubt, progressively work our way through. None of us would have any hesitation in going back and recommending it to others, as long as they don't recommend it to further-others and we end up not being able to book a table.

This is a sign above a door on the other (west) side of High Street. I just like it.