lyttel fish big pond: cooking tea

Last night I got a train and a tram and crossed the river from North to South and hopped off at Middle Park. Which is not the same thing as Middle Earth at all, but it does exist.

The Middle Park Hotel was hosting a dinner showcasing the outstanding food, wine and produce from the greater region Daylesford.

Annie Smithers, and I’m going to say, doyenne of growing and cooking good food, joined forces with Michael Dhillon of Bindi Wines in the Macedon Ranges.

Annie trained under Stephanie Alexander, whose uncompromising dedication to good food has shaped her life and changed Australia's eating habits. Author of fourteen books, chef and owner of two renowned Melbourne restaurants and founder of the Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden programme in schools, Stephanie Alexander was the perfect mentor for Annie Smithers. After working in a number of top Melbourne restaurants, Annie opened her own place in Kyneton, Victoria, in 2005. Last year, she handed that over to new owners and moved down the road to Trentham to cook out of a tiny restaurant and to Malmesbury where she grows the vegetables and fruit she cooks with.

Annie is an extremely modest and appreciative chef. She said she had dragged herself out of the mud of Malmesbury to come to Middle Park to cook, but that she hadn’t been the only one cooking the dinner. She described her night as working with a beautiful team of men, which she is not used to because she cooks on her own. She thanked the Middle Park Hotel for inviting her and Michael to come down and cook tea.

Cooking tea is what she says she does.

Annie describes her food style as one that she has moved to after many years in the restaurant industry. Thirty years of being on the stove, in fact. An awfully long time, she reflects. She has done a lot of restaurant cooking and about 5 years ago started gardening to grow produce for the restaurant, which has changed her world in an extraordinary and very beautiful way. She feels as though she has been taken back to the very roots of classic provincial European cooking; food that’s based on beautiful produce, good ethics, good farming practices, good animal husbandry, all the things she is really passionate about. It’s food that is, and here, she pauses to find the right word for her food…it’s dinner, it’s tea. It’s not fussed with, it’s not ramped up. It’s something that’s comfortable. It’s something that’s convivial and it’s something to share with friends and family. And in the current world of food where there’s a lot of extraordinary performance art, good old-fashioned dinner still has its place.

One of the great things about what Annie does is the fact that she grows about 90% of the fruit and vegetables used in her restaurant. So she knows everything she cooks with from a seed right through to the finished product. This creates a level of respect, the appreciation of how hard it is to grow food. But there is also a sense of how easy it is. And anyone, anywhere, whether they have a window box or they have a bit of dirt in their backyard can know the joy and pride of putting something in the ground and seeing it all the way through to the dinner plate.

Matching food to wine or wine to food? For Annie, Michael’s wines are extraordinary. She describes them as having a complexity and a love that is unmatched in the region. She recounts ringing him and asking what he imagines might go with each of his wines. He gave her a bit of a rough idea and they took it from there. Good food can stand alone and good wine can stand alone, but when the two of them are matched carefully and lovingly together, it really is one of the great things in the world.

When asked about a must-have dish at Trentham restaurant, Annie couldn’t answer that. The menu changes every week and it’s whatever is on on the day. It’s a tiny little venture. Annie goes out there on a Thursday morning and she sees what she has and says that hopefully she has enough it to pull it together and make something beautiful.

If last night’s dinner was anything to go by, I imagine she does.