Good Food: How to make your Melbourne picnic pop
GEMIMA CODY
Spring has sprung with a new focus on picnic pleasures.
Dining in restaurants is so close, you can almost taste it. But if outside get-togethers are all we have for now, that's nothing to sneeze at. Sun, air, friends, food. The joy.
After nearly 250 days of cumulative lockdowns and countless missed milestones, you deserve a picnic that really pops.
Make sure your contribution to the blanket buffet has serious star power with the best produce, pastries and chef-made condiments on offer.
Shop the top shellfish
You'd be a fool to go past the seafood we've gained unprecedented access to due to restaurant closures, lockdowns and trade disputes. Missed a birthday or anniversary while we've been cooped up? Give yourself the gift of a freshly cooked crayfish, a rainbow of caviar (from sturgeon to local Yarra Valley trout roe), and top-grade sashimi from the likes of restaurant supplier Clamms Seafood. clammsonline.com.au
Want to add oysters with an optional bottle of Veuve Clicquot? East 33 delivers Sydney rocks (shucked or unshucked) ready for any occasion. east33.sydney
Conquering condiments
Last year we went crazy for online marketplace Co-Lab Pantry, a one-stop shop for The Everleigh cocktail bar's Manhattans and Entrecote's secret-recipe herb butter. And have you seen the site lately?
You could win at picnicking in a single transaction, loading your basket with fresh produce and Fancy Hank's house-made chicken salt (to gussy up fish and chips), aioli from Daylesford's Lake House, Chappy's chips (the pinnacle of crisps) and romesco sauce from MoVida. colabpantry.com.au
Brae's liquefied assets
Crops don't stop when restaurants close, which means that without guests, Dan Hunter's farm-focused fine diner, Brae in Birregurra, has been producing some top-shelf pantry staples. Hunter's organic spelt crop has been malted the traditional way and turned into Liquid Assets beer by Prickly Moses.
They have also produced their inaugural organic olive oil. The arbequina olives were hand-harvested by restaurant staff during May's lockdown, and cold-pressed within hours to make just 122 bottles of light, extra virgin oil with a peppery kick. Rare as gold, get it in a harvest hamper from Brae's online shop, along with those beers and a lime cordial that's the perfect bittersweet picnic fix.braerestaurant.com
Meet the bamboo barbie
Yakitori in the park is now one bamboo grill away. New Japanese stick joint Robata has packs of yakitori and plenty of other sticks for takeaway (with cocktails and sashimi, too), which you can bundle with a CasusGrill, an ingenious disposable charcoal grill ready for park parties. robata.com.au
Tom Sarafian's hummus
Chef Tom Sarafian, of the late Bar Saracen, spent years researching chickpea folklore to perfect his hummus recipe, and when you taste his signature blend, lightly scented with rescued lemons, you don't doubt he succeeded.
Now available from select suppliers (including All Are Welcome bakery and Meatsmith, which delivers statewide), pulling this out at a picnic will be like bringing a torpedo to a pillow fight. Serve it as a centrepiece dish, dressed with crab or warmed chickpeas, or spoon it straight from the jar. sarafian.com.au
Angasi dashi in a bag
Bringing a flask of dashi featuring native Australian angasi oysters is a pretty boss picnic move, now possible thanks to Adam James of Rough Rice, Tasmania's champion of wild ferments.The Japanese stock underpins countless dishes, but James says it's the ultimate picnic and camping companion.
Made with dried native angasi oysters, skipjack tuna, seaweeds (Japanese and Australian) and wild mushrooms, it comes in teabag form so you can sip it as a deeply restorative cuppa, or add it to noodles or greens. Orders via instagram.com/roughrice
Dessert trolley of dreams
Pastry chef Rosemary Andrews stole hearts, minds and huge chunks of Instagram real estate when she was driving Attica Summer Camp's dessert trolley this year. Her impeccable tarts and feathery sponges dominated summer and now you can be that hero.
Andrews is selling weekly mixed boxes of her divine sweets, featuring the likes of burnt honey and espresso cake with wattleseed-spiked dulce de leche cream; vanilla custard tarts framed in strawberries, and double-baked flourless dark chocolate tarts.
Warning: they're so popular, you enter a weekly ballot for a space on her sweet list. rosemaryandrews.wixsite.com
Guilt-free desserts
Too decadent? Step this way. Christy Tania, the dessert champion who first rose to fame on MasterChef and now runs Glace in Windsor and Emporium, has gone into the guilt-free dessert game. Each weekend her lockdown boxes feature a selection of desserts made with monkfruit sugar, which is allegedly carb- and kilojoule-free, zero GI and fructose-friendly. Truly, the unicorn ingredient.
Harnessing this magic, and also steering clear of wheat, her desserts are all gluten-free, sugar-free and dairy-free. She has made peanut butter raspberry doughnuts, a chocolate hazelnut rum cake, pecan maple bourbon pie, Black Forest roulade and a coconut raspberry lamington. Sign up for some sorcery. glacedessert.com
Butter gets better
If you hold a deep loathing of synthetic truffle products, but grieve the end of the black gold season, here's great news: uncompromising chef Mark Best has trapped the musty jewel in creamy bricks of CopperTree farm butter, and you can pick up a block at select Woolworths stores ($5.50 for 200g).
Picture a curl of this on a rough-torn chunk of fresh bread with some honeycomb, parma ham or cheese made from spring milk. The end. coppertreefarms.com.au
Toast the season
Embla chef Dave Verheul's seasonal vermouths have become liquor shelf essentials. Small batch and changing seasonally, each Saison Vermouth release is essentially a collector's item as much as a drink. If you see a bottle of the autumnal Fallen Quinces, or last spring's Flowers on a shelf, buy it.
The latest is a bitter number called Black Walnut. Starting with moscato wine from Rutherglen, it's mixed with green walnuts that have been oxidised to give it a complex, bitter edge, and balanced with camomile and kumquat. instagram.com/saisonvermouth
Somm on demand
Which wine goes with party pies, finger sandwiches or ice-cream cakes? Former Rosetta sommelier Pierre-Marie Caillaud knows, and he has started a tailored wine delivery service, Somm at Home, to answer these burning questions. Delivery is free on purchases over $150. sommathome.com.au
Live high and dry
Fake beers, faux spirits and even booze-free bubbles are no longer the butt of jokes, and with some councils maintaining an outdoor alcohol ban, this might be a good time to give dry a try.
Negroni fan? Lyre's Italian spritz has just the right edge of bitterness, that when soda water and orange are added it becomes a solid summery substitute for your aperitif.
Beer-wise, Heaps Normal leads the pack for a reason. The lager-style beer is so convincing you'll think twice before getting behind a wheel, while the pepperberry IPA from Queensland company Sobah is great for those who want more of a punchy, hoppy hit.
Wine-wise, Non has a range that steers close to the natural wine camp. Its Lemon Marmalade and Hibiscus (pictured) is fresh and tart while Tomato Water and Basil is summer in a glass. sansdrinks.com.au
Custom kombucha
After a project and money-saver in one? Melbourne's queen of ferments, Sharon Flynn of The Fermentary, says kombucha (fermented tea) is simple to make – even for beginners.
A SCOBY (symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast) is easy to find at health food shops and is resilient enough that it can be neglected for weeks between batches. Once added to sweetened tea, it converts the sugar and in four to 10 days you end up with sweet-sour and lightly fizzing kombucha, which is great for the gut. Add fresh strawberry puree or store-bought juices for custom-flavoured kombucha. thefermentary.com.au
The set-up
Don't overlook your blanket's sartorial splendour. Start with beautiful grazing boards and polished wooden picnic stakes (to support glassware) from Barossa-based Winestains, which makes everything from upcycled wine barrels. winestains.com.au
Flowers? Restaurant and interior designer Brahman Perera, the brains behind beautiful party palaces like Entrecote, says he often tries to mix useful herbs into an arrangement so the scent is more in tune with the culinary smells wafting from your food. He also recommends adding citrus and fruit to dress a scene, and making the effort to eat them at the end of the meal.
Another of Perera's secret weapons for beautifying your setting translates perfectly for twilights on a rug: "Rechargeable lamps are often a saviour," he says. Favourites include the mushroom-like Pierre Charpin PC Portable Lamp, available at HAY shop. hayshop.com.au
