Pod Food chef Matt Breis serves home-grown produce for patrons in Pialligo

If you are about to drink a glass of 2004 Hill of Grace shiraz from Henschke, which is about $700 a bottle, the individual wooden box in which it comes deserves to be admired too.

Matt Breis​, head chef at Pod Food in Pialligo, saved some of the discarded boxes from an exclusive club at which he formerly worked. He drilled holes in the bottom of the boxes, painted their interiors with black bituminous paint to stop wood rot, filled them with best seed-raising mix, and planted the boxes with seeds of microgreens. These included "early Nantes" carrot, red vein sorrel, bolt hardy beetroot and runaway rocket which did very well in autumn when they were well snipped, but have now been hit by frosts. The boxes grace a garden table to greet guests as they arrive at the restaurant.

Matt searched the web to find a site that sold seeds he liked. It was the Seed Club in the Northern Territory, which started in 2014, and he bought dozens of packets of 30 different varieties of edibles.

Peter Vassalakis started working at Pialligo Plant Farm in 1997 as maintenance and gardens carer and he continued on to Pod Food in early 2014 when the plant farm/nursery closed. When Matt started there last September the garden beds had been hit by winter and looked unloved. Peter and Matt cleared five large garden beds that they are working on to grow produce for the restaurant. A long plot in the car park has also been cleared waiting for spring planting of tomatoes which will get sun all day.

The first in-ground plantings were rows of kale, red and green cabbage and kohlrabi. Matt, 24, says the process is a learning curve for him as he started with no garden skills but he is reading books and experimenting. The soil is fantastic at the plant farm and the new neighbours have granted access to Pod Food to harvest globe artichokes, figs and persimmons.

It is interesting that kohlrabi was among his first plantings. The go-to book for many chefs and home kitchen gardeners is Stephanie Alexander's The Cook's Companion (2004) and even though the author covers dozens of vegetables and including cabbages, brussels sprouts and kale, there is scant mention of kohlrabi. It is a form of cabbage in which the stem remains short and the vegetable swells to form an edible corm.

Roger Phillips and Martyn Rix in Vegetables (1993) say kohlrabi (Brassica oleracea var. gongylodes​) originated in northern Europe in the 15th century, although a similar vegetable was described by Pliny in about AD70. They include a photograph of a man paddling a long boat laden with kohlrabi for sale at the early morning vegetable market on Dal Lake in Kashmir. It is found in pale greenish white or purple and the corms are best eaten when young, up to the size of a tennis ball and they should be peeled before cooking. I found purple kohlrabi for sale in a Canberra Centre greengrocer's for $3.99 each and they were next to the hoary celeriac.

Matt says it is excellent to be able to grab fresh garnishes straight from the garden. He uses kale from the front gate to accompany a simple and comforting roast mushroom dish and has shared the recipe with us.

Recipe: Roast portobello mushroom, kale, goat's cheese mousse

Mushroom: Peel the mushroom and remove the stem, then roast whole in garlic, thyme, extra virgin olive oil and butter.

Kale (three ways): Saute kale in butter with confit garlic and shallots; fry kale for crunch; make kale powder by blanching the kale and dehydrating it which gives a nice sweetness to the whole dish.

Goat's cheese mousse: Whip Yarra Valley goat's cheese with cream cheese and pouring cream.

Matt also makes mushroom cream to go with the dish by sweating eschalots, garlic, thyme and the peel and stem from the mushroom, then reduces a good quality port and cooking cream. He blends the mix and whips it until light and fluffy and puts fried eschalot crumb on top to serve.

Susan Parsons is a Canberra reviewer.