Highlights from Canberra's Good Food Month 2015
Good Food Month returns to Canberra in a different shape and form for 2015. It ran last year for a month in October, with about 25 events throughout the month, including special offers and dinners. But this year it's linked to the Enlighten Night Noodle Markets, which have come to the capital for the first time, and is a mini version of Good Food Month.
This time there are 17 events, including "hats off" dinners at two hatted restaurants - the Capitol Bar and Grill at QT Hotel and Italian and Sons in Braddon, and a native Australian dinner at Pulp Kitchen.
Two of the events this year, however, are particularly special to chef Janet Jeffs. Last year she celebrated 40 years as a chef and for Good Food Month she's put together a dinner at the Arboretum featuring the food and produce of the Yass Valley, on March 12, and is hosting a long table lunch on her farm, Ballalaba, outside Canberra, on March 15.
Jeffs says she was inspired by Outstanding in the Field, where diners are invited out to farms to see where their produce comes from and to have lunch in a corn field or in a barn. The point is that the farms are all biodynamic, organic or sustainable. Because Jeffs' farm is quite a way out of town and a little difficult to get to, guests will meet at Old Parliament House and hop onto a bus that will take them out to the property and then bring them back.
Jeffs says the event celebrates her farm's 185th year. "The Food First lunch salutes the gathering movement challenging fast food, factory food, and food from afar. It's the revolution we have to have to ensure a sustainable farming future, but this Sunday lunch shows there is nothing new about growing and eating your own good food," she says.
The long table lunch will be held in the apple orchard and starts with bread from Dojo in Braidwood and olive oil produced just near Carwoola with a tasting plate of heirloom tomatoes, which features exotically named breeds such as Wapsipinicon Peach and the 1930s Mortgage Lifter. Jeffs says the main "announces autumn" in the form of slow-cooked beef daube, from the farm's own rare-breed Dexter cattle, with local Braidwood Half Moon Shiraz jus and a salad picked from the garden.
"Mid-March is the start of our harvest here at Ballalaba, and we are growing a fabulous orchard of old apples and pears which were planted at the turn of the 20th century, so around 1900," she says. "The varieties are common, but of course not modern, so we have brilliant Red Delicious, Five Crown (an old variety and one of the parents of Red Delicious) with its distinctive five bumps on its base, old school Jonathon apples, small, sweet and not often now seen at the markets because they don't travel well and hate cold storage, and very old school Granny Smiths which have a distinctive red blush on their green skins (the red blush was bred out of them for cosmetic reasons). It's in this orchard that we plan to set the long table and dine on the produce primarily sourced from the farm."
Jeffs will also host dinner at her Conservatory restaurant at the National Arboretum which is all about the Yass Valley. "I wanted the dinner to be a 'roll call' of all the fabulous small growers and food producers from our Canberra region, and tried to include a sweep of traditional flavours for this time of the year, the autumn harvest," she says. "My hopes are for our guests to enjoy the bounty available right here, right now."
To that end, she's pairing a Helm riesling with smoked meats from the Poachers Pantry and lemon-myrtle-infused olives from Peter Cleary's Homeleigh Grove. The main is a roasted rack of Yass Valley lamb with a vegetable ratatouille from Allsun farm and an apple tarte tatin with pink salt caramel ice cream and apples from Food and Wine contributor Owen Pidgeon.
The Food First Lunch is on Sunday, March 15, at noon ($80 plus drinks. Cash only); A Taste of Yass Valley dinner is at the Arboretum on Thursday, March 12 at 6.30pm ($100). See canberra.goodfoodmonth.com