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Victoria's foodies prepare for June's Winter Roast Collection festival

Richard Cornish
Richard Cornish

Pope Joan's Winter Feast Series runs throughout June.
Pope Joan's Winter Feast Series runs throughout June.Supplied

Winter chills, frosts and crackling fires are back and so is The Roast Collection. Victoria's largest winter food festival, which has grown to more than 150 events dotted around Melbourne and across regional Victoria, makes a welcome return this June.

"The Roast Collection was an amazing, positive industry reaction to the Black Saturday bushfires that decimated regional Victoria," explains Natalie O'Brien, CEO of the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival. "It is part of Put Victoria on Your Table," she says, referring to the campaign that calls on Victorians to, wherever possible, choose Victorian food and beverages to feed their families and entertain friends.

Under the Roast Collection banner, restaurants, cafes, winemakers, brewers and bakers take Victorian produce and use recipes and techniques traditional to the winter months to make feasts, lunches, dinners and classes.

Port Phillip Bay's roast collection.
Port Phillip Bay's roast collection.Supplied
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In Brunswick East, restaurateur Alfredo La Spina is getting back to his roots. "I grew up on a farm in north Victoria in place called Whorouly," he says. "My parents came from Sicily and we grew our own food. Mum cooked the recipes from Sicily. I am calling our event 'Feast From The Alpine Road' to celebrate the farmers from that region where I grew up and where my family still lives."

This lunchtime feast at Bar Idda begins with smoked trout, cheese and cauliflower arancini followed by ravioli filled with freshwater salmon mousse and mint. Both the salmon and trout are from Mountain Fresh Trout and Salmon Farm at Harrietville.

This is followed by capretto alla forno (roast goat cooked with wine), anchovies and capers. Dessert will be warm wheat and goat's curd pudding with walnuts and persimmon jelly from La Spina's brother's farm.

Earth masterclass.
Earth masterclass.Daniel Mahon

Many of Victoria's best small farms are run by women, and Union Dining's Nicky Riemer is bringing together the creme de la creme of our female farmers for a long Sunday lunch. The five-course menu features cheese from Holy Goat, Warialda Belted Galloway beef, veal from Plains Paddock, Western Plains Pork and vegetables from Yarra Valley Gourmet Greenhouse. "These are people we work with throughout the year," co-owner Adam Cash says. "They all have a lot synergy working with Nicky and it's going to be both an honour and an amazing experience having these powerful and energetic women in the dining room at the same time." Highlights from the menu include bresaola with fresh goat's curd, walnuts, roasted beetroot and pickled kohlrabi followed by roasted suckling pig with pear and white-bean puree and mustard-fruit vinaigrette. "We have an almost exclusively Victorian wine list," Cash says, "so I can imagine these dishes with a Star Lane nebbiolo from Beechworth, juicy fruit with savoury backbone."

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Warialda Belted Galloway is making another appearance, this time with the team at The Commoner in Fitzroy, where select cuts will be roasted in a wood oven and served with bone-marrow butter. At this time of the year, former chef, restaurant co-owner and now full-time grower and forager Matthew Donnelly spends much of his days scouring the forests for wild mushrooms such as slippery jacks, saffron milk caps and grey ghosts.They are on the menu along with red wine jus and horseradish from his garden in Romsey.

Down the southern end of the Mornington Peninsula, at Sorrento, the team at Cakes and Ale are celebrating the fish caught in the cool, clean waters of the southern end of Port Phillip Bay with roasted snapper in Sorrento. Chef Leilani Wolfenden says their white fish comes from "the fishers across the bay from Drysdale."

Union Dining's Nicky Riemer is bringing together  female farmers for a long Sunday lunch.
Union Dining's Nicky Riemer is bringing together female farmers for a long Sunday lunch. Supplied

"They ring us up at 6am and tell us what they have caught earlier and we put our order in. It's that fresh!"

Wolfenden is pan-frying whole 400-gram snapper, loading the pan with herbs, garlic and butter and finishing the dish in the oven. Served with vegetables from the nearby market gardens, they will be served with wines made by the Mornington Peninsula's queen of textural white wines, Kathleen Quealy.

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The Roast Collection goes beyond roasting joints of meat and takes in the traditional skills of roasting fruit and vegetables in the baker's kitchen.

Victorians will celebrate winter with traditional winter food sourced locally.
Victorians will celebrate winter with traditional winter food sourced locally.Supplied

Baker Phillippa Grogan is holding a special workshop at her Armadale bakery. "I love winter because it brings with the joy of being able to turn the oven to high," she says, " to transform vegetables and fruit into caramelised morsels while warming the kitchen at the same time."

Chef and local food advocate Matt Wilkinson is not only putting on a roast special every night in June; he's running traditional winter specials until the end of September. "This is the time of the year to bring out those recipes your nan used to cook, from roasts to soups to braises. Victorian producers are growing great winter vegetables and now and over winter it is the perfect time to be cooking what we (British and European people) consider to be traditional food." Wilkinson and his team will be serving Christmas fare in July as a winter special, using Victorian ham and turkey.

The Roast Collection extends across the regions with events such as Feast and Fire with a winter solstice hilltop bonfire followed by a turkey feast at Tamsin's Table in Gippsland's Poowong East. At Green Olive at Red Hill on the Mornington Peninsula the team are slow-roasting lamb shoulder in the wood-fired oven using beer from Mornington Peninsula brewery.

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Neil Perry roasts a leg of lamb.
Neil Perry roasts a leg of lamb.William Meppem

"I am a country girl myself," the festival's Natalie O'Brien says, "So I love the idea of rugging up and heading to the regions for the weekend." Or staying in town and letting the food from the regions come to a restaurant near you.

The Roast Collection – selected highlights

Feast from the Alpine Road, 12.30pm – 4.30pm, Sun June 14, $90, Bar Idda, Brunswick East, 9380 5339

The Lady Farmers' Roast, 12.30pm – 3:30pm, Sun June 28, $69, Union Dining, Richmond, 9428 2988

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Unbuckle for Beef, lunch Sat-Sun and dinner Wed-Sun in June, $32-$65, The Commoner, Fitzroy, 9415 6876

Roasted Snapper in Sorrento, 6pm –10pm, Mon June 1 – Tue June 30, $31.50, Cakes and Ale, Sorrento, 5984 4995

Phillippa's Home Baking Basics, 6.30pm – 9.30pm, June 16, $100, Phillippa's, Armadale, 9428 5363

Pope Joan's Winter Feast Series, 6pm – 9pm, June 1-26, $60, Pope Joan, Brunswick East, 9388 8858

Feast & Fire: Winter Solstice, noon-7.30pm, June 21, $130, Tamsin's Table, Poowong East, 0422 976 540

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Wood Fire Lamb Weekend, 9am – 4pm, Sat 13 – Sun 14 June, $49.95, Green Olive, Red Hill, 0438 002 606

For all events go to melbournefoodandwine.com.au

Richard CornishRichard Cornish writes about food, drinks and producers for Good Food.

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