Winter Menu

Friday 10^th June, 2011.

Hello everyone. Well its less than a month now until we find out if we have won either Best breakfast or Best Café in the Regional Restaurant  & Catering Awards and while we wait business carries on as usual at Lexie’s. Our new winter menu is up and running with the colder weather making our seafood chowder a big hit. Make sure to come down and try the Duck supreme with yellow curry and pineapple sauce or the locally grown oysters with Tabasco and Tequila sauce. The new menu continues to show our unique style of cuisine – Modern classic or iconic dishes with native Australian ingredients with a focus on regional produce. Also coming soon will be a new look website and you’ll be able to follow us on Twitter and Facebook, I’ll keep you posted.

Til next week, Peace and Good Eating.

Best Breakfast??? Could be!

Friday 20^th May, 2011.

Hello everyone. I’m happy to announce this week that we have become finalists in the Restaurant and Catering Awards once again. We entered a new category this year as well as our Best Breakfast category, we are in the running for the Best Cafe Award – fantastic!

I hope no one got sore eyes reading my blog last week, it was a long one. I promise it wouldn’t be as long this week. Even though the mornings have been very chilly, the days have been beautiful and this week, once again diners on the deck were treated to a pod of dolphins playing in the water.

One of Britain’s legendary old school chef’s Marco Pierre White, who mentored some of today’s big name ‘celebrity chefs’ like Curtis Stone, Heston Blumenthal and Gordon Ramsay, is in Australia to appear on Master Chef Australia and promote his range of stock pots. We really are moving forward on the world culinary scene with more high profile chefs wanting to visit our shores in October for the Crave Sydney International Food Festival such as cacao producer and chef Willie Harcourt-Cooze of Willie’s Wonky Chocolate Factory fame.

We will have a new menu up a running for the start of winter in two weeks. I’m hoping to bring in a few of those comfort dishes we all crave in winter and we will be placing an even higher emphasis on local, seasonal produce than we already do. I’m really looking forward to it.

Til next week, Peace and Good Eating.

The Macadamia Nut

Friday 13^th May, 2011.

Hello everyone. Firstly thank you to all the families who chose to spend Mother’s Day with us, it was a great day and we had a lot of fun. Has it been a year already? June sees the return of Hunter Wine and Food Month with many events happening throughout the month right across the valley. I went to several last year and they were well worth checking out, for more information go to www.hvwineandfood.hvva.com.au  Yesterday we saw a pod of large dolphins playing in the waves out the front of the cafe -it’s great to see them back.

Now to the story of the Macadamia – It’s a long one because they are so fascinating and have been part of European Australians’ history for almost two hundred years. I’ve visited several Macadamia farms including one in Hawaii and the amount of products derived from this one tree is amazing, it is similar to the coconut in many ways because it’s used for beauty products, clothing, food and gardening. In our house alone we have roasted macadamias, macadamia honey, macadamia oil, macadamia skin butter and after sun macadamia lotion.

The Macadamia is a genus of nine species of flowering plants in the family Proteaceae, with seven of the nine species native to eastern Australia, the other two in New Caledonia (M. neurophylla) and Sulawesi in Indonesia (M. hildebrandii). The fact that the Macadamia nut had its origins in Australia is not widely known. Our ‘Australian Bush Nut’ was first discovered by Allan Cunningham in 1828. In the 1850′s these trees were noticed by a British botanist Ferdinand Von Mueller and Walter Hill, the Director of the Botanical Gardens of Brisbane. The two men were struck with the majestic beauty of the specimens found growing in the rainforests of Queensland. A distinction was made between Macadamia integrifolia (smooth shelled) and Macadamia tetraphylla (rough shelled) which also produces a nut that is edible, although not as good for roasting as Macadamia integrifolia. The genus Macadamia was named after a prominent scientist of that time, Dr John MacAdam. Indigenous Australian names for the nut include gyndl, jindilli, and boombera. There were at least twelve aboriginal tribes in the region where the trees grew and they were used as an item of trade with other tribes. With the arrival of white settlers nuts were bartered, often with native honey, for rum and tobacco. The high oil content of these nuts was a coveted addition to the indigenous diet. However, they were difficult to harvest in great quantities so probably were not a major staple food. The fallen nuts were collected in dilly bags and taken to feasting grounds. Some coastal aboriginal middens contain large quantities of bush nut shells along with sea shells, often 15 – 20kms from the nearest trees. Nuts were eaten raw or roasted in hot coals. Many processing stones have been found in eastern rainforests, consisting of a large stone with a delicate incision for holding the nuts and sometimes a smaller, flat stone sits on top which is then struck by a larger hammer stone.

The nuts are a valuable food crop. Only the two, Macadamia integrifolia and Macadamia tetraphylla, are used commercially, the remainder of the genus possess poisonous and/or inedible nuts, such as M. whelanii and M. ternifolia; the toxicity is due to the presence of gynogenic glycosides. These glycosides can be removed by prolonged leaching, a practice carried out by some Indigenous Australian people in order to use these species as well. The two species of edible macadamia readily hybridize, and M. tetraphylla is threatened in the wild due to this. One of the locations where wild nut trees were originally found was at Mount Bauple near Maryborough in southeast Queensland. Locals in this area still refer to them as ‘Bauple nuts’. The macadamia nut is the only plant food native to Australia that is produced and exported in any significant quantity (so far). The first commercial orchard of macadamia trees was planted in the early 1880s by Charles Staff at Rous Mill, 12 km southeast of Lismore, New South Wales, consisting of M. Tetraphylla. Besides the development of a small boutique industry in Australia during the late 19th and early 20th century, macadamia was extensively planted as a commercial crop in Hawaii from the 1920s. Macadamia seeds were first imported into Hawaii in 1882 by William H. Purvis. He was the young manager of the Pacific Sugar Mill, at Kukuihaele, on the Big Island and planted seed nuts that year at Kapulena. The Hawaiian-produced macadamia established the nut internationally. Many Americans still refer to the nut as the Hawaiian nut. In 2006, macadamia production began to fall in Hawaii, due to lower prices from an over-supply.

Outside of Hawaii and Australia, the macadamia is also commercially produced in South Africa, Brazil, California, Costa Rica, Israel, Kenya, Bolivia, New Zealand, Colombia and Malawi. It wasn’t until the 1960′s that Australians realized the potential of this indigenous tree nut and began serious local cultivation. Trees were planted on the rolling hills of north eastern New South Wales and south eastern Queensland where over one third of the world’s production is now grown. Australia is now the world’s largest commercial producer – at approximately 40,000 tonnes of nut in shell per year, with a total global production of 100,000 tonnes. It is estimated the Australian industry is now worth over $100million annually to the national economy. In New South Wales alone there are some 468 registered macadamia orchards. Australian macadamias have developed a world-wide reputation for the finest quality, flavour and texture. The industry has finally come of age so that today we can all enjoy the best nut in the world.

Compared to other common edible nuts like almonds and cashews, macadamias are high in fat and low in protein. They have the highest amount of beneficial monounsaturated fats of any known nut. They also contain 9% protein, 9% carbohydrate, 2% dietary fibre, as well as calcium, phosphorus, potassium, sodium, selenium, iron, thiamine, riboflavin and niacin. They may reduce the risk of heart disease and type 2 diabetes. The macadamia tree is usually propagated by grafting, and does not begin to produce commercial quantities of nuts until it is 7–10 years old, but once established, may continue bearing for over 100 years. The macadamia nut has an extremely hard shell, but can be cracked using a blunt instrument, such as a hammer or rock applied with some force to the nut sitting in a concave surface, or a custom made macadamia nutcracker can be used.

Macadamias are toxic to dogs. Ingestion may result in macadamia nut toxicoses, which is marked by weakness with the inability to stand within 12 hours of ingestion. Recovery is usually within 24 hours. Macadamia nuts are also often used by law enforcement to simulate crack cocaine in drug stings. When chopped, the nuts resemble crack cocaine in colour. Macadamia nuts are often fed to Hyacinth Macaws in captivity. These large parrots are one of the few animals, aside from humans, capable of cracking and shelling the nut. The trees are also grown as ornamental plants in subtropical regions for their glossy foliage and attractive flowers.

Put Macadamias in your morning muesli or in ice-cream or biscuit dough. They just love pumpkin soup and are great crushed with breadcrumbs for a coating on fish, lamb or chicken. Throw them through salads or use instead of pine-nuts in pesto as we do in the cafe. They also make a great alternative to peanut butter.

Whew!! I guess you can tell I rrrreally love Macadamias.

Til next week, Peace and Good Eating.

Happy Mother’s Day

Friday 6^th May, 2011.

Hello everyone. What an eventful week on the world stage it’s been. You would probably be forgiven for thinking that not too many people were focussed on food, however the coverage of the Royal Wedding was so comprehensive even the canapés didn’t get left out and although I’m not a Monarchist, I was interested in seeing what the chef put together for such a high profile meal – the menu included;
Cornish crab salad on lemon blini
Pressed duck terrine with fruit chutney
Roulade of goats’ cheese with caramelised walnuts
Quails eggs with celery salt
Scottish langoustines with lemon mayonnaise
Pressed confit of pork belly with crayfish and crackling
Bubble and squeak with confit shoulder of lamb
Grain mustard and honey-glazed chipolatas
Rhubarb creme brulee tartlet
Passionfruit praline
White chocolate ganache truffle
Milk chocolate praline with nuts
Dark chocolate ganache truffle

Buckingham Palace added that guests would be served Pol Roger NV Brut Reserve Champagne

It’s also Master Chef Australia season again (this week they tackled crocodile- with disappointing results) which always sparks conversion but in the Lexie’s kitchen it prompted a conversation about the many ‘celebrity chef’ programmes on television. If you find yourself hanging out for the next episode of Master Chef try these foodie shows in between to tide you over, all appear on Foxtel or can be downloaded on You Tube:-

Ace of Cakes – Revolves around the daily workings of Charm City Cakes in Baltimore, Chef Duff Goldman and his team of ‘friends’ create amazing cakes for special events.

Cake Boss – Similar to Ace of Cakes, run by Buddy Valastro, he and his team make amazing cakes as well from their shop in Hoboken, New Jersey.

Top Chef Masters – is a spin off the original Top Chef series in which ‘cheftestants’ compete in elimination challenges for a $100000 prize, in this series it pits some of America’s culinary royalty such as Rick Bayless, Susur Lee and Wylie Dufresne against one another to win money for their chosen charities.

Top  Chef :Just Desserts – Closer to the original series only this series focuses on pastry chefs.

The F Word – the series in which Gordon Ramsay doesn’t lose his cool, instead opting for a recipe driven and far more instructional show with segments on unusual ingredients and other culinary topics resulting in a more enjoyable experience for the viewer.

Let me know what you think of these mostly US shows and we’ll discuss foodie shows made on Australian shores in a future blog.

I’ve had a few people ask about the story behind Macadamias that I mentioned a few weeks back, so next week I’ll post a focus profile on Macadamias.

Hope all Mums have a great day on Sunday, Happy Mother’s Day from all the staff at Lexie’s.

Til next week, Peace and Good Eating.

Cooking with the kids

Friday 29^th April, 2011.

Hello everyone. Our leaders – Doug and Trish are spending some much needed vacation time in Thailand at the moment. While they’re gone though, business carries on as usual at Lexie’s. I hope everyone got the chance to try out my ANZAC cookie recipe. We had a great day of trade on ANZAC Day and it was nice to see so many people out early who had attended the dawn services.

Mother Nature has been pounding the beach near Lexie’s this week with some of the biggest surf I’ve seen in the area since starting work there over two years ago.

Mother’s Day is of course coming up next week and we are fully booked. It should be a great day, unfortunately I haven’t seen any Watermelon in recent weeks good enough to make my acclaimed Vanilla-bean and Watermelon Jam that I’ve made the last two Mother’s Days for afternoon scones but we will have a good selection of tasty sweets for Mums to indulge in.

My wife is the director of a preschool and each year she attempts to get Fathers involved in a craft night to make something with their kids for Mother’s Day – well, I’m going to attempt to do the same. If you’re staying home this Mother’s Day and breakfast seems a bit early and stressful to organise, why not try this recipe with the kids for an afternoon treat Mum can enjoy. One of our wait staff raves about how good these scones are and makes them at home herself.

Lemonade Scones with Wild Rosella and Raspberry Jam

This is a quick and easy recipe and it produces really light scones that are best served hot, straight out of the oven.
325g (2 cups and 2 Tbsp) self-raising flour
170ml (2/3 cup) cold lemonade (make sure to use carbonated lemonade)
170ml (2/3 cup) thickened cream

I love these with a Wild Rosella and Raspberry jam that I make but you can buy a Rosella jam from Cole’s supermarkets that is good or use your favourite flavour jam.
Preheat oven to 225°C or 205°C if using a fan-forced oven. Line a baking tray with baking paper.
Sift the flour into a large bowl. Combine lemonade and cream in a medium bowl. Add the lemonade and cream mixture to flour and gently fold ingredients together until just combined (don’t over mix the dough or you will get tough scones). The dough should be fairly soft and sticky.
Place the dough on a lightly floured bench, form it into a round and press out to about 3.5cm thickness. Cut scones using a floured 5cm diameter cutter dipping it in to flour each cut so it doesn’t stick. Form the off-cuts into another round and cut more scones until dough is all gone.
Place scones close together on the baking tray, so they are just touching. You can brush the tops with milk or eggwash if you like. Bake for about 12-15 minutes or until pale golden and cooked through.
If you like your scones to have a soft crust cover them with a clean tea towel for one minute after removing from the oven. Serve with jam and double-thick cream.  Enjoy.
Makes about 12-14 scones.

I’ve now been writing this (mostly) weekly blog for a year and have had a great response from people throughout the industry and customers alike. I’d just like to say thank you for taking the time and keep the feedback coming. I think we’ve done what we set out to do – inform, excite and engage readers, so thanks.

Til next week, Peace and Good Eating.