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Matt Kantor (Little Kitchen, Secret Pickle Supper Club, Ghost Chef), John Placko (culinary director of Maple Leaf Foods) and Luke Hayes-Alexander (Luke’s Gastronomy, Kingston) get ready for the meal
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John Placko leading the Toronto Down Under team in a discussion about the evening’s agenda. From left to right: Matt Kantor, Sarah Placko, Michelle Rabin, Luke Hayes-Alexander and John Placko
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A sous-vide setup was kind of given, as modern techniques are common in the kitchens of all three chefs.
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The menu and handouts about the evening’s special courses provided to each of the guests
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A preview of the last course. Most of the guests weren’t sure what to expect, although they did recognize a few of the table’s items including the Australian flag, a giant bucket of Vegemite and a didgeridoo. The playlist featured Australian artists and a little didgeridoo.
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A beet and Granny Smith hot and cold martini, a little riff off of the hot-frozen gin fizz from Kantor’s El Bulli Imitació dinner. Kantor was keen to note that both beets and Granny Smith apples are native to Australia.
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Vegemite grilled cheese sandwich: buttered bread sandwiched with cheese and a thin layer of Vegemite paste. Similar to beef boullion, the brewers’ yeast extract is salty, slightly bitter and incredibly malty; in the grilled cheese it adds a layer of umami flavour that is savoury and strangely addictive.
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Two well-known savoury ingredients shipped in for the Australia-themed event: Vegemite and Murray River pink salt
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Oysters Kilpatrick: a classic way to serve oysters in Australia. The Malpeque oysters were topped with chopped cooked bacon, a bit of butter and Worchestershire sauce before being baked in the oven for five minutes.
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Yellowtail crudo with coffee, lemon and beer. Yellowtail is a popular fish in Australia. Here, silky and aromatic fillets of sashimi-grade yellowtail were drizzled with coffee oil (Kantor tells us the coffee was roasted by a Torontonian from Australia) and lemon juice before being dusted with Murray River pink salt. The crudo was sided with an emulsion of Coopers Brewery sparkling ale and some baguette.
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Coopers Brewery Sparkling Ale. A refreshing English pale ale that went very well with the first flight of starters.
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Barramundi brandade with an olive vinaigrette (lemon, olive oil, chives and parsley)
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Pumpkin soup with goat cheese and ginger. Butternut squash is also known as “pumpkin” in Australia and is ubiquitous in soup form on grocery store shelves. Placko served a modernist version with a warm goat cheese sphere and crisp micro-sponges that were flavoured with pumpkin and ginger.
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Micro-sponges: sort of like sponge cake, but softer, springier and not sweet. These were baked to top the pumpkin soup course and also served moist and soft with the kangaroo course.
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“Blinman”: White stripe lamb, beets (two ways), lemon myrtle, brown butter and wattleseed. This dish was based on Hayes-Alexander’s experience in Blinman—a deserted mining town 25 almost 2,000 kilometres from Sydney, Australia—where the young chef was the first Canadian invited to attend and judge the legendary Blinman Camp Oven Cook-Off. Here, a thick wattleseed-studded shell surrounds loose braised lamb.
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Wattleseeds are the edible seeds from 120 species of Australian Acacia eaten by Australian Aborigines either directly or made into a type of bush bread. Their flavour straddles chocolate, coffee and hazelnuts.
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Kangaroo meat is high in protein and low in fat. Quandong, below, is a type of wild peach with a big nut and a leathery skin that grows on small desert trees. The fruit is tart, but highly nutritious (twice the vitamin C of an orange) and is an important part of the aboriginal diet.
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A trio of lean and mildly gamey rare kangaroo loins that were cooked to 60 degrees with caramelized onion micro-sponge, tamarillo fruit purée, black garlic purée and quandong chutney made with onion, mustard powder and quandong cooking syrup.
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This the first snack Hayes-Alexander had when he landed in Sydney—a ball of pastry wrapped around braised shoulder of beef with shallots and served in a brown paper bag.
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A deconstructed take on the previous course, featuring braised beef cheek over a light pool of pastry sauce and a smear of thick, sweet roasted onion purée. Other items dressing the busy plate included roasted onion wedges, roasted onion tuiles, pickled mustard, red chilies, garlic, white wine jellies, tiny, cookie-like brown butter maltodextrin balls, chives and a generous pinch of Bush Dreams seasoning salt.
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The cheese course consisted of Roaring Forties strong blue cheese (made by King Island Dairy, which is located south of Melbourne), dehydrated grapes (i.e. homemade raisins on the vine), compressed apples and walnut bread crisps.
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Pavlova, a meringue-based dessert that’s a part of the national cuisines of both Australia and New Zealand, was created in honour of the Russian ballet dancer Anna Pavlova in the 1920s. This was a crowd favourite and featured passion fruit in different textures: passion fruit curd was topped with passion fruit ice cream and a poached meringue before being surrounded by shards of airy and thin baked meringue. The dessert was something of a palate cleanser, with tart passion fruit pulp, raspberry niblets (fruit separated by liquid nitrogen), passion fruit “pop rocks” and gold. Placko’s reason for including the latter: “because we can.”
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Dessert prep: some of the ingredients that were used in the cheese and dessert courses by Placko including dehydrated grapes, meringue, passion fruit pop rocks and gold. (The crisp micro-sponges were used in the soup course.)
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Boozy whisky truffle, stabbed though with a nail
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“Testosterone”: a whisky cream–filled croquette, musk meringue, “long black” toffee (that’s how one orders espresso in Sydney) and vanilla pipe tobacco ice cream. This was served alongside a wooden pipe filled with a scent Hayes-Alexander created to complement the dessert.
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The “testosterone” cologne that Hayes-Alexander created. Each diner received a mini-bottle of the manly essence in their take-away gift tins, which also included a package of Australian Tim Tams, Bush Dreams Pepperberry Rub and handmade sweets (fennel lollies and mandarin wafers).
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Liquid nitrogen–poached wattleseed. Essentially a flash frozen ball of whipped cream studded with nutty wattleseeds. Diners were instructed to eat the two-bite frozen treat as soon as it was served for a crisp meringue exterior and soft ice cream interior.
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John Placko “poaching” the wattleseed whipped cream balls in liquid nitrogen.
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The Tim Tam, a.k.a. “Australia’s favourite cookie.” This was the key to the evening closer: the popular “Tim Tam Slam.”
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The Tim Tam Slam is the practice of drinking a hot beverage, like coffee, through a Tim Tam biscuit (like a straw) with opposite corners nibbled off. The result is a softened biscuit with a warm, creamy chocolate centre.
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Guests Anthony and Mary Ito share a “slam” moment
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Cookbook Store manager Alison Fryer
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