September 2011 news
Baking is my new all consuming passion I would say... I may even go as far as saying that I may have found my calling in life. We are now baking a white, soy, linseed & quinoa, light rye & caraway, fruit & wholemeal sourdough all made from organic flours & ingredients. Over the weekends an olive, a chorizo, fetta & pepperonata & a fig, raisin & pistachio. I am working on a full rye & a spelt in my spare time along with the question of where is my oven going to go?!
Tanvir is continuing our wild coffee ride. He ordered a cold drip filter to add to the array of scientific looking equipment growing behind the coffee machine. It will be a great addition over summer, once we get the ratios & timings right it will be a refreshing change to your caffeine hit. Dark horse blend from mecca has still been awesome, it still amazes me that we can get our hands on such great consistent coffee!
Josh has joined us from The Boathouse on Blackwattle Bay & will mean that coming into summer we have a strong crew in the kitchen & hopefully he will help take us to a new level. There will be some other staff changes over the coming months. Unfortunately, Tanvir’s heading back to Bangladesh for a few months, Cam will be off doing the marriage & honeymoon thing & Nanci is heading back to the states for good. We are on the hunt for passionate & experienced staff. We will need baristas to get us through the summer rush, & a manager. Along with the staff changes there will be an overhaul of the entire menu! Now that we are ordering in whole sides of Taralga Springs beef, we will feature “cuts of the day” with certain cuts of the beef, dry aging some too, & we are also using this beef to make our own sausages that will feature on the new menu!
Already as far as the menu goes we’ve changed a number of our wines & most of our beer as well. Some of the wines that featured at some of our produce dinners have been moved onto the list. The David Hook “de novo” white that featured at the last produce dinner replaces the evans & tate classic white & is a very easy drinking crisp white wine expertly blended from five different grape varieties. After trying it at the produce dinner decided it would be a great match for some of our food & our great location. Likewise the “mosto”, similar to a moscato it is a slightly sparkling wine that will be great drinking over spring & summer. Most of the beers have changed as well. We will feature the little creatures beers which are beautiful, they also make pipsqueak cider & white rabbit which will be added to the list for all our drinking pleasure. There may even be a beer & cider matched produce dinner on the horizon.....
Speaking of dinners, the next one is slated for the 6th October, we are currently working on what it will feature, but will probably be a spring based dinner. We have also floated the idea of a dinner at Pierre’s (pepe saya,the butter & yoghurt man) warehouse. It will be open to maybe 50 people & it looks as though there will be a line up of chefs from around Sydney, some even from hatted restaurants that will cook a course or two each to fill the night. It is quite an exciting prospect & Pierre is extremely excited by it as well, stay tuned for dates, but we are aiming for sometime in November & we will let you know how to book for it. We are talking about opening Thursday & Friday evenings for the next few months to cover ourselves due to the disruption of renovations. I will keep you all posted if we do, as it will be quieter in the evening as no work will be going on.
As mentioned above, Sealevel are renovating their outdoor area until mid November if all goes well. I have been told that it shouldn’t disrupt us too much, & I am hoping we have seen the worst of it already. My apologies in advance for any disruptions that do occur, unfortunately it is out of my control as well.
I’m still trying to get into better shape & spending some time down at Vision personal training. Their weight loss challenge is running again & I’m trying to drop some more kilo’s!
look forward to seeing you all soon, Nick
august news
We have moved on to baking our sourdough full time now. I am still perfecting some of the derivitaves of rye, spelt & a wholemeal, but am very close on some, & am extremely happy with my organic white sourdough. We will be baking 6-7 days & producing for the time being, a white, soy + linseed & fruit sourdough for use in house, & to sell. I will bake an olive & a fig, rasin & pistachio sourdough loaf over the weekends, & some others that I am perfecting at the moment. I’m working on the holy grail of sourdough too, some would say I’m obsessed, which is a miche! I’ve been baking & chorizo, fetta & pepperonata loaf (which is awesome), a light rye & caraway, & trying to perfect a polenta, rosemary & peptita loaf. All this & trying to arrange a new oven which should take my bread to a new level & consistency!
We’ve changed some of our dairy products over to Pepe Saya! Pierre makes the most amazing butter, using country valley cream. It is a cultured European style butter with a pro-biotic just like in yoghurt! I would have to say that it’s probably the best butter I’ve ever had, & we are also buying his yoghurt & buttermilk too! Along with this great produce, we’ve changed our bacon from the middle bacon we were getting from Barossa Fine Foods to their Shultz Bacon. It is aguably the best bacon in Australia which they have won a plethora of awards for! Hopefully you will find it up to standard. Along with using shultz bacon for all of our bacon repetoire now, & pepe saya cultured butter for all our toast & butter needs, you can also purchase both to take home with you! Why not grab a loaf of our sourdough & a Pepe Saya butter to go with it!?
Tanvir has been pushing us all along on a great coffee ride, we now have some coffee syphons in house & are encouraging people that feel like a little change to their caffine regime to give it a go! We are trying to keep some lighter roast coffee’s in house to take advantage of this & Mecca is always forthcoming. Our house blend as always is consistently amazing, but we’ve been getting some beautiful single estate coffee’s, some of which are very rare & expensive, but are absolutely amazing, be sure to ask.
Our second produce dinner was a great success, we ended up running it over two nights, & was almost an overload of meat! Darren ripped out some great dishes again, & there’ll be some stunning photo’s from the night coming to our website soon thanks to Bryce! We also ran Bastille night dinner on the 14th July, with of course a strict french theme, six courses included a georgous game terrine, a cassoulet, & a couple of other french inspired dishes followed by some awesome desserts. We are working on the next produce dinner & have slated Thursday 25th August. Same rules apply, we will seat a maximum of 18 for 7-8 courses including matched wine! We are in the
process of sourcing some organic geese, organic lamb & taralga springs beef which will feature on the night! We will try & stick to a theme of everything sourced within 100 mile radius.
Hope to see you all soon, & stay tuned for updates (twitter @alleybreak or facebook)
Regards, Nick
