About twenty minutes past New Norfolk we turned up a gravel road  and drove up hill for another ten, through a gate and in to the middle of a hilltop paddock where a house and shed were perched overlooking the valley and Mt Field National Park with its snow-capped peaks.

Len Finnann emerged from the shed to greet us and introduce himself. He told us that he used to be a chef and had moved in to farming because he had seen a massive gap in the market for ultra premium quality meat. Len moved to Tasmania and bought the picturesque block of land (on which he singlehandedly built his house in 12 days!) and put up the shed. He bought a couple of Wessex Saddleback pigs and the rest is history. The top, flat part of the block is now pegged out for planning approval on a couple of acres of new pig pens and a very large new chicken coop.

We visited Boris, Len’s massive 350kg Saddleback boar, his three pregnant sows and small herd of piglets nearly ready for the abattoir as they turned over the ground looking for breakfast and doing what happy pigs do. Len told us that the week before he had woken up to a few centimetres of snow over the whole property and the pigs frolicking in it!

After the pig introduction it was time for the real reason for our trip, to see a small brood of pure-bred silkie chickens! Len had bought a small number of eggs and hatched an even smaller number of chicks with the intent of growing them up for the plates at Ethos! We have been looking for silkies for meat for a long time so this was very exciting. While popular in Asia it is virtually impossible to find them in Australia let a lone Tasmania.

Silkie chooks are special for several reasons, firstly they don’t have feathers as such, their plumage is more like fluff which means they cannot fly (and they look like they’re rocking fantastic 80s hairdos, they have five toes (where other chickens have 4) and a very calm temperament which means they are popular with people who want to keep a couple of chooks in the back yard. But the most special thing about silkies and the reason we’ve been searching for them is their meat – it’s black! While this might seem a bit strange, it means that the meat has the REAL taste of chicken, not like to ones we see on the market today, bred for their ability to grow as quickly as possible and the white colour of their meat.

While it may be a couple of months before we see any black chicken on the menu at Ethos, the ball is most certainly rolling so stay tuned! Thanks to Len and Sam for helping us to source such a unique product!

A couple of months ago Iain and Elenor started brewing ginger beer in the cellar at Ethos. The idea had been tossed around before but it took a trip to the Tasmanian Home Brewing Supplies (www.thbs.intas.net/) shop on Liverpool Street in Hobart for some advice and a tiny sachet of brewers yeast to get us going.

The beginnings of the ginger plant

The taste of brewed ginger beer and not fizzy ginger cordial (like you buy in the shops these days) will hold a lot of very fond childhood memories for many Tasmanians who would have been treated to a bottle of the fizzy drink in their formative years, possible made by a friend or relative.

The simple process of starting the brew is a mixture of yeast, sugar, ginger powder and water, you then simply have to wait and feed the brew or ‘plant’ every day with a little bit more ginger and a little bit more sugar, then once a week, strain off the water form your plant, dilute it with more water, lemon juice and a bit more sugar and bottle it up (keeping the solids from the plant to start next week’s batch all over again)! We label and date each bottle with the name of a famous ‘ginger’ i.e. Lucile Ball or Boris Becker (this is Elenor’s favorite part) so we can track the bottles and take notes on how changes and tweaks we’ve made to the brew effect the finished product. It then takes four weeks for the little yeasties to do their thing, and in the process of eating the sugar, produce fizz and a little bit of alcohol (exactly the same process as champagne) as well as a wonderful brewed dry flavor.

Ginger plant before diluting

We had been told not to bottle our ginger beer in glass bottles and that PET would be better, it’s easy to see why. After the four weeks of fermentation PET bottles are swollen to bursting and once the liquid has been poured out you can see that contained pressure has actually stretched the plastic!

We then re-bottle the ginger beer into smaller glass bottles so it can be served to Ethos’ thirsty diners. Refreshing, dry and hand made we think it’s pretty special.

Bottling the gingers

This is the recipe given to us by the good folks at Tasmanian Home Brewing Supplies and it works a treat so give it a go, or come on in to Ethos…

Ginger beer

Start a ginger beer plant by placing 50g of fresh bakers yeast in a jar with about 300ml of water, 2 teaspoons of ground ginger and 2 teaspoons of sugar

Feed the plant each day for the next 7 days by adding one teaspoon of ground ginger and 1 teaspoon of sugar.

Make the ginger beer by straining the mixture through fine muslin (keeping the sediment) and reserving the liquid. Dissolve 450g of sugar in 600ml of boiling water. When cool add the juice of 2 lemons and the reserved liquid then make up the volume to 4½l. Bottle in p.e.t (coke or similar) bottles as you can keep an eye on the pressure forming and if it gets to great you can release some as required (slowly).

Restart the plant by dividing the sediment into 2 parts and placing each half into a jar with 300ml of water. You now have 2 plants to feed as above. If one plant is enough you can either give one away or throw it away.

2011 saw a poor cherry season with late rain and hail, meaning that fruit was depleted across the southern part of Tasmania. This combined with a flagging world economy meant that the usual booming Tasmanian Cherry export industry was left high-and-dry. There was a glut of export quality cherries and no one to buy them.

The clever people at Platinum Ridge thought rather than chuck the fruit, they would offer it for sale, directly from the pickers bins to the Hobart public. They were shocked by so many surprised looks at the quality of their cherries (usually fruit at this grade is packed on a plane within a day of being picked, never to be seen by Tasmanians). They decided that this simply wasn’t right and to give Tasmanians the chance to eat the best cherries in the world they now offer a leasing scheme on their cherry trees. Members of the public can rent a tree in the orchard and any fruit that grows on is branches is yours to pick yourself. And we are talking 40mm fruit here! They recommend packing a picnic, driving down to the orchard and sitting amongst the fruit laden trees while picking your cherries at leisure… sounds good to us.

So when Ethos was offered a tree a few months ago we were very excited and headed down to meet the team and meet our tree (Chester) in person.

Chester the Ethos tree

the amazing pine cool rooms

Our tour of Platinum Ridge started in their old sheds, old apple sheds to be precise built in 1961. The apple orchards have gone and been replaced by cherries but the immense pine-lined cool rooms remain in operation to cool the cherries ready for transport. Piney smelling and stunningly beautiful the two towering coolrooms are a wonderful throwback to the Huon Valley’s agricultural past and a real treasure. We learn that the ladies of the orchard in days of old used to play badminton in the rooms when apple season had finished and the fans had been turned off for another year.

the Platinum Ridge packing line

In the remainder of the shed is juxtaposed technology. Dustin’s bespoke and very shiny packing line, which has up to 40 sorters and packers working along it when the cherry season is at its peak, is capable of sorting up to two million individual pieces of fruit in a single day. We can’t wait to go back and see it in action!

We then headed out to the orchards on foot where you would be hard pressed to find a more beautiful place anywhere in the world, overlooking the Huon River and a 360-degree vista of the Valley. We met Chester covered in immature and still green fruit and talked at length with Dustin about the challenges he faces in growing world-class cherries in Tasmania before heading back to Hobart to count the days until we could go back and pick our cherries! Stay tuned…

The beautiful watercolours and prints currently at Ethos investigate the juxtaposition of spiritual and occult elements in contemporary fashion photography and popular aesthetics. 

David’s work translates the mass exposure of imagery via the internet and blog culture and combines it with the ideas of spiritual interconnectedness; the development of personal and cultural aesthetics; and notions of beauty and the ethereal. 

Dreamcatcher

We felt the space at Ethos was ideal for David’s work as it plays with same themes of contradictory aesthetics in young and old, natural vs synthetic and that we are all bond by feeling elicited through perceived beauty.

David’s pieces will be on display and for the duration of September- please come by for a look or go to www.davidfooks.com  for more information

A couple of months ago we became aware of a landscaping company in Tasmania doing vertical gardens. We discovered that Daniel Green of Outlook Concepts was the man to see, so we invited him in for a coffee and to see if it would be possible for him to design a garden to run up one of the walls of our courtyard.

little plants nestled in their new homes

Daniel’s system is relatively new, (event though vertical gardens have been around for many years) and is modular, which means it can be adapted to nearly any surface. Welded and powder coated steel cages are filled with a soil mixture and the plants are planted into the front of the cages. Then they simply hang from a wall mounted bracket. Irrigation runs up the center and is operated via a timer. Then all you have to do is wait for the plants to grow!

ready made garden

Daniel had a all the cages pre planted and laid out so the whole system was up and on the wall in less than an hour! Now we just have to wait for spring to roll around and watch the plants fill out their new home. We can’t wait!

Daniel doing what he does best!!

The best thing about the modular system is that it can be added to as time goes on, so keep your eye on the walls of our courtyard!

A welcome addition to our courtyard!

the gardens

Moonah Primary in Hobart’s northern suburbs is a special school. And in our opinion, if you are a student there you are a lucky student. Moonah Primary is one of only a handful of primary schools from all around Australia to have been granted funding by the Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Foundation. The program allows schools to install and maintain a large vegetable garden and an operating kitchen – big enough for a whole class of kids to grow, harvest, cook and share healthy and nourishing food.

 

making bread

Iain and Chloe recently spent the day with six of the best young cooks at Moonah preparing a four course meal for 50 teachers, parents and friends of the school before returning in the evening to serve it all to great success! As well as the six young chefs learning some kitchen skills and techniques from Iain, the event raised some money to help keep the garden running smoothly. There were other classmates on hand to serve the food to the hungry guests on the night and the whole team did a wonderful job under Chloe’s watchful eye and service ran like a professional team! 

  

As a testament to the tuition these kids have received once a week from grade three upward, the year five and sixes who worked in the kitchen were outstanding. Cool heads, skillful hands and the ability to keep the kitchen spotlessly clean between jobs was incredibly impressive, they worked like some of the better apprentices we have seen over the years in hospitality.

edible flowers from the garden

kneading demo

wood-firing in the garden

smooth service

little pasta masers!

sashimi, cucumber + yuzu

Hopefully the program yields some fantastic apprentices in a few years time, but if it doesn’t, at the very least provides some of these kids the only healthy meal they eat all week and empowers them with skills and knowledge to feed themselves and their own families in the future. We would like to thank Moonah’s principal Angela Aiezitis for allowing us the opportunity to get involved and see the Kitchen Garden program in action.

We have been humbled and inspired by the staff and students of Moonah Primary and urge all of our readers to get behind community gardens of any kind, it is important for Australia’s future.

Aiden Direen’s 2Cow Dairy lies just outside Cygnet in the Huon Valley, the re-established site of the former Cygnet Dairy. ’2Cow’ refers to the two breeds of dairy cattle used in the production of this delicious milk we use for all our cooking and coffee at Ethos.

On our recent trip down, we were fortunate enough to meet the long eye lashed and caramel coloured jersey and classic black and white Friesian cows that make up Aiden’s milking herd. Jersey milk is amongst the richest in the world and the Friesian milk allows the product to be more versatile once it gets to Ethos.

Unlike most supermarket milk the 2Cow milk is 100% milk and is pasteurized but not homogenized which means if you’re lucky enough to be the first to open the bottle you get a big blob of sweet cream on your corn flakes as it floats to the surface as the milk settles. (I remember hearing about what a treat it was for my parents when they were children but hadn’t experienced it myself until we got the 2Cow in at Ethos).

 Aiden ran us through the milking and filtration process before showing us the refrigerated vat of milk he had extracted from his cattle that morning. Before the mixing arm was turned on thick layer of golden cream could be seen floating on its surface.

It was at this time that Aiden explained that we were unable to taste the milk at this stage because it was yet to be pasteurized at his Coal River Valley bottling facility. The Dairy industry is regulated to a point where milk directly out of the cow’s udder cannot even be given away which we think is sad as it is not only totally delicious but has huge health benefits. Hopefully one day these laws can be relaxed with a bit of public lobbying and support for those dairy farmers aiming for a return to the product’s natural state and integrity.

We drove up to meet his herd grazing at the top of a hill over looking the Huon Valley and its carpet of apple orchards, now in fruit. The 40 cattle seemed as curious about us as we were about them before they went back to the serious business of grazing and milk production while the Jersey bull bellowed at us from the neighboring paddock.

Aiden told us that he hopes to be producing a skim milk and as a byproduct Jersey cream in his own onsite facility by the end of this year and we can’t wait! Real milk produced by beautiful healthy cattle… we think you can’t do better.

It was here that Nicole talked us through the Grandveue process from the beginning. The cheesery first started in 2001 with a small flock of dairy sheep. It has evolved using only organic farming methods to be not just a dairy but a stud farm; exporting Awassi dairy and meat lamb as well as their own Grandveue dairy lamb genetics world-wide.

 Nicole showed us the state-of-the-art technology that has helped her to develop one of the most premium bloodlines of dairy sheep anywhere in the world, and has been instrumental in ensuring the optimum health and milk production of her own dairy flock.

 It was then into the cheesery to see a how a wheel of their signature Sapphire blue matures from the inside out. Winner of the Champion Cheese of Show in the Sydney Royal Show 2012 in a lineup of over 350 of Australia’s best cheeses. It has been a staple on our cheese board for a long time now, and we were excited to see it being made and help celebrate the amazing national prize.

 We tasted fresh ewes’ milk and asked Nicole as many questions as we could think of before departing with a crate of milk and a quick goodbye to the lambs in the shed.

Nicole has proven to be a huge inspiration to all of us here at Ethos. To meet and listen to another young person (just like us) who is so passionate about her industry and Tasmania, producing many world-class products. To be doing it all naturally and ethically is a truly wonderful thing!

Misty and grey skies over Hobart cleared to perfect blue as we left the shadow of mt Wellington and headed up the Derwent Valley to visit Robert and Anne Ashbolt’s farm. About 7 km beyond the historic centre of New Norfolk, the Ashbolts grow and produce multi award winning extra virgin olive oil, the olives for which, we would be harvesting that day for use at Ethos.

Anne and Robert welcomed us in to their home with steaming mugs of hot elderflower tea (which they also produce from their own grove of elder trees). We warmed up and gazed out Anne’s kitchen windows across the valley, before heading through the vegetable garden to the processing shed where Robert was busily working, extracting vibrant green oil from crates of freshly picked olives “we try and crush them within an hour of coming off the tree” he told us.

Robert’s bespoke machinery was a lot smaller than we had expected it to be which goes to show how small scale the Ashbolt production really is. We learnt about the processes involved with olive oil production and were allowed to taste some of the oil produced a few hours before (which had been allowed to settel properly). Fruity, rich, and peppery the fresh oil was amazing, no doubt another prize winner for 2012.

We then each grabbed a bucket and headed out to the olive groves to hand pick some olives to serve later in the year at ethos. Olives harvested for oil are stripped off the trees on to nets laid across the ground, before being collected and pressed, where as the art of hand picking olives for the table needs to be a bit more gentile so as to not damage the fruit.

The team worked away on just a couple of trees for a a few hours and returned to the house with buckets and buckets of Ligurian and picholine olives ready for the long brining process back at Ethos.

Anne farewelled us with freshly baked cakes (with fruits from her quince and apple trees) and we vowed to return in spring to see the elderflowers when they are in the middle of their short season. Hopefully the Ashbolt’s herd of bush-run boer goats are kidding…

The olives are now under brine for a month or so and will then be available at Ethos. Meanwhile, you can warm up with some of the Ashbolt’s delicious elderflower tea! 

In our endeavour to source ethical commodities at Ethos,  we also aim where we can, to use entire animals for use in the kitchen. We feel that the most respectful way to treat a creature which died to provide us meat is by not just utilising it for its ‘prime cuts’, which happens so often in restaurants.

In turn, this poses a challenge for our chefs to explore various cooking methods and textures in order to optimise such a variety of cuts. This requires different garnishes and techniques for presentation to create interest for both our diners and chefs from day to day.We source and serve heirloom dorper lambs from Bruny island in such a way- here is an outline of how we tend to them………

We start by breaking the animal down in to cuts; from shank to tenderloin and everything in between. Doing our own butchery in-house gives us the opportunity to customise our own cuts; a rack with the entire rib bone left intact, whether we separate the rump or leave it attached to the leg, we can remove the shank or tunnel bone it and leave it to roast with the shoulder and so on. All of which makes for a beautiful presentation when it’s cooked.

We also believe that the care and attention to detail we instill in the meat right from the minute it gets in to our kitchen will be tasted by whomever is lucky enough to eat our delicious lamby dishes.

Buying whole animals from a farmer who affords them a good life and a peaceful death, we are able to ensure the quality and respct for the meat which would be impossible to control any other way. We are proud to have the opportunity to serve these wonderful heirloom lambs.