Sometimes, personal correspondence is so good it just has to be shared. Great email landed in my inbox the other day from an old friend and colleague, Matthew Evans. A month or two back Matthew left Sydney for a Tasmanian sea change. Former editor of The Sydney Morning Herald Good Food Guide and Good Living restaurant reviewer, long-time Good Weekend food columnist and author (Never Order Chicken on a Monday and the Weekend Cook), he’s now learning to make cheese, slice abalone from rocks icy Tasmanian waters and spear flounder. An edited version, with Matthew's permission, reproduced here:
“I arrived in Tassie the slow way, on an overnight boat, with my car buried in the hold. I travelled with Nick, my cheese maker mate, and Ian, the other cheese maker. We filled the wee bunkroom with the smell of washed rind and red wine and I slept like the deceased.
Awoke to a brilliant Tassie morn and drove straight to Sheila’s house. A friend’s mother, she was expecting us and had the bacon and frypan at the ready. Jar after jar of preserved fruit filled the room, and after runny eggs we raided the back yard. Two types of nashi, so small they’d fit in a toddler’s palm, filled our crates. We picked hundreds of tiny apples and then gorged ourselves on mulberries. The result was three grown men, giggling like schoolgirls at the flavour, the stains on our hands and shirts giving us the appearance of the criminally insane.
After that it was down to Bruny Island. Here’s something I jotted down: Monday and it’s salt bush lamb chops, simply pan seared then grilled with rosemary and olive oil. The potatoes are unpeeled whole baby pink eyes with a scattering of Bruny Island’s Tom cheese, like a French tomme but with an Aussie accent.
I cook lamb again later in the week, this time a rack, seared in a hot pan and bunged in a hot oven for a few minutes. I boil quartered Dutch cream potatoes until soft and toss them with crushed garlic and a knob of butter while steaming hot.
Come Sunday, we go abalone diving. It’s two blokes, one snorkel, one knife, one weight belt and a kelp forest shielding the abalone from view. Despite the lack of equipment, in an hour we prise seven abs from the rocks, five of legal size. I feel giddy from the exertion and need to eat. Blackberry brambles line the path back to the car and we drop the wetsuits and greedily fill our faces, our hands and mouths stained to deep purple.
A mate drops in to share some of his 50 hand-dived scallops. He reached his bag limit in 23 minutes. It’s the first weekend of the season, so it’ll be slimmer pickings in weeks to come. You need a tank to get deep enough for scallops, and a scuba licence.
In the absence of a big steamer we barely grill the scallops until plump. The abalone is chopped 1cm thick and wok tossed for a few seconds with garlic and chilli. The only accompaniments needed are riesling and rice.
After dinner the wind drops and we go floundering. We wade hundreds of metres from shore on a long sand bar, towing an old surfboard. It holds a milk crate for the catch and a car battery hooked up to a torch on a pole. The beam of the torch spreads out underwater; the flounder, near the channel’s drop off, can be seen as vague lumps in the sand. You have to be fast, and accurate, to spear them using a metal rod with a barbed spike on the end. Ten flounder later, with the water lapping at my comfort zone, it’s time to head home. We pop the fish in the fridge and have a nightcap of 12-year-old Glenlivet with walnut shortbread in the shape of a pear.
Did I tell you about the phosphorescence when we went floundering? Or the free range eggs at the CWA shop that are blue from silky bantams and are tiny wee things that cost just $2.50 a dozen? Or the mist on Mount Wellington, that strange monolith that overshadows my new life? Have I mentioned chocolate crackles as big as a child's head or a tarte Tatin with quinces as dark as a Bruny night and as fat as a fist? Or Ross's unctuous scrambled eggs on sourdough with wood oven roasted Snug butchery bacon and slabs of buttery sourdough bread on the deck? Did I tell you about the milk spewing from the van after I pressed the wrong button as we pumped it from the dairy into tanks, and that Nick had forgotten to put the lid on the milk pod, so not all the slops were my fault I probably did, and I'm boring you.”
