garden

Addicted to seed

To truly create from the garden is one of the most satisfying ways to cook. My mother is a horticulturist and when I was a young boy we had a polytunnel in our backyard that was used to grow plants from cuttings and seed. Our garden was where weekends were always spent as a family, mowing the lawns, trimming hedges and cutting back roses. I was addicted early – digging up the nearby paddocks and forests for pine tree shoots to transplant, in the hope that by Christmas I would have a small tree to sell.

To be able to walk through a garden of edible plants is a wonderful thing. When Biota was born, so was a garden – when the garden was born, so was Biota. This small garden would drive our ethos and the way we cook, no matter how big or how small it is; it provokes the thought process that takes us to another world.

We started as a bunch of young cooks planting seeds in a small greenhouse. Once they matured we carefully moved them to deeper soil in raised beds we had built. We planted breakfast radish, chamomile, violets, heirloom tomatoes and pineapple sage, with no real use for any of it, as we had no restaurant yet to use it in. After the first year of growing and learning as cooks, we realised we had developed an addiction to the seed. Watching something grow gives inspiration in many different ways; to spend time in the garden with your fellow cooks, pulling weeds, getting fresh air and planning the night or day to come is a rare thing. So we embraced it and to this day we see it as an important part of our growth. As time passed and the restaurant grew busier, we were hungry to plant more varietals. We built more gardens, set up a natural composting system that uses the heat from the sun to break down organisms, and started to create from the garden. We thought about dishes that would showcase the very thing we were growing: a simple cucumber, for instance, can be the star of a dish that has an oyster in it; why is it that we automatically think the dish should be labelled ‘oyster with cucumber’ when we were aiming for ‘cucumber with oyster’?

‘We thought about dishes that would showcase the very thing we were growing: a simple cucumber, for instance, can be the star of a dish that has an oyster in it; why is it that we automatically think the dish should be labelled “oyster with cucumber” when we were aiming for “cucumber with oyster”?’

Having gardens to supply our kitchen with endless ingredients and inspiration is wonderful; what it also does is open doors to a community. We make friends with like-minded people who share the same addiction to the seed. Local people bring in huge sacks of citrus fruit, or a bin bag full of nettles, just because they think we might like to use it. This feels very special, and it makes us want to make use of the ingredient with utmost integrity.

We don’t overwork the plants and vegetables in our cooking; we rely on them to display their natural beauty. I love to see the roots of the plant, the very thing that keeps it alive, in our cooking. One night at Biota, about 20 minutes into a busy Saturday service, a new cook was working on the vegetable section, one of the most important in our kitchen. He was preparing the leeks for a dish of beef. Now, to me, a leek with its roots on is a beautiful thing: it has stood so proud in the earth for 90 days before we harvested it. To serve the leek cooked with its roots intact, as if it had just been pulled up, requires great care. I remember having a 15-minute discussion with the cook, explaining how the leek’s future rested in his hands, and that what he did to it in the next ten minutes was crucial. The same thought process is applied to everything that comes from our garden. The cooks at Biota have a relationship with the earth in which ingredients are grown and with the ingredients themselves – we are connected. Enjoy the journey of root vegetables, legumes, seeds, grains, leaves and flowers in this chapter… we do.