WINTER // Recipe for four

Carrots, dill seeds and oily fish

This dish is all about the purple carrot: in fact, the oily fish is almost just a seasoning for the carrots. The carotene turns the grape skins purple, but the grapes remain a vibrant green on the inside. I find the old carrots similar to the oily fish in some ways: not perfect, not the first choice for everybody… but for me they are. Ask your fishmonger to fillet the mackerel for you, but you will also need to keep the bones.

FRIED BONE JUICES

700 ml (24 fl oz) vegetable oil

Bones from 2 small mackerel

1 brown onion, chopped

1 garlic clove, unpeeled

100 ml (3½ fl oz) white soy sauce

100 g (3½ oz) dried kelp or sea lettuce

Juice of 2 purple unpeeled carrots

6 g (¼ oz) xanthan gum

2 teaspoons salt

12 green grapes

Grated zest of 1 lime

Heat the vegetable oil in a saucepan to 180°C (350°F) and fry the fish bones until brown and crisp. Put the bones in a deep saucepan and add the onion, garlic, white soy sauce, kelp and 600 ml (21 fl oz) water. Cover the pan and infuse over low heat for about 1 hour.

Strain into a clean saucepan, add the carrot juice and xanthan gum, then place over low heat and whisk until thickened. Season with salt and then strain through a fine mesh strainer. Put in the fridge to chill. Add the grapes and grated lime zest to the bone juices just before serving.

DILL SEED OIL

50 g (1³/₄ oz) dill seeds

400 ml (14 fl oz) grape seed oil

1 teaspoon salt

Toast the dill seeds in a dry frying pan, shaking the pan regularly, until they become fragrant. Remove from the pan. Heat the grape seed oil to 60°C (140°F). Add the dill seeds and salt, seal in a container and leave to cool.

OILY FISH

Fillets from 2 small Spanish mackerel (approximately 300 g/10½ oz)

1 small bonito or fresh sardine

Use a blowtorch to gently scorch the underside of the fish fillets.

PLANTS TO FINISH

6 small red mustard leaves

12 dill sprigs

8 young bracken tips

Last-season purple carrots, unpeeled, shaved

Biota’s gardens

The gardens at Biota are on 3.5 acres in the town centre of Bowral, secluded by a high pine hedge in a little world of their own. As we became familiar with the micro climate of our region, we discovered that we don’t have just four seasons, but eight. There are the obvious seasons for planting and harvesting, then there are sub-seasons of those seasons.

We graduated from planting seedlings to propagating seeds in a 30-metre long polytunnel – over 120 trays a month of varied plant species. Gardens require a great deal of adaptation: we need to work closely with mother nature, take our time and develop the soils, the water and how we feed the gardens. We have 20 black bins for all our kitchen waste – these use the heat from the sun to promote bacterial organisms, which in turn break down the food. This is then tipped onto the garden beds and turned into the soil to nourish it.

Our gardens are always hand weeded and we don’t use any herbicides or pesticides – this means a somewhat wild garden, depending on the season. Some leaves might have small bugs or holes in them, like our cos (romaine) lettuce, but at Biota a bug doesn’t mean a leaf isn’t fit for human consumption; it doesn’t mean it’s not dish worthy. I really think all supermarkets should start to sell the ‘ugly’ vegetables too – these plants and vegetables, for me, are more interesting to cook with, they demand more attention and deserve respect. At the end of the lettuce season the plant has often got bugs, is sometimes going to seed and is not really fit to eat as a fresh leaf… so we burn the lettuce, roots on, over hot coals and then plunge it into a hot pickle made from elderflower vinegar and ginger from the garden. This simple method of preserving a lettuce that was at the end of its life is very special. Suddenly that old bug-ridden plant has taken on a new identity, its flavour profile is sharp, its texture crisp again and its colour vibrant.

‘This simple method of preserving a lettuce that was at the end of its life is very special. Suddenly that old bug-ridden plant has taken on a new identity, its flavour profile is sharp, its texture crisp again and its colour vibrant.’

We preserve a lot of different plants, vegetables and fruits using different techniques. Some traditional methods have been shown to have a lower energy input and carbon footprint than modern methods; fermentation, pickling and brining are an essential part of our cycle each year. The elderflowers in our garden, for example, bloom very quickly and don’t last long on the plant. If we’re not using them fresh, they are made into a vinegar for the kitchen and a ferment for the bar to use in the juice menu that we offer as an alternative to wine matchings. The garden lavender is also made into a ferment.

Every morning the kitchen and bar cooks gather all the plants from the Biota gardens as a team. This is a special and most important moment in the day: it’s a time for discussing the day ahead and for checking on our plants. We discuss dish rotation, plant rotation and most of all a ‘like minded’ approach to who we are and what we stand for.