BLOG: White Enamel Pie Dish

The Dinner Party at Windy Station

The anticipation of a golden evening at The Dinner Party at Windy Station starts long before passing through the Windy Station gates. The awe of driving through the Liverpool Plains at sunset, past expansive paddocks of bright yellow canola, grazing cattle, and large irrigation rigs, fills you with pride that this is one of the most productive food growing regions in Australia. Arriving at the 24,000-hectare property Windy Station the big agriculture theme continues, seeing the extraordinary Windy Woolshed where workers sheared 60,000 sheep when it was built in 1901. The Dinner Party at Windy Station is the first of a calendar of biannual events to bring visitors to the Liverpool Plains to experience the incredible landscape, heritage, and local, seasonal food. Windy Station agritourism manager Clare Lee brings together like minded foodies to give guests a memorable destination dining experience. Last night’s The Dinner Party at Windy Station grouped food writer, Sophie Hansen, chef Cathy Armstrong, and In Two Minds winemaker Kate Day to toast “food as a backdrop to connection.”

A deli in our kitchen

When our new kitchen was installed late last year I never imagined that the weight bearing steel beam across the centre of the room would be used for hanging smallgoods. Turns out it is the perfect environment for air drying pancetta, guanciale, bacon and coppa hanging from butchers hooks and cooking twine in ideal autumn humidity and temperature. Re-installing our wood fire, which raised the room temperature, thankfully coincided with taking the smallgoods down and wrapping them in butchers paper for storage in the fridge and freezer. 

Doing the wedding flowers

‘You can do it’ and ‘Start early’ are two phrases from Annabelle Hickson’s ‘A Tree in the House’ DIY flower book that replayed in my mind as my daughter Isabelle, her groom Ben, family, friends, and I arranged their wedding flowers.

I have witnessed Annabelle transform a shearing shed with clouds of cotton, and chandeliers of gum leaves, as well as a convent with explosions of autumn leaves. Annabelle even worked her floral magic on our shop verandah for a Book Lunch among the launch events for ‘A Tree in the House.’

When Isabelle and Ben announced their engagement and started planning a wedding at our village of Nundle in north west NSW I was confident we could wrangle zip ties, chicken wire, flowers and foliage into joyful displays of seasonal colour.

Mediterranean cooking with Nundle produce

Duncan has declared that we do not need any more cook books, which is a fair call considering our vast collection from more than 30 years of adult cooking, and many timeless classics inherited from our relatives. Yet 'Rick Stein from Venice to Istanbul' arrived in the mail, ordered by Duncan, as a present for me! We love a Rick Stein program and enjoyed the Rick Stein from Venice to Istanbul series on SBS On Demand. Although we do not live in a Mediterranean climate, the dishes cooked in the series featured many of the ingredients we grow on our small farm; lamb, pork, honey, eggs, zucchini, eggplant, capsicum, potatoes, silverbeet, and beans, and the herbs basil, thyme, sage, rosemary, and parsley.

Autumn mushrooming at Nundle State Forest

“You look like a mushroomer,” is how my friend Alena greets me as I arrive at her place for a mushrooming expedition in the state forest near our homes in north west NSW. Without any prior discussion we are twinning in long sleeved checked shirts, long pants, boots, and hats. “Do you have a knife?” Yes. “Do you have a bucket?” I have a wire basket and timber trug. ‘Uniform’ and gear sorted we make the short car journey to Nundle State Forest at Hanging Rock to look for Pine Mushrooms, also known as Saffron Milk Caps.

Community Garden mural storytelling of Nundle food culture

What began as an admiration of the botanical artworks of Chef Sean Moran through social media and in Galah magazine led Upper Peel Landcare Group to propose a Nundle Community Garden mural by Natasha Soonchild celebrating the homegrown food and gardening culture of Nundle and Hanging Rock.

Porkucopia of smallgoods and fresh cuts

Over the years we have helped friends with their pig growing efforts, processing, and were well aware of just how good home grown pork could be, but had never tackled the challenge on our own place. Now in the midst of a porkucopia of bacon, pancetta, guanciale, English ham, pulled pork shoulder and fresh cuts that will last us for the year ahead, it’s difficult to understand why we hesitated so long. Our first experience of raising our first weaner pigs was watching them head toward Nundle on the main road after they had breached the portable electric fence on the evening of their arrival. We gently coaxed them back in, and although they would test the tape every day from then on, they never repeated that first glorious dash.

The gift - Ivan Inman, Water Diviner

Dressed in an Akubra hat, long-sleeved shirt, and jeans, 92-year-old Ivan Inman walks in a paddock, a length of metal rod rotating quickly in his hand, a crop duster aerial forcefully flicking through the air, or a steel bolt circling from a short length of frayed baling twine.

Ivan is demonstrating the skill of divining, looking for underground water, to give a drilling team a better idea of where to drill a bore or well, and at what depth.

The term water divining might conjure ‘The Water Diviner’ film directed by and starring Russell Crowe. When his character Joshua Connor is asked how he finds water that seeps through cracks in the earth underground he explains, ‘…well there’s the trick, you have to feel it…’

We walked a marathon

It started as a joke. One of our walking group members, Tash, sharing a social media post back in March about a trek crossing the mountain range between our town of Nundle, and Timor in the Upper Hunter Valley with the comment, "This looks interesting." Tash wasn't expecting actual positive responses ranging from, "I have to check dates" to "I am KEEN!!!!" and "Let's register a team."

Honey Jumbles made with our first honey harvest