Showing posts with label yallingup. Show all posts
Showing posts with label yallingup. Show all posts

Thursday, March 5, 2015

Dining with the Skamp - Wills Domain


I love a good degustation.  It can be so much more playful and inventive than the entrée/main combo. My husband and I often order a bunch of entrees, rather than a main each when we dine because the entrée is where a chef often shines. They can be a bit more experimental, more bold, more fun. Because if you don’t like it, it’s only a small dish, and you have a main coming to fill you up. Generally that’ll be a much safer meat + vegetable + sauce scenario and is rarely the stand-out of a whole dinner out. Good and dependable, but nothing groundbreaking. A degustation takes the playfulness of an entrée and runs with it. I’ve had a few degustations over the years, and so far, Wills Domain has probably been my favourite.




The lunch is 7 courses, with two additional courses available at an extra cost – all with the option of matching Wills Domain wines. Well, what’s the point in half-arsing a fabulous food experience? Lance and I went the whole hog and did both additional courses. In fact, we even went the wholer hog and added an additional course, making it a 10 course lunch. I have to stress though, that it wasn’t added because we needed the extra food! Lance had eaten the degustation at Wills Domain back in November and ever since, wanted to take me down there for the experience, and for one dish in particular – the carrot and quinoa salad with smoked yoghurt. You might recall that he is currently obsessed with smoking foods, so this smoked yoghurt dish blew him away. It was swapped out for a different “Garden” dish on the dego menu, but still available ala carte, so he asked them to add it in for us, which they happily did. Our service that lunch was top-notch from all staff. They were friendly, attentive and so knowledgeable of the dishes and wines they were bringing us . We were told that that day, there was a review lambasting the service in the paper and so everyone was on their best behaviour – but Lance had mainly the same staff on his last visit, and had already remarked how good his service was. In fact, a lot of the staff remembered him from his last visit and welcomed him back before we even started.

 


We started with a sourdough bun with cultured butter, a glass of their NV sparkling and the three ‘snacks’. The snacks on our day were crispy kale with wattleseed, mini herring tacos and fish bladder with a creamy fish sauce. The herring tacos were more of a tostada – with the corn tortillas crisped up and the perfect textural counterpoint to the oily fish. The fish bladder was something of a revelation. The texture was similar to a prawn cracker, slightly oily and that crispy/tingly/stick to your tongue awesomeness. It had quite a fishy taste, and slid through the accompanying creamy fish sauce, it was so unique and delicious. It was rich and salty and went perfectly with the sparkling. Lance said that last time they had beef tendon, which was the same prawn cracker texture but meaty, rather than fishy.

 


The next dish was cured Kingfish. Kingfish is my favourite sashimi fish, and cured it was just as good. The cucumber mousse and lemon curd were the perfect accompaniment to the fish. This was paired with their 2013 Rose. A lovely bright rose made from Shiraz grapes, which is also one of their cheaper wines, which makes it perfect to take to summer lunches! It treads that line between sweet and dry very well, making it easy drinking and well suited to seafood.




The extra dish Lance ordered for us and my favourite dish of the original degustation were both the “Garden” course. And both were mind-blowingly good, worth going to Wills Domain for by themselves. The current summer menu pairs various heirloom tomatoes with various types of basil from their own garden. The flavours of each basil leaf are vastly different, whilst still maintaining the basic basil flavour that goes so well with tomatoes. This was then paired with a crispy savoury pine nut granola which was delightful and one of my favourite things ever – mozzarella ice cream. My goat’s cheese ice cream is one of my favourite ice creams ever, and this blew it out of the water. It has a strong mozzarella punch that made the tomatoes sing. The ice cream is intensely cheesy and very savoury, whilst still being unmistakeably ice cream. It’s perfect in this dish, but could also make an amazing dessert – maybe with grilled figs! I am a much more savoury person than sweet person and this ice crean the perfect combination of salty and sweet. I would curl up on the couch with a whole tub of this ice cream and a whole bottle of the accompanying Semillon by myself. Who needs a cheese platter, when you have a cheese bowl?
 

From here we went to the broth supplement. This was a very simple, but very delicious dish. A small marron, a few native fruits in the quandong and bunya bunya nuts, as well as sea spinach and then a lovely jamon broth poured over at the table. Theatrics is always fun! Whilst eating it, I couldn’t help but quote some Arrested Development – the jamon broth was essentially “Hot Ham Water” – but delicious hot ham water. Hot ham water that was so delicious that in a fancy establishment, I uncouthly but discretely picked up the bowl to drink the last little bit that my spoon couldn’t reach!

 

The ocean dish was a piece of dhufish (although this changes depending on the market that day), with a piece of silken cuttlefish draped over the top and a lovely crunchy potato stack. The cuttlefish was a beautiful shiny black ribbon, slightly chewy in texture and fairly mild in flavour. Definitely a way of presenting cuttlefish I’ve never had before. And the matching Cuve d’Elevage Chardonnay was my favourite wine of the lunch. We were told that this vintage doesn’t use malolactic fermentation, but still had a wonderful creamy/butteriness in the mouthfeel. It was such a smooth Chardonnay, and so good, we left with a bottle. It’s a little pricier as it’s on their reserve list, but it was well worth it in my opinion!


Paddock then brought us a melt-in-your-mouth-tender piece of rump with a caramelly-charred baby onion. This and the fish both showcase how good the local meat and seafood are down south. Very simply cooked and presented – the flavour is in the produce itself. This was paired with their 2010 Reserve Shiraz, that we also bought a bottle of, as it was Lance’s favourite wine of the meal. We’ve since drunk that one with smoked chicken and smoke-roasted potatoes and it also paired wonderfully with that. The smokiness loving the boldness of the wine.

 

After Paddock, we had our extra Garden dish – the carrot and quinoa salad with smoked yoghurt. It was everything Lance had talked it up to be and more. Beautiful multi-coloured carrots, roasted to a tender, sweet but still fresh crunch, or peeled in long strips decorated a salad made of quinoa and various nuts and seeds dressed simply, and a few small dollops of strongly smokey yoghurt dabbed around the plate. It was a perfectly realised dish. Each texture and flavour element bringing out the best in every item. If you don’t go the whole hog and do the dego at Wills Domain, I strongly urge you to order this dish. It’s filling enough for a light lunch and is just so full of flavour. As Lance put it, it’s rare that he’ll order a vegetarian dish, but this was so flavoursome, so ‘complete’, that he didn’t feel like he was missing out on anything by not having any meat.

 


If you couldn’t tell from my gushing over the mozzarella ice cream, I am a big fan of cheese. I must admit, I don’t know a huge array of cheeses, so I love finding any opportunity to try more. So of course we were going to order the cheese supplement. This cheese was the Heidi Raclette, which is a Swiss style cheese, nutty and ripe flavoured. A fairly plain buckwheat cracker, a long, thin strip of apple and drops of intense almost burnt onion jam brought out the cheese flavours perfectly. It was served with a German style of grape in the Scheurebe wine.
 



The first dessert was served with a 2008 Shiraz. The aging of this wine making a wonderfully mellow accompaniment to the first chocolate dessert. Lance and I will often have a couch movie date with a bottle of Shiraz and a block of Bahenand Co Chilli Chocolate, so the Shiraz-chocolate pairing is one that we were excited about. Being a summer menu, instead of having a rich and heavy chocolate dessert, this was a rich and light dessert. The dish consisted of 3 different flavoured and textured balls, one a ganache, one an ice cream, one I can’t remember what (possibly a sorbet?), topped with a ribbon of beetroot. The flavours of beetroot and chocolate are fairly classic. The flavours of beetroot and caraway are fairly classic. The combination  of all 3 was extremely good. The caraway was very subtle, not overwhelmingly aniseedy, and the whole dish refreshing, despite it’s richness.
 

The final dish was an elderflower cheesecake with an oaty cookie base and strawberries, served with a dessert wine. This was a lovely, but I guess ultimately forgettable dish as I can’t really remember all the details of it, like I can every other dish. But I guess out of 10 dishes, that’s not bad. I did enjoy it at the time, but nothing about it stood out enough to gush about it like I have every other dish. The dessert wine was enjoyably sweet, and not cloying like some tend to be. It had a nice floral tone to match the cheesecake.

Oh, and I’ve forgotten to mention the palate cleansers! The first was an ‘apple sour’ and it was truly one of the most delicious drinks I’ve ever had. It was zingy and vinegary and refreshing. It was like a combination of apple cider with a dash of apple cider vinegar and such a novel take on palate cleansers. Apparently they have had people complain it’s a little too sour, but I thought it was absolutely delicious. Add some rum and it would make an epic cocktail! The second was a herby sorbet. Flavours of basil, coriander and mint all mingled in your mouth in a fun way, each flavour taking precedent at times as we tried to pick the herbs used.
 
Not wanting our epic meal to be over quite yet, Lance and I both ordered coffees while our taxi for the day and friend checked out the gallery and cellar door. And they came with peanut butter salted caramel truffles. Just in case we weren’t blown away enough already, these little bites were a perfect full stop to the day. There is nothing not to love about peanut butter, salted caramel and chocolate, and nothing about these disappointed, with just the right level of each component.


 

Wednesday, January 14, 2015

Weekend Away - Skamp's New Car

Weekend Away - Skamp's New Car -Mitsubishi Outlander goes to Molloy Island, Margaret River and Yallingup
Weekend Away - Skamp's New Car -Mitsubishi Outlander goes to Molloy Island, Margaret River and Yallingup

Late last year, my husband was involved in a car accident. Beyond a little whiplash, he was fine. His car, however, was not. It was deemed ‘uneconomical to repair’, and promptly taken away for scrap. Which given all of the experiences we’ve had in that car, was more than a little sad. Now, I’m not a car person. And Lance is not a car person. We don’t even have a his car/her car set-up. We need two cars, but both cars are ‘ours’. So when it came to buying a vehicle, practicality is the only thing that entered our reasoning. The last time either of us had bought a car was over 10 years ago, so we didn’t really even know what was out there, let alone what we wanted to buy! So we went to car yards. Dozens of them. And looked at cars. Hundreds of them.


Weekend Away - Skamp's New Car -Mitsubishi Outlander goes to Molloy Island, Margaret River and Yallingup
Weekend Away - Skamp's New Car -Mitsubishi Outlander goes to Molloy Island, Margaret River and Yallingup

We already own a small car, which is perfect for driving to work, and around the place. Our new car had to be a big car, like the recently departed old Fairmont. We needed boot space. Lots of it. For grocery shopping (boxes and boxes of fresh produce from The Nanna Shop. For trips down south. For crabbing and fishing and kayaking. And we needed a decently sized back-seat. We frequently ferry around 5 adults and we’re nice enough to want those adults squished in the backseat to be comfortable. Honestly, those were the two main factors we considered. Then we looked at the more serious things like fuel economy. We eventually settled on the Mistubishi Outlander (or the Mitsubishi Zoolander as we have been calling it). And I am so stoked with it! One of the things that sold us on the Outlander being the car for us was the salesman, Jayke at Southside Mitsubishi. Every car we looked at, we immediately opened the boot, before looking at anything else. It actually seemed to freak out a lot of car salesmen! Jayke asked what sort of things we’d be transporting, that the boot was such a concern. My husband joked, ‘Bodies’. Without missing a beat, Jayke climbed in to show how many people would fit! Now, that is service!
Weekend Away - Skamp's New Car -Mitsubishi Outlander goes to Molloy Island, Margaret River and Yallingup
Weekend Away - Skamp's New Car -Mitsubishi Outlander goes to Molloy Island, Margaret River and Yallingup
Weekend Away - Skamp's New Car -Mitsubishi Outlander goes to Molloy Island, Margaret River and Yallingup
Taken from the back row, with the middle seats folded down
Weekend Away - Skamp's New Car -Mitsubishi Outlander goes to Molloy Island, Margaret River and Yallingup
It's not often your kilometres match how hot the day is!


We decided to take the car down for a trip to Molloy Island very soon after buying it. We bought the 7 seat option, which means that we can have less designated drivers in the Margaret River Wine Region. Perfect, right? Especially when I don’t have to be the designated driver!


Weekend Away - Skamp's New Car -Mitsubishi Outlander goes to Molloy Island, Margaret River and Yallingup
Weekend Away - Skamp's New Car -Mitsubishi Outlander goes to Molloy Island, Margaret River and Yallingup
Weekend Away - Skamp's New Car -Mitsubishi Outlander goes to Molloy Island, Margaret River and Yallingup
Weekend Away - Skamp's New Car -Mitsubishi Outlander goes to Molloy Island, Margaret River and Yallingup
Weekend Away - Skamp's New Car -Mitsubishi Outlander goes to Molloy Island, Margaret River and Yallingup

Our trip consisted of driving down after work on Friday night. 5 people, 5 people's luggage. We wanted to make sure there was enough space to bring home wine! The next morning we stopped for a coffee at Yahava and browsed through the Vasse Virgin store. I absolutely love their Chamomile and Lavender balm. My skin has a tendency towards dryness and irritation with a lot of products, but this moisturiser made from olive oil is beautiful. 

From there, we drove on to Woody Nook for wine tasting and lunch. I'm quite a fan of the Nookery Cafe. Their meals are sort of more "old-fashioned" than a lot of restaurants. The dishes are well made, with lots of fresh local produce, but they haven't bothered jumping on the whatever's trendy bandwagon. They provide classic dishes, at very reasonable prices. The location is lovely too, but I would recommend sitting outside in this weather. It was quite stuffy inside when you order. One of the wines I always find myself buying here is their Velvet Rose. The label is quite fun, as the rose changes colour from white to red, to show that the wine is cold enough to drink! But it's not just a gimmick, the rose is actually a lovely lightly sweet wine that paired well with my ginger duck, Lance's salmon and Justin's ricotta cannelloni.




Weekend Away - Skamp's New Car -Mitsubishi Outlander goes to Molloy Island, Margaret River and Yallingup - Woody Nook
Velvet Rose
Weekend Away - Skamp's New Car -Mitsubishi Outlander goes to Molloy Island, Margaret River and Yallingup - Woody Nook
Fish of the Day - Salmon with Baby Chat Potatoes and Asparagus
Weekend Away - Skamp's New Car -Mitsubishi Outlander goes to Molloy Island, Margaret River and Yallingup - Woody Nook
Duck with Plum and Ginger Sauce with Polenta Cake and Sauteed Vegetables
Weekend Away - Skamp's New Car -Mitsubishi Outlander goes to Molloy Island, Margaret River and Yallingup - Woody Nook
Garlic Prawns and Steamed Calamari stuffed with Salmon Mousse on Couscous
Weekend Away - Skamp's New Car -Mitsubishi Outlander goes to Molloy Island, Margaret River and Yallingup - Woody Nook
Pasta of the Day - Vegetarian Cannelloni with salad and fries
The five of us then drove on to Cape Naturaliste Winery. I don't think I need to remind you of how much I love the wines here. We brought along some cheese, venison chorizo, crackers and bought a few wines by the glass to sit on the verandah and watch the sun set. We were mainly drinking the 2013 Sauvignon Blanc - a zesty, passionfruity and very summery wine, before switching to 2011 Torpedo Rocks Shiraz - full-flavoured but still light enough to enjoy on a summer's afternoon. By the time we finished drinking and chatting, our dinner options were severely limited. So we hit Dunsborough for fish and chips, then watched a bride-to-be wrestle her friends to the floor at a Hen's Party at the Dunsborough tavern.


Weekend Away - Skamp's New Car -Mitsubishi Outlander goes to Molloy Island, Margaret River and Yallingup - Cape Naturaliste
Weekend Away - Skamp's New Car -Mitsubishi Outlander goes to Molloy Island, Margaret River and Yallingup - Cape Naturaliste
Weekend Away - Skamp's New Car -Mitsubishi Outlander goes to Molloy Island, Margaret River and Yallingup - Cape Naturaliste
Weekend Away - Skamp's New Car -Mitsubishi Outlander goes to Molloy Island, Margaret River and Yallingup - Cape Naturaliste
Weekend Away - Skamp's New Car -Mitsubishi Outlander goes to Molloy Island, Margaret River and Yallingup - Cape Naturaliste
Weekend Away - Skamp's New Car -Mitsubishi Outlander goes to Molloy Island, Margaret River and Yallingup - Cape Naturaliste
Weekend Away - Skamp's New Car -Mitsubishi Outlander goes to Molloy Island, Margaret River and Yallingup - Cape Naturaliste
Weekend Away - Skamp's New Car -Mitsubishi Outlander goes to Molloy Island, Margaret River and Yallingup



The next morning, we slept in and had a leisurely pack and drive home. We stopped in at the Blackwood Meadery. I particularly like their lemon mead - perfect for afternoon sipping over ice. And then we hit Cheeky Monkey Brewery for lunch. The vibe of this brewery is so laidback and chill. It's always a relaxing experience. The food can be a little hit and miss for me. It goes from incredible to just good. I've never had a bad meal here, but sometimes it's been not as good as it should be. This trip, it was good, though. Lance's ribs were covered in lovely sticky BBQ sauce (nothing irks me more than sauce-less ribs), although the switch from normal chips to corn chips is a little disappointing. Wiping up all the sauce with chips is part of the rib experience! And my Char Sui Pork Salad was overflowing with delicious saucy pork and the crispy shallots topped it off perfectly. The live music was cherry on the top experience. We stopped in to Ferngrove/Killerby Wines on our way out and ended up with another carton of wine.


Weekend Away - Skamp's New Car -Mitsubishi Outlander goes to Molloy Island, Margaret River and Yallingup
Weekend Away - Skamp's New Car -Mitsubishi Outlander goes to Molloy Island, Margaret River and Yallingup
Weekend Away - Skamp's New Car -Mitsubishi Outlander goes to Molloy Island, Margaret River and Yallingup
Weekend Away - Skamp's New Car -Mitsubishi Outlander goes to Molloy Island, Margaret River and Yallingup
Weekend Away - Skamp's New Car -Mitsubishi Outlander goes to Molloy Island, Margaret River and Yallingup - Cheeky Monkey
Pork Ribs in Cheeky Monkey BBQ sauce with Coleslaw and Corn Chips
Weekend Away - Skamp's New Car -Mitsubishi Outlander goes to Molloy Island, Margaret River and Yallingup - Cheeky Monkey
Char Sui Pork Salad with egg noodles, mixed leaves, crispy shallots and sweet soy dressing
Weekend Away - Skamp's New Car -Mitsubishi Outlander goes to Molloy Island, Margaret River and Yallingup - Cheeky Monkey

At this point, we had put our new car's space to the test. We started off with 5 people and 5 people's luggage. We now had 5 people, 5 people's luggage and 7 cartons of wine. How did it fit? Very, very well. Lance is a bit of an expert at packing Tetris, but he packed the car such that we had all that gear and STILL had 6 seats available. We didn't need 6 seats, but we had them! So the drive home had one in the back, two in the middle with the arm rest/drink holder down and two in the front. No complaints about being squished at all.


Weekend Away - Skamp's New Car -Mitsubishi Outlander goes to Molloy Island, Margaret River and Yallingup
Weekend Away - Skamp's New Car -Mitsubishi Outlander goes to Molloy Island, Margaret River and Yallingup
Weekend Away - Skamp's New Car -Mitsubishi Outlander goes to Molloy Island, Margaret River and Yallingup
Weekend Away - Skamp's New Car -Mitsubishi Outlander goes to Molloy Island, Margaret River and Yallingup
Weekend Away - Skamp's New Car -Mitsubishi Outlander goes to Molloy Island, Margaret River and Yallingup

The Zoolander definitely passed our Molloy test. Lance and I are both so stoked with our decision!



Weekend Away - Skamp's New Car -Mitsubishi Outlander goes to Molloy Island, Margaret River and Yallingup
Our car even knew it was on the ferry!