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Watch VideoGourmet Farmer
Matthew Evans
Ever wondered what it’d be like to leave an extremely cushy job in the city and try to set up a small farm without any experience of rural life apart from a luxury weekend farmstay in 1992? Join Matthew Evans as he adjusts from being Australia’s most feared restaurant critic to learning exactly where his food is coming from, on a farmlet in Tasmania’s beautiful Huon Valley.
Matthew Evans once trained as a chef before he crossed to the dark side of the industry and became a restaurant reviewer. After five years and 2000 restaurant meals as the chief reviewer for The Sydney Morning Herald, he came to the slow realisation that chefs don’t have the best produce in the land, normal people who live close to the land do. So he moved to Tasmania, to a small patch of earth where he’s raising pigs and sheep, milking a cow and waiting for his chickens to start laying.
Abundance
9 CommentsOh, those tomatoes. I forgot to stake them before the roots took hold, so then staked them too far from the stalk. I didn’t pluck out the laterals, so they became bushy and leafy. And I managed to lose at least one of the cards that should tell me what I’d planted.
Indian Summers and Pregnant Sows
Tassie often boasts an Indian summer. An autumn of warm days nearly as balmy in March as January. Today, as I write, it’s 25 degrees, the paddocks are hazy from the sun, and a moody fog was burnt off the hill tops not long after dawn. It won’t last. Under 20 and rain by the weekend they say. But ‘they’ have been talking about rain for weeks.
Life On Telly
So this is life on telly. Since the series started, a few people have been asking questions when I meet them. More than a few. So I thought I’d try to answer a couple for those who live further afield.
The Circle of Life
Maggie is back. Back from her hot date, and hungry as ever. Hips swaying, belly wobbling. With any luck she’s in calf and due around September. She’s giving a good 5 litres of milk most days, so the house is full of her cream and butter and yoghurt. Lots of the milk goes to the pigs – a high protein, but high fat food, that supplements their diet. Speaking of diets, I think the several tonnes of seconds cherries might have made them fat, so the pigs are on part rations.
Last Week's Menu
It’s like this. I set myself the goal of trying to rear and grow as much of my own food as possible. And I failed, particularly during the early months in the garden, and over the hungry part at the end of winter when nothing grows. I still wonder about my credibility as someone trying to eat food I’ve grown, or grown by someone I know. I shop for lots of things locally that I can’t grow myself, including at either of the two supermarkets in Cygnet.
Homemade Bacon
I’ve been experimenting a lot with pork. With dry curing and ageing of my prosciutto in the picker’s hut. With light curing of fresh pork for an hour and making pasta. With roasts and braises and stews and speck. And now, only a few months later than I originally planned, I’ve finally managed to smoke my own bacon from my own pigs.
Let Us Eat Cake
Cake. It’s a big part of country living. The making of it. The eating of it. The very idea of it.
Roadside Fruit Stalls
If you pass a roadside stall selling fruit at this time of year and don’t stop, you’re probably missing out. Not all of them are totally brilliant, but for every miss there are several hits; stalls selling just-picked berries that are so good they make me giggle like a schoolgirl.
Featured Recipes
Hot Tips
Toasting spices
Toasting whole spices in a dry pan can help to bring out the essential oils and the flavour in the spice, however be careful to taste as you add the spice to your dish as the flavour will have changed and you may need less. Toasting pre-ground spices is a little trickier and it can ruin the flavour of the spice altogether.
Glossary
Paprika
Milder than cayenne, paprika is the ground red powder of mild and hot peppers and is an important ingredient in Hungarian goulash and in Spanish sausages and salamis.
