Paired with CAULIFLOWER CHEESE
Recipe Category: Bar Bites Issue 200
Recipe
POLENTA-CRUMBED CALAMARI WITH WASABI & GREEN TEA MAYO
Served with: GREEN THUMB COCKTAIL
The calamari is based on a salad my parents served in their first restaurant, an upmarket hotel just outside of Melbourne, called Athelstane.
We adapted our Green Thumb cocktail from Meehan's Bartender Manual, adjusting the ratios for the Kiwi palate and freshening it up a bit with a few local ingredients. Green tea on matcha, ginger on apple, wasabi on fennel – this dish/drink pair works because they’re analogous rather than contrasting.
Recipe
CAULIFLOWER CHEESE
Served with: BUTTERED OLD FASHIONED
The cauliflower cheese was actually a place holder on a winter menu that made it to print when we ran out of time to come up with something more mind-blowing. That said, it sold so well that it's a classic we have to keep on through the colder months (though its popularity never waned even through summer). Maybe it's the nostalgia that keeps it ever-seasonal? With brown-butter notes and general old-timeliness, both this and the Buttered Old Fashioned are united in taste and tempo. Best served in front of an open fire, vinyl on the radiogram filling the room, a cigar prepared as digestif – or streaming Mad Men on your laptop, curtains closed, in bed.
