The Ultimate Summer Spread
Tony Cox teams up with Matt Golinski to design the ultimate Christmas feast – we say, it’s too good for just one day. Consider this your dream summer spread.
Christmas is supposed to be all about the kids but given my wife and I are childless, we get to have a great lie in, wander down to Main Beach for a dip in the stunning water before lunch enters our thought process. Being a soccer tragic I had Matt Golinski provide five Christmas Day essential ingredients to which I would match five drinks of my choosing, a little like Fantasy Football League.
Fresh from watching English chef, Tom Kerridge’s Proper Pub Food on SBS Food, the knobs of butter Tom uses are big enough to sink the Titanic and that is only the 10% you can see, I was feeling really inspired until I remembered there is a slight temperature difference between his Christmas and ours.
So here’s ours:
1. Fresh Mooloolaba prawns I remember as a child not wanting to peel the prawns myself and waiting until a parent did it for me, a sense of entitlement rivalling Prince Andrew. As I grew up I realised that the peeler controlled not only the rate at which the bowl of cleaned prawns filled but also how many actually made it into the bowl. I needed to learn how to peel those morsels of deliciousness for myself so I could get more prawns. Better still, it is quite therapeutic when carried out in conjunction with the following steps: – Grab a cold beer from the fridge; – Open the freezer door and insert said beer into the freezer; – Return ten minutes later and remove the icy amber ale from the freezer; – Insert the beer into a stubbie cooler, remove the lid and consume; – Repeat the above steps as required. There is nothing better than an ice-cold lager and fresh prawns. Alternately, wait until Boxing Day and find a restaurant where someone peels the prawns, butters the white bread, adds a bit of lettuce and delivers it to your table, accompanied by an ice-cold beer.
2. Ora King smoked salmon, New Zealand I have always found the Ora salmon a little richer than the Tasmanian salmon. The fat content sitting between our salmon and the added fattiness of ocean trout. What better liquid condiment than a sparkling rosé! You can take as high up the food chain or as low as you like, but the NV Clover Hill Tasmanian Cuvee Rosé is bang on. Priced in the mid-$30s you don’t need to go to crazy prices to get a cracking drink.
3. Moya Valley Chicken Does anything scream out for great chardonnay like roast chicken? There are so many to choose from but this is probably the point of the day where I blow the budget. You can cut a few corners and save a few bucks elsewhere but when chardonnay is good, it is sublime. No contest, By Farr ‘GC’ chardonnay around $110-$120 a bottle, stunning.
4. Forage Farm Roast Pork Match with a chilled, fruity red, either a Beaujolais or pinot noir; nothing too serious as the chill will overtake the intrigue of a complex pinot noir. Dalrymple Pinot Noir from Piper’s River in Tasmania, has generous weight with a little chill – delicious!
5. Piggy in the Middle Ham Time for Australia’s gift to the wine world, yes for some reason like the relatives you see once-a-year, sparkling red only seems to make an appearance at Christmas. Ingenious, big shiraz from warm climate regions which are too hard to consume at the height of an Australian summer. Let’s throw some bubbles into it, creating that visually appealing purple/ crimson mousse, chill it down and there you go! Problem solved for all those who want to have big reds on Christmas Day. Seppelt Original Sparkling Shiraz, Rockford if the budget allows, there are plenty of others if the budget doesn’t extend.
There you go, some good simple matches that will go with the traditional foods you will find on your table. Add the festive touch with the essential accompanying dish of Noosa Reds with torn basil leaves and chunks of Cedar Street Cheeserie mozzarella drizzled in olive oil – all in the perfect Christmas colours!
If you do peak a little early, grab some Nurofen and Berocca and next morning, find the best burger joint nearby and some greasy goodness washed down with a can of the black doctor, Coca Cola.
