L29 Hal and his Pork Knuckles
Today saw 30 members around the tables with Hal at the helm putting on a show with his pork knuckles. Our Wine Master brought back some fond memories for our President, brining out a wine he discovered on his honeymoon all those years ago.
Wine report by Stephen O'Halloran
Today, a crowd of about 30 or so gathered together for a bit of knuckle @ the WFS, and by that I mean Pork Knuckle, not what goes on in our Committee meetings. Hal Epstein had put on a delicious meal of perfectly cooked Pork Knuckle with red cabbage and all the other trimmings. It was a great effort from Hal & Amosh to put it all together. See Food Report for more detail.
Our Canapé wine was the Larry Cherubino Folklore Chardonnay 2022 @ 13.3%. This man is one of our best winemakers, and this is his entry-level chardy from his vineyards in WA. The wine is a very acceptable commercial-style drink for Canapés. Good acidity, hints of melon & stone fruits, quite a big wine packing lots of rich fruit flavours, but to me the finish was marred by a degree of sweetness which I found off-putting. However, it is what it is, a good-value Chardy which would appeal to many, but not this little black duck.
Wine number 1 on the lunch wines was the great Schloss Johannisburg Kabinett Rotlack Riesling 2021 @ 11.5% from the Rheingau district of Germany. What a wine!
My wife & I first tasted this wine when on our Honeymoon in 1972, when we visited Norfolk Island. One mouthful and we were hooked. I think we drank it with everything we ate: steak, roast beef, fish, pasta, salads and so on. The memories are very clear. It certainly washed away any honeymoon anxieties, including how we were going to afford bottle after bottle of this wine!
So much for an expedition down memory lane. Put simply, this is a magnificent Riesling. Elegant, restrained, perfectly balanced fruit/acid integrating seamlessly. Lingering finish that yearns for more! Pure, vibrant, everything in harmony. I can say no more. Wonderful.
Number 2 wine, the Port Philip Estate 2023 Pinot Noir @ 13.5%, was to me disappointing. The wine & I just did not hit it off together from my first glance at its insipid appearance. Light, pale red-brick colour, thin & lacking in any degree of depth or flavour. A cool-climate wine from the Mornington Peninsula, the wine was highly acidic & finished poorly. To me, this wine was a throwback to the early days of PN in Australia, watery & flavourless. I have no desire to see this wine again.
Wine 3 was the SC Pannell Adelaide Hills 2016 Shiraz @ 14%. This chap is one of my favourite winemakers, but I regret to say, this wine was not one of his best. Colour was good, a mid-weight Shiraz, quite elegant on the palate, showing nice earthy spices with firm tannins & good oak integration, but there was something lacking at the finish. Maybe acids were falling away a tad, leading to a rather dull finish. Still an enjoyable lunch wine, however, but perhaps I was expecting a bit more from this celebrated winemaker. Perhaps should have been drunk 2/3 years ago.
Final wine of the day was the 2016 Pagliarese Chainti Classico @ 13%. A wine from Tuscany, 90% Sangiovese. The colour was still good, dark fruit flavours of cherry, blueberry & raspberry, tannin & oak in balance, but I detected a touch of acid loss at the finish, with a touch of flabby aftertaste. Still quite an acceptable lunch wine, but again, in my view drinking a few years beyond its prime.
My wine of the day, the magnificent Schloss Johannisburg Riesling.
Food report by James Hill
Our chef of the day was Hal Epstein.
Hal always looks to do something a little different. Today, it was canapés with an indigenous ingredient.
Hal started with popcorn with a bush pepper blend.
Freshly popped popcorn dusted with a bush pepper blend.
A first as a canapé in my time with our society.
Yours truly followed up with some kangaroo loin meatballs with saltbush, some Davidson plum paste, and balsamic dipping sauce. Kangaroo is a lean meat, so when preparing the meatballs, we added some pork fat to stop them drying out.
Then came mini arancini coated with lemon myrtle crumbs and onion, breadcrumbs, mozzarella, and Parmesan mixed with the rice.
Roasted pork knuckle with red cabbage, cauliflower, and a panko crumb topping.
The pork knuckles were perfectly cooked, crackling on the outside and the meat moist and tender, falling off the bone. On the plate, we had red cabbage that was slowly cooked with apples, apple cider vinegar, brown sugar, and butter, and panko-crusted florets of cauliflower.
What a feast! No one went hungry today; the pork knuckle average weight was 800 gms.
A very good lunch today. Thanks, Hal.
Hal acknowledged the assistance of our kitchen brigade in preparing the pork knuckle.
Bread
Bread was baguettes from Baker Bleu, Double Bay.
Cheese
Hal got Claude to recommend a cheese, and cheese master Mark Bradford obliged. Today we had ‘Stilton’, a cow’s milk blue cheese from England.
A limited quantity of Stilton is made at Colston Bassett to a traditional recipe exclusively for Neal’s Yard Dairy using animal rennet, which creates a delicate, friable texture and long, complex flavour. Curds are hand-ladled into cylindrical moulds; a time-consuming and painstaking process, but one that helps to preserve the structure of the curd and deliver a smooth, rich-textured cheese.
The piercing takes place later in the maturation process in order to strike the right balance between creamy, flavoursome paste and blue mould.
During maturation, the crusty rind forms naturally, encouraged by rubbing and brushing, and after spiking, blueing radiates from the centre. This is a buttery, silky cheese with an elegant sweetness.
