Chateau d'Estoublon - Summer Dining Nirvana

The cicadas chant their summer song fortissimo, drowning the petty murmurs of urbane diners. French preschoolers clash wooden swords and shields between the roses. Mine bury their gazes in iThings, oblivious to the beauty of a thirty degree day, en vacances, en France. A plate of gently baked tomatoes sits before me, slightly split and spilling ripe juice and tiny seeds, smelling like a gift from the gods. Burrata oozing and coalescing with emerald green pistou. Champagne warming in the sun - drink it faster, before it's tepid. I'm at Chateau d'Estoublon, on the plains below Les Baux de Provence.






It's easy to miss it, we drove past ourselves in the search of a ruined abbey past Fontville, and if I hadn't seen the perfume-like oil bottles in Saint Remy the day before, I would not have given the gates a second thought. Happy circumstances, indeed, because this place is the pinnacle of my preference for lunch with the family in the french countryside.

It's beautiful. There is the chateau, of course. The one standing is actually the 'new' building. The inital Grand Mas was razed in the 16th century, and this one was not completed until the end of the 17th. The olive groves were restored in the 1950s and the current vineyards were only planted recently. Now, the entire estate appears to rest in harmony under the patronage of the Schneiders (since 1998). It's surreally pretty - like Snow White's meadow. There's a limestone chapel between the gnarled olives, lavender in structured rows, barn doors painted burgundy, roses in a hundred colours, and velvet lawn undulating down to a small lake with ducks and reeds.

It's got something for everybody. There's the wine tasting, and olive oil sampling, of course, and a two story boutique as cavernous as a warehouse art gallery filled with beautiful trinkets, provincial furnishing, gourmet pantry goods, books and clothing. There's a playground down the hill, which my children can use to distract themselves in-between technology and face stuffing sessions. Oak and ash trees shade lounges in a peaceful corner. We're under creamy parasols in the thick of lunch service. 

The food is good. No, great. It's not unique, but beautifully fresh and seasonal, and cooked perfectly. There’s no dedicated children’s menu, but the waiter suggested some tenderloin veal steaks, which now arrive with peas bursting from pods and smothered in a luxurious jus. Who invented evil chicken nuggets when food can be this good? I think I'll have the daily catch, but just in this moment, I need to pay some more attention to my pomme d'amours.

And then the wine. The white (Grenache-Blanc, Marsanne, Roussanne) is a forward and fruity medium bodied wine, spicy with cloves and orange peel, juicy and lush, pear, quince, apricot and custard apple. It's really something else, and not like others in the area. The rose is also one of the best I have tried in the region. Like the white, it's fuller than most, and a pale tangerine blush like the first taste of autumn. It's abundant with berry fruit, ever so slightly astringent, with a long, deep finish that fills the gullet with redcurrant and floral undertones for at least half a minute after swallowing. There are several reds, and my pick is the 100% Grenache, which gives Barossa Valley (South Australia) wine makers a run for their money. It's so chocolaty you can almost chew it.

Everything has a purity about it. The Baux de Provence region commands wines be Organic, but it's a process that vignerons have happily slipped into without hesitation. Organic production simply works here. Most of the vineyard and olive grove work is done by hand, and the oils can be bought in many degrees of purity and refinement, and also according to the distinct varieties of the olives. They have taken olive oil to a level previously rare to be seen - it's treated as well as the wine, possibly better.

Well, as my glass of rosé has arrived, I will leave you and return to my palate. May you all find your dining nirvana. If you struggle, I suggest you try here...

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Chateau d'Estoublon

Route de Maussane 13990 Fontvieille France - map
T. +33 4 90 54 64 00
F. +33 4 90 54 64 01

www.estoublon.com

Cellar Door Opening Hours:

Until december 30:
10am to 1pm and 2 to 6pm
Closed Sunday
Winter hours:
10am to 1pm and 2 to 6pm
Closed Sundays and Mondays
Summer hours:
7/7 from 10am to 1pm and 2 to 7pm

The Restaurant is open Tuesday to Sunday for lunch and also Thursday, Friday and Saturday night for dinner. It's very well priced considering the superb location sample menu here.

A Christmas Market Christmas market in Estoublon is scheduled from November 17 to December 29, 2012

The Chateau also accepts large booking for tasting, horse riding through the olive groves, and offers the venue for weddings and other events. These can be booked by emailing estoublon@estoublon.com or calling the number above.

The Chateau d'Estoublon Epicerie mentioned can be found at 9 Boulevard Mirabeau 13210 Saint Rémy De Provence

Kiddies Corn Fritters

These have always a staple in our family. I think they started off as a breakfast item, but now they are one of the most frequently requested dinner veggies, and I always save some for the lunchbox the next day.

Considering we have switched to being gluten and dairy free, they've seen a little adjustment. I now use a gluten flour mix (Doves Farm self raising) and I replace cow's milk with camel milk (easy to buy here in Dubai, low in bad casein, and a creamier replica than soy or rice milk). The recipe tastes just as good either way.

Ingredients

• 2 eggs
• 1 x 340g tin of sweet corn (12 Oz)
• 3/4 cup self raising flour
• 1/2 cup milk 
• 1/2 cup frozen peas
• pinch salt
• pinch smoked paprika

Instructions:

1. In a blender, mix 1/2 the tin of corn with the eggs, milk, salt and paprika. 
2. When smooth, turn off and add peas and remainder of the corn and stir in (will be lumpy)
3. Heat a non-stick pan to medium-high with a little oil, and fry tablespoonfuls a few at a time, turning when bubbles appear (just like with pancakes)

These taste good hot or cold, and keep for a day or two in the fridge. Adult them up a bit with a spicy salsa and a squeeze of lime, or add green chili and garlic to the blend.

Some kids are picky with texture (mine used to be), if so, you can always blend the entire lot - but frozen peas tend to leave bits of skin if they are not very good quality - maybe substitute with steamed broccoli. This will make a looser mix though, so make smaller spoonfuls when frying. Alternatively, if you like a bit more texture, you can leave the corn out of the initial blend and have super lumpy fritters. 

Pomegranate and Quinoa salad

I've just discovered that you can cook quinoa in a rice cooker. This means no more sticky-together or crunchy bits, no more burned quinoa stuck to the bottom of the pan, and no more constant checking. Just plop in 2 cups of quinoa to 4 cups of water, turn it on and go away.

As a result, I'm finally cooking more quinoa.

Quinoa has a very woody flavour, and it needs something with it to temper the strength of this, particularly if you are trying to get kids to eat it. I've tried it warm and curried (here), which I thought was pretty good, but it got the definite thumbs down from the kids. This time, I served it cold, and to balance the raw and dusty flavour, added pomegranate seeds for sweetness and mint for freshness. And pine nuts, just because I like them.


Ingredients:

• 2 cups quinoa, rinsed
• 4 cups water
• pinch of salt
• 1 cup pomegranate seeds
• 1/2 tsp all spice powder
• 1/2 cup chopped fresh mint
• pine nuts (kernals) - toasted gently in a dry pan
• squeeze of lemon juice
• a big slug of nice olive oil
• more salt and cracked black pepper to taste

Instructions

• Put quinoa, water and a pinch of salt in the rice cooker, and turn it on. You can toast your pine nuts while you wait.
• When quinoa is cooked, take it out of the cooker, stir in all spice and lemon juice and let it cool
• Add all other ingredients and stir.

Yep. Super hard. Not.

Try serving with labneh or thick greek yoghurt with a sprinkle of sumac. 

Blue Flame - hot, pure, fast, and full of treasure.

It's the kind of flame that comes from a gas cooker - shaped like a lotus, perfectly rigid until a pot is slid across it, then it too opens like a flower, and spreads, stretching always up - trying to find the highest point. It's contained in a blowtorch - blisteringly hot, pushing out in a forced and continuous exhale. In a bunsen burner, it's the purest flame - where soot particles are blown away by a perfectly open oxygen valve, the colour reflects complete combustion. It's a car, a very, very fast car. A rocket car. It broke the land speed record way back in 1970, and was named after the gas that propelled it. It's a beacon for Dracula, and others who seek pirates' treasure on St Georges Eve - it marks the burial points better than an X.

It's also a restaurant at Jumeirah Creekside Hotel. 

The hotel opened quietly over Summer, while any traveller with any sense kept their distance from this dusty inferno that is Dubai in July. It's given them time to ease into full service, but time is telling now - the crowds are back, and considering there's really only the Park Hyatt competing on this side of the river in that sleek and chic super-five-star niche, it's going to see some interest. The opening of this hotel, and also the Melia in Bur Dubai have been two I have looked forward to with great anticipation. It signifies the recognition that Dubai has something to offer besides business, beach and big spending. It's bringing the spotlight back onto what us locals know as 'Old Dubai', and finally introducing the luxury traveller to something other than the manicured and manufactured character of the southern beaches and endless marble malls.

Blue Flame is the signature restaurant. In layman's terms, it's the fancy one, where the hotel expresses itself as well as it can, unlimited in comparison by food budgets and other forms of artistic restraint. So, it's expensive, and it's got weird food. Luckily, there's a stack of people out there who don't mind that - namely, me (although I'm much more a fan of the latter than the former - but unfortunately they tend to arrive together). When I go out for dinner, I like to be wowed. Sometimes it is more of a 'shock' than a wow, but it doesn't stop me. I want something I would never cook at home, because it's either too finicky, or I quite simply couldn't think of it.

Blue Flame call themselves a 'grill restaurant', but it's not completely the case. They also excel in this lovely little wedge between molecular gastronomy and fusion cuisine that remains on the casual side of pretentious, with the added benefit of being in the main, organic and sustainable produce. Bending to Middle Eastern flavour, the menu is populated with mainly grilled items at main course, which while good, are not far as innovative or unique as their entrees and desserts. Have a look at their sample dinner menu here - it only includes about half of what is on offer, but you get the drift. Entrees range from exciting to downright challenging, the grills are the same as available everywhere else, and the desserts are clever and tempting.

Our personal experience started with some first class bread. I couldn't be 100% sure, but I think it was soda bread, and came in two flavours - shitake mushroom and corgette. They were warm, gorgeous little scones filled with feelgood aroma, and served with lobster creme and bacon butter - an entree in themselves. Still, husband ordered the twisted tuna for entree, which came carpaccio with perfect peeled parcels of cherry tomato, soft-poached quail eggs and lashings of dressing that both tanged and melded flavours. My entree was the ravioli - the only fault the name, because it was a large singular raviolo filled with a poached hens egg that seeped as hoped into the profusion of micro-herbs and baby asparagus spears. Cooked perfectly.



My chosen main of crusted mahi mahi was unavailable, so I changed at the last minute to king prawns from the grill, with asparagus and a lobster pernod bisque. The prawns were enormous, but not exciting. My asparagus side dish had been decapitated (I think all the spears went on my raviolo). The sauce was too reduced and the entire dish needed more juice. Husband's 24 hour beef ribs were better. Soft, slightly gelatinous, a lovely sticky sweet glaze, and partnered with a twist on coleslaw that contrasted very well. But the curly fries looked like turkey twizzers - hidious things that Jamie Oliver declared war on in his school dinners series, for good reason. These of course, were probably house made, and artfully so, but made the dish look like something from an English school canteen.

We shared a dessert, one hard to pass up - a Karkadeh (hibiscus flower essence) creme brulee with cinnamon jelly, biscotti and a cloud-like île flottante meringue. The karkadeh possibly sounds better in theory than it works in practice, due to its slightly acidic nature but it was still an excellent dessert, and for those who would usually find a creme brulee too rich, this is the one to test the boundaries on. After dessert we were presented with a bowl of symbolic blue flame - fight inducing fairy floss, that husband ate more than his fair share of. Luckily it dissolved in his mouth in nanoseconds, otherwise I might just have drawn his greedy jaws apart to fetch it back.

The restaurant has thrust itself firmly into Generaton Z. The interior is a tribute to the modern angles and gleam of the 1920s, 50s and 80s, and yet also a little futuristic and beautifully spaceshippy. It's nicely lit, with blue highlights in nooks and crevices, particularly effective in the wavy ceiling. Unfortunately the floor hasn't seen the complete treatment, and is, between islands of funky vinyl, fake wood laminate. It bothered me all night, and in an 'Art Hotel', where everything else is edgy, it's completely out of place. In the centre of the room is a surreal and elegant cooking pod, where anyone can jump in for a class between 7 and 8pm, and for little more than the cost of the meal, will get to absorb a little expertise from Chef Ruben before they sit down and feast. It's also available for private bookings.

Keeping inline with the forward-thinking style, winelists arrive on ipads. It's good in theory, saves money on printing, should be easy to keep up to date, helps the drinker to sort the wine according to their preference, e.g. by colour, country and bottle/glass. However, it's a little hard to navigate, and needs refining. I'd like to see more options, dividing wines by style, and having an opportunity to enter your menu choice and find a wine to match. I'd also like to see more wines on the list - it's in the main a little overpriced, and lacking the excitement I found in the menu. 

So - it's a little of all the other 'blue flames' out there - it's so cool its hot, has a clean pure atmosphere, it's speeding forward ahead of other restaurants in style and function, and there's plenty of treasure to be found on the menu. But... with all new restaurants, it needs time to settle into itself. There were a couple of teething problems on the night - flat champagne that needed to be replaced, items on the menu not available, offering us a view of the meat tray before checking if we were interested (which might have just been a deal-breaker for a vegetarian), and a little over-checking on our happiness throughout the evening. I'm looking forward to a return visit when they've settled in a little more.

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Jumeirah Creekside Hotel is open for lunch and dinner all days.
Tel: +971 4 230 8580
Email: JCHblueflamerestaurant@jumeirah.com
web: www.jumeirah.com
It's located in Garhoud - not far from the airport and close to the Emirates Training College
map

Tiger Fish

Well, it's not actually tiger-fish. That's just for the benefit of Goldilocks, my picky 5 year old. He hates just about everything, except the things I can't feed him, namely gluten and dairy. Oh, and sugar of course. He LOVES sugar. With Goldilocks, it's all in the eye though. If it looks good, he'll probably taste it at least. Today, I worked on his new love of marine animals, and everything ocean, and promised him the rarest fish in the world, the kind that's striped, even after you cook it.

This dish has the benefit of having nori, which is stacked with iodine, a nutrient hard to find elsewhere in a child's diet (except for salt). And considering it is vital for healthy thyroid function and brain development, it's something we need to watch. "iodine deficiency during infancy may result in abdominal brain development and, consequently, impaired intellectual development" (www.mineralifeonline.com) Holy cow. Hope it's not too late...

Ingredients

• fillets of firm white fleshed fish (eg. Hamour/grouper, Snapper, Mahi Mahi)
• toasted nori (the green one), cut with scissors into thin strips
• tapioca starch
• egg - beaten
• cool water
• canola oil for frying 

Instructions

1. Cut the fish into fingers, about the size of the ones that come out of a box.
2. wrap the nori around each piece carefully, and as tightly as you can without it breaking. The oils and moisture in the fish will hold it in place.
3. Put your oil on to heat up (I shallow-fry in a wok, but a deep fryer would also work beautifully), and make your batter from the egg, tapioca starch and water. You are looking for a consistancy like pouring cream, or just a bit lighter. Thick enough to stick to the fish, but only a thin coating. Use a hand whisk - it mixes very easily.
4. toss the wrapped fish in the batter piece by piece with a fork, drain a little to get the excess off, then fry until golden and crispy. 

Serve well salted (iodised salt of course!), and with wasabi mayonnaise or lemon wedges.


Notes:

I have not used quantities, as this is not a precise recipe. However, if you like measurements, for a quantity that easily fed two adults and two children, I used 700g hamour, 2 sheets of nori, 1 egg, 6 tablespoons of tapioca and about 50ml water. I shallow fried in 2cm of canola oil, turning once. They took about 1 1/2 minutes on each side.

This batter is very similar to a tempura batter, but the egg helps it stick nicely.

To make your own wasabi mayonnaise, combine 2 tbsp mayo (I like Japanese Kewpie mayo) with 1/2 tsp wasabi powder, 1/2 tsp dijon mustard and salt and white pepper.

Beef Daube Provencal

I love stews, particularly French ones. Unfortunately however, I can't get my kids to adore Boeuf Bourguignon the way I do. It's not just the mushrooms they can't stand, but the overall richness. In a recent trip to Provence however, I discovered the lighter, mushroom-free alternative. It's only been around for hundreds of years, but for some reason, I feel the need to put my own little recipe up. It's very simple - almost impossible to mess up, and yes, the kids love this one.

Ingredients:

• 750g beef - iceblock sized pieces
• 1/2 cup flour
• 100g lardons (streaky bacon, diced) 
• 2 cloves garlic, crushed
• dash of good sherry vinegar (substitute with balsamic if you can't find it)
• 1 cup white wine
• 2 cups water
• 3 large carrots
• 10-15 pearl onions (or eshallot) peeled but left in tact.
• 1 bouquet garnis (or 2-3 tsp mixed herbes de provence)
• 1/2 tsp celery seeds
• 3 cloves
• 1 tsp brown sugar
• salt and white pepper to taste

Instructions:

1. Season flour well with salt and pepper, then coat meat. Put a casserole dish (daubière) on medium-high heat, and brown meat in a good slug of olive oil (or butter if you like to be naughty), stirring continuously.
2. When meat is browned (about 5 minutes), add bacon and garlic, and fry for a minute or so - as long as you can before the bottom of the pan gets too crusty. Then add vinegar, scraping the bottom to remove caked flour, and as that dries, add the wine. Keep stirring until it starts to thicken nicely, then add the rest of the ingredients except for the carrots.
3. Bring to the boil, then put in a 135ºC oven with the lid on. 
4. An hour or so later, add the carrots. Cook for about 2 more hours, or until meat is falling apart.

Notes:

• I used blade steak for this particular daube, but many other cheap cuts would work, and I'm a big fan of brisket if you like it really gelatinous. The traditional recipe uses all three of chuck, shank and rib to ensure a perfect balance between flavour and texture. Trim the gristle but not every little bit of fat. Fat is flavour.
• I have made this wine-free for a non-drinking friend. Use a 1/2 cup of vinegar instead of just a dash, ensuring it is a good quality sherry vinegar or possibly a red wine vinegar (Balsamic would be too rich when using this much). You will probably need an extra spoon of sugar to balance, and a little more water. 
• If you need to omit the bacon, make sure you use a fattier cut of beef, and use chicken stock rather than water.
• If the meat is not tender, you haven't cooked it enough. That's the wonderful thing about the oven - you can put things in and forget about them. It is very unlikely to burn at that temperature, but if it dries out too much, just add more water (and salt). It's pretty much impossible to overcook the beef, but the onions and carrots will eventually get mushy.
• I like this recipe with a stack of white pepper - I add a whole teaspoon to the flour when I season it, and then add more when I serve. But I really love pepper. Oh, and salt - can't get enough of that...
• I add celery seeds because I have a big kid (ahem, husband) with an aversion to celery, which is an important ingredient because it adds such a wonderful leafy flavour. The seeds could be substituted with a stalk of diced celery, added at the same time as the garlic. 

Sinking ships and floating cities - Titanic by Marco Pierre White, Dubai

I'm not entirely sure what Marco Pierre White was aiming at when he named his new Dubai restaurant "Titanic". Press suggests that it is designed to be a kindred spirit of the original London Titanic restaurant, which went down when the Regent Palace Hotel entered its facelift period. He named that one just to piss off the chef downstairs who ran "The Atlantic". Yes, very funny. The joke cost him a little time in court, but he eventually won, and it's said he can still enjoy a beer with Atlantic owner Peyton (although I can find no image to prove this). Perhaps the naming of Dubai's restaurant is another tongue in cheek effort by the rebel chef who treats political correctness like a soddy sous chef.

It's hard not to imagine a sinking megalith when conjuring the word "Titanic". Something opulent, expensive, brash and brand spanking shiny new, and yet unsupported, unsafe, unsound and completely doomed. Perhaps if he had opened in 2008, while Dubai was eroding in a financial storm, it would have been more appropriate. A kick in the face to economic difficulty and to Dubai itself, a perfect "F-you" statement to fit his televised personality. Now, Dubai seems to have bobbed back to the surface. It's not the Titanic, it's the iceberg. Like his previously named restaurant, it's floating nicely above the Atlantic, thank-you very much, and against the odds, still blinged glamourously in modern fashion.

The restaurant itself does not really resemble the boat. It's decorated in a boxy modern interpretation of Art Deco, an era of the 1920s and 30s, many years after the big boat blundered. There's an aggressive and headless winged female in pride of place - possibly a take on Samothrace. She's reflected in bevelled mirror and glittering crystal all over the room, and impossible to ignore. The waiters think she has something to do with the Titanic - a reproduction of a relic that was brought up with the wreckage, but again, I can find no record of it. Besides the angel of victory, the room is both smooth and soft whilst retaining that sharp-edged and bulky deco style. It's comfortable, nicely lit, plush. The bar alongside is likewise welcoming, with deep velvet chairs, and clever lighting that divides the room into secluded nooks without cramping it with walls.

The food is typically MPW, and again, atypically Titanic. I doubt very much one would have found a chicken Caesar salad or asparagus risotto onboard a British ship in 1912. It's simple, and to someone like me who loves a little experimentation with food, comes across as a little lazy. It is however pitched to a market and fairly well done. White says himself in nearly every well structured article I have read on Titanic that he is sick of 18 course menus and fancy pants cuisine. Is it just an excuse for what reads to me as an overly simple offering? If it is, it doesn't matter. There is a market for diners who want ordinary western food cooked well, without the bells and whistles, the fusion and the cleverly contrasting flavours. Meat and three veg is the bill of fare here, and from the looks on other diners' faces, it was going down well.

  

  Our own dishes on the night were staples. Smoked salmon and prawn cocktail to start. Steak and risotto for mains, and Eton Mess for dessert. The food was good - not great, but good enough. The salmon was superb - rich, creamy, full flavoured and generously served. The prawn cocktail was dull - a dish that needs to be perfect because it has been done so often and for so long that everyone has tried it a dozen times before. It was the iceberg that sank this too - iceberg lettuce, soggy in the rose marie sauce and flavourless as it always is but without the crunch that makes it a useful ingredient. The steak was OK. Scottish beef had been selected rather than some of the better Southern Hemisphere versions on our local market. Probably to keep with the British theme, but again, for a dish like this, make it the best, because anyone can cook a slab of rib eye. The mustards made up for it - incredible - perfectly balanced, tangy, herby, gorgeous. The waiter told us they were house-made. They should sell it by the jar. The risotto was very nicely done. Other reviews have had this up and down - perhaps a risotto's beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so if you like yours al dente with soupy creamy juices, well seasoned and with the asparagus green and slightly crisp, then you'll be happy. The Eton mess was a triumph. But like the other dishes, it's not rocket science - it's pretty hard not to make smashed meringue, whipped cream and jammy fruit taste good. But I'd order it again.

The service was reasonable by Dubai standards, polite yet friendly, unobtrusive, a little inexperienced or disjointed in parts, yet worthy of a tip. The wine list is interesting, fairly well priced, but seriously lacking choice by the glass, while the cocktail list is inspired and deserves further investigation at that cozy bar on another night. The location of the venue may prove a sticking point for some. It's in Bur Dubai - surrounded by dodgy hotels with dubious buffet deals and faux british pubs, cheap curry joints, dark alleys and the docks. On the one hand, I applaud the location. Bur Dubai is a vibrant area of Dubai that needs more attention and better hotels and restaurants, but on the other, Port Rashid is hardly the "Paris End" of old Dubai - I think I'm still holding out for a refurbishment of the Arabian Courtyard Hotel, an area where I can stroll Bastakiya, Meena bazaar and the souks before popping in for a luxurious change of scenery.

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Does it get the vote for a return visit? Yes. Marco Pierre White is doing in Dubai what the Ivy is trying to achieve. Simple, no-thought-required western food cooked well in a glam environment. But let's hope they pop some avocado in the prawn cocktail and a few more wines by the glass on the list before I get back there.

Melia Dubai's website

For bookings at Titanic, call +971 4 386 8111, email melia.dubai@melia.com 

or 

do as I did, and get 20% off on Round Menu (minus a 5AED booking fee) here

Escaping in my home town - Collingwood Childrens' Farm

When I had my first child (Lion), I lived in Abbotsford. My little factory workers' cottage in Paterson St was 4.5km from the smacking centre of Melbourne's CBD. This working class nook was built on blood, sweat and crime. It's tendency to flood before the sewer system was installed in Melbourne meant that housing was cheap. It filled with Irish, then followed Greeks, Vietnamese and other immigrants. The smell of fish sauce, frying oil and malt still fills the lower atmosphere on most days. The brewery has stayed, "Little Saigon" resides on Victoria St, and the Retreat hotel is perfectly preserved in time. But other relics have been gentrified or completely dissapeared. The Skipping Girl still jumps over her vinegar sign, but there's no factory underneath. Modern warehouse appartments have filled the voids. The Denton Hat Mill and Trennery Cresent textile factories have likewise been adapted to the changing population. The nuns are all but gone from the convent. But the Collingwood Childrens' Farm remains, bigger and better than ever.

I don't know what images are conjured in others' minds when they hear the word "Australia". I suppose it's probably kangaroos, the Sydney Harbour Bridge, Ularu and Lara Bingle. But I think of Eycalyptus trees, with scent so heavy you can almost feel the oil dripping on your skin as you walk underneath. I see country shacks - weatherboard suitably weathered, a corrugated iron roof, rusting in the elements, a verandah and a fat old blue heeler plonked in front of the fly-screen door snoring its head off. I see paddocks, green and muddy, with tufts of golden grass seeding in the wind, flimsy fence wire inexplicably holding back a one-ton cow. I smell hot pies from the bakery, sitting in their steel hot-boxes, wattle microbes that jump up my nose and make me sneeze, and horse poo - incredibly, a smell I love. This little 15 acre farm has all those things, and it's practically in the city.

When I took Lion back, he couldn't believe we'd wanted to move out of the area. The Yarra here is beautiful - brown, of course, as it always is, but surrounded by Australian bushland without a boat-shed or road in sight. If you listen hard enough, you can hear the Eastern Freeway over the hill, but you have to strain over the sound of bell birds, neighing horses and overly social geese. Chickens have right of way, and there has to be over a hundred of them. They cluck and peck under picnic tables, in your path and beneath your feet - not in the slightest bit scared by human interference. They roost when they feel like it, and visiting children are encouraged to collect eggs. That's not all they get to touch. Goldilocks became personally acquainted with Sandi, Nibbles, and about eight other guinea pigs I have forgotten the names of. For some reason these ones do not die in fright or flee in panic at the sight of small children, and every one gets a cuddle. In the barn, it's possible to have a go at milking Heather the cow, and in season, bottle-feed the lambs.




The surrounding fields (in Australia, we call these paddocks) contain goats, sheep, cows and a particularly noisy calf, donkeys, horses and up on a rise above the barn, some lovely Berkshire pigs - neighbours to the red and tiger earth worm colonies within the compost heap. Ducks, peacocks and cats also wander the area, living in organic peace, and the bees can be visited on the second and forth Sunday of each month.  Closer to the buildings and barn are the organic orchards and vegetable plots. These in turn look over the community gardens - kitchen gardens away from the kitchen so to speak. We would have been able to apply for one, had we still resided in Abbotsford. A vineyard, currently pruned within an inch of its life, nestles in a recess between these and a magical wishing tree.

The entire area is a little other-worldly, and it's not just because it's in such contrast to the sprawling metropolis that surrounds it (over 4 million people live in Melbourne). It was a gift to the council from the St Heliers Convent, and has somehow retained something Godly, or at least Samaritan about it. And at other times it is distinctly pagan - the winter solstice is celebrated in feral wonder around a bonfire each year, and is definitely worth attending. What I have christened the wishing tree, with its mammoth skeletal form and sitting stones also appears slightly surreal. The farm is entirely organic, and it rubs off on the people who live in the area. It was the farm, the local plots and the market held there, that drove me towards organic produce and a more natural life about 10 years ago. Returning now, and watching the young parents on their bikes, with their hemp bags, teaching their children to compost and eating stone-ground bread from the convent bakery, I see it's not lost its effect in that decade. Now I too, wonder why we moved...

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The farmers market held on the second Saturday each month is now one of Australia's greatest. More information on Melbourne Community Farmers Markets here.

Collingwood Childrens Farm Official Site
with great information on the origins of the farm and the general area here. 
Currently the cafe is closed, but there is a wonderful development just up the hill at the convent, where you can get a drink at the Boiler Room Bar, get your first dig at Japanese soul food at Kappaya, go veg at Lentil as Anything or eat a full meal, or just some daily bread at the Convent Bakery. More information and maps here.


For those seeking out similar farms in their own area, Europeans have a look at the cityfarm website here. UK, look at farmgarden here.
I could not find a general list of farms in the USA, but they definitely exist. There is an article in Time Magazine here, and I suggest looking them up city by city.
Those interested in starting up a project themselves, look at this wonderful site - cityfarmer.info - which has a blog detailing the process, seasons, and other farms' stories.