CHEONG: RECOLLECTION & ANTICIPATION

CHEONG LIEW: COOKING AT YANGARRA

Hot Cool Weekend Coming Right Up Cheong Liew At Yangarra Pizza & Jay Hoad At Settlement
by PHILIP WHITE

SETTLEMENT WINES: SHARING PIZZAS BEFORE VINTAGE

Cheong Liew called by the other day, to finalise the arrangements for his lunch at Yangarra Estate on next Sunday, the 12th. We sat and drank wine together, while he made his typically vague culinary suggestions to the disbelieving vineyard manager, Michael Lane.

Amongst other tantalizations, Cheong will be cooking some of the sheep which spent last winter mowing the vineyards on this priceless distant satellite of the Californian wine family, Kendall-Jackson. He airily suggested some kind of saltire-shaped frame thing that had something to do with a Japanese beach barbecue and one of the ways sheep are cooked in Argentina, and suggested Michael could build a few of them.

SHEEP WEEDING THE YANGARRA HIGH SANDS VINEYARD photo STACEY POTHOVEN - CLICK IMAGE TO ENLARGE

Michael, a plant physiologist and very clever vine doctor, tentatively spreads his skills as far as a little animal husbandry now and then in matters of turning weeds into little grains of fertiliser, via cloven-hooved beasties, but looked flustered at the thought of becoming an outdoors kitchen architect and fitter for a grand picnic luncheon for several hundred.

ACE VITICULTURER MICHAEL LANE PLAYING A LITTLE LAMB GUITAR SOLO

I think he imagined Cheong wanted a sort of ornate stainless steel vineyard trellis thingo that you could spreadeagle dressed sheep upon and light a fire beneath. “Like mandolin duck,” Cheong said of the shape of the China duck which is opened for roasting flat, on a frame. “We’ll have mandolin sheep!” Which didn’t help Michael. So I suggested it’d be more like big guitar sheep.

Looking slightly amused at Michael’s dilemma, Julie Zuikelis, Cheong’s sister-in-law and occasional shotgun rider in matters culinary was there, too. Since the days of Neddy’s, she has seen this remarkable man walk through dozens of kitchens, leaving many a puzzled jaw agape as he scatters wild ideas and damn fool gustatory notions around like gods cast new constellations with a wave.

SOME OF ANNIKA BERLINGIERI'S FIRST SETTLEMENT CROP VINTAGE 2011

We have been around for a long time now. There is much that doesn’t need to be said when we sit. But my brain spun in wonder at unspoken recollections of Adelaide restaurants at which this great man served me food, from The Iliad (Greek), through Indian Kitchen (curry), Lord Kitchener’s (roast beef and steak), Neddy’s (everything), The Exeter (with Zuikelis - pub food from possum pie to Malay-style salad of kangaroo fillets), The Regency Park School of Food and Catering (everything), The Grange in the Adelaide Hilton (an ethereal/hearty essence of all the above), and now The Botanical, which is in bloody Melbourne.

I recall sauntering with him around Chinatown in Kuala Lumpur, checking out his childhood home, and the restaurants he grew up in - family-owned and formidable rivals – before his family scattered around the world to escape the barbaric Islamic bloodbath of 1969. I thought of the day when I walked around the corner from my place to Neddy’s one evening in the late seventies and he couldn’t wait to tell me that he’d decided to remove all the various national cuisine sections from his menu.

“I’m gonna mix it all up”, he said, and went on to invent fusion food right before our eyes.

Those of us with open heads knew we were in for a trip, and yet sat in constant disbelief at the audacity of what Cheong would cheerily put on a plate. I took Max Schubert, the Grange creator to Neddy’s because he’d never eaten kangaroo. For unjustified, squeamish health reasons, it was illegal to serve kangaroo in a restaurant, but Cheong served it raw. When Max asked when we’d be eating the roo, I had to advise it was the raw meat we’d first eaten. Kangaroo sashimi. The old WWII soldier’s incredible acceptance of new ideas showed in his radiant, boy-like wonder. “Roo? Raw? Like the Japs have it?”

Deer penis soup, pig’s feet, sea slug, duck’s tongues, shark lips, swine offal: Cheong was fearless. Outside of a disbelieving claque of dribbling converts, the awards and acknowledgements were slow, particularly from the bitter and pretentious foodists of the Australian east coast, but eventually our mate was "one of the ten hottest chefs alive" in Food & Wine Magazine in the USA, thence into the Hall of Fame in the World Food Media Awards. The Medal of the Order of Australia in 1999 was “for service to the food and restaurant industry through involvement in developing and influencing the style of contemporary Australian cuisine,” and when Adelaide Lord Mayor Michael Harbinson presented him with the keys to the City of Adelaide as he left to kick new life into The Botanical in Melbourne, Harbo said everybody was asking why he was giving Cheong the keys to the city right upon his departure. His riposte? “He's gotta be able to get back in!”

Cheong was more amused to hear that the previous recipient of said keys was non other than Rupert Murdoch, many, many years earlier.

Anyway, on the 12th June, a Sunday, Cheong will be at Yangarra, offering a Sea & Vines Festival picnic lunch. It is his first big meal cooked in South Australia since an undeserving Melbourne snapped him up. My point being that you’d be really silly if you didn’t book. Which you can do by clicking on Cheong above.

And yes, I have a vested interest to declare. I live at Yangarra, where I rent a small flat. Nothing wrong with a landlord who’ll bring Cheong in to cook lunch.

There goes your Sunday. For Pentecost, or Monday, Moon Day, or whatever you want to call it, I’ll recommend pizza, cooked by she who admits to thinking about tomatoes at least eighty per cent of the time, St Annika. She runs a lovely produce garden and wood-fired pizza oven at Settlement Wines, and has Jay Hoad playing an orchestra of instruments from the Weissenborn lap steel through dulcimer to didjeridoo.

Jay’s just back from his most recent tour of the Caribbean and the USA, on which he was support artist for The Wailers; one secret highlight of the Settlement wine arsenal is a collection of exquisite aged fortifieds just ideal for pondering wild soulful music. Click on Jay's poster to book.

Both wineries have room for a few more. Settlement: 08 8323 7344; Yangarra 08 8383 7459

THE YEARLINGS AT YANGARRA LAST YEAR. CLICK EM TO VIEW ON THE AMAZING TRACK THEY PUT DOWN VERY RECENTLY AT THE ALREADY LEGENDARY CANDELO CHURCH SESSION WITH HEATH CULLEN, DAVID ROSS McDONALD, JEFF LANG, AND B J BARKER ... BELOW: TOMATOES AT SETTLEMENT WILL TAKE YOU SOMEWHERE ELSE AGAIN. TRUCKIN STRAIGHT FROM THE GARDEN TO THE FRONT LAWN, WHERE YOU EAT EM. OR CLICK ON EM TO HEAR THE SOUND OF OLIVE JAM.