Mornington Peninsula: T’Gallant – mushroom foraging

I’m not a big fan of autumn, winter, grey skies, and rain. Every year, I eagerly wait for summer to arrive. But even I must admit that there are some positives to the cold, wet weather – one of them being wild mushrooms.

A couple of weeks ago, the Boys and I headed down to T'Gallant for a mushroom hunt. It had been raining heavily the night before and we showed up to find that almost everyone else had gumboots on. Uh oh! Were we going to be under prepared? Trust me, if we had owned a pair of gumboots, I would have brought them, but we live in Melbourne.... where it rarely rains for more than 30 minutes. So gumboots have always seemed like a stupid thing to buy. But maybe that’s just envy talking because everyone else was so prepared!



For the first part of the day, we spent an hour looking for mushrooms – specifically pine mushrooms / saffron milk-caps and slippery jacks. Our guide took us out of the winery, talking us through the characteristics of saffron milk-caps and slippery jacks. We walked up the road for about ten minutes, and then entered private property (under prior arrangement with the land owner). Fortunately, while there was a fair bit of mud, gumboots weren’t actually required – just careful footing so we didn’t go arse over t.... :)





Saffron milk-caps grow under pine trees, with which they have a mycorrhizal (symbiotic) association. They have a firm carrot orange cap, which is convex to vase shaped, a hollow stem, and when cut or bruised, they bleed a red-orange milk.



Slippery jacks have a slimy brown cap, with the underside being light-yellow and spongey. This particular one had deteriorated from age and insects - we found much better looking ones later on.



There were tons of mushrooms at this property – the autumn rains had obviously created the right conditions for the mushrooms to flourish. There were also plenty of toadstools too – poisonous unfortunately, but very pretty.



Obviously, you need to know what you’re doing when picking wild mushrooms. While I feel the session gave me an idea of what to look for regarding saffron milk caps and slippery jacks, I certainly wouldn’t go foraging for them myself without an educated guide or having an expert look over them. So – warning! At T’Gallant there were posters on the wall with pictures and descriptions of edible and poisonous fungi around the world. I was particularly intrigued by one mushroom that is very poisonous – but the symptoms of poisoning only show up 3-4 weeks after ingestion. And some toxic mushrooms can cause organ failure. Shudder!



When we had picked a basket’s worth of mushrooms, we headed back to the winery. Back at T-Gallant, we tasted some wines, and then sat down to a cooking demonstration and lunch, accompanied by two glasses of wine. (The price for the mushroom forage plus food and wine was $75pp.)



During our wine tasting, we had a little snack of mushroom pate on toasts with parmesan and balsamic vinegar. We were starving by this stage, so the little snack was very welcome!



After we had tasted the wines, we headed into the demonstration kitchen and were served a fantastic mushroom soup. It was a shame it was served in a paper cup because this was a soup to be savoured. It was thick and hearty, and packed with an intense mushroom flavour, probably helped by the fact that it was made with a generous amount of dried forest mushrooms as well as fresh mushrooms.





The mushrooms that had been picked in the morning were cleaned and then barbequed. I found them quite fleshy and meaty, with the Slippery Jacks having an interesting spongey texture.



After the soup, out came a mushroom and onion pizza. The mushrooms and onions had been sliced thinly and baked on top of a thin, crispy base.



This was a very simple salad topped with parmesan. It had a tangy, rather addictive dressing.



We had a mushroom tarte tartin, made from a mixture of different mushrooms - button, small swiss brown and oyster, and puff pastry.





And our last savoury dish was a mushroom rigatoni with pine nuts and mascarpone. This was a simple dish cooked well. The pasta had a good meaty mushroom flavour, and the pine nuts gave a bit of crunchy and nuttiness.



And dessert was brown sugar meringues with ice cream – that were plated to look like mushrooms! Cute! The meringues had dark sugary notes similar to molasses/treacle, and the ice cream tasted a bit orangey, possibly due to orange blossom water? It was a sweet way of ending the afternoon, and also a creative way of dealing with the mushroom theme!



On the way out, we spotted the winery cat hanging out on a display shelf. It was a (much) slimmer version of one of our cats – awww.

We had a fun afternoon and I enjoyed both the mushroom hunting and the food back at the winery. Unfortunately we attended the last mushroom session for the year, but I believe they run them every year around May/June. They book out very quickly, so keep an eye out next year if you’re interested.

T'Gallant
1385 Mornington-Flinders Road
Main Ridge 3928
Phone: 03 5989 6565

Week of Eats: Lunch at Pier 10, Mornington Peninsula

A while ago now, back when my in-laws Annette and Terry were here, we spent a gorgeous Friday down in the Mornington Peninsula laughing, tasting wines, and enjoying the sunshine.


Our lunch time view at Pier 10

After stops at two wineries (T-Gallant and Montalto), our lunch stop was Pier 10. Pier 10 used to be a weekender, and became a vineyard in 1996. It's a very pleasant spot, with the restaurant looking out over the vines and fields. I seem to remember being told that it's called Pier 10 because the structure in the front garden used to be part of a pier.



After tasting a few wines in the tasting room (where we came across a bucket of seriously gigantic zucchinis that were looking for homes), we headed to the back deck for food.



For lunch, we had an antipasto platter to share. It was all pretty good - olives, cured meats, some very good crunchy green beans, marinated vegetables and a bit of smooth pate.

And for the mains, the options were: a wild mushroom risotto, fish and chips, roast chicken breast and pan roasted ocean trout.



Alastair, Terry and I, ordered the pan roasted ocean trout, with nicoise salad and basil pesto. We were all pleased with our lunch - the trout was perfectly cooked with crispy skin, and the vegetables and salad were crunchy and fresh. Good boiled egg too!



Annette had the roast chicken breast with mashed potato, green beans, and gravy. This looked great – and it was a massive portion!



It was a very pleasant lunch – nothing fancy, but the food was well cooked and tasty. And as a bonus, we took a zucchini home for later - I told you they were massive!

Pier 10
10 Shoreham Road
Shoreham 3916
Phone: 5989 8848

Picnic at Montalto, Mornington Peninsula

Isn't it interesting how the older you get, the faster time goes by? Three years ago in March, Alastair and I were married (AWWW) but sometimes it feels like it was just yesterday. Should I write something embarrassingly gushy about love and all that jazz? No, I'll spare you! Be thankful!

Since March is always a very busy month, we waited until April to celebrate our anniversary. I booked us a picnic at Montalto, a winery on the Mornington Peninsula. I have been wanting to picnic there ever since I read about it on Vicious Ange’s blog a couple of years ago. For $70 per person, we were allocated a private picnic spot (there are five) on the winery grounds, with food and other assorted picnic stuff set up for our arrival. We checked in at the cellar door, taking the opportunity to taste a couple of wines, and were then given a map so we could walk down to our picnic spot. Our spot was Half Moon, and would have been a 5-10 minute walk from the cellar door, except we got lost a couple of times and at one point I sent us crashing through the bush in what was pretty much the opposite direction. Now normally I have a fantastic sense of direction, and am very good with maps, but this was a hand drawn one with no sense of scale – what kind of map is that?? Bah! Ultimately, Alastair had to take over and lead the way, figuring out how to get to our secluded spot.

A good picnic is, of course, reliant on the weather and we totally lucked out. It was a beautiful sunny day, with a balmy temperature of about 25°C.



Our picnic spot was set in a clearing surrounded by trees. When we arrived, a table and umbrella had been set up for us.



The table was set with white linen, plates and cutlery, and off to one side was a big esky fridge thing (chillybin!) that held the food.



There was also a picnic basket which was loaded with a picnic blanket, insect repellent and sun screen. The insect repellent was definitely very useful as I started to get bug bites almost straight away - thank goodness it had been provided!


The esky fridge thing!

At the cellar door, we had ordered a bottle of wine, and someone must have driven it down while we were navigating the winery grounds, because there was a freshly opened, cold bottle waiting for us.



It didn't take us long to get stuck into the food. In a covered dish on the table were several chewy bread rolls, and a bowl of nice olive oil.



On our first platter of food were: slices of terrine, a couple of dips (hummus and capsicum), some very good olives, smoked salmon on lentils, and a cherry tomato and basil salad. Good all round, with both of us particularly enjoying the smoked salmon, terrine and olives.



After a rest, we pulled out the mains platter. For mains we had duck, roast beef with chutney, and vegetables. The duck, cooked medium, was flavoursome and not too gamey. I also enjoyed the sweetish chutney with the thick slices of beef. But I would have loved more salady stuff - there was a lot of meat on that plate!



And for dessert, we had two kinds of cheese, crackers, quince paste, a sliced up fig, a couple of seriously fantastic strawberries and raspberries, raisins, a mandarin jelly thing, and a dense and rich chocolate cake.



It was nice to spend the afternoon hanging out under the trees with the sounds of the bush around us: birds chirping, the breeze blowing, cows mooing in the distance...! Yep, we picnicked to the serene sound of the occasional moooooooooooo. Hilarious.

We finished with a complimentary coffee at the Montalto garden café before we had to head back to Melbourne.

We had a very lovely picnic - it's such a beautiful spot and great for a special occasion. It was very well organised, and I was impressed that small things had been thought of e.g. insect repellent being provided, the table being set, and our cold bottle of wine being driven down. It was just a shame that we couldn't spend longer hanging out there!


Montalto Vineyard & Olive Grove
33 Shoreham Road, Red Hill South, Victoria 3937
Phone +61 3 5989 8412

De Bortoli

Last week was a busy one - work was unusually silly and my mother-in-law, Annette, was visiting.

On Monday, Alastair and I took the day off and the three of us headed out to the Yarra Valley for a long lunch. Alastair had a new GPS unit to play with, so we entered a random road in the Yarra Valley to test it out. The GPS unit got us there - eventually - via the scenic route. Instead of taking the Eastern Freeway, we ended up driving through the windy, hilly roads behind the Valley.



We decided to have lunch at De Bortoli, one of the prettiest wineries out in the Yarra Valley (in my opinion!). Our table was right by the window, giving us a beautiful view of the Great Dividing Range and the vines.



After we had a chance to look at the menu, we were bought some bread and white bean puree. The bread was one of the best I've ever eaten. It was seriously amazing! The bread had been baked on the premises that morning, and the inside was moist and spongy. The crust was topped with crystals of rock salt, which crunched and gave off little bursts of saltiness. The bean puree was a nice complement, with a lovely fruity olive oil. We were given six generously sized slices of bread, and were offered more, which we had to regretfully decline due to lack of stomach space. It was a very regretful decline on my part. A week later and I'm still lusting after that bread!



Annette's starter was the pumpkin risotto – a risotto of carnaroli rice with pumpkin and pancetta ($17). Annette had been wavering between this and another starter, and asked the waiter what he thought of her two choices. He said the risotto without a second thought, and it was easy to see why. The dish was magnificent, intensely flavoured with pumpkin but also very creamy.



Alastair had the wagyu bresaola which was thinly sliced and served with rocket, black pepper and shavings of parmesan ($18). The dried meat was sweet and tender.



As for me, I ordered the insalata di gamberi which were char grilled prawns with Sardinian pasta ($19). The four prawns were large and juicy and generously dressed with olive oil. The pasta was a touch salty, but otherwise nicely flavoured with lemon and herbs.





For mains, Annette had the veal rib eye with green beans and salsa d'erbe ($34). Alastair had the duck – which was steamed and roasted in balsamic and pinot noir, then stuffed with lemon and sage and served with swiss chard, muscatels and pan juices ($34). Both looked really good and there were no complaints about either dish!



My main was the ocean trout – the fillet was pan fried and served on top of a castelluccio lentil, roast vine tomato and herb salad ($32). The lentils were dressed with an anchovy and rosemary dressing. They had managed to crisp the skin without overcooking the fish and it was moist and tender. The lentils were perfectly cooked and the dressing complemented the fish well. As a bonus, the little tomatoes were a little burst of intense tomato flavour – yum!



We also ordered a side of Italian fried potatoes with rosemary and garlic ($7). The potatoes were crispy on the outside and soft on the inside – perfect and very moreish.



Afterwards we finished, we had a look at the dessert menu but soon realised there was no chance of fitting it in. We ordered coffees instead, and along with the coffees we received some biscotti and little cake things.



After a quick walk around the winery, we headed back the long way to Melbourne. Yep, we tried the GPS unit again! Despite the extra travelling time, it was one of the most pleasurable lunches I've had in a while. The location, food and wine were wonderful, but as always with meals out, it was the company that was the best thing.

De Bortoli Winery & Restaurant
Pinnacle Lane, Dixons Creek
Yarra Valley, Victoria 3775
Telephone (03) 5965 2271