La Petite Mort

A favourite, quick snack at Tansley Farm is what we like to call La Petite Mort.

Step 1. I like to use a nice, fresh sourdough bread cut into medium-thick slices. A pain paysan would work as well, but a typical baguette might be slightly less interesting.

Step 2: Drizzle some robust olive oil (from Tansley Farm, of course) over the bread until it soaks in a little. You could do this step after the cheese (see Step 3), but the cheese can prevent the bread from taking up a lot of the oil.

Step 3. Spread some fresh chèvre goat cheese over the oil. We use our own, raw-milk chèvre.

Step 4. Ideally, you now want to sprinkle some piment d’Espelette over the cheese, but this can be hard to come by in Australia. A great alternative is some cracked pepper.

There you have it — I know you will love your petite mort as much as I do.

—Brewmaster

Kale salad with nouvelle olive oil

Winter greens in the Tansley Farm garden

When winter is in full swing, I crave dark, vitamin-packed kale salads.

And winter is well and truly here. We are tired. It was an amazing harvest season; everything was top-notch. It began in early spring with mountains of gorgeous eggs, then launched into summer with luscious tomatoes, cucumbers and celery; then blackberries and boysenberries, and cherries from Cowlings. There were litres and litres of milk from Gigi and Noëlle, until the cheese cave was overflowing with ageing beauties. Then in autumn, the apples were ready – a tonne from our little orphan trees! Pears went into jars and the freezer, poached and their saffron scented syrup saved for winter cocktails. We dried walnuts in the sun and stored them safely in metal bins in the cellar or shelled in the freezer. And did we mention vintage? A barrel and a half of pinot noir, tasting amazing already, gently ticking away until bottling at the end of the year. Then finally, the olives. It was a stunner of a crop, but after a harvest season like we have had, who would expect anything else?

And so we are tired, and so grateful for the season’s bounty, and so ready for the rest that winter brings.

Summer is for crisp cucumber, sweet tomatoes and delicate lettuce, but winter is fresh carrots, radishes, and mountains of thinly sliced kale, doused with soy sauce, vinegar and lashings of our spicy nouvelle oil.

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