Rainbow trout, gnocchi, wilted baby spinach, roast garlic cream

Rainbow trout: baked en papillote with a little white wine, a treatment most suitable to trout IMO.
Roast garlic cream: fish stock, roast garlic, cream.

A simple but delicious combination, and paired well with the Tapanappa Tiers Chardonnay 2005. It is a good wine, even if perhaps a little pricey, with lifted fruit – honeydew melon skin, baked lemon, and a hint of pink grapefruit and musky-wood. The palate is well balanced, showing acidity that doesn’t dominate, with suitable medium weight, and a reasonably long finish of butter, cream and a kind of nut kernel character. The oak is well pitched, being noticeable yet well integrated.
This isn’t a modern styled Aussie Chard – it isn’t high in acidity, insipid in character, or oak dominant – but rather more like a combination of the old and the new style that meet in the middle ground that I think is most suitable for Aussie Chard: fruit that’s edging on tropical but not pushed too far that way, present acidity that’s not too sharp (and full malo/MLF), some pleasant malo- and sur lie-derived character, and obvious yet well integrated oak. It’s actually one of the best Aussie Chard’s I’ve had for quite a while.

Peppered beef ribeye (Scotch fillet), roast radish, parsnip cream, jus

Beef: What to do with flavourless Australian ribeye (called Scotch fillet in Australia and New Zealand)? Pepper the flavour into it. Finished in the oven.
Radish: European radish and (freshly plucked from the ground) daikon/Japanese radish, roasted in a little butter and olive oil. The European radishes paired better than the daikon… perhaps unsurprisingly.
The parsnip cream offered a nice sweet and cooling contrast to the heat of the pepper and the radish.

I find the best way to make it is the classic French way:

Lightly dust the beef in flour and brown in a hot pan before removing. Saute the aromatics (I like onion, carrot, celery, leek) in the same pan and remove. Deglaze with a little tomato paste (added umami and Maillard) and wine. Reduce by 1/2. Then place all ingredients in a covered (foiled or lidded) roasting tray/tin/pan with garlic, thyme and bay and cover with chicken (and beef) stock. Braise in the oven for between 3 and 5 hours at about 130°C/266°F. (I find roasting provides a lower, more controlled heat source than a hob.) The meat should be moist and fall off the bone when done. The meat can then be picked through and shaped in moulds (if desired) before chilling to retain shape and allow the flavours to marry.

Then the braising liquid can be strained and reduced. I find it can be helpful to chill the strained liquid first (or reduce by 1/2, then chill), remove the fat and sediment, then strain through muslin before the final reduction. Reduce to a thick glaze and add either a little pre-reduce Sherry or brandy, or a little Sherry vinegar.

The below is served with wilted spinach and a parsnip mash (boiled parsnips, mashed and pushed through a strainer, with seasoning and possibly some milk/cream/butter mixed in).

Braised shin of beef, wilted spinach, mashed parsnip, jus