Making August
The Bread: Spelt Loaf
with browned butter and George’s truffle
Bread and (good) butter - always a treat on its own but this month our homemade bread also helps to mop up the creamy stracciatella that follows. Bread, butter AND cheese. What more do you need?
Those lovely little (or sometimes not so little!) black truffles are popping up on menus around town at the moment as we come into the harvesting season. We source our Périgord Black Truffles from George over towards Nelson who harvests them with the help of dog handler Serge and three specially trained dogs, Evee, Leo and Poppy. The farming process can be a true labor of love, but slicing into the truffle and seeing the intricate patterns inside never gets old for us.
Viavio Stracciatella
with tamarillo, frogsong walnuts, fried rosemary, warm Royalburn honey
Consider this our take on a Winter caprese salad. We’ve replaced the tomato with tamarillo, basil with rosemary, and mozzarella with stracciatella.
We keep things simple on this dish by not playing too much with each ingredient because they work so well as they are. That said, we do gently fry the rosemary to infuse the oil with the herby flavour, which also gets added onto the plate along with the crispy rosemary to provide a bit of extra texture.
To make the stracciatella, a ‘pad’ of mozzarella is pulled to create strings and is mixed with cream. This creamy mix can be wrapped up again in another pad of mozzarella which gives you a burrata. In other words, mozzarella is the gift that keeps on giving.
Greenlip Mussel Rockefeller
with garlic butter, spinach, parmesan panko, kina bearnaise
Unlike the stracciatella, a fair bit of prep goes into this dish, from picking out the perfect sized rocks to present the mussels on, to getting down and dirty with a sea urchin.
Inspired by the New Orleans dish ‘Oysters Rockefeller’, first created at Antoine’s Restaurant back in 1899. The original featured oysters placed in a half-shell and topped with breadcrumbs before being baked or broiled. The name references the wealthy millionaire, John D. Rockefeller, as the dish’s green sauce was rich both in flavour and cost. The exact ingredients were kept a secret and have been debated hotly since but generally are thought to include pureed veggies, herbs, butter, capers and maybe even a splash of liquor.
For our dish we swap out the oysters for mussels and top it with Kina Bearnaise, a spin on the classic hollandaise. We crack open the kina to get to the lovely yellow bits inside (called the gonads - try not to think too hard about that one…) which get incorporated into our classic bearnaise recipe.
Think of the sea urchin (and its gonads) as the ocean’s version of an egg yolk. Outrageously creamy and behaves in the same way as a yolk to thicken the bearnaise. We blend it up with regular egg yolks to poach them gently and emulsify the butter into it. The sea urchins can be a messy one to prep but they add a ‘seafood creaminess’ into the bearnaise that works really well with the mussels.
Check out our Instagram and Facebook reels to see some of the prep for the kina and how this dish comes to life.
We present the mussels a-top a layer of small rocks. This rock-filled plate goes straight in the oven with the parmesan and panko coated mussels, before the kina bearnaise is added on top. The rocks do a pretty amazing job at keeping warm long after they’ve been removed from the oven and carried to your table. Although, seeing ‘lay rocks on plates’ on your prep jobs for the day feels like one of those ‘chef’ jobs that doesn’t quite seem to fit the job description. A bit more admin when it comes to the prep and cleaning jobs each night but we think it’s worth it for the visual (and practical) benefit!
The Mains: Wildshot Venison Striploin or Wild Caught Southern Bluefin Tuna
both served with black garlic cho ganjang, shitake mushroom, crispy shallot & charred Asian greens
We get stuck in with our sauces for the mains in this month’s menu.
Togarashi – also used on the tuna in July’s menu and arguably makes even more sense in this month’s menu with the charred Asian greens.
A Japanese seasoning mix featuring sesame, chilli, orange zest and heaps of spices. Often used on sushi and also works beautifully on grilled octopus and barbecued mackerel.
Black garlic cho ganjang - a Korean vinegary (‘cho’), soy (‘ganjang’) based bbq sauce.
It can be as simple as just vinegar and soy sauce but garlic, sugar and sesame oil help to make it even more addictive. A fun one to have at going creating yourself, the ingredients and quantities can be freestyled to create your own perfect blend to suit your taste.
Spiced Pear
with spiced pear sorbet, ginger beer
The humble sorbet – always fun coming up with combos for this part of the menu and a good chance to make the most of seasonal fruits!
The focus for this month’s sorbet is poached pears. We gently poach them in cardamom, nutmeg and cloves and the ginger helps carry that mulled flavour. Plus a bit of acid from the ginger beer to balance the sweetness of the pear, good ol’ cheffing 101.
The Dessert: PB & J Waffle
with boysenberry jam, sauternes jelly, peanut brittle, peanut butter ice cream
Hard to go wrong with a classic flavour combo like peanut butter and jelly. And a chance for Head Chef Sam to whip up yet another ice cream flavour - perfecting his ice cream has slowly but surely become a true passion project.
Our pals in the US usually have this with grape ‘jelly’ - or as we know it, jam. So Head Chef Sam decided to take that literally and make a jelly (as we know it in NZ) out of grapes. Well, sauternes to be exact - a delicious French dessert wine which is, of course, made from grapes. It’s grape jelly, but with ‘style’.
The choice to include boysenberry jam was prompted by a fairly wholesome scenario. Sam, not satisfied with simple peanut butter on toast for breakfast, decided to add some jam to the mix. The only jam he could find? Boysenberry jam. Pleasantly surprised by the combo Sam decided to run with it and threw in the waffle to bring the whole ‘breakfast-theme’ together. As true professionals, rather than using the boysenberry jam from Sam’s kitchen cupboards at home, the arc chefs create the jam for this menu from scratch, using boysenberries from Nelson.
And there you have it, the August Menu complete. If you haven’t already had the chance to try it for yourself, head to our booking page and let us know what you think.
Check back next month for the ‘Behind the Scenes’ of our September menu.
The arc team :)
