PUZZLES - Peacock Sky Vineyard!

26 April 2012
6 Waiheke Weekender
Epicurean
The verjus phenomenon
‘Grape farmer’ and now verjus maker, Rob Meredith
grew up with an appreciation of good food and good
wine. He enjoys spending time in the kitchen but
admits that he tends to use every dish in the place,
creating debris from one end of the kitchen to the
other. More often than not you’ll find a pan stuck
to the ceiling, he admits ruefully, and as a result
his wife of 23 years Connie, herself a chef, tends to
manage most of the kitchen duties.
As co-owner and self-titled a grape farmer, Rob explains how their
verjus at Peacock Sky came to be:
“Thinning in vineyard management (sometimes called a “green
harvest”) is a technique used to reduce the final fruit yield in a
vineyard.
“Immature grapes are removed before they fully develop, leaving the vines to put all their energy into ripening and maturing
the remaining bunches. Theoretically the remaining grapes will
be of higher quality with better flavours so this technique is used
commonly in the production of fine wines, where a high volume
yield is less of a priority.
“In many cases these immature grapes are dropped on the
ground, but this year we harvested some of the green grapes and
pressed them to make verjus.”
Never keen to see waste, he sought the expertise of his
Hungarian colleague Balazs Haga, an experienced wine and verjus
maker, to help him master the new techniques.
Australian cook, vintner and food writer Maggie Beer began
the modern resurgence of verjus when she began commercial
production in 1984, after a harvest of Rhine riesling grapes could
not be sold. She persuaded a winemaker friend to help her turn the
juice into verjus.
PUZZLES
Rob Meredith, at home in the kitchen.
Below – Grilling the lavosh, also known as lavash, a thin,
crunchy Middle Eastern style bread.
After slow national sales, 15 years later came
international sales that were then followed by
local products in France and elsewhere.
Today you can find verjus recipes everywhere
and Rob says the biggest challenge to participating in this story was which recipe to select.
Fascinated by the diversity of applications, Rob
has been having fun with his little bottle of green
juice in the kitchen developing some favourites.
He finally settled on a poached salmon dish
to show off the verjus which he describes, as in
wine talk, in terms of balance, texture, flavour
and colour.
He is fascinated by its acidic complexities that
pair delightfully with an oily fish such as salmon.
And he loves a recipe using chicken or pork
where he can use his verjus to deglaze or replace
wine in cooking to create an alcohol free dish.
Salmon poached in verjus
This is a nice, straightforward recipe that shows
the versatility of verjus in cooking. Here we use it
not only to cook the salmon, but also as a component of the dressing on the accompanying salad.
1 cup verjus
1/4 cup minced shallots
2 salmon steaks, each 2-3 cm thick (about 250g
each)
1 tablespoon butter
Salt and pepper to taste
1 teaspoon chopped chives
Put the verjus and the chopped shallots in a 20-25
cm frying pan over high heat. Add the salmon
steaks. Cover and bring to simmer. Continue to
simmer, turning once, until the fish is no longer
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