Engaging the Senses

I am very fortunate to have travelled the world cooking. Some of my favourite memories include working with guest chefs at Hangar-7 in Salzburg, which included a two-Michelin-starred restaurant next door to the Flying Bulls aircraft fleet. Another bucket list moment was eating at Albert and Ferran Adrià’s Michelin-starred Tickets restaurant in Barcelona, with inspiration drawn from the pair’s original El Bulli menu (one of the world’s best restaurants which closed in 2011). It was so special because every chef knows what the Adrià brothers did for modern gastronomy. They paved the way in so many senses — pioneering molecular gastronomy and making cooking methods a scientific art form. When I ate at Tickets, I enjoyed 45 courses; two hours into the meal, I realised there was food camouflaged into the walls. It was a once-in-a-lifetime sensory experience.

I worked alongside Danish chef Rasmus Kofoed for nearly three years at the much-lauded Geranium restaurant in Copenhagen.  In addition to learning from his brilliant technique, I also realised how important it is to work with nature and the different seasons to produce food that’s in-tune with the earth. Another influential mentor of mine is Australian chef Anthony Healy, who oversaw my development from Commis to Executive Sous Chef during my early career. He had utter faith in my abilities and really moulded me into the chef I am today.

I keep my dishes local and seasonal, which is what makes Wildflower a perfect fit for me; the whole ethos revolves around the Indigenous Noongar calendar, which has six seasons instead of four. With such short windows of time to harvest and work with each ingredient, there’s a much deeper connection to nature’s rhythms. Each dish has an extra depth to it because it’s all produced at absolute peak seasonality. It brings theatrics to the table: every ingredient is a star of the show in its own right.

Wildflower has an excellent supply network of local producers and farmers who believe in giving back to nature, working with respect to traditions and organic processes. I’m obsessive about maintaining high standards at every stage of the food supply chain, from seeding to fully formed vegetable, or calf to cow. Not only is it better for the planet, but everything tastes better that way. I try to work with Indigenous producers and ingredients wherever possible; one of Wildflower’s main suppliers is Tucker Bush, a company that stocks Indigenous-grown produce ranging from Geraldton wax flowers and finger limes to karkalla and native herbs that we use for infusions.

I love working with Western Australian marron — a large freshwater crayfish — that we source from Pemberton. They’re an incredibly unique creature, and taste unexpectedly sweet and delicate. I’ve also sourced some rainbow trout from the same supplier; it’s drying in the cool room, after which I’ll turn it  into a trout cotton candy for a future canapé.

Our wattleseeds are sourced by Tucker Bush, who deliver them to us ready-cleaned and roasted. One of my favourite ways to use wattleseeds is to make them into a butter. It tastes fantastic spread on bread, or roasted with mushrooms from Kardinya. You’ll also find wattleseed in our dessert list, featured in our take on an Irish Coffee.

I have always been a big fan of seafood and I’m really interested in Australian chef Josh Niland’s ‘fin-to-scale’ approach, using the entire fish including bones, offal and skin. I think that’s pretty revolutionary; not only does it avoid waste but it also could usher in a whole new raft of flavours to play with.

I also love working with vegetables, getting creative in processing and evolving them into things not seen before. It’s always refreshing when the standout dish of a menu can be a wedge of cabbage or a carrot, even when they stand next to incredible quality proteins.

It’s a blessing and a curse that my mind is always ticking and thinking of the next thing to put on a menu. Inspiration can come from absolutely anything if you’re open-minded enough.

In my eyes no dish is every perfect, there's always something that I want to tweak or improve. But we’ve just added a pork dish to our lunch menu which I’m very excited by. The pork loin is from  Lindley Valley. I roll it in roasted pork chicharrón and toasted yeast crumb and serve it with a kind of bordelaise sauce. The sauce when it hits the table is just amazing – infused with fresh truffles from Denmark WA, as well as native thyme, which gives the dish the faintest hint of apple flavour.