I
t’s now 25 years since we opened Sean’s, our
beachside restaurant and home away from
home. Before we opened on the beach, we
spent many weekends planting fruit trees,
heirloom vegetables and herbs on just
a few acres surrounding our cubbyhouse in the Blue
Mountains – a nest that made us feel plain good by
connecting us to each season – and held a dream that
we could one day serve something we had grown at
our restaurant table.
We’ve since upsized to a larger farm, and just as
my van filled with compost buckets makes its twice-
weekly trip from the restaurant to the farm, more and
more harvests make a return trip back, to become the
foundation to our simple, soulful cooking.
Like any small business, there have been
incredible highs, and terrifying lows; I’ll never forget
the feeling of shucking Sydney Rock oysters and frying
school prawns for the legendary Alice Waters of Chez
Panisse for her first meal in Sydney, sandwiching
comfrey leaves with shavings of goat’s feta as fritters
for the late AA Gill, or the joy of roasting a chook for
everyone’s food hero, Maggie Beer, for the launch of
herMaggie’s Harvestcookbook. Highlights that are as unique as the
time our grease trap burst and oozed greasy sludge through the entire
kitchen as we were serving the main course to a private dinner.
Drama aside, it’s the day-to-day vibrancy of restaurant life
that keeps me buoyant, the connections and relationships formed
with regulars, the incredible team I have supporting me, and
ultimately how our collective experience can (most of the time)
make diners happy.
I still top up with weekly shops from Flemington markets, scour
Sydney Fish Market for our seafood, and buy directly from other local
producers and cheesemakers as much as I physically can, because I’m
a visual cook; I need to see produce to be inspired to make a menu.
The recipes I’d like to share with you are more a taste of coastal
summer cooking. The ingredients are not so specialised that you
need a vegie patch of your own to cook them and, because many
of the dishes can be prepared the day ahead, they hopefully will
take a little pressure off – the cold poached Murray cod, for example,
a show-stopper that couldn’t be simpler.
Cooking is as much about feel as it is taste, and as I would tell any
cook following a recipe, if some other vegetable or piece of fruit seems
just too good to resist, then follow your instinct.Sean’s, 270 Campbell
Pde, Bondi Beach, NSW, (02) 9365 4924, seanspanaroma.coSean Moran108 GOURMET TRAVELLER