ONA Coffee's Cupping Room

ONA Coffee has just opened a new outlet in Civic, the Cupping Room, and it's a must-see for any Canberran or visiting coffee connoisseur.

ONA Coffee has been roasting their own beans in Canberra since 2007. What they lack in an impressive establishment date is more than made up for with the quality of their product. One of only two ACT coffee roasters to win medals in the Sydney Royal Coffee Competition—a category of the Sydney Royal Fine Food Show that was established in 1998—and operating their own bean sourcing programme direct from coffee farmers in India, Central and Southern America, they have a fast-growing reputation for excellence.

Their Fyshwich Coffee House and Roastery has been a favourite cafe of mine since moving to Canberra, despite its distance from my Northside home. I was more than a little excited to hear they were opening a new café in Civic, and not just because it was right next to the university campus where I spend my weekdays.

Photo courtesy of Jessica Hancock.

Exquisite latte art, as always.

The doors of the stylish new venue on London Circuit opened last Saturday to admit Canberra's coffee lovers and I arrived soon after. On the advice of the Fyshwick staff, I've swapped my usual brew from latte to a flat white and I started off with an Organic Blend flat white. In most cafés, their organic coffee offering has exchanged excellence for its name. Whereas the organic coffee served by ONA has reached such high quality that they now serve it as their house blend, supplanting the already exceptional Malawian Mocha and ONA Signature blends. Hints of dark chocolate and caramel make it a favourite of mine for any milk based coffee.

Photo courtesy of Jessica Hancock.

The day was warming quickly and another ONA favourite was soon sampled, their cold drip. Stylishly served to match the mad scientist equipment used to produce it, the cold drip is delivered in an old-fashioned medicine bottle with a similarly old-fashioned label. Lacking even a trace of bitterness, cold drip is an ideal drink for anyone still taking their first baby steps in the coffee world. It also makes an excellent summer beverage for even the most discerning of coffee connoisseurs.

The Cupping Room's coffees lived up to the ONA name admirably, but the new venue has something more on offer that sets it apart. Between the espresso machines and the kitchen is an offering new to Canberra: a bar lined with stools, at which a few unusual coffee offerings are prepared. This is the heart of the Cupping Room, the filter bar, where their pourovers are poured, aeropresses are pressed, cold-drips drip slowly away and freshly roasted beans are cupped.

ONA founder, Sasa, prepares pourovers at the Cupping Room's
filter bar. Photo courtesy of Jessica Hancock.

Lured in by the mid-week free coffee day, I returned to the Cupping Room with a group of caffeine addicted postgraduates a few days later for a study session. For some, this was their first introduction to ONA and they were generally impressed by what they discovered. One person—a non-drinker of coffee, tea or hot chocolate, who found his meal choices restricted by his low-carb diet, dislike of fish and egg, and an aversion to ordering custom dishes—sampled only sips of the coffee on offer, but still enjoyed the atmosphere. Then, as the studying wound to a close, we had the chance to take part in a cupping.

Roaster, Gus, checking the smell of his latest
roasts. Photo courtesy of Jessica Hancock.

Cupping is a scene reminiscent of a wine or whisky tasting, with the anonymous coffees lined up along the bar. The "crust" of coffee grounds is first broken to release the aromas of the mysterious brews and then scooped off. The unfiltered coffee beneath is slurped in a most undignified manner, spreading it evenly across the tongue. From these tests, roasters can check the quality of each batch of beans, pick out the individual flavours and refine the roasting process to match. Customers at the Cupping Room have the chance to take part in the process under the guidance of ONA's expert coffee roasters. We were treated to samples of seven different single origin roasts, including a taste of the rare and intensely aromatic geisha, a legendary coffee varietal that has been breaking world price records since its discovery by the world markets in 2004. I was at a loss to describe its powerful aromas and flavours (were those floral notes? Berries, perhaps plums?) but could appreciate their exquisite combination.

The Cupping Room's food menu is worth exploring.

Like ONA's other venues, the Cupping Room provides excellent food to accompany their range of espresso, pourover, aeropress and cold brew coffees. Their new menu is a fusion of flavours inspired by South American cuisine, and their all-day breakfasts boast a few unusual takes on the typical Australian offerings.

"Not So Benedict" takes eggs benedict, then adds
silverside and a mustard sauce.

"Dragon Eggs" are avocado halves, filled with mildly
spiced guacamole and topped with poached eggs.

The banana hotcakes include a hint of salt to offset
their sweetness.

Also check out ONA's video, Cup A Wonderful World. Bonus points for spotting the author of this blog.

Homemade Bone Stock

Eating lunch at a recent first aid course, I got a surprise supply of ingredients. The organisers had a couple of supermarket roast chickens to provide some sandwich fillings, the carcasses of which were abandoned at meal's end. I snapped them up quickly and took them home to make myself some stock.

Store-bought stock tends to be tasteless (apart from the overwhelming taste of salt) and I've been a staunch supporter of making my own for a few years. It started when my local shop started packets of turkey bones, wings and necks, all the bits that don't look good in the Christmas family photo. It wasn't December, but enough Australians hold a Christmas-like celebration around June 25th (which is now bizarrely being called Christmas in July, apparently named after the entirely unrelated United States tradition intended to boost retail sales) that turkey can become reasonably prevalent in the frozen section of shops during June. I got a few assorted "offcuts", marinated them and shared a decent meal with some friends. But afterwards, I was left with a pile of bones... and decided to learn how to make stock from them. This recipe is the result of a few adaptations leading up to the present day, and needs little or no adaptation to be used with turkey or beef bones.

Chicken Bone Stock
Ingredients

• 2 chicken frames
• 1 onion, skinned and chopped into eighths
• 1 leek, including green section of stem
• 1 bunch celery, including leaves 
• 1 carrot
• 2 bay leaves
• 2 sprigs parsley
• 1/4 C vinegar, apple cider or white wine
• black peppercorns
• 2 egg whites, to clarify the finished stock

Directions

1. Cut chicken frames into chunks and place in your stock pot if it is oven-proof, or spread in a roasting dish if its not. Bake for 15-20 minutes at 180°C (fan forced), turning as necessary, until the pieces are golden brown. Cooking time will vary depending on whether you're using cooked or raw carcasses. Do not allow bones to burn. Take out of the oven and allow to cool.
2. Chop the green top off your leek and cut it (the green section) into 3cm lengths. This recipe does not require the white flesh, so you can use that for one of the many recipes that demand no green leek be included. Chop the leafy tops off your celery. Again, leaves work just as well as stalk for this recipe, so you can use the stalks elsewhere. Chop carrot into 3cm lengths. Rinse parsley and all vegetables then add to your stock pot.
3. If you baked the bones in the stock pot, skip ahead to part 4. If you baked your bones in a roasting dish, add these to the stock pot. If there are any juices in the dish, pour these into the pot as well (don't worry if they include chicken fat. You can remove the fat later. If there's any caramelised juice on the dish add some warm to dissolve it and pour this into the pot. 
4. Add the vinegar (apple cider or white wine), bay leaves and pepper to the pot and pour in enough cold water to cover. Bring to a simmer over medium heat (do not allow to boil vigorously), reduce to low and leave at a gentle simmer for 4 hours.
5. Straining your stock is easiest if done in a couple of steps and requires another pot or a large bowl big enough to hold your stock, a colander and some muslin or cheesecloth. Place the colander over the second pot. Pour the stock through, discard the chunks left in the colander and rinse your stock pot. Place a piece of cheesecloth in the colander, and place over your stock pot. Pour the stock through.
6. Now for the egg whites. Keep the colander and second pot handy; you'll need them again. Put the pot of strained stock back on the stove and bring back to a simmer over low-medium heat. Beat egg whites with 2 tablespoons of cold water, then pour into the stock and leave for several minutes. The egg white should form a "raft" on the surface, to which sediment in the stock will bind. Remove from the heat and strain through cheesecloth to remove the egg whites. Place stock in the fridge to cool.
7. Once cold, any fat in the stock will form as solid crust on the top. Skim this off and your stock is ready for use. It can be used immediately, or frozen in smaller containers for later use.

Stock before and after filtering with egg white.

Poppies, cheese and oranges collide to produce... cheesecake, funnily enough.

In the interests of full disclosure, I must warn any potential readers that half this post is about language and the process of devising recipes, not about cheesecake at all. If you want to skip to the part with an actual recipe, it's posted separately under Orange and Poppyseed Cheesecake.

My love for baked cheesecakes starts somewhere quite unusual, I suspect. It began as an expletive.

Surrounded by overwhelming quantities of anatomical descriptions, blasphemies and cultural references to choose from when requiring an expletive, I found them all lacking. What I needed was an expletive I could use when everything had just turned to brick and I wanted to declare as such boldly, loudly and (above all) without recriminations from everyone nearby. I took to using several, one of which was—for no apparent reason—"cheesecake." After declaring "Cheesecake!" for a year or more, whenever I stubbed my toe, misplaced my wallet or my computer bricked and I lost an hour's work, it seemed high time I learn to actually make this dish whose name I'd been misusing. I found a recipe online and started experimenting. The results were mixed (my habit of tampering with the ingredients proved deleterious, since I hadn't yet worked out what could be changed safely) but I produced a few passable samples.

Then I decided to make a birthday cake, a birthday cheesecake to be precise, and wanted to make something a little different. There are literally (OED, definition I1b not sense I1c) hundreds of thousands of different recipes scattered across the internet, but none of the ones I looked at were quite what I was after. I wasn't exactly sure what I did want, so it was experimentation time.

My old engineering self insisted that stage one was a tabulated comparison of the nicest looking recipes I could find, and then analyse for commonalities in their ingredient ratios. Naturally, the results were pretty varied, but not quite random. While there were instances of higher and lower quantities of absolutely every ingredient, a common thread appeared to be:

Crumb:

Biscuits : Butter + (optional) Nut Meal : Butter

2 : 1 + (optional) 4 : 1

Filling:

Sugar : Eggs : Cornflour : Cheese : Vanilla Bean Paste : Sour Cream (optional)

155g : 3 Eggs : 1 Tablespoon : 500g : 1 Teaspoon : 300ml

Cheese of choice mainly varies between philadelphia*, mascarpone and quark, with a few other options on the side. Chocolate was sometimes mixed in to the filling, accompanied by a slight decrease in the quantity of sugar.

It was a start, and gave me something I could tinker with. One concept that particularly intrigued me was the introduction of nut meal into the crumb, partly for flavour but presumably for texture as well. There were also a large number of recipes incorporating either molten or grated chocolate into the filling. Never having done either before, I pulled out my single-serve springform pie tins and made some miniature cheesecakes.

One recipe called for hazelnut meal, which I decided to test. After sampling, I can confidently say that it's a bad idea unless you really really love hazelnut, as it was extremely overpowering. As for the choice of adding molten vs grated chocolate, the preferences from those who sampled them were consistently for the molten chocolate.

So now to choose a flavour...

I have lost count of the number of passionfruit cheesecakes I've made (of both the baked and bushwalking varieties) and can't say I was keen to just make another one of them. I contemplated combining dark chocolate and raspberry, one of my all-time favourite flavour combinations, but decided cheesecake would prove a poor medium to convey it. Butterscotch seemed promising in combination with white chocolate, and I was working out a recipe when an unusual thought struck. Orange and poppyseed...

I was inspired by a cake my housemate had made around a month ago, which had poppy seeds ground to a flour and mixed through one layer. It was a delicious cake and I'd had half a mind to incorporate the technique into something for a while.

Baked cheesecake consists of two to three layers: the crumb, filling and an optional topping. I tried to make different flavours dominant in each layer. I crushed some Nice biscuits (I tried to use scotch fingers out of curiosity in the test cheesecakes, but Nice work much better) and mixed in coarsely ground poppyseed instead of nut meal, with a little orange zest for a subtle citrus flavour. Into the filling, I added no small quantity of white chocolate (it makes the cake wonderfully rich), some finely ground poppyseed (I didn't want any crunch in the filling's texture), lashings of orange zest and juice. Two miniature cheesecakes were baked alongside the main dish and I tested these with and without a topping made from thickened orange juice.

The final cake suffered slightly from the inaccuracy of my oven's thermostat (I may need to install an oven thermometer to monitor this manually), with a couple of cracks forming in the top, but was satisfactory. It was a cheesecake, definitely a cheesecake, but the texture change wrought by the poppyseed made it a most unusual one. The crumb was firmer than usual, and held together better than the same recipe without poppyseed. The filling was slightly denser and lay somewhere between a dense, moist cake and a cheesecake.

Were these changes for the worse? No, I don't think so, nor for the better. I prefer this style of crumb, but others may prefer a more traditional texture. The resulting cake is just different a style. I may yet consider some refinements to add in another iteration but the recipe as it stands certainly produces an unusual but delicious cheesecake. If you'd like to try making it, the recipe is here.

* My browser is insisting this should be capitalised, but I disagree; philadelphia has become a genericized trademark for a particular type of cream cheese in colloquial usage. It has not yet have achieved sufficiently widespread usage to appear in dictionaries as such. Nevertheless, that is how it is being used in everyday speech.

Orange and Poppyseed Cheesecake

This recipe arose from some experimentation with the cheesecake concept, which I have posted about in more detail here.

Ingredients:

• 250 g Nice* biscuits
• 1 tbsp demerara sugar (or large-grained raw sugar)
• 50 g poppyseeds
• 140 g unsalted butter, melted
• 500 g cream cheese at room temperature
• 1/2 C castor sugar
• 120 g white chocolate, melted
• 300 g sour cream
• 1 tbsp cornflour
• 3  eggs
• 3  oranges
• 1 tbsp cornflour (for topping)
• 1/4 C castor sugar (for topping)
• 1 tbsp lemon juice (for topping)

Directions:

1. Line a 22cm springform pan with baking paper. If using a smaller tin, or one with low sides, reduce quantity of filling accordingly.
2. Use a microplane† or grater to remove the zest from the oranges, and set aside. Juice the oranges, and set aside.
3. Using a food processor or mortar and pestle, crush the biscuits to a fine crumb. Using a spice grinder or mortar and pestle, grind half the poppyseeds roughly then combine with the crushed biscuits, melted butter, demerara sugar and ~1 tbsp of the orange zest. Spread over the base and up sides of springform pan, pressing into place using a straight sided glass. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes.
4. Preheat oven to 150°C (130°C fan-forced). Using an electric beater, beat the cream cheese and the castor sugar (1/2 cup) together until light and smooth. Mix in the eggs, one at a time, followed by the sour cream, chocolate and 1 tbsp of cornflour. Beat until smooth. Using a spice grinder or mortar and pestle, grind the remaining poppyseed to a fine powder and add to the cream cheese mixture with half the orange juice and half the remaining orange zest. Beat until smooth.
5. Pour cream cheese mixture into the prepared cake tin. Mixture will expand slightly while cooking, and must only be filled to slightly below the top of the crumb. Bake for 50 minutes, or until cheesecake is set in the centre. Turn off the oven and leave the cheesecake in it with the door slightly ajar to cool for 2 hours. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 4-6 hours to cool completely.
6. To make the topping, combine the remaining orange juice with the lemon juice and top up with water to 250 ml. Add 1 tbsp of this liquid to 1 tbsp of cornflour in a saucepan and stir until combined. Add the remaining liquid, 1/4C of castor sugar and remaining orange zest and stir to combine. Place on medium heat, stirring until it boils and starts to thicken. Allow to cool slightly then spread over the top of the cheesecake. Refrigerate until set, then serve.

* Nice biscuits are my preferred choice for use in cheesecakes, but any plain biscuit will work.

† While I'm generally against adding gimmicky gadgets to my kitchen, I have been thoroughly won over by microplanes, which are a similar to a fine grater, but can actually grate parmesan cheese quickly, remove the zest from an orange without clogging up, finely grate garlic without having to remove the skin and can be cleaned easily (and no, they don't sponsor me).

Hilleberg Jannu

The first time I heard about Hilleberg tents, I was pretty excited. They looked amazing and one of them was just what I wanted for the hike I was planning. This was the description that so caught my eye:

A midnight photography session captured a
frost-covered Jannu by moonlight.

The Jannu is that rarest of combinations – tremendously strong and exceptionally light. The Jannu is our strongest, ultra-lightweight dome tent model, and is in some respects the ultralight version of the Tarra, but with only one entrance. At the same time, it is very much its own creature. For while it is an Ultralight tent, it is nonetheless ideal for harsh, high altitude use, and both exposed and/or above tree line terrain and protected conditions in all seasons and all weathers. Its compact footprint shines in limited-space sites, such as knife-edge ridges and small ledges, and it is very stable, even in high winds. Yet it is also easily light enough for use on long distance trips where low weight is a high priority. The Jannu’s single entrance and vestibule favor lighter weight over absolute comfort, and its dome design gives it exceptional static strength for handling snow loading. As a result, it is a fine choice both for base camp situations, and for mobile adventures, where you pitch your tent every day.*

Companies are always saying wonderful things about their products though. After using it for a three-week bushwalk and on numerous shorter trips in varying conditions, this is what I think about the Jannu.

A Quick Clarification

The Jannu is a four-season tent. This term gets thrown around a lot, and I want to clarify what I take it to mean before we carry on any further. A lot of products titled as four-season gear are intended only for use in late Autumn to early Spring; they aren't suitable for Summer usage. Anything like that, I'll call Winter gear because it's less confusing and far more accurate. If a company claims four-season usability for their gear, its performance in hot weather is as important to me as its ability to withstand a storm.

Strung out to dry the day after a storm. Normally, only a
few guy ropes are required. Photo: Jessica Hancock.

Pitching the Tent

The first thing I noticed when setting up the Jannu was jut how much space it filled. The footprint is surprisingly narrow, given how roomy the tent is, but it is long. I have never been unable to find a space for it, but on several occasions I have found only a single space long enough to fit its full length. Once a suitable site is found, the rest of the setup is pretty simple; one person can pitch the Jannu in about the time it takes another to put some water on to boil. Most of the guy ropes aren't needed unless you're expecting a hurricane but the three attached to the vent's rain cover are an absolute must; the tent won't ventilate without them (but more on the vent later). The peg-out points on the vestibule have an adjustable strap on them so that you can put the peg wherever you need to, to avoid rocks and tree roots, and then just adjust the strap to suit. This is a simple, elegant design feature that was greatly appreciated, but I couldn't for the life of me fathom why it hadn't been used on all the peg-out points. The tent body attaches to the fly with loop and toggles. These toggles are much smaller than are used for attaching the vent and can come undone while pitching the tent, although they're secure once it's erected. This has only happened twice in the 30+ times I've put the tent up and it was easily spotted then fixed both times.

Summer Storm Performance

Ducking outside for a quick brew during a brief
break in the weather. Photo: Jessica Hancock.

Two nights up on an exposed plateau with high wind, driving rain, sleet and hail certainly tested this out. No water got into the main tent, only the vestibule. This came from two sources: opening the zip to go in and out of the tent and part of the vestibule sagging slightly. No matter how level the campsite nor how I adjusted the the guy ropes, this sag was always present. The water ingress was minimal but, as the only leaking part of the tent, I've spent a lot of time trying to stop it. The Jannu's wind performance was outstanding; it can be set up each night according to convenience and space, not prevailing wind direction. The advantage of the semi-geodesic design is that it doesn't matter whether the wind changes direction. During the windiest conditions I have put it through, the inner tent wall barely moved.

Winter Storm Performance

The Jannu shed enough snow to stay upright
overnight, but it was starting to sag by morning...

In a recent backcountry ski trip, the campsite was buffeted by winds measured at 80km/h, received over 40cm of snow and dropped to a pleasant -6°C overnight. The Jannu had no problems with the wind, and (unlike another tent in the campsite) didn't need digging out during the night to prevent it from collapsing beneath the snow. It definitely did need digging out later, and I would have been uncomfortable letting much more snow build up on it, but it coped well. Only in the vestibule did the weight of the snow make much difference, where the usual sag partway along the zip had been exacerbated to the point where half the vestibule was unusable.

Sunny Day Performance

Sheltered from the wind, but not the sun. The
Jannu heated fast during this rest day.

I don't just camp in storms, and have used the Jannu on several warm days. Provided there was a breeze and I had set up the vent, the tent ventilated effectively and there was no condensation beading its surface come morning. In particularly sheltered campsites, it still ventilated and never became uncomfortably warm, but the difference in temperature was certainly noticeable and condensation started to bead the inner tent wall. Only once have I forgotten to peg out and open the vent (rest assured, I won't forget again!), and it meant waking up to a tent dripping with condensation. When confident that there wouldn't be any rain on a particularly still, warm night, I left the vent's rain cover off and enjoyed a pleasant night with no overheating issues or water droplets on my gear come morning. So the vent works provided there is either wind or no chance of rain.

Not really relevant to the tent quality,
but it made for a nice morning view.

Comfort

The Jannu is a roomy tent, easily big enough to fit three people (particularly if you consider how small many "two-man" tents actually are) or two people and the full contents of their packs. While spending a day sheltering from the rain, the Jannu was used as a communal space. Four adults could sit up quite comfortably inside it, playing cards while the back of the tent was devoted to preparing lunch. Regardless of the weather outside the tent, it remained a warm, quiet environment inside.

Build Quality

There is no doubt that the Hillebergs are well-made tents. The fabric is second to none, somehow being lighter, stronger and more waterproof than that used for other modern tents. After a 22 night hike, the Jannu looked as fresh and shiny as it had on day one. The lightweight poles are slightly thicker at the joints, the most common failure point on many tent poles. Tent pegs were easily driven into even the hardest packed rocky soil, while also being easily removed come morning thanks to the simple but wonderful addition of a loop of cord to the end of each.

Jannu Overview

The Jannu's semi-geodesic design makes for a very stable, reliable tent. It can be set up according to comfort and convenience rather than having to predict what the prevailing wind direction will be. It is (just) light enough to be used by a single person, but the spacious inner can easily fit two people and all their gear; however, the vestibule space is of limited use during rain due to sagging.

*Product description on the Hilleberg site.