Cream of the Yarra Valley's crop

Australia's favourite food blogger, Not Quite Nigella, aka Lorraine Elliott, and finds there's more to the Yarra Valley than wineries.

On our recent visit to the Yarra Valley we managed to explore a few other restaurants and shops – not that we were in danger of starving mind you, but because we were curious to see what the rest of the food in the Yarra Valley was like.

And we confirmed that no visit to the Yarra Valley would be complete without visiting the Yarra Valley Dairy. I'm not delivering any revelatory news when I tell you how good their Persian feta is and how it is entirely possible to eat a whole 250g canister in one sitting with just a fork or a spoon. I may or may not have done that (I'm telling Mr NQN that we just 'ran out').

The dairy's 250 cows graze on the land nearby and the milk is delivered underground to their factory alongside the shop, which is housed in an old milking shed. The cows are milked twice daily and left overnight to graze on pasture after their second milking.

They make four types of cheeses here: 1) white mould cheese 2) marinated cheese 3) fresh cheese and 4) curds. We were fortunate to try a fresh savourine rolled in ash, with the ash used to lock in the moisture. When it is aged a little more it becomes their Black Savourine product, which has a layer of white on the outside and a small ash layer inside (as the flavour of the ash gets drawn into the cheese). There is one harder style cheese available, which is very sweet and represents their version of a gruyere and for a garlicky punch, there is their "House Cow”.



Our stay at Chateau Yering has furnished us with a 10 per cent off voucher so Mr NQN and I debate how to put it to good use. He chooses the Black Savourine and I resist buying the 1kg bucket of the Persian feta (I frightened myself at how quickly the 250g disappeared) and instead choose the Cardi goat's milk cheese, because I adore the unusual sweet taste of the shallots and cardamom.

That afternoon we wanted to try a local's favourite, which involved the pizza route.

Zonzo is housed in a large barn and has an accompanying vineyard called Train Trak. As soon as we walk in we wish we had booked. Fortunately, there is room at the end of a table, which actually suits us fine as we just wanted to try a couple of pizzas.

A steel bison's head overlooks the whole room and room dividers are made up of corks. Cured sausages are suspended from the ceiling and there's a lively crowd of people and families. The pizza is the star of the show here but there are also some pasta dishes and some smaller antipasto platters. We are hypnotically drawn to the large pizza oven from which the chefs fetch pizza-after-pizza with their pizza paddles.

We decided to order two pizzas, not because we were hungry (after a big breakfast and cheese samples, hungry was the last thing we were) but because we couldn't decide on which pizzas to order. I do love sausage on pizza whether it is fresh sausage or salami, and so the pizza alla salsiccia was calling to me. But the other part of me wanted the pizza con porcini as I was clearly nowhere near truffled- or mushroomed-out.

Our teas arrive and my face fell a little when I saw that they were tea-bags in tea infusers. But the tea itself is actually rather good. We tried the ginger peach tea (more peach than ginger) and the smooth chai, which was my favourite with a lovely sweetness and good balance. Sometimes chais can be a bit too bold and overpowering with clove or other strong flavours but this has just the right balance of flavours and aromas.



The pizza alla salsiccia was preferred out of the two but you wouldn't kick either out of bed. This one has tomato, mozzarella, taleggio, pork and fennel sausage, onion and rosemary. It was fragrant and full of flavour and before I knew I had eaten half. Mr NQN raised his eyebrows and pointedly lifted up his plate to swap before I hoovered down the rest.

The pizza with porcinis had tomato, mozzarella, porcini, pancetta and mascarpone and I particularly liked the mascarpone, which gave it just the right amount of creaminess to go with the mushrooms.

With our car boot full of cheese, black truffle, jams and teas, our tummies full with pizza and our minds full of memories, we slowly depart the Yarra Valley.

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