Mud and Bone Winter Feast

On Saturday 30 June, we collaborated with Mud Australia and hosted a fabulous feast for 104 at Mud's Marrickville studio.

We called it the Mud and Bone Winter Feast and billed it as a celebration of mud, blood, bone and fire. All the food was cooked onsite on open fires and our natural tendency toward gothic excess was tempered by Mud's elegant aesthetic. But really it was just a excuse for us to get dressed up, play with like-minded local artists and makers, put on some glorious music and authorise our personal consumption of a lot of excellent wine, spirits and good food. 

Check out the menu below.

The Mud team pushed all the work benches to the sides and cleared out the huge, central room in the working studio (no small task) and we turned it into a wonderland festooned with lights and bones and skulls and candles, a grand piano, four long tables for the dinner and a kitchen and bar lit with beautiful Mud lamps. Guests entered through the factory roller door between two fiery spits on which a Melanda Park pig and a Moorlands Texel lamb were turning and were greeted with a tiny, warming cup of intensely flavoured beef broth with tiny slices of heart.

The rest of the evening was fuelled with gin, ale, wine, three courses of meats, cheeses and Sift winter vegetables - all cooked on the open fire and served on beautiful Mud porcelain. The amazing Michele Cranston produced the entire menu, ably assisted by the Feather and Bone spit team and we finished up with a stupendous, fiery Queen of Puddings by Nadine Ingram.

The highlight of the night was the beautiful musical performance by vocalist Lucy MacFarlane and accompanist Simon Kenway on the grand piano after the main course.

Embodying the spirit of mud, bone, blood and fire, Lucy appeared slowly out of the darkness into the spotlight next to the piano like some kind of exotic, wounded, red and white bird. Her white hair was teased up high and she wore a gothic corsage of bleached vertebra around her shoulders and along one arm. Fake blood splattered across her neck and arms and down her red and white sheath dress and a rattling train of bones and shards of Mud porcelain trailed behind her as she walked. 

She looked amazing, but it was Lucy's voice and the music that really took our collective breath away. It's one thing to go to the opera but quite another to be within metres of a truly skilled performer with such a rich and powerful voice. Lucy and Simon are experienced virtuosi and they gave us four glorious, classic arias ('Un bel di' from Butterfly, 'D'amor sull alli rose' from Il Trovatore, 'Vissi d'arte' from Tosca and 'Ebben ne andrò lontana' from La Wally) and we were all awestruck. It was so beautiful and moving that afterwards I had to go and have a brief weep in the upstairs loo.       

It was lots of fun and we're thinking we'll do a summer one early next year. Something hot and spicy. 

Here's the menu and below are some photographs.

Mud and Bone Winter Feast
Saturday 30 June 2018  •  Mud Studio, Marrickville

Food by Michele Cranston, Feather and Bone & Flour and Stone
Served on Mud Australia porcelain
Musical performance by Lucy McFarlane and Simon Kenway

Eat
Beef broth with heart
Feather and Bone sopressa, copacollo and pancetta
Burraduc Buffalo milk Dolce Nina
Kristen Allan cow’s milk curd
Pickled and spiced vegetables

Char-grilled Piccolo Farm pastured quail with Moroccan spices and fennel salad with citrus and Karrabool olive oil
Spit-roasted Moorlands bio-dynamic Texel lamb
Spit-roasted Melanda Park mixed breed pastured pig
Roasted cauliflower with spiced tahini and chickpeas
Char-grilled winter vegetables
Brickfields organic ciabatta

Flour and Stone flaming Queen of Puddings
Fancy pants ice cream with blood orange and hazelnuts

Drink
Gin cocktail
Keen as Mustard ale (five grain, barrel fermented Australian wild ale)
Hilltops Wild Yeast Sauvignon Blanc 2018
Yarra Valley Pinot Grigio 2017
‘Dandy’ Hilltops Field Blend Red 2018
Hilltops Tempranillo 2017

Cast
Feather and Bone ~ Meat, poultry, cheeses and spits
Mud Australia ~ serving and dinnerware
Sift Produce ~ fruit and vegetables
Flour & Stone ~ desserts
Sparrow & Vine ~ wines
Wildflower Brewing  ~ beer
Poor Tom’s Gin Distillery ~ gin cocktail