Staying on the Central Coast for the Coastal Twist Festival was an opportunity to check out local producers. Already familiar with chef Mark Wiseman’s fine work at Bollito Pasta (but not quick enough to snaffle one of his cracking family-size lasagne alla boscaiola ($42.50/1.5kg) before they sold out) I contented myself with paccheri rigati ($6/300g). This proved a fortuitous choice when I discovered Seacoast Fishing, a local fishing co-op and charter business in Kincumber. They were selling wild-caught (tagged and sustainable) local lobsters ($80/kilo). We took home a 650gram beauty ($50), and after using its head, shell and legs to make a bisque, served it with hunks of tail meat over paccheri: bliss!
Bollito Pasta has moved out of The Old Wyong Milk Factory, which, despite a thriving cafe, had a whiff of faded tourist attraction about it. I visited Bollito’s West Gosford store, however I did pick up a slightly pricy sapphire blue cheese ($16.50/150grams) from Little Creek Cheese at the milk factory. With our cheese course taken care of, we headed to Woy Woy for D & L Witchard's Seafood Outlet for the entree: a dozen unshucked triploid Pacific oysters ($20). Dale, a third generation oyster farmer in Patonga Creek, called them small, but they proved to be lovely, briny mouthfuls. With an Atlantic salmon that looked like it had just jumped out of the ocean in his display, we were also tempted into some locally caught dusky flathead fillets ($60/kilo) that we crumbed and panfried for fish finger sangas the next day.
We punctuated all the pasta, cheese and seafood with springy fresh vegetables from Ettalong Fresh Food Market in the Broken Bay Scout Hall. This saw us pan fry broad beans in garlic to spoon onto oat crackers, and we have hard-to-find cipollini onions with rosemary and balsamic on the menu tonight. Margin's Mushrooms, also from Woy Woy, had a stall as part of this small market, so we loaded up a brown bag ($22) that will last us all week. The Central Coast certainly has a lot to offer visiting foodies.
