Kitchen Garden: Inside the kitchen garden of Sage Dining Rooms

The farm

Dino Jugovac, business partner of Michael and Peter Harrington, owns the farm on Majura Road. Dino directly employees a full-time farmer to tend the Back Angus cattle and Suffolk sheep on the property. The Sage garden farm was constructed by Pete and Mike in 2012 with the help of a chef.

Preparing the soil

When I first contacted Johnon MacDonald, executive chef at AKIBA Canberra, Sage Dining Rooms and Kokomo's, he was turning the soil in the garden farm beds for winter rejuvenation.

The soil is enriched by the use of chicken manure compost from a chicken farm down the road plus forest mushroom mulch.

At present the team from Sage Dining Rooms is out there for an hour every three days and, when crops are more established, this will be once a week. This includes the head chef from Sage Thomas Heinrich, MacDonald, and four staff who are from Australia, Korea, the Philippines and Bhutan. Only one, Pasang from Bhutan, had some experience with gardening and that was back home.

Planting the crops

The group is raising seedlings, including heirloom varieties grown from seeds sourced from Diggers Club. In the garden they have purple podded Dutch peas, dwarf snow peas, Novela peas, broad beans and globe artichokes.

In a greenhouse trays are filled with just planted seeds for summer with five varieties of tomatoes, Tommy toe, Tigerella, Sunrise bumble bee, red and black, and Reisetomate the traveller's tomato as well as Maui purple and cayenne chillies.

There are organically grown herbs, sage of course, rosemary, thyme and lemon thyme.

The crops that have done best on the farm are tomatoes, peas, salad leaves, hearty herbs, zucchini and zucchini flowers and their availability does have some influence on the menu.

At Sage Dining Rooms

Over morning coffee with Thomas Heinrich at botanical Sage, we chatted about the plants growing in the Mint Garden Bar in the adjoining entry courtyard in Braddon. A Gorman House possum had stripped the rhubarb and nasturtiums but there are lemon trees, an orange tree bearing fruit, a bay tree and rosemary shrubs. A vigorous passionfruit vine, a source of fruit for Thomas's passionfruit bavarois.

The menu

From diners' "taste and test" vote in March, MacDonald's tuna and pea dish scored 9.2/10 so will stay on the Sage menu permanently. He generously shares the recipe. Heinrich shares his dessert of raspberries and coconut.

Yellowfin tuna, green peas

65g tuna, diced 3/4cm

2 tbsp soy goats curd (mix 1 cup soy dressing to 4 cups goat's curd)

1 tbsp green peas crushed with a fork and tossed in EVOO and salt to taste

1 tsp chiffonade of mint

Wasabi panna cotta:

250g milk

250g cream

1 tbsp wasabi paste

50g lemon juice

7g gelatine sheet

Soak gelatine sheet in cold water for 5 minutes until soft and pliable. Combine milk, cream and wasabi paste in a pot on medium heat until it comes to the boil, remove pot from heat, squeeze soaked gelatine sheets to remove any water and add to the warm cream mix so that it dissolves. Add lemon juice and set in a container in the fridge.

Soy dressing

150g soy sauce

15 cloves garlic

30 anchovies

75g balsamic vinegar

300g EVOO

6 tsp sugar

Blend all ingredients in a blender until smooth.

Plating: Make a circle with soy goats curd, add dollop of wasabi panna cotta, combine green peas, chiffonade mint, lemon juice and EVOO in a bowl with the diced tuna and mix to combine, season with a little seasalt and spoon over panna cotta. To finish, combine 5g puffed rice, half tsp seasame seeds, half tsp bonito flakes and sprinkle over the top.

Raspberry sorbet, coconut, nata de coco

3 fresh raspberries cut in half

10g coconut meat

10g nata de coco (coconut water that has been fermented and set, available from Asian grocery)

1/3 cup coconut mousse

10g raspberry gel

5g raspberry crisp

1 scoop raspberry sorbet (Sage makes their own but you can purchase same, if good quality)

Coconut Mousse

125g sugar

125g water

1 litre coconut cream

Combine water and sugar in a pot and bring to the boil on high heat, remove and allow to cool, add to coconut cream and place in a whipped cream dispenser. Charge dispenser and place in fridge for two hours to set.

Raspberry gel

1 kg raspberry puree

250g sugar

250g agar agar powder

Heat puree and sugar in pot until dissolved, add agar agar, bring to the boil while continually whisking, remove from heat and place in a container to set in the fridge. Once set, blend until smooth.

Plating: Squeeze tbsp of coconut mousse from whipped cream dispenser onto plate, scatter fresh raspberry halves and nata de coco, spoon raspberry gel onto mousse then generous scoop of sorbet. Sage tops the dessert with broken shards of raspberry crisp.

Susan Parsons is a Canberra writer.