Green Papaya Salad Two Ways

I have seen so many food shows making gorgeous looking Thai salads using green papaya and they look so fresh and crisp, but I had never tried it myself. I just had never come across it either prepared on a menu or in a store to be purchased. I googled it many a time, but I honestly had never seen it before.

Then I attended a Lao-Thai cooking class at the James Street Cooking School and one of the recipes was a lovely spicy green papaya salad served with crispy marinated pork neck. I saw and tasted green papaya for the first time and I liked it, even though the instructor said that the salad tasted better when made with green mango. Then, while shopping at the James Street Market I just happened to be wandering past the fruit section when they brought out a tray of halved green papayas. They were quite expensive compared to the other fruit, but I really wanted to try out some recipes so I bought some.

On the way home from this very exciting shopping trip we stopped at a local Asian supermarket to pick up some other ingredients and in their produce section we found not only green payaya much cheaper and fresher than what I had bought at James Street but they also had green mango. I bought some more and headed home to make some salad.

The green payaya salad from the cooking class wasn't the only green payaya salad to have caught my eye.

Recently I picked up a new cookbook Essentials of Asian Cooking by Chuck Williams/Farina Kingsley. It's really cool, with lots of fresh new recipes and masses of Asian flavours. There's really interesting explanations and backgrounds at the beginning of each section and large beautiful photos. I've tagged so many recipes to try that I ran out of tags and had to improvise.

I did have some problems shredding my green papaya. My mandoline just wasn't cutting it. This isn't the first problem I've had with my mandoline, so in a fit of temper I threw the whole thing out. Calming down, I improvised by using a vegetable peeler to make thin strips and then using a sharp knife to cut long, thin strips. It took a long time, but it turned out quite well.

The two salads couldn't be more different in their final taste. The first salad makes a paste with shallots, garlic and sugar which is then mixed with rice vinegar, fish sauce, lime juice, Sriracha chile sauce and oil. The second salad makes a paste with garlic, salt, chillies, peanuts and dried prawns and then mashes that paste with lime, cherry tomatoes and snake beans with palm sugar, fish sauce, lime juice and tamarind water only used to season.

I found that the first salad was much lighter but was much gentler in its flavour. I'd cut back on the Sriracha but next time I'd add more chilli. The second salad was packed full of flavour and tasted even better the next day, except I added too much garlic and made the second salad death to any vampire in a ten kilometre radius, not to mention it was quite embarrassing to try and eat it in front of my office-mate. Luckily, he likes garlic, but I still couldn't bring myself to finish it.

Green Payaya Salad 1
adapted from Essentials of Asian Cooking by Chuck Williams/Farina Kingsley


1/2 green payaya
1/2 carrot
2 shallots, thinly sliced, plus 1 tbs chopped
1 red chilli, seeded and cut into thin rings
2 tbs chopped fresh coriander
1 clove garlic, chopped
1/2 tsp sugar
2 tbs rice vinegar
2 tbs fish sauce
1 tbs lime juice
1 tsp Sriracha chile sauce
1 1/2 tbs canola oil

Shred the papaya and the carrot into long thin strips. In a large bowl, combine the papaya, carrot, sliced shallots, chilli and coriander and toss gently.

Combine the chopped shallot, garlic and sugar and process in a food processor or using mortar and pestle until a smooth paste forms. Add 1-2 tbs water if needed. Transfer the paste to a bowl and whisk in the vinegar, fish sauce, lime juice and chilli sauce. Gradually drizzle in the oil while continuing to whisk.

Pour the dressing over the papaya mixture and toss to coat thoroughly. Refrigerate for at least two hours or up to overnight before serving.

Green Papaya Salad 2
adapted from James Street Cooking School


2 garlic cloves (this was too much for a halved recipe, go for 1)
Pinch of salt
1 red chilli
1 tbs roasted peanuts
4 cherry tomatoes, quartered
4 green beans, cut into 1cm lengths
1 cup shredded green papaya
1 tbs palm sugar
1/2 tbs lime juice
1/2 tbs tamarind water
1/2 - 1 tbs fish sauce

Pound garlic with sald and chilli in a pestle and mortar. Add peanuts and pound into a course paste. Add cherry toamtoes and beans to the mortar and gently mash together. Add green papaya and bruise. Season with palm sugar, lime juice, tamarind water and fish sauce.

Quickly Scaled Mont Blanc

I love creamy desserts. They are a big weakness of mine. Tiramisu, trifle... if it's creamy, I'm there. I also like sweetened chestnut puree, but I never know what to do with it when I buy some. D loves this Coffee and Chocolate Meringue Cake, but that was the only recipe in my delicious collection that used sweetened chestnut puree, and it's quite a complicated process which I don't tend to do unless it's a special occasion.

This may make you think that I had some sweetened chestnut puree that I needed to use, but I actually didn't. I don't know what I was reading that made me think about sweetened chestnut puree. I still don't have any recipes in my delicious collection but I wanted something with sweetened chestnut puree. I thought Nigella's Quickly Scaled Mont Blanc might be an easy way to ease my cravings.

There was a small hurdle when there was no sweetened puree at the local gourmet supermarket. I ended up buying unsweetened and tried to emulate the dark smooth paste of the canned sweetene puree. It kind of worked but the prepared sweetened stuff is much much nicer.

So, for this dessert I sprinkled some chopped Lindt dark chocolate into the base of the glass, followed by some of my home-sweetened chestnut puree, followed by some cream (should be whipped, but I couldn't be bothered. I paid for this when the cream came out of the carton faster than I expected and nearly overflowed the glass). I finished it off with some crushed meringue nests and a sprinkling of malted milk powder. I was so lazy making this that I almost feel guilty passing it off as a Nigella-inspired recipe, because the domestic goddess would not put together something this sloppy.

Despite my sloppiness, it wasn't bad. The lashings of cream and the cocoa-flavoured meringue balanced out my not-quite-as-sweet puree and the malted powder actually added a nice dimension to the dessert. I think I used chocolate with too high a cocoa content though, it was just too bitter and really fought with the creaminess of the rest of the dessert. I don't think I would use dark chocolate again if I repeat the recipe.

Below I'm posting Nigella's recipe rather than my adaptation of it, if you really want to try it my way, I've detailed my changes above.

Now, what to do with a large amount of leftover unsweetened chestnut puree?

Quickly Scaled Mont Blanc
by Nigella Lawson

Makes 6 when made in shallow glasses

100g good quality dark chocolate
500ml oz double cream
2 meringue nests
500g sweetened chestnut purée or spread, from a can

Place the chocolate into the bowl of a food processor and blend until it forms large, broken grains. Divide the chocolate equally among the six glasses.

Place the cream in a large bowl and lightly whip it until soft peaks form. Crumble one of the meringues into the mixture and mix well.

Place the chestnut purée or spread on top of the chocolate in the glasses.

Spoon the cream and meringue mixture into the glasses on top of the chestnut purée.

To serve, crumble the remaining meringue over the top of the cream and meringue mixture.

Gozleme

We love gozlemes. We first tasted them on a trip to Sydney where the markets have a stall that makes the most spectacular gozlemes. We have missed them up here in Brisbane where there is no substitute. Then a stall at a local farmers' market started selling them too, but while they were tasty but they weren't quite as good as the Sydney ones.

Then we tried making them at home, complete with homemade dough. They were really good, but we had to stop comparing everything to the Sydney gozlemes.

The next time we had a gozleme craving, I was lazy and used tortillas in place of making my own dough. This made the final sandwich a little crispier than it should have been, but it saved an awful lot of time which makes this a really easy weeknight dinner.

I tweaked the mince mixture a little bit after being inspired by a recipe in the Woman's Day Marvellous Mince and More cookbook which I picked up cheap at a newsagent. The last time I added some tinned tomatoes to my mince mixture, this time I used some feta stirred through after cooking. I think this version is much closer to the spicy meat mix you get in the gozlemes from the market.

Easy Gozlemes
adapted from The Woman's Day Marvellous Mince and More cookbook

1 tbs oil
1 onion, finely chopped
2 garlic cloves, crused
1 tbs ground cumin
1 tsp paprika (hot or mild)
1 tbs sumac
1 tsp chilli flakes
500g beef mince
200g feta, crumbled
flour tortillas

Heat oil in a large frying pan over a high heat.

Add the onions and garlic and fry until soft. Add spices and cook for 1 minute.

Add the mince and fry, stirring, until cooked.

Transfer mixture to a bowl and cool for 10 minutes. Stir through the feta cheese. Season to taste.

Heat up a sandwich press.

Spoon filling evenly over a tortilla and top with another tortilla. Cook in the sandwich press until browned and crisp.

Serve with lemon wedges.

Cheesy Potato Bake

We had some potatoes laying around at home and D decided that he would like to have a potato bake for dinner. We don't have potatoes very often, I am more a rice and pasta person although I do love Japanese potato salad. I haven't had a potato bake since I lived with my mum, which was many years ago and I have never made one myself, so I went off to find a recipe.

Looking for a good potato bake recipe is similar to looking to for a pasta carbonara recipe. There are many many variations and there are many different combinations of ingredients that can be used to get the same kind of effect. In the case of potato bake, some use cream, some go for the more traditional roux, for example. I wanted to go for a roux to make my cheese sauce and I ended up choosing this recipe for Cheesy Potato Bake from Taste.com.au.

We halved the recipe and added a little bit of extra flavour by frying up some chopped onion and bacon. This was a really good idea from D, as it gave the potato bake some depth and complexity to its creamy cheesiness.

We had this in the oven by 6:45pm, but unfortunately our oven is terrible and our bake took much much longer than the stated 1 hour, even for a halved recipe. We didn't eat until nearly 9:30. We had planned to cook other things so we could have the potato bake as a side dish but we were so tired and annoyed by the time the bake was finally cooked that we just had potato bake for dinner. Stupid oven. Luckily, it tasted fantastic.

Cheesy Potato Bake
adapted from Taste.com.au

1/2 onion, chopped
1 rasher bacon, chopped
30g butter
1/8 cup plain flour
1 cup milk
1 cup grated tasty cheese
500g potatoes, peeled, thinly sliced


Preheat oven to 180°C. Grease a 6cm deep, 24cm square baking dish.

In a small frypan, cook the onion until soft and add the bacon. Cook until the mix colours.

Melt butter in a heavy-based saucepan over medium heat. Add flour. Cook, stirring constantly, for 2 minutes, or until bubbly. Remove from heat. Slowly add milk, stirring constantly until well combined. Return to heat. Cook, stirring, until sauce comes to the boil.

Add 1 1/2 cups of cheese. Stir to combine.

Arrange one-third of potatoes, overlapping slightly, over base of baking dish. Sprinkle with salt and pepper and onion/bacon mix. Spoon one-third of the cheese sauce over potatoes. Repeat twice. Sprinkle with remaining cheese.

Bake for 1 hour, or until potatoes are tender and top is golden. If top begins to brown too much, cover with foil.

Roasted Red Capsicum Pasta Salad

I love pasta salad. It's a great way to get all the vegetable goodness in salad with the added carbohydrates to help fill you up. This one, admittedly, is slightly light on the vegetables thanks to my poor measuring skills, so I took a small side salad to even it out.

I read Deb's blog Smitten Kitchen religiously. I haven't made one thing from her blog that hasn't turned out to be wonderfully tasty. So when she posted about this summer pea and roasted red pepper pasta salad, I had to give it a try.

The exciting part of this pasta salad was the roasted capsicum vinaigrette. It's quite simple, just roast some red capsicums, peel them and then puree them in a blender and then mix with the other ingredients. It was quite fun, actually. Such a beautiful red! The red wine vinegar does give the dressing quite a bite, Deb suggests adding a further two tablespoons if you want extra bite however I think next time I may reduce the red wine vinegar a little as I prefer a smoother taste.

The snow peas and peas gave a wonderful fresh taste, however next time I don't think I will blanch the snow peas or experiment with an extremely brief blanch as I like my snow peas to have the maximum crunch.

If you want to try this fabulous pasta salad yourself, see this post at Smitten Kitchen.

Carrot Cookie Sandwiches

There are many many recipes posted at the Masterchef website, not just those from the show but there's a myriad of recipes from Campbells Real Stock, Coles, Aeroplane Jelly and many other sponsors. Sometimes I am suspicious of sponsored recipes, as they rarely turn out to be as tasty as you would hope. I have been pleasantly surprised with the two recipes I have tried from the website, the first being Tessie's Italian Chicken Casserole and the second being these Carrot Cookie Sandwiches.

There aren't many people I know who do not like a fresh carrot cake with creamy cream cheese icing. I loved the idea of making this classic combination into a cookie.

I don't like sultanas, so I omitted them from the mix. I also had the freshest, most beautiful tasting cream cheese so I severely cut back on the amount of icing sugar in the icing.

The cookies turned out quite dense, next time I would make them much smaller and thinner. I think that I do prefer the traditional carrot cake, ultimately, however these are a nice change to a sweet cookie.

Carrot Cookie Sandwiches
adapted from a Coles recipe as posted on the Masterchef website

250g butter, at room temperature
1 cup brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla essence
2 eggs
2 cups plain fl our
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1 1/2 cups finely grated carrot
1 cups rolled oats

FILLING
250g spreadable cream cheese
1/8 cup pure icing sugar
1 tsp vanilla essence

Cream the butter , sugar and vanilla together in a large bowl until pale and creamy. Add the eggs, one at a time and beat well after each. Sift over the dry ingredients and then fold into the butter and egg mixture. Add the carrot and the oats and mix well. Cover and chill for 1 hour or until firm.

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celcius and line two trays with baking paper.

Roll tablespoons of dough into balls. Place on prepared trays, allowing room for spreading. Flatten slightly with a spatula. Bake for 15 mins, until golden. Cool on a wire rack.

Make Filling: Using an electric mixer, beat all ingredients together in a medium bowl until smooth. Spread filling onto half of the cookies. Sandwich with remaining cookies. Store in an airtight container in the refrigerator.

Matt Preston's dream kitchen

I found an article by Matt Preston over at the The Age in which he details his dream kitchen. This fantasy includes a walk-in pantry and a scullery of TARDIS-like (or batcave) proportions to house all of his kitchen appliances.

I know how it feels to dream of something like that. In our tiny rental kitchen, the only place to store appliances in the kitchen is on top of the cupboards. The few cupboards that we do have aren't deep enough to fit the slow cooker or the wok or the breadmaker. It looks terrible and cluttered, but there isn't anywhere else to put them. And that's just the appliances that aren't used everyday, the everyday appliances posed a much greater problem in our current kitchen. There is only one countertop (well, two if you count the sink) and it's extremely small. There's also only one powerpoint and it's next to the sink. This is where our toaster, kettle and coffee maker live, squished together in the counterspace between the fridge and the sink which is only 30cm wide.

We actually went out and bought more cupboards to try and expand our storage. These cupboards became my pantry, but I dream of a walk in pantry... or even a bigger cupboard. Or two. When we moved into this place I just gave the kitchen a cursory glance because this house had all of our other requirements, but you don't realise just how important the kitchen can be. Next time, I'm looking at the kitchen far more closely.

This post wasn't meant to be a kitchen-bash. I really identified with Matt's writing and happily fantasised alongside him as he fitted out his perfect kitchen.

It's a very enjoyable read and can be found here.

Malted Milk Cookies with Chunks of Dark Chocolate and Malteser Smashings

Lately, I've been obsessively reading through the archives of many many food blogs. My latest read is Ange's blog, Vicious Ange. Like me, Ange loves recipes by Bill Granger and Nigella Lawson, and her lovely pictures remind me how many recipes I still want to try.

One recipe in particular caught my eye and I could not wait to try it. My favourite chocolate is Maltesers. I love their light malty crunch. I also love Ovaltine or Horlicks in warm milk. I had never really thought to adapt the malty goodness of Maltesers and Ovaltine to baking, so when I saw these Malted Milk Cookies with Chunks of Dark Chocolate, my eyes lit up. I'm still a little unsteady, so baking has to be done in stages. Luckily, the recipe is nice and simple and can be made in one bowl, or the bowl of the mixer to minimise the dishes.

The only tricky thing is the chocolate and Malteser chunks. I am not a big fan of large chocolate chunks in my cookies, I much prefer a smaller more well-distributed chocolate chip. This meant that my larger Lindt dark chocolate buttons needed to be broken up. I have had bad experiences trying to beat chocolate into submission in a plastic bag, so I tried to break them up in a mortar and pestle. That didn't work either, so I gave up and blitzed chocolate and Maltesers together in my mini food processor. I pulsed them until I had a nice sandy texture with small pebble sized chunks of chocolate, which is the perfect size for me.

I only had 110g of dark chocolate instead of the 200g required by the recipe, but I definately didn't feel that the extra 90g were needed. I used heaped teaspoon sized scoops of dough and they made large biscuits. These tend to spread quite a bit. I like chewy biscuits, so I cooked them for the minimum cooking time and found that these had a lovely crispy outside and a beautifully chewy interior.

I couldn't be happier with how these biscuits turned out. They are absolutely amazing. If you would like to try them for yourself (and you should), see the recipe here at Vicious Ange.

Huevos Rancheros

My recent foray into Mexican food has made me quite excited to try and experiment further with these flavours. I was actually looking for something to make for breakfast and came across this recipe for Huevos Rancheros on Recipezaar. While this isn't normally accepted breakfast food, I've never been one for traditional breakfast fare and this appealed to me greatly.

It was really easy too, and cooked to perfection on the stove. My last attempt to cook runny eggs seemed foolproof but failed twice. This one seemed more perilous, but surprisingly enough turned out divinely runny yolks. Creamy yolk combined with the flavoured tomato sauce was a fresh explosion of flavour that made for a perfect breakfast.

I did jazz it up a bit. After omitting the chillis entirely, I added a squirt of sriracha sauce, some of the beef machaca and pico de gallo and some sour cream and cheese and served it with some tortillas fried in a small frying pan with a spray of olive oil. I will definately make this again.

Mexican Huevos Rancheros
adapted from Sharon123's recipe on Recipezaar

1 tablespoons olive oil
1/4 onion, chopped
4 cherry tomatoes, chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
1 teaspoon dried oregano leaves
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon sriracha sauce
3/4 cup passata
2 eggs

In large skillet, heat olive oil. Add the onion and cook until tender.

Add tomato, garlic, oregano, salt, sriracha and passata and simmer for about 20 minutes.

Break eggs, one at a time, into cup and slip into sauce and simmer over low heat until eggs are set, about 5 minutes.

Serve over tortillas.

Beef Machaca and Pico de Gallo

Something happened recently that made me start reading up on Mexican food, but I can't remember what it was. All I know, is that my delicious bookmarks have been overrun with fabulous Mexican (and Tex-Mex) recipes that I want to try, I've been investigating the authentic Mexican restaurants in Brisbane and watching any Mexican related cooking show I could get my hands on.

I really wish I could remember what started it all off?

Anyway, making Mexican food at home is a little difficult as I have no idea where I can get some of the ingredients like canned chillis and even different types of chilli. Most of the stores I frequent only classify them as being red or green. Helpful. Also, I'm a bit of a chilli wuss but I am willing to experiment. So, what is one to do when she really wants to cook Mexican but is unable to leave the house and even if she was able to leave wouldn't know where to get what she needed anyway? Wow, that was a poorly constructed sentence. Well, she improvises. I haven't got a lot of patience when it comes to cooking at the moment, simply because I can't stand up very well and it's quite hard to do things in the kitchen. It turns out that when it came to these dishes, that was a blessing as the dish became far more organic and was catered to our tastes as I couldn't be bothered measuring and just threw things in.


The guide I followed came from this recipe for Beef Machaca posted on Recipezaar. I loved the idea of slow cooking the meat and I knew it would make it much easier to shred. We used about 600g of chuck steak. It was a little fattier than I think it was meant to be - the meat attached to the fine veins of fat was a little more difficult to shred and I did have to remove some. I tossed it into the slow cooker with a sliced onion and 3/4 cup of water. I didn't have any canned chillis, so I guessed at the water content. To add some heat, I added a couple of splashes of sriracha sauce. I didn't have any adobo seasoning, so I used this recipe for Dry Adobe Seasoning (also on Recipezaar) as a guide. I didn't add any salt, I figured I could season it later if necessary. I added 2 beef stock cubes, the dry mustard powder and the peppercorns (I forgot the minced garlic) and then added approx 1 tsp garlic powder, 1 tsp onion powder, 1 tsp ground oregano and 1 tsp of cumin. I set the slowcooker to high and cooked it for 5 hours.

Halfway through the cooking time, I turned the meat over and tasted the liquid. It did need a little seasoning, so I added a sprinkle of salt (no more than half a teaspoon). After five hours, it smelled amazing and looked like this:


The meat was already falling apart, so I used a slotted spoon to remove it a bit at a time and shredded it on my chopping board. It was nice and easy. Fun too, because I could just lean against the counter and not move around. I enjoyed it. After shredding the beef, I stirred through a jar of medium-heat chunky salsa. None of the heat came through in the finished dish, so I do have something to work on for next time.


We bought some lovely vine-ripened tomatoes from the local fruit shop yesterday and I decided to make a quick pico de gallo using the recipe from SBS's Food Safari.

This was nice and easy too, except I discovered that all of my knives are in terrible need of sharpening. They massacred the poor tomatoes. Simply dice three tomatoes, add some chopped red onion, a sprinkle of salt and some chopped coriander and mix together. I followed the advice someone fave in the comments and added some lime juice as well. The lime juice lifted the salsa to a whole other level, it was definately a good idea.


We had nachos for dinner last night, serving our beef machaca and pico de gallo with some tortilla chips, sour cream and a little bit of cheese. D said it was awesome and went back for seconds. I have to agree, it was really amazing. We have been guilty of taking the mince/Old El Paso route to nachos previously, but this way is so different from the Old El Paso way that it's almost a different meal. The shredded beef was so much lighter than any mince mixture and it combined so well with the salsa. It wasn't stodgy like the mince versions can be. I have a tendency to add far more sour cream than I should to the mince versions, just to lift it a bit but this was completely unneccessary with the shredded beef. The smallest hint of sour cream was all it needed, just to give it a little finish.

The whole meal was a definate winner.

Beef Machaca
adapted from Sue L's recipe as posted on Recipezaar
and from Dry Adobe Seasoning Recipe posted by cookiedog

600g chuck steak
1 onion, sliced thinly
3/4 cup water
2 tbs sriracha chilli sauce
2 beef stock cubes
1 1/2 tsp dry mustard
10 peppercorns
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp onion powder
1 tsp ground oregano
1 tsp of cumin
pinch of kosher salt
1 jar medium heat chunky salsa

Add all ingredients to your slow cooker and cook on high for approx 5 hours or until meat is cooked through and tender. Check halfway through the cooking time to ensure no part of the meat is starting to dry out, turn meat if necessary. Check for seasoning and adjust if necessary.

Once meat has cooked, shred the beef and stir through the salsa. Add some of the cooking liquid if the mix looks too dry.

Pico de Gallo
from SBS's Food Safari

3 tomatoes, diced
1/2 red onion, diced
1/4 cup coriander, chopped
2 tbs lime juice
1 tsp salt

Combine the first three ingredients and add salt and lime juice to taste.

Brisbane Good Food and Wine Show 2009 - Sunday

Mum and I went solo to Sunday at the Good Food and Wine Show. It seemed like a lot of show-goers chose to sleep in on Sunday as it didn't start to get busy until later on in the afternoon. This meant we had a an hour or so of lovely leisurely strolling before the crowds rolled in.

We scored another twist potato first up, we couldn't resist. After that we wandered up to the Lilydale Chicken stand where Justine was starting another demonstration. Unfortunately, Ben was starting a demonstration across the aisle at the Barbeques Galore stand and Mum, although quite torn, decided that Ben trumped Justine and we scooted across the aisle to stake out good spots to watch Ben.


I turned into quite the famewhore this weekend and I boldly bugged Ben for a photo, but I'm a little self-conscious so you only get a bit of my hair in this pic. I even told him how much I loved the BBC version of The Best from years ago. He said that the show was great fun to make.

He was a great sport, chatting and laughing. He was even quite affable when Mum told him how much she didn't like him making fun of Darren on The Best Australia. What on earth happens on that show? I think it may have traumatised my mother. He told her that Darren gives as good as he gets and charmed her a little bit. She has been eyeing his cookbook Outdoor for a while, but she decided to buy it today and Ben good-naturedly autographed it in the middle of his demo.

Speaking of the demo, he made some pikelets in the BBQ and topped them with some banana, whipped cream and maple syrup. The photo below is of the test batch and were very tasty. I think I may have to replicate these at home.


Alistair McLeod in the Celebrity Theatre


Alistair McLeod was on MC duty for all the shows, and he was drafted into presenting when Curtis Stone wasn't available. We got a call a few months ago from Ticketek letting us know that there had been a change and letting us know that we could get a refund if we wanted. I was lucky enough to get tickets in the front row, so Mum and I decided to keep the tickets.

Last year D and I saw Alistair in the Celebrity Theatre because I liked him on Ready Steady Cook and I was obsessively lusting over the food at Brett's Wharf. I was a little disappointed, as I didn't feel that his natural enthusiasm carried over into his show. This year, however, he had enthusiasm in buckets.

He was really engaged and was so entertaining. He made some fantastic food, none of which I can remember clearly unfortunately. I discovered that I had lost my ticket about two hours before the show and we spent that time trying to work out what we could do so I could still see the show. I am still not very well with my inner ear problem, so when you add that to being very easily tired after two big days and add some stress on top I lost it a little bit and I don't remember the details.

I did take photos and I do know that Alistair was really informative, I just don't remember what he talked about. Mum and I both had a great time.

Alistair seemed to enjoy himself too, running way over time and needing to call out some help to get his dishes finished.

A salad with prawns and heart of palm and some kind of fish with a soup of cucumber and something else... I'm sorry I can't remember because it looked fabulous.

Using dry ice to make a raspberry sorbet

Matt Moran in the Celebrity Theatre

Straight after Alistair's show, we went back in for Matt Moran's final show. We bought the tickets Sunday morning and we were way back in the theatre, so the pictures didn't turn out so well.

Matt is another great entertainer. He had one of his assistant chefs helping him out, so he could focus more on the audience and not have to worry as much about the food. He did a lot of cooking too, but having that assistance helped. Matt, along with George and Gary, really tried to engage the audience more than just having a taster or two sitting on the side of the stage. Matt really made a production of his tasters, choosing couples (one married, one not) and making one guy serve everyone else and do dishes and making the husband of the other couple take a limited edition of his latest book out into the show and try and swap it for some goodies.

Matt spoke about Aria Brisbane, which is a restaurant that I really want to try. He asked the audience if anyone had eaten there and a few people raised their hands. He asked if anyone had eaten at Aria Sydney and a few more people raised their hands. He asked if anyone had eaten at both Sydney and Brisbane and only one guy raised his hand. He had eaten twice at Brisbane and once at Sydney. Matt gave him a big screen LG TV. Well, a ticket or receipt for one anyway. I excitedly told D about this, but he doesn't think that the very very small chance that Matt will repeat this gesture at future food and wine shows is a good enough excuse to eat at both Arias before the next show.

Matt cooked a chicken saute with chorizo and chickpeas served with witlof braised with orange and green peppercorns, a prawn tempura with a remoulade sauce and a raspberry tart with champagne sabyon.

I am a very bad food blogger and I don't remember much about Matt's dishes either. I wasn't very well by this stage.

After Matt's show, Mum took a stand and we went off to find some food. We had decided that we weren't going to spend more money on the restaurant, so we hadn't bought tickets earlier like we had been doing. Mum wanted to try Gary's chicken coleslaw which I ate on Saturday though, so we went and lined up for some tickets. The line wasn't too long, but the restaurant was full and the usher said that she didn't think we'd be able to get seats. She recommended going in and having a look, but she wasn't very confident. Luckily, we snared some bench seats as another couple was leaving. Mum said someone tried to take a seat three times while I was getting my dish.

As I said, Mum had Gary's chicken coleslaw and really enjoyed it. I didn't feel like eating, but I make an exception for Alistair's creme brulee dessert. This time the creme brulee topping was not crispy at all which was a little disappointing, but the chocolate custard was still comfortingly creamy. After food I did feel a little better so we wandered around a little more, but it wasn't long before we started feeling tired again so we picked a few favourite stalls to visit one last time and then we headed home.

Interestingly, D had requested that we buy him some ginger beer as a present from Sunday's show. We went to their stall and the lady there told us that someone from the show had made an error on their liquor licence so none of the beer/cider stalls were permitted to sell their goods. Poor D had to miss out on his ginger beer.

I ended up with quite a haul of strange and wonderful things. I bought some silicone fresh lids and ezi seal lids from B J Enterprises. I've already used these heaps since we bought them. I bought a shammy from one of the three shammy stalls (it doesn't clean carpet quite as well as advertised, but it still does a damn good job); two variety bags of Indomie noodles (mmm, healthy); a soy and chilli balsamic vinegar from The Really Stuffed Olive Co; a bottle of original Yumm dressing and a Back to Basics Squeeze It! from Tupperware, which is an accordian style plastic contraption to be used in place of a piping bag. Shows are fun.

Can't wait for next year!

Brisbane Good Food and Wine Show 2009 - Saturday

Before we get into our regularly scheduled blogging fun, I just have to say I can't believe I have not seen Ratatouille before. It's like Remy is speaking directly to my food blogger heart...

Anyway, it was very very busy on Saturday at the Food and Wine Show. Very very busy. It was still a good fun day as D joined Mum and I and we also caught up with some friends. As hard as it is keeping a big group together in the crowds, it's fun to share.

D, Mum and I made our way in in the morning, thinking we could beat the afternoon crowds. I don't think there was anything you could do to beat the crowds on Saturday. Again, we made a beeline to the ticket booth for the restaurant. It was one of our best ideas all weekend (the other was going on Friday too!).

Thanks to our Friday visit, Mum and I had wandered through all the stalls and we had already earmarked our favourites to revisit. It was good, because it was really hard to get to many stalls due to the huge crowds in front of them. We knew which ones were worth the pushing and the waiting.

Twist Potato

One of the stalls well worth the wait is the Twist Potato stand. On Friday we saw these people wandering around with these crazy looking potatoes on sticks and on Saturday we decided to wait in the line (10 minutes at 10:30am!!!) and see what all the fuss was about.


Twist Potato sells a strange little machine that cuts a potato into a spiral which is then threaded onto a skewer, dipped in a batter and fried in duck fat. After the frying, you get to sprinkle on your choice of flavourings, BBQ, chilli, cheese or onion.


We spoke to one of the exhibitors while in line and they are hoping to sell these for use at fetes and markets as a tasty snack food. They are really easy to use, while we waited they invited some kids to make their own potato and the hardest part was threading the spiralled potato onto the stick.


After our wait we joined the few people wandering around with these beauties. We got stopped so many times by people wanting to try them. They were really yummy, better than hot chips and even roast potato. You still got the crispy outside and the soft fluffy inside, they were so good!!

Unfortunately, their stall was in front of the Black Pearl Epicure stall, which had this amazing selection of cheeses in a French Cheese showbag. I tasted some of their cheese on Friday and adored them, but didn't want to carry cheese around because we would be away quite late and I never had the opportunity to go back and taste more cheese or buy the showbag. I guess I'll just have to go and visit their store.

Spirit House Spice Cream


I would love to visit the Spirit House at Yandina. I had a work colleague that attended some of their cooking classes and she said that they were magnificent. The Spirit House had a stall in Lyndey Milan's Regional Produce Market section of the show offering samples of their amazing spice cream. Mum's and my favourite was the chocolate and chilli, while D preferred the coconut and lime.

Wild Oats Restaurant

We were a little later on Saturday and were lucky that we managed to score a table.

Main dish from Gary Mehigan - Braised Beef Cheek, Red Onion Marmalade and Horseradish Mash

D picked the main dish from Gary for lunch. The beef was a little dry, but the onion marmelade and the horseradish mash were very well received by D. He liked the sauce to start, but felt that it got very overpowering as he made his way through the dish. I liked the sauce, but I thought the osso bucco on Friday was nicer.

Speaking of the osso bucco, Mum chose to have this for lunch on Saturday. She felt that the meat was dry and there wasn't enough sauce. She said that my version of the dish on Friday was heaps tastier.

Entree from Gary Mehigan - Vietnamese Chicken Coleslaw, Green Papaya, Peanuts and Mint Nuoc Mam Dressing

I couldn't find any peanuts or green papaya in my lunch, but it didn't matter because it was a perfect fresh summer salad. It was light and tasty and had a great zingy dressing. It was pretty big too, I didn't feel that I was going hungry by not choosing a main.

Dessert from Gary Mehigan - Clotted Cream & Lemon Curd Mousse, Spiced Gingerbread Crumble

Of course, I may not have needed a main dish because I indulged myself with dessert again. D stole a bite from this before I got a chance to. He said that it was all right but then followed it up with "you'll love it" to me. He was right, I love creamy desserts and I love lemon curd so this mix of flavours hit all the right notes with me. Yum.


Justine Schofield and Lilydale Chickens


Justine from Masterchef was demonstrating recipes at the Lilydale Chicken stand. We started watching her make a stir-fried chicken and prawn omelette, but Mum was being squashed up against the wall by lots of people behind her and we decided to leave them to it and we left before she finished. She is really tiny in real life.


Gary Mehigan and George Calombaris in the Celebrity Theatre


George and Gary put on a great show in the Celebrity Theatre. They bounced off each other really well and the script felt quite natural as they related little anecdotes and teased each other. They were funny and really engaging. It was lots of fun.

They each made two dishes and took so long that at the end they were being chased off the stage by Alistair McLeod, who was MC (it is really difficult to get a photo of Alistair - he never stands still!)


Gary made a Trout Watercress, Potato, Radish and Bacon Salad. He arranged it Stonehenge-style on the plate, but it still looked awesome. I would have really liked to taste it.


Gary's second dish was English Doughnuts filled with jam and dusted with lavender sugar. Another dish I really want to try! Then, eschewing the 2009 custom of having two audience members sitting stage left (or right) during the show, Gary instead called three or four kids up on stage and tasked them to remove the flowers from the lavender at the table. The lucky things also got to taste the doughnuts. Gary also took the remaining doughnuts for a run through the audience, comparing the audience to seagulls as he handed them out. Gary and George alternated dishes, and the doughnuts were actually the last dish made.



George made some Greek egg and lemon soup (Kotopoulo Avgolemono) and a lamb souvlaki served with chips. I didn't get a photo of the egg and lemon soup, but I was sitting in my chair wishing I could taste some of its creamy white goodness. George did get an audience member to sit stage right, and it didn't look like she was a fan of the soup as she barely touched it. George tried to feed some to her, but she didn't seem to change her position. Soon after Gary finished his trout dish, the audience member chosen to taste that dish shared some salad with her and soup was left sitting on the table.


George's second dish was a lamb souvlaki. I love souvlaki, and even though D doesn't like lamb I'm going to make this. George cooked this for eight hours in a very low oven (I think it was 100 degrees C), saying that it could even be cooked overnight. I don't trust my oven to maintain any sort of heat for any length of time (it has trouble with 15 minute biscuits) so I may have to move first...

George served the lamb in a pita smeared with mustard (the Greeks only put out the garlic sauce for tourists, apparently) and topped with some red onion, parsley and thick cut chips which he freshly deep fried. He wrapped it up in some paper and then had the whole audience jumping up and down when he asked who wanted to try it. Sadly, it wasn't me. Gary went for another run into the audience handing out the remaining chips.

Their show was really fun, all three of us had a great time.

I am really into Greek cooking at the moment and I've been wanting to buy one of George's books for months. I wasn't sure which one to buy and had been intending on doing some internet research before I gave in to temptation, but after the show I succumbed to my consumerist tendencies and bought a copy of George's Greek Cooking from the Hellenic Heart. Luckily, I've been quite inspired by many of the recipes in the book. I also got it signed by George and he impressively managed to take up three quarters of a page with his signature. Well done. I also scored another photo with him, this time taken by D who amazingly managed to get a really good photo of me. I'm calling it my glamour shot. George was also much friendlier on Saturday than he was on Friday night. When I asked for a photo, he responded quite positively and gave me a hug which was a marked difference from Friday's "make it quick" so he must have had a bad day on Friday.

Ben O'Donoghue and Barbeques Galore

After my brush with fame we wandered past the Barbeques Galore stand where Ben O'Donoghue was demonstrating some of their products. He was making a pizza of some kind. Mum remembered seeing him use the pizza stone combo last year and was hoping that we could try some this year, however the people in front of us didn't move after taking their samples and we couldn't get in before they were all gone. Oh well, it wasn't meant to be.


Here's a blurry picture of Ben. It was very busy at the stall and that picture was the best one of the lot!!

Below is a picture of the beer can chicken they were also cooking. It uses a funky little stand so the chicken stands up easily while mounted on the can. I want one so I can try and make beer can chicken. It looks awesome.

Brisbane Good Food and Wine Show 2009 - Friday

Well, the Brisbane Good Food and Wine Show is over for another year. It was three massive days of food, wine and fun. My mother and I (in what's becoming a yearly tradition) attended on all three days and we had a great time.

Admittedly, I was a little disappointed in this year's show offerings. There were over 300 exhibitors, but there didn't seem to be as many repeat exhibitors. Last year, I bought some fantastic sauces and other goodies and I was hoping to get some more, especially The Chilli Man sauces which I absolutely adored. Out of the nine exhibitors I purchased from last year, only three were at this year's show. There were many many other exhibitors, but I did miss the ones that I had enjoyed previously.

While I was hoping for the The Chilli Man to be there, I was really hoping to get some great sauces. I just can't get the depth of flavour that I like in a sauce from the supermarket brands and I haven't found a gourmet brand that meets my high expectations. I was really excited about the show, because where better to sample different brands than a food show? However, I wasn't very lucky this year.

Another noticeable absence was all the cooking magazines. Last year all of them were there and some of them even had the cooking demonstrations. This year all we had was BBC Good Food.

Anyway, enough about what wasn't there and on to what was there.

Friday was an awesome day to go to the show and we didn't realise how good we had it until Saturday morning when every move you made was against a crowd of people.

A few days before the show started, members of the mailing list received an email saying that the first 150 people to the show on Friday morning would win a gift bag which included Curtis Stone's new book Relaxed Cooking with Curtis Stone. Originally, Curtis Stone was one of the Celebrity Chefs who would be appearing in the Celebrity Theatre. My mum really likes Curtis' cooking so I booked my tickets at 9am on 25 August, the day they first went on sale, and we had front row centre seats. Then we found out that Curtis couldn't attend because of filming commitments in the US and we were a little disappointed. We decided that we would get to the Convention Centre early on Friday so we could at least get a copy of his cookbook if we couldn't see him live.

We arrived before 9am for the 10am show start along with many many other people. When we started queuing, there were around 50 people in the queue (thanks to the lovely people behind us who counted) however, we ended up behind around 80 other people. Nobody likes a queue jumper people. I don't care who is holding your spot. I'm talking about people like the lady who casually pushed in front of me without a look or a word while talking on her mobile and ran over my feet with her trolley and then, talking all the while, pushed her way through other people until she settled in near the front of the line. She didn't even have someone holding her spot!

Rude and inconsiderate people notwithstanding, we did manage to get a copy of Curtis' book and it's lovely. It's just amazing how free stuff can make people go crazy.

Wild Oats Restaurant

The first thing Mum and I did was visit the booth selling tickets to the restaurant. Last year the line for the restaurant was always crazily long and we hoped to beat the crowds having to queue twice (once for tickets and once to get in). After a short time of browsing through the stands, we decided to take an early lunch, again hoping to beat the crowds. We didn't realise how lucky we were, as we had no problems finding a lovely table and Mum only had to wait for one other person to be served before getting served herself.

The restaurant prices have been hit by the global financial crisis (just joking), increasing from increments of $7 to increments of $8. A dessert was $8, entree and glass of wine was $16 and a main and a glass of wine was $24.

Main dish from Alistair McLeod - Peppered beef salad, roasted tomatoes, kipfler potatoes and horseradish cream

Mum chose the peppered beef salad from Alistair McLeod. Noticeably absent were the roasted tomatoes, however Mum can't eat tomatoes so they weren't really missed. We also looked the dish over quite closely and couldn't see the pepper. We must have to take the kitchen's word for it. The beef was a little overdone for my tastes, but I can't imagine that cooking for such a magnitude of people could be easy and I could understand that something like that may be a casualty of the situation, however it was 11:30 on the first morning.

Wow, that sounds really critical. It wasn't meant to be. The horseradish cream was beautiful and creamy and went really well with the beef and the salad was lovely and fresh, there were just a couple of things we noticed.

Main dish from Tobie Puttock - Veal Osso Bucco

On the other hand, I didn't notice anything out of order with Tobie Puttock's main dish, a wonderfully rich osso bucco. The veal was cooked beautifully and fell apart when you prodded it with your fork. The mash was creamy and delightful and the sauce was deep and fabulous. It was so good.

Dessert from Alistair McLeod - Chocolate creme brulee, Irish whiskey roasted strawberries and almond biscotti

This was also amazing. So amazing, in fact, I had it again on Sunday. Friday's was the best though. The Irish whiskey roasted strawberries were sweet but had a deep taste from the whiskey that wasn't boozy at all. The chocolate creme brulee had an awesomely crisp top and divinely creamy chocolate custard. It was so good I had trouble concentrating on what Mum was saying while I ate it, shamelessly dunking the biscotti into the chocolate cream.

Tobie Puttock in the Celebrity Theatre


First up on our Celebrity Theatre schedule was Tobie Puttock and his awesome shirt. He was wearing it to promote a friend's business, but I can't remember what that business was. Whatever it was, it is a very cool shirt.

Tobie is the only celebrity chef that we have seen every year that we have visited the show and he always is great to watch. This time he made a rotolo of beetroot leaves and ricotta and beef for two roasted in herbed salt.

Watching him make the rotolo was great. I don't think I'd ever try this one at home, but it looked very cool. He wrapped some beetroot leaves, ricotta and mushrooms in some fresh pasta sheets and then he wrapped that in a chef's cloth and cooked it in a water bath in the oven.

This year they had two small tables at either end of the stage and during the show (as usual) they chose an audience member or two to taste the dishes. However, this time they sat the audience member/s at the table for the whole show and they got to taste all the dishes. I much preferred previous years when more people had the opportunity to see/smell/taste the finished dishes. Gary and George were a notable exception to the general rule, running up and down the aisle giving out chips and doughnuts and Matt Moran chose two sets of audience members, one for each of his dishes (more on these chefs later).

Moving on, Tobie made a beef roast in a pastry-type crust that can imitate a full salt crust using flour, salt, herbs, egg whites and water. The beef is first browned in a frypan before being finished off in the oven. When he cut open the beef it was a gorgeous shade of pink. I would really have liked to taste it, so I guess I will have to try and cook it at home.

Tobie was excited because he was heading off to Wet 'n' Wild after the show. I hope he enjoyed himself.


Ben O'Donoghue in the Celebrity Theatre


We bought tickets to see Ben O'Donoghue later that afternoon and were lucky to get some really good seats near the front. The only experience I've really had seeing Ben on TV is from the BBC show The Best in 2002 (which I love) but Mum, who is lucky enough to get Lifestyle Food, has seen him on Surfing the Menu and more recently on The Best in Australia and last year at the Barbeques Galore stand at the show. She wasn't all that interested in seeing Ben as she didn't like how horrible they were to Darren and she told the box office clerk this (I had no idea what she was talking about) but when the show started Ben asked the audience if they thought he was mean to Darren on TV he explained that it was all editing and they had to do it. After that, Mum was a little more kindly disposed towards him.

He put on a good show. He cooked nice clean flavours and was entertaining to watch. I was one of the lucky two picked to taste his dishes and it was very uncomfortable sitting up there with everyone watching you eat, plus it was hard to see what Ben was doing as you couldn't really see the screen and the angle was off to see the counter. However, I did get to taste his cooking, which was awesome.

He made two dishes, the first was a great fresh entree of prawns with a watermelon and mango salad. The prawns were lightly brushed with wasabi and then were wrapped in kataifi (I think - it was Greek shredded filo pastry. Can anyone correct me on this?). They were then deep fried and served with salad of mango and watermelon with some greens, and some small dollops of Japanese mayonnaise mixed with wasabi. It was very nice and light, I loved all the flavours separately, and it was a lovely fresh salad.

Ben served this salad by using a melon baller and then placing balls of mango and watermelon at random intervals about the plate and then interspersed them with dollops of mayonnaise. This seems like such a random Stonehenge-esque way to serve something to me, but Gary did the same thing so it must be the fashion at the moment.

Ben's second dish was an Indian style fish marinated in lime, chilli powder, zest of lime, garlic and ginger. He then toasted some dahl and peppercorns with some other things (I can't remember, I'm sorry) and ground them up. He mixed in some fresh chopped coriander and then coated the fish in the mix. He served the fish with some homemade tomato relish. The fish was absolutely awesome, nice and flavourful with a real kick from the chilli. The tomato relish was a huge winner too, I could have eaten it on its own.

Christmas Canapes and Sparkling

Two days before the show, another email was sent out with a competition to win tickets to an evening of canapes and sparkling wine with Gary Mehigan and George Calombaris. I was definately up for that, so I entered and I was quite excited when I won a double pass.

Mum and I knew it was going to be a long day as the event didn't start until 6:15pm, and we had gotten to the show early that morning, so we were a little tired while we waited the short time between the close of the show and the start of our evening. We perked up once we entered the Reidel Wine Theatre and were given our first glass of sparkling. I don't drink, but I do like a nice sparkling and the Hardys Sir James Cuvee Brut is a very nice sparkling. I had three or four glasses, which is huge for me and made me quite a spectacle walking to the bus stop later that evening.

Anyway, the wine theatre had been elegantly arranged into a lovely little cocktail party with a DJ playing some great music. We enjoyed our wine and chatted to the couples around us until Gary and George arrived.


They mingled through the crowd and even stopped for photos (you don't get to see either of the photos taken of me with Gary and George as my photographer may have had more to drink than she realised and they both turned out blurry - love you Mum!). I got a cuddle from Gary too. He seems to enjoy the odd cuddle. George seemed a little over the whole thing and when I asked for a photo I was told to "make it quick", but they must have had a long day.

They took centre stage for a moment and explained that they designed the canapes we were about to try and we would be able to taste them paired with a matched Hardys wine. I loved my sparkling too much to change, so I missed the matched wine experience. After their little speech they did a bit more mingling before disappearing off into the night. They weren't there for very long, but we learned the next day that they were booked in to dine at Aria Brisbane so they must have had to rush.

The canapes were quite tasty, but knowing of George's opinion of food bloggers and twitterers, I'll just tell you what they are and comment that the vitello tonnato and the saganaki martini were my favourites even though he's apparently sworn off the internet.

Salmon Rillet (Gary) - fresh salmon mixed with shallots, lemon zest and juice and white pepper and then mixed with smoked salmon, creme fraiche and chives.

Vitello Tonnato (Gary) - poached veal scotch with a sauce of mayonnaise, anchovies, capers, lemon juice and zest and tuna.

Mezze on a Stick (George) - white anchovies, pistachio praline and octopus marinated in paprika, thyme, red wine vinegar, roasted garlic puree and olive oil.

Saganaki Martini (George) - fried haloumi served over some tomato, cucumber, candied olives and chives in a tomato gin tea.

After a long enjoyable day we caught a bus home, managed to eat some dinner and then went to bed early to rest up for more food and wine on Saturday.