Adriano Zumbo Bandaged Bear Cake

Adriano Zumbo's continued support of the Childrens Hospital at Westmead has become another auction. To celebrate Bandaged Bear's 21st birthday, Adriano has created a one-of-a-kind cake, featuring fairy bread, Yogo mousse, vanilla praline icing and chocolate pop rocks is up for grabs (a new one, made just for you, of course). If you feel like satisfying your sweet tooth as well as your charitable spirit, click here and place a bid - there are just 2 more days to go.

seasonal food

(as heard on FBI Radio)

As the seaons tick over and the weather gets cooler once again, there's a certain delight in seeing what fruits and vegetables have popped their heads up and are back on grocer shelves. Here are three seasonal finds and what to do with them.

Celeriac

This rather ugly root vegetable is actually a kind of celery (hence the name), but rather than the green bits, it's all about the bit below the ground. You'll see it in restaurants often as a puree, matched with beef, or pork, or as a soup. It has an earthy, nutty flavour with some of those fresh celery characteristics thrown in for good measure.

At home, use it instead of your regular potato mash: Peel, chop and par boil the pieces of celeriac. Add salt (celeriac loves salt), white pepper, butter, single cream and blitz it with a stick blender. The result is a silky, elegant mash that'll go well with anything from fish to beef and beyond.

Brussel Sprouts

These poor guys get such a bad rap from mothers and grandmothers who overboiled them and served up soppy, miserable lumps of faded greenery on the plate.

When they're new in season and small, they're fantastic when treated very lightly and of should only see the inside of the boiling pot for a few seconds. A great tip for any green veggie you want to blanch is to soak them in ice-water first and then stick them in the boiling water a few seconds. The ice-water reduces the extent to which the vegetable is cooked and helps to retain more nutrients and a brighter colour.

Core and blanch these babies, then toss them in a hot pan with butter, crushed garlic and a pinch of caraway seeds. Season with salt and pepper. You'll be converted.

Apples

Fuji, Gala, Golden Delicious, Granny Smiths, Royal Gala and Jonathon apples are all great at this time of the year - eat 'em raw to enjoy the best of the season, but you can always throw them into the pot and make a great homemade apple sauce for pork, or a quick dessert like this:

Peel and chop apples, pop them in a bowl and add a brown sugar, ground cinnamon, nutmeg and a nob of soft butter. Mix.

Grab a sheet of puff pastry, cut into squares and fill each square with the apple mixture, fold them in half to form triangles. Glaze with a beaten egg and pop into a hot oven for 15 minutes or until the pastry turns golden brown. Serve with vanilla ice cream. Easy.

lunch launch

Are you a corporate entertainer? Are you looking for a new, chic (and most importantly) cost effective venue to take clients out to lunch in the Sydney area? Do you want a longer, stronger erection?

...Ok, scrap that last question, but if you answered yes to the first two, email info@fooderati.com.au with the subject title 'Lunch Launch' for your chance to score an invite to lunch for you and a colleague.

melbourne food & wine festival

The Melbourne Food & Wine Festival launched this week and with a program guide that spans 87 pages, you can rest assured that there's plenty on the agenda for every palate, budget and interest. The agenda remains the same though: To appreciate all that Melbourne (and Victoria, really) has to offer, when it comes to the business of the banquet. From garden fork to kitchen fork, all aspects of the food journey are covered.

The ever popular masterclass sessions at The Langham, showcasing local and international chefs including NYC enfant terrible David Chang, Spain's Adoni Luis Aduriz from recently charred Mugaritz and local heroes Guy Grossi, Peter Gilmore and wunderkind Adam D'Sylva. At $590 for a weekend ticket, it ain't no snip to see these guys in action.

There are, however, plenty of other options that don't cost the earth to eat from it.

1. Crawl & Bite

If you tend to be an over eater and a post-meal constitutional is a must, then the series of restaurant crawls is perfect. For $50, you can choose a trio of hip Melbourne restaurants (mercifully) close to one another, and the idea is that you get to try a signature dish and matched drink at each venue. Guided by the passionate staff from restaurants such as Coda, Red Spice Road, Movida Next Door/aqui and Seamstress, it's a great way to sample a few restaurants in one night. Food, drink and cardio: a well-rounded combo, so you don't have to be.

More info here.

2. Metlink Edible Garden














The centre of Melbourne has been turned into an edible garden for the festival. The concept stems from the desire to educate more people about where the food on their plate comes from, The Diggers Club have transformed City Square into a consumable delight, trucking in edible flowers, plants and trees from 10 regions in Victoria.

Chefs and cooks like Stephanie Alexander will take to the stage to talk about the joys of growing your own, and best of all, the event is free.

Where: City Square, Melbourne
When: Throughout the festival

More information and image source here.

3. The Culinary Cinema


Food and film are best mates, really. But aside from going for a vegan feed at Govinda's in Sydney before kicking back and watching a film on cusions in Darlinghurst, there aren't many events that theme the cuisine and cinema together.

Selvana Chelvanaigum from The Tea Rooms and Persimmon's Terry Clarke have created food and film parings along the lines of sweets and cocktails with Like Water for Chocolate, which aired on March 13, but coming up is Terry's lunchbox creation inspired by The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and her lover which screens this weekend.

The screening is free, the food is $30 - but when you factor in going to see a movie and then grabbing dinner, it's a no brainer.

Where: NGV International, 180 St Kilda Road, Melbourne
When: Saturday March 20

www.ngv.vic.gov.au and details here.

le whif

Oh god, how I love The Colbert Report. Without it, we'd be much poorer for it. And probably laugh a lot less. I'd also not know about the wonderfully insane developments in food that, for the most part, occur in the U.S.A.

Take the Le Whif, for instance. Why chew your food, when you can quite literally inhale it? A finely ground flavoured powder, you suck it through a contraption that somewhat resembles an asthma inhaler. What more could you ask for, really.



Available in both chocolate and coffee versions, the website provides pure gold quotes such as "easy to open!", and "takes a new approach to eating, by breathing."

Need I say more? Thank you Stephen Colbert.

nsw wine week

Well, it's the second week of FBI Radio's supporter [Booty Call] drive. Keeping with the theme of 'bang for your buck', NSW wine week is upon us and what better way to discover some of the states more interesting varietals than with good food.

Over the next month, there are a host of restaurants playing nice with NSW wine, offering great value meals matched with wine. The way it works is the restaurants have created a dish that showcases great produce and their signature skill and then their wine person requests the type of varietals best suited to the food. NSW wine comes to the table with a selection to choose from (cue the theme song from 'Perfect Match').

Here are a few picks to try over the next few weeks. Chin chin.

The Bather's Pavillion Restaurant

4 The Esplanade
Mosman NSW 2088
(02) 9969 5050

An idyllic setting, heirlook vegetables and an interesting wine match. Take a date.

King fish with fennel and heirloom carrots, lemon and baby caper dressing
Wine: 2009 Eden Road The Long Road Canberra Riesling
Cost: $50

Le Pelican

411 Bourke St
Surry Hills NSW 2010
(02) 9380 2622

Half a duck? Hell yeah! This underrated French brasserie in Sydney's Darlinghurst is worth giving a go for the sexy setting, decadent duck and perky pinot.

Roasted half duck, green pea puree, braised shoulder facon pastilla
Wine: 2008 Eden Road Tumbarumba Pinot Noir
Cost: $40

Fix St James

111 Elizabeth Street
Sydney NSW 2000
(02) 9232 2767

Pine mushrooms come into season around this time of the year, particularly after a good dose of rain and, as the name implies, grow around the bases of pine trees. Meaty in texture and with it's ability to carry other flavours well, this dish gets ticks for being seasonally savvy and using a less popular cut like the flank - showing the chef knows his stuff.

Wagyu flank (medium rare) with pine mushroom & eschallot sauce
Wine: 2008 Glandore Estate Hunter Valley Tempranillo
Cost: $40

Cottage Point Restaurant

2 Anderson Pl
Cottage Point NSW 2084
(02) 9456 1011

Twice cooked free range spatch, mushrooms and polenta..with the weather cooling down, this is the kind of food we can start indulging in. Cottage Point may be a little way out of Sydney, but the trip is worth it.

Thirlmere free range spatchcock poached in chicken stock then roasted, served with braised king brown mushroom and warm white polenta, topped with parmesan and parsley sauce on a chicken and mushroom jus

Wine: 2009 Barwang Tumbarumba Pinot Gris
Cost: $40

Check out more details and dinner here.

taste of young sydney [TOYS]

Last night saw the first Taste of Young Sydney [TOYS] dinner: Issue #1: Phat.

The idea was spawned from a conversation between Sydney chef Morgan McGlone of Flinders Inn and SMH senior writer Helen Greenwood, loosely consisting of a rant session about how young chefs don't take the initiative enough in order to show what they can do when left to their own devices. A phonecall to me from Morgan, a few yum cha and pub sessions later and Taste of Young Sydney was born.

Coming together over beers at the pub; Adriano Zumbo, Darren Robertson (Tetsuya), Morgan McGlone (Flinders Inn), Dan Hong (Lotus), and the Good Food Guide's 2010 Josephine Pignolet Young Chef of the Year chef, Mitch Orr decided to pull their skills together and create a dinner with a difference. With each chef taking a course under the theme 'Phat', the dinner was inspired by events of legendary dinners past, like those created by Gay Bilson.

Together with as many friends as possible; wine, front of house, marketing, music, design and development, the [TOYS] collective exists to showcase real next generation talent in a fun, dynamic environment.

[TOYS] Class of 2010

Banjo Harris-Plane, Erin Thommeny, Kylie Javier, Paul Yanon, Chauncey Sjostedt, Dan Hong, Darren Robertson, Mitch Orr, Morgan McGlone, Adriano Zumbo

Held at Flinders Inn, Paddington, 55 fierce food lovers came together to experience a meal cooked by five friends, running the gamut from Dan Hong's mini banh mi canapes to Darren Robertson's Three Little Pigs inspired pork dish and Adriano's reconstructed pork spare rib dessert, the food was inventive, inspired and most of all, fun.

Images, taken by the very talented Nathalie Swainston to come, but for more details, check out our site: www.tasteofyoungsydney.com.au.

one litre of coffee?

Watching the Colbert Report recently, there was mention of a new Starbucks drink size in the USA: the Trenta. Normally, Fooderati wouldn't bother with discussing coffee sacrilege, but when the coffee is an epic, nerve-hacking 32 ounces...or 946.35295 mls of (dodgy at best) coffee, one needs to say...WTF?



























Starbuck's attempt at The Big Gulp, there's no question that anyone actually needs to consume close to a litre of coffee, and considering the vendor, it's surprising to most that people actually want to, either. Ick.

Image from here.

where do you go for kangaroo?

FBI Radio's Sweetie: "I have friends who have just gotten of the plane from New York. They want to eat our national treasures. Where do we start?"

Poor little Skippy. Once known for being cute, furry and found at Symbio Wildlife Park, these guys are increasingly hopping from park to plate, thanks to an increase in the availability of roo meat in Australia's butchers (prime cuts) and supermarket shelves (kanga bangers).

Seen as a pest in some rural parts of this wide brown land, kangaroo meat has been embraced by conservationists and farmers alike, who see the farming of kangaroo as a way to keep the population (and it's damage) down and supply the public with a viable source of red meat.

The movement to eat kangaroo has even spawned a new 'atarian'...the kangatarian. Tayissa Barone's article in Good Living in February 2010 identified a new breed of semi-vegetarian (wtf?) - those whose only meat intake is kangaroo, based on environmental, ecological and humanitarian grounds.

Omnivores alike will find roo meat just as tasty, whether you buy into the ethical argument or not. So what's it like? Like any game meat, there's very little fat which means it should either be cooked fairly quickly, or incredibly slowly, to get the best out of the produce. There's a moderately gamey scent and flavour don't let the doe eyes fool you - this is one tasty little guy.

So where to you go to eat roo?

1. Wolfie's Grill

17/21 Circular Quay
The Rocks NSW 2000, Australia
(02) 9241 5577
www.wolfiesgrill.com.au

For $43, you get two Aussies on your plate; kangaroo loin fillet and crocodile tail medallions..think of it as native Australian steak and chicken. If two is a little much, roo also features on their mixed grill platter with a more traditional line up of lamb cutlets, petit tenderloin, ribs and sausage, for $45.

2. Kingsleys Steak House

29 King St
Sydney NSW 2000
(02) 9295 5080
http://kingsleyssteak.com.au/

Not just for a seriously good beef steak, if you like your roo a little bit fancy, try the roast kangaroo loin with spatzli, red cabbage & porcini cream at Kingsleys Steak House on for size.

3. Haydens Pies

166 Princes Hwy
Ulladulla
New South Wales, 2539
Phone: (02) 4455 7798

If you're headed down the coast, make sure you stop by Haydens Pies for a pie pitt stop with gourmet aspirations. The pastry is flakey and buttery, there's a huge selection including rotating daily specials that run the gamut from seafood bisque to good old steak and kidney...and kangaroo with roasted beetroot. Stewy and rich, the meat is tender and the beetroot gives a great earthy flavour and sweetness. For something closer to home, try St Honore Bakery in North Sydney, 50 Miller Street, North Sydney , NSW (opposite Greenwood Plaza).