Events

Adelaide Chocolate School: Truffle Making for Beginners

- Alex Prichard Leave a comment

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Not so long ago a friend of mine spotted a group buying deal for a truffle making class at the Adelaide Chocolate School. It worked out at half price and seemed like a fun way to spend an afternoon so why not? We bought the deal and booked ourselves in straight away (see my top five hints for group buying restaurant deals). The booking process (which my mate did, not me!) seemed a bit long winded, as you had to reserve online and then wait for confirmation of your chosen date/time – so it might not be ideal for anyone with a very restricted schedule.

Fortunately, we got our desired date/time and so we headed along last Sunday afternoon to see what it was all about. While I’m happy and confident making ganache, I have never actually made truffles so I was really interested to have the experience and (to a certain extent) have my hand held through it.

The class is 2 hours long and it does absolutely start on time! We arrived very early so we went for a coffee, which meant we walked through the door of the chocolate school bang on 1pm (maybe a minute after!) and things had just started and we were the last ones there. Be early!

There was a bit of introduction before we moved on to choosing our chocolate and starting on our ganache. We had a choice of white, milk or dark chocolate (I chose dark) and we each got 300g of chocolate and a funky little bench top electric bain-marie. I normally melt chocolate in the microwave so going back to the bain-marie method was a bit sloooow for impatient me but it was really interesting to learn that you can use anything which has an element to melt your chocolate. Our elements were set at 80°C (I don’t think they got quite that high) and the instructor said that if, for example, you had an electric fry pan you could heat to a low temperature you could use that. No water required – just place your chocolate in a metal dish on the element.

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We melted our 300g of chocolate with ⅓ cup of cream (we used full fat UHT cream). Being dark chocolate mine took ages to melt and I would have liked a bit more time at this stage of proceedings.

Once the chocolate and cream was smooth, we divided it in to two batches and flavoured each. I chose rose and coffee as my flavourings. We used flavouring essences which I wasn’t such a fan of. The flavour wasn’t quite as true or intense as I would like but I do understand that essences are a great way of imparting flavour without having to mess with proportions. A few drops of coffee essence is a much easier way of doing things, than using actual coffee and ensuring you reduce the amount of cream appropriately. This makes it extremely versatile and easy in a class situation but not a way I’d be flavouring my own truffles in the future.

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Flavourings added and adjusted, we poured the ganache onto baking paper and popped it into the fridge to firm up. This is another step where I’d have liked a little more time, as when we came to work our ganache, mine was still quite soft, which made it quite sticky. Nonetheless, the ganache was easy to work with and it was simple to break it up and roll it into little balls. We then did two layers of chocolate covering. This was the messy part and fortunately we had plenty of latex gloves to hand. Rather than dipping the truffles, we spooned melted chocolate onto a gloved hand and then rolled the truffle lightly and quickly to coat it. I’m really glad I had a first go at doing this in class. At home I would never have worn gloves (which would have been a mistake!) and you do actually need to use quite a lot of chocolate. Because my truffles were slightly rough from being a bit warm when I rolled them, being parsimonious with the chocolate meant I ended up with slightly spiky truffles! Next time, I’ll make sure to load up!

Two coats of chocolate and then on to decoration. As I am not a pretty-pretty-let’s-decorate-everything kind of person I went for immensely stylish drizzles of white and dark chocolate on my rose and coffee truffles respectively. Loads of people in the class did much more creative and painstaking decoration than I will ever manage!

After decorating you need to leave the chocolates to dry before bagging them up (or, better yet, bring a hard container from home and you can store them neatly in one layer and preserve your decoration) and then the class was over.

I thought that for $35 the class was great fun and good value for money but I don’t think I’d have felt the same way had it cost me $80 (current website price). I wasn’t madly in love with my chocolates (hasn’t stopped me eating them, mind!) – and I personally would use couverture chocolate (in class we used compound chocolate which just doesn’t taste as good). An excellent tip was that even if you use couverture chocolate for your ganache, if you’re not tempering it, use compound chocolate for the dipping stages to ensure a glossy finish.

What the class has done is given me is the much needed kick to ensure that I actually have a go at making my own truffles in future. I will definitely invest in the latex gloves and ensure I’m generous with the dipping chocolate. The question of flavourings is going to give me a lot of room for experimentation but I’m reasonably sure I’ll be able to put in place plenty of quality control measures …

Adelaide Chocolate School
48 Melbourne Street
North Adelaide SA 5006
(08) 7120 2664

Kangaroo Island FEASTival

- Alex Prichard Leave a comment

20141215_111327Penneshaw – your first view of KI from the ferry

Late last year I was fortunate enough to spend a long and (almost) child-free weekend on Kangaroo Island. In order to celebrate a clutch of significant birthdays a large group of us booked out a couple of the Kangaroo Beach Lodges and headed over, cars filled to the brim with essentials (mostly red wine and beer). I really need to write about that …

Just prior to that, I’d been invited to the official KI FEASTival launch at the Central Market. While KI might be deservedly well known for wildlife, its food and wine industry is blossoming and the annual FEASTival, now in its fourth year, is going from strength to strength.

This year, FEASTival runs from 1 – 8 May and there are a ton of events on a wide range of scales. If you’re seeking a smaller, more intimate experience you will find those, alongside much bigger dinners for a hundred or so people.

Over the last few months I’ve been fortunate enough to speak with a number of KI food and wine producers and they have all been enthusiastic about their produce and passionate about opportunities to share it with the wider South Australian community. For many of them, the island’s isolation, while generally a blessing, can cause problems when it comes to ‘exporting’ to the mainland so visiting is the perfect way of sampling as much as possible!

From my own trip to the island, my two must see picks would be Island Pure, sheep dairy and soon home to the island’s only brewery and Kangaroo Island Spirits. Even if you don’t like gin, the KIS cellar door is just remarkable.

If you haven’t been to KI for a while (or if you’ve never been!) then early May is the perfect time to go.

Fear and Delight

- Alex Prichard Leave a comment

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Soup

Disclaimer: I was a guest at Fear and Delight: The Complete Experience

SPOILER ALERT: If you have tickets booked to The Complete Experience or are even vaguely thinking about going DO NOT READ THIS POST.

If you are going to The Show or the Devil’s Lighthouse … then read on.

A little while back I was invited to the media launch for Fear and Delight, one of the many, many shows on in Adelaide at the moment. I was unable to attend the launch (even I can’t fit in everything) so when I was invited to attend the actual whole complete experience I was excited as well as a tiny bit scared, because I didn’t feel as though I’d had the heads up that I might have had.

Fear and Delight comes in three parts, as it were – The Complete Experience, which is dinner, show and nightclub, The Show, which is … um, the show (plus nightclub) and The Devil’s Lighthouse, which is the nightclub part. This means that there is something to suit all energy levels and budgets. While The Complete Experience will set you back $150, the show is $58 and admission to just the club is $17. I suspect this makes The Complete Experience one of the pricier events at the Fringe but you do need to keep in mind that you get dinner, drinks, the show and the club admission. If you crunch the numbers, the dinner part is setting you back $92.

But really, the dinner part is more about theatre, show and experience than it is about food. You most certainly are NOT paying your money for a nice, polite, sit down, silver service, Chateaubriand kind of meal. OH NO.

I arrived at the Garden of Unearthly Delights, collected my ticket and wandered off to find the starting point for Fear and Delight. The show has a dress code (black and white) which makes it very easy to spot the people milling around waiting for it to start. I had actually ummed and ahhed about wearing very dark blue jeans but figured I should be obedient and wear black. Not everyone was as well behaved as me (!) so don’t feel you have to rush out and add to your wardrobe but by the same token, don’t wear your best neon dress.

While standing around waiting for things to happen we were served beef jerky canapés. The jerky was served on a cow skull with a side of ant mayonnaise. While eating this, chatting and wondering what would happen next, performers wandered through the group handing out masks. When the two people I was talking to received theirs, the female performer ignored me so I politely asked if I could have one too. She took one look at me, huffed, turned her back and walked off.

The Complete Experience is not for the insecure, that’s for sure!

While we speculated about how I should have asked (“oi, give us a mask” peppered with expletives was posited …) another performer turned up, grabbed the hand of one of our little threesome and lead her off. We didn’t see her again until we hit The Devil’s Lighthouse itself.

The Complete Experience is not for those of you wanting a cosy, romantic date night!

I was in the last group lead through the curtains. We were gathered in a small room where we were handed bright green shots and gold glittery pills and told to wear our masks as they were our keys to the Devil’s Lighthouse. Wait – where’s my mask? I don’t have a mask!

At this point, Steve (whose other half had been lead off) decided he’d stick with me because without a mask I was a prime target to be picked on and so he’d be safe …

Glitter pills duly taken we were told to follow our guide at all times and we were then lead out of the small room and across the parklands where we were greeted by a naked lady in a bath, pouring sparkling wine (D’Arenberg’s Dadd). We were also served oysters with sand. This was actually some seafood in a very thick almost mayonnaise like, yet grey, sauce covered in a thick layer of edible sand. It smelt unbelievably horrible but actually tasted pretty good.

After bubbles, we were lead to the main area and into the Devil’s Lighthouse. Here we lined up two by two to receive a very weird kind of communion. The red jelly that we had spooned into our mouths by the priest was just awful (I have no idea what it was but it was universally decried as more towards the disgusting end of the flavour spectrum). Having survived that, we were given a ‘holy bun’. These were excellent! They were steamed buns but instead of an Asian filling it was actually more like a pasty. I really enjoyed this and the buns seemed to resurrect everyone’s faith in the food to come …

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Here come the drinks …

Munching on our buns we were then lead across to the stage and told to find any friends we wanted to sit with. Diners were seated on all four sides of the stage (The Complete Experience is limited to 100 people per evening) and while performers and staff checked for anyone with special dietary requirements (you obviously need to let them know in advance!), drinks were poured and we were all able to have a good look at our entrée (the soup pictured above) while performers tumbled about the stage, did a bit of sabrage and brought bells around for you to ring if you needed a drink.

Various formalities over, the food proper began. Boiling water was poured onto our soup and the skulls gave way to a consommé. I thought the broth itself was a bit on the bland side but the rose petals, which I’ve never considered in a savoury dish before, gave it some excellent flavour.

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birthday cake … not so chocolatey …

Soup over, the birthday cakes were brought out – one cake to be divided between 5 or 6 people. After some discussion we decided the cake was polenta made with squid ink and it was topped with some grilled octopus tentacles which were tender. The cake definitely looked a lot more macabre and threatening than it actually was – although funnily enough the picture of this on the Eating Adelaide Facebook page did receive one ‘hide this post’ …

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caged chicken … no free range here

Next up, came our caged chicken, served with a side of baby gem lettuce and ‘cream and sugar’ (mustard sauce and a sesame seed mix). Again, there was a lot more shock value going on with the appearance of the food than with its flavour (it was roast chicken – nothing scary there!). We were also served a cold cauliflower soup which was presented as a cappucino.

All the time we were eating things were going on on stage – it was a very busy meal in that you were never sitting around relaxing, chatting and thinking about the food.

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koala brains … by this point the light had failed me totally!

As we were finishing off mains and having dessert (koala brains – a kind of vanilla semifreddo, served with some jelly in a petri dish), the punters for The Show were admitted and the stage was busily cleared up ready for the performance to start.

I finally got my mask at this point!

The performance itself has a very loose story line which is conveyed through speech, song and music but the highlight of this part of the evening is without a doubt the acrobats. If you need to be reminded of or want to be blown away by what the human body can do, a performance like this is what you need to see. The feats of balance and strength that the male and female stars brought to the stage were just breathtaking and I absolutely and thoroughly enjoyed it.

Once the show wrapped up, most people headed to the Devil’s Lighthouse for some nightclub action. However, as a 6:30am start beckoned, I was sensible and boring and went home.

Overall, I think that the many performers who have come together to put create Fear and Delight have achieved what they set out to do. There is much of The Complete Experience which is confronting and will take you out of your comfort zone. You are not going to enjoy every moment of it and you’re not supposed to. Your ideas about food will be challenged – not everything tastes good, not everything smells good and by and large the appearance of dishes is there to make you feel uncomfortable. In some ways, because this is so much about perception, actually what you are eating is less important than what your brain is telling you. And the entire experience is not about having a ‘nice meal and seeing a show’ – there were parts of the food I really enjoyed, and a lot of the food divided people (the cold cauliflower soup I could not deal with but the person next to me loved it).

This is food as performance art and even if you don’t love every moment of it (and you won’t) you’re unlikely to forget it in a hurry.