Events

2014 Cellar Door Festival – Bigger and Better

- Alex Prichard Leave a comment

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Late last year I was asked to be a social media ambassador for the 2014 Cellar Door Festival. There have been a few events for the ambassadors, including a session at OzHarvest and a cheese and wine matching class (I missed that one as I was ham and wine matching in Spain at the time).

As the festival itself is almost upon us (it kicks off next Friday, 14 February) the final ambassador event was held last week at the Adelaide Convention Centre. We were treated to an ‘amazing race’ style evening – charging around the centre, learning more about both the festival and local produce. After we’d built up a head of steam, several of the ‘new producers’ who are being showcased by PIRSA were on hand to chat to us about their foods and participation in the festival.

My partner, Rubina, and I didn’t quite manage to win the race part of the evening (though if there had been a prize for making the most noise, taking it seriously and getting into the spirit of things in an over the top manner, we would DEFINITELY have won that!) we did come in a creditable third (out of five).

For me, probably the most interesting part of the race was trying the alpaca carpaccio. Alpaca is probably not a meat you’ll have come across before. While it’s been eaten in South America for centuries its appearance on Australian menus is still very novel. I had a lovely chat to Perry from Fleurieu Prime Alpaca, and I recommend checking out the meat at the festival. It’s extremely lean, tender and very gently flavoured. You might also find some alpaca on the menu at Pranzo in the CBD.

While the festival is, of course, about wine (and a bit of beer, too!), this year it has a much greater focus on food. Of the producers I met last week, many have a strong emphasis on native ingredients so festival goers will have the opportunity to try plenty of new foods – both at the Farmers’ Market and from individual producers.

This year, the festival’s masterclasses also have a strong food theme. On the opening evening (Friday 14 February) Marion Grasby will be hosting a Valentine’s Day Extravaganza (you can win tickets to this over at McFuzzlebutt’s Manchen – NOTE, you will need to purchase your own Cellar Door Festival tickets separately). Over the course of the weekend she is also hosting two further classes (Summer Entertaining and Asian Favourites) and there are seafood, cheese and, of course, wine focussed classes.

Classes do need to be booked in advance: full details are on the Cellar Door Festival website.

Cooking for a Cause with OzHarvest

- Alex Prichard Leave a comment

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chef Tze Khaw of the Adelaide Convention Centre

On Monday night the Cellar Door Wine Festival (CDWF) social media ambassadors (yes, that includes me) headed to the OzHarvest kitchen in Goodwood for a bit of hands-on food prep for charities across Adelaide.

OzHarvest is a ‘food rescue’ charity. This means that it collects perishables and distributes them immediately to charities who can these use these foods in either food preparation or as already prepared meals. The Adelaide Convention Centre (home of the CDWF) has had a close relationship with OzHarvest since its 2011 beginnings here in SA (OzHarvest is a national charity which was started in Sydney) and, in addition to donations from its day to day business, the leftovers from the CDWF’s Farmers’ Market are donated to OzHarvest when the festival closes.

We took part in one of OzHarvest’s new initiatives: Cooking for a Cause. The Cooking for a Cause sessions are, essentially, team building exercises that allow participants to give something back. A group of up to 10 people gathers in the OzHarvest kitchen and does some food prep. Typically, there is a lot of chopping and stirring and, at the end of the session the food goes out to charities in Adelaide (of course, some can be held back for lunch for the participants too!).

On Monday Tze Khaw, Executive Chef at the Adelaide Convention Centre, took us through our paces. The efficiency of the procuring staff at the ACC was on show – with most ingredients arriving pre-chopped – so we didn’t have to do too much work! Although I did roughly chop some coriander …

We prepped a vegetable and lentil curry, to be served with couscous. The meal we prepared was going out, in portions, to about 100 people across Adelaide on Tuesday. I was surprised that such a large number of portions could be made out of what seemed like relatively small quantities of ingredients. For example, the curry used just a 500g tin of lentils (and quite a lot of veggies, admittedly) and Chef Tze prepped just one 1kg of couscous.

Chef Tze passed on some useful cooking hints – pointing out that in a professional kitchen a stock pot would be kept on the go the whole time to make use of vegetable offcuts, and showing us a way of washing coriander (and spinach, and other leaf vegetables) to ensure that it’s grit free (basically, rinse the prepared leaves in a bowl of clear water and pull them out from the top of the bowl into another bowl of clear water).

Listening to Hayley from OzHarvest discuss the stats on food wastage was rather depressing and certainly serves as a wake up call, both in terms of how much we might waste ourselves (yes, sad half bunch of coriander loitering in the bottom of the fridge, I’m looking at you) but also how privileged most of us are.

Little sermon over!

If you’re a corporate or social group and are interested in Cooking for a Cause, get in touch with OzHarvest (in Adelaide, ring (08) 8162 9553 or email adelaide.info@ozharvest.org). If you’re looking for a Christmas present for a food mad friend, you can buy the OzHarvest Cookbook. And, of course, the team at OzHarvest will always welcome additional volunteers!

A Little Light Cake Decorating

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before … all nice and tidy!

Disclaimer: Appliances Online invited me to the cake decorating class. However, having bought a new dishwasher from AOL earlier this year, I’m happy to say that I’d shop with them again. And if you fancy free delivery and free removal of your old appliance, then it’s worth your time to check out their prices.

date of class: Thursday 21 November 2013

If you’re a regular reader, you’ll know that cake decorating is not my thing. Making cake, eating cake – absolutely. Making cake look pretty? I get as far as slapping some ganache on it. This weekend we’re hosting the toddler’s third birthday party so when Appliances Online invited me to a cake decorating class to celebrate the company’s eighth birthday I was hardly about to say no.

The morning was held because it’s Appliances Online’s eighth birthday and to celebrate the company is running an appliance themed cake decorating competition. If you’re a fiend with the fondant or a marvel at modelling, or if this post inspires you, then get your cake decorating head on and head to the AOL blog to find out how to enter.

A group of Adelaide bloggers and media gathered at the Adelaide Chocolate School on Melbourne Street to be taken through our cake decorating paces by the very helpful Belinda of Metro Designer Cakes. The timing was perfect for me – I’ve had a practice run of Master Almost-Three’s cake so I turned up full of questions (and thanks, Belinda, for all the answers!).

After a bit of socialising (and a coffee, I’m full of head cold at the moment and am needing super human quantities of caffeine to work my way through the mental fug!), we split into small groups and set to work on our cakes. The basic cakes were all set up for us, ready to go. On our bench, we had a two mini Tefal food processors and a Morphy Richards toaster all assembled and covered with basic fondant. With images of the ‘real’ things to hand, we set about completing the cake-appliances and then decorating them as we fancied.

With our toaster we played it relatively safe – although Camellia’s jar of Vegemite was fantastic and drew a lot of admiring glances.

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We were a bit more creative with the first food processor – I’m particularly proud of this because not only did I roll a couple of the coloured ropes of icing, but I also made the carrot top! Yes, those slightly uncertain green fronds are all my own work!

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The final food processor – well, we almost didn’t start on this one and I’m not sure whose idea it was (certainly wasn’t mine!) but … look! Santa’s been grated! More rope work by me – and I also did the ribbon and bow on the parcel (and dusted it with silver).

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So I’m not going to be stealing anyone’s job any time soon, but I did have a great morning and Appliances Online and the small appliance sponsors (Breville, Tefal, Sunbeam and Morphy Richards) put together some very generous gifts for us all. I’m now the proud owner of a very shiny new Breville juicer. The lime, pear and apple trees had better deliver!