Cafe culture casual and comfortable: Cafe Vue

July 2010

RESTAURANTS are all well and good but they are stuffy, often expensive and unapproachable for a casual lunch or dinner. Now cafes staffed by former chefs and front-of-house staff from high-end restaurants are competing on their turf, offering somewhere to drop in any time with carefully sourced produce, wines and coffee, but at a lower [...]

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12 Cheesemakers To Watch

July 2010

From goat’s curd to gruyere, these cheesmakers have winning formulas sure to impress discerning cheese lovers. Holy Goat Made at the Sutton Grange Organic farm near Bendigo in Victoria, Holy Goat (at about $130/kg) is universally regarded as one of the best cheeses in Australia by top chefs, including Michael Ryan from Provenance in Beechworth. [...]

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How To Make Cheese

July 2010

There are many perceptions of the rustic, bucolic lifestyle of the artisan cheesemaker. But the reality is very different to how the mass dairy marketers would have us see it in their advertising and promotions. Even the most boutique of cheesemakers in Australia has more in common with the hygiene of an operating theatre than [...]

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How Cheese Got Its Stink

July 2010

Cheese has been around a long time. Nobody is quite sure how long but perhaps 5000 to 12,000 years, probably originating from the Middle East where milk products were curdled and drained of whey and preserved with salt making something a bit like the fetta we know today. In Australia, cheese has been around since [...]

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The Raw Milk Debate

July 2010

Raw milk dairy is one of those touchy subjects that decays into political debate. It is difficult to get to the bottom of whether or not raw milk products are a danger to anybody. Many artisan cheesemakers, such as Nick Haddow at the Bruny Island Cheese Company [pictured], say not; the Australian Specialist Cheesemakers’ Association [...]

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Boss has his head in the cloud: data back-up

June 2010

CUSTOMER databases, accounts and records are critical to business and if this information is lost a company will grind to a halt. The problem for many companies is that backing up information is often too complicated and expensive to do properly. But Ruslan Kogan, founder of the online stores Kogan and Milan Direct has made [...]

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First In, Fresh Dressed

June 2010

The most copied chef in the world isn’t necessarily one you’ve heard of. But when a chef talks about using fresh, locally foraged ingredients you can be pretty sure the influence is Michel Bras of the eponymous restaurant now run by his son Sebastien. Based in Laguiole, the restaurant is a three-hour journey from the [...]

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The Quest for Authentic Mexican

May 2010

Authentic Mexican food can be difficult to find in Australia and is often mistaken for TexMex, a Texan interpretation of the cuisine. According to the food crowd, Mexican in the new emerging flavour in Australia but so far there are few restaurants getting anywhere near the freshness of authentic Mexico cuisine and escaping the clichéd [...]

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In Conversation with Chez Pim

April 2010

Pim Techamuanvivit, one of the most famous food blogger in the world, was in Melbourne for the Food and Wine Festival last month and she had one thing on her mind: an Aussie pie. Not just any old bakery pie but the best. And I helped her find it at the Middle Park Hotel; it [...]

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Unsung Hero: Tripe

February 2010

Tripe is controversial. Let’s face it, there’s no hiding the fact that it’s one of the four stomachs found in a cow. And stinks. Its strange looks, pale color and texture aren’t for everyone. Basically, it’s ugly to say the least. And many of us will have been scarred by poorly prepared tripe from our [...]

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