Meet the jellymongers, Sam Bompas and Harry Parr. The old Eton College pals have taken the UK party scene by storm with their flamboyant jellies, bow ties and jelly-stained trousers. Whether it’s flooding the ground floor of a stately home to make a giant cocktail navigable only by boat, or inspiring the world’s top architects to make jelly, the jellymongers recently also enchanted Melbourne with their brightly coloured, often alcoholic, and very wobbly creations. They whipped up funeral jellies for […]
Month: March 2011
Simple beetroot, carrot and goats cheese salad
A salad fit for @tammois’ pagan house burning tonight. One of the secrets of good cooking is to know how to pack flavour into a dish. In the bad old days of my childhood the school dinner lady boiled the crap out of beetroot and doused it in some kind of industrial vinegar. Needless to say I hated this particular root vegetable. But now I’ve come to love it. First, I don’t cook it but roast the beet, which concentrates […]
Everything you wanted to know about coffee (but were afraid to ask your hipster barista) part 1
New on the block – the “magic” at Proud Mary. Check out part two of this post. It’s complicated now ordering a coffee. No sooner do you think you have a grip on all the current vogue brewing methods and another one lands on the scene. In my case the latest ones to enter my vocabulary it’s the Trifecta (coming soon) and the Magic (see definitions below). No longer are the options just espresso-based but there a plethora of new […]
Defining Irish fare
It’s butter. Rich creamy butter, the product of Ireland’s rich emerald green pastures, that excites Rachel Allen, the woman who put Irish cooking back on the map, and who recently visited Australia as part of the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival. “I always come back to dairy.” says the TV chef, cookbook author and champion of local artisan produce. “I love our butter. I love our cream.” Then there’s the seasonal foods. “That meal, the last of asparagus, the first […]
The top 10 Australian cheeses
Billy the goat cheese This is a guest post by Laurie Gutteridge. He runs the Taste Cheese website and blog and the splendid cheese room at Innocent Bystander in the Yarra Valley. You can also follow him on Twitter as taste_cheese. (If you have something on value to say I’m open to guest postings – send an email. Ed) My criteria when looking for a cheese? It starts with the understanding that a holistic view encompassing everything from the farming […]
Curry: At lunch with Atul Kochhar
Spice crusted scallops, grape and ginger dressing You can’t beat a good curry. The question is in Australia, where can you find a good curry? Some 15 years ago there were hardly any curry houses and even though now they are spotted around everywhere, few offer a really great dining experience. Usually what we are served is anonymous cuts of meat in generic curry sauces heated up to order. It’s miles away from the wonderful dining experiences of other ethic […]
The Butter Factor
Butter’s come a long way since Marlon Brando first used it as a lubricant – just as cheese has come a long way since it was imported into Australia in tins. We now have our first legally made unpasteurized cheese – known as C2 – available from Bruny Island Cheese. And for the first time the Australian Cheese Awards have recognised a really decent local cheese – Jindi Old Telegraph Road. The long slow march of the cheesemakers is now […]