The culinary circus that is the Good Food & Wine Show came to Melbourne last weekend and, dedicated foodie that I am, I went with a dear friend to tackle it head on. This is the third successive year that the two of us have taken on the show, and this was by far our greatest adventure. Credit for this lies not with me, but with my friend, who planned and scheduled our day from start to finish. There was the Cheese Matters Masterclass, then the cooking class, then a date with Mr Ramsay with samples and tipples to be had in between.
After meeting for a hit of caffeine before taking the plunge we forged through the doors – maidens on a mission. First stop the info booth to pick up the goodies that came with our Ramsay Pass – canvas bag, BBC Good Food Magazine and a copy of Gordon’s Healthy Eating. I also needed a trolley, having learnt the hard way the year before that it’s great to buy everything that you taste, but you still need to get it home. We then had a little while to peruse some of the stands before heading to a little room upstairs.
It was time for Cheese Matters, our 45 minute cheese masterclass. After introductions and a few overall statements the very personable and knowledgeable Naomi Crisante took us through ten cheeses in a variety of styles – from fresh, soft white and washed rind styles, to Cheddar, Parmesan and rich and luscious blue. All had been matched with a selected wine and range of accompaniments. It was a very social tasting, cleverly encouraged by Naomi’s icebreaker game of “if you were a cheese what would you be?” I think I would be Holy Goat La Luna. We called it Speed Cheesing. It was literally a race from one delicious mouthful to the next.
Highlights included:
South Cape Goats Cheese drizzled with River Flats Estate Lemon Infused Olive oil and sprinkled liberally with dukka and served with De Bortoli “Rococo” a blanc de blanc sparkling.
Tasmanian Heritage Traditional Camembert with beetroot and apple relish and more of the sparkling.
King Island Dairy Endeavour Blue drizzled with truffle honey and paired with De Bortoli Noble One and some muscatels.
Armed with our goodie bags, including a great recipe book, we headed back down to the main throng and resumed our stroll through the exhibitors. We were doing rather well navigating our way past those who had spruikers galore, ready to lure you into buying yet another chamois that you don’t need and wont use. That is until the “beauty” stand. I use this label generously because I cannot recall the name of it, even after a quick review of the exhibitors list, and that may be because I have blocked it from memory. Normally foolhardy, my friend and I somehow got convinced that we need to look 10 years younger in just two minutes.
We are attractive women, but like many of us in our 30s the suggestion that we could look even better with little effort was too good to ignore. Perhaps we could blame the quickly quaffed wines or the concentration of cheese but our guard was down. All we could see were nice looking ladies in black uniforms waving fans over the faces of those who had been shown to the bar stools that made up most of the stand. How bad could it be? What we failed to notice was that to look 10 years younger the demonstrators were going to wipe off the makeup under our eyes and smear what was essentially silicone under our eyes. We were then instructed NOT to move whilst it dried, then shown our “younger” selves in the hand mirrors. What I saw looked like a big smudge of dried wallpaper glue and felt rather similar. Not to mention that my carefully crafted ‘oh so natural” looking makeup now seemed to have been applied by a five year old! It may be true that this is the secret of all the stars, but we decided that it could remain a secret and headed straight to the nearest Ladies to return our faces to normal.
There was not long to wait before our Cooking School, but it was all the way over the other side of the exhibition and to get there we needed to negotiate our way through the World of Wine. This meant that we were in a suitably relaxed state when we arrived at the Gourmet Garden Cooking School for our 90 minute hands on class with Dominique Rizzo. 14 people had decided to take the Easy Entertaining with Elegantly simple Finger Food class and we were spread out over 4 work stations. In quick succession with loads of interaction and encouragement from Dominique we put together a selection of four easy examples of finger food. We even managed to convince the lovely young boys at the Finlandia Vodka stand to part with a bottle of their finest to go into our accompanying lime and lemongrass granita shots.
Fried stuffed olives w herbed mayonnaise
Sesame salmon roulade en croute
Italian lemon grilled meatballs w Sicilian sauce
Chinese noodle cake with shredded duck and chilli jam
It was a fun class, not overly challenging, and I will admit to some initial hesitation regarding the tubes of Gourmet Garden herbs. However, it would have been the wrong environment to attempt anything more complex than this, particularly with no prior knowledge of the skill level of those participating. But, what did I think of the Gourmet Garden herbs? Well, not yet ready to proclaim myself a convert, I can see their usefulness especially if you are prone to not using whole bunches of fresh herbs and, like me, hate to see wastage. As part of the class we got wonderful sample bags with no less than nine Gourmet Garden varieties. Looks like I will have lots of opportunity to test them out further at home.
We departed the Cooking School happy and made a few more rounds of the exhibitors before making our way to the celebrity theatre to see Gordon Ramsay. The first thing that I noticed was that the theatre was half empty. The next thing I noticed was that the assembled throng seemed rather more interested in the giveaways that Alistair McLeod was dispensing, than the arrival of one of the world’s most famous chefs. But arrive he did, admittedly after three “here he is…” build ups from Alistair.
It is a pity that he carried on the way he did, and I don’t wish to add to the publicity he has gained as a result of his antics. When he stopped the ranting and got on with the cooking, the dishes he made were simple but clever dishes that made good use of good produce. But the time with Mr Ramsay flew by and we were soon manoeuvring our trolleys out of the theatre.
It had been a full and fun packed day and the last thing to do was head home to put our somewhat tired feet up.
I spent a rare childfree 15 minutes sitting in the sun last Thursday, thinking I was somewhere else. On a lovely deck, sipping really good coffee and listening to ‘the girl from Impanema’ (loud, but sufficient to drown out the fact I was at Chadstone), I had the most enviable view into the fromage room at Jones the Grocer. ahh bliss, although I was a little overwhelmed and didn’t buy any cheese – but now I know who to go cheese shopping with!