Had enough of Zumbo yet? If not, here’s a little more.
Escape from a Colombian Rainforest, referred to at the store by one of the counter staff as “Escape from a Colombian Car Park”. I’m sure you’ve seen the cake a number of times. I even passed up the opportunity to try this out during the launch of the Winter collection, where it was first revealed.
The cake has come along way since that time, huh?
I’d finally gotten around to buying one when I went around that way to pick up the chocolate mousse cake as seen on my previous post. Oh, and Masterchef Australia as well. Read more »
I was fortunate enough to have won the opportunity to buy the chocolate mousse cake pictured above. Yes, won the opportunity to buy the cake. If you don’t already know, you’ll see what I mean when you read on.
There’s a lot of hype surrounding the chocolate mousse cake. It was initially introduced as a challenge on Masterchef Australia presented by the now infamous Adriano Zumbo. Then there was the charity auction, whereby you had the chance to bid for a slice of the action, costing up to $125 for a single slice (1/8 of the cake). Between the screening of the Masterchef episode and the auction, a lot of demand was generated for the chocolate mousse cake. This lead to the lottery, which would draw 100 lucky winners from a pool of over 4000 entrants, who would win the chance to purchase the cake at the value of $90, of which 5% would go to the Childrens Hospital, Westmead.
While all that was happening, you had bloggers attempting to replicate the mousse cake by recipe, with varying degrees of success (personal favourite was by Linda from eatshowandtell). Celebrities, such as Kate Ritchie, were also getting a slice of the action as well.
As I said, a lot of hype.
Having been fortunate enough to have been drawn as one of the winners one question I was sure to be asked, and I was asking of myself was whether the cake lived up to the hype, whether it was worth the $90 and how did it actually taste?
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Pad Thai.
It’s somewhat of a benchmark dish for me; a common point of reference from which the quality of one Thai restaurant is judged over another. This particular version of the dish is from the Doytao restaurant located in Drummoyne, though there are a number of branches located within Sydney.
From discussions I’ve had with friends and acquaintances, the selection of a pad thai as a benchmark dish is somewhat of a controversial one. Some say that you need to take a holistic approach and try a large number of dishes. Others say that it’s just a bad choice to judge the quality of a restaurant’s dishes. Though I appreciate their points, I would beg to differ for a number of reasons:
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For those of you that don’t already know her, this is Sheryl aka Shez from the food blog One Bite More. She had kindly invited me as well as a small handful of food bloggers over to her place for a party. We’re not talking any old party here either…
Ok, now that we have you attention…
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I present to you the Daring Cooks Challenge for August 2009 – rice with mushrooms, cuttlefish and artichokes; essentially a paella. The original recipe is by José Andrés (apparently a Spanish chef of high regard, who has trained under Ferran Adria) selected by this months Daring Cooks host, Olga of Olga’s Recipes.
Ok, let’s be honest here. Taking photos while you’re cooking up a storm with the limited culinary skills and experience that you have; using a recipe that you’ve never worked with before in any incarnation, is somewhat of a challenge. Some might even consider it somewhat daring. To others, lunacy may be closer to the mark. To each their own I guess.
However, to end up with a product such as the dish pictured above, is it truly worth the hassle? The grumbling and gnashing of teeth? The anxiety of not knowing whether the end product is going to look good through the lens, let alone be edible? The frantic juggling between camera, food, camera, food, food, with the realisation that you’ve just attempted to take a photo with a box of salt?
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