Frankie making saffran pasta.
So on the first night Frankie was still frantically rolling out the pasta when the first guests arrived. There was a hectic 5 minutes with me being my usual bossy self and getting one of our lovely helpers to deal with the guests. Another to do a speedy clean up.
Tags: Australian Tapestry Workshop, food design, Francesca Unsworth, Melbourne, pop up, State of Design 2010, underground
Some insprirations: weaving yarns dyed in house at the Australian Tapestry workshop
After a stopovers in Dubai, Colombo (Sri Lanka) and Singapore it was finally touchdown in Melbourne on Saturday 17th July. The cold came as bit of shock with having gotten used to the humid heat in Singapore and Summer having kicked off in Paris , but there was no time to warm myself up by a cosy fire. It was all go go go from the start with my partner in crime, Frankie having flown in on the same day from Sydney. We hadn’t seen each other since the Edible Immigration Tales in March and even though we had been skyping and emailing regularly our ideas, cooking experiments and designs. It’s still not quite the same as having a face to face conversation.
Tags: Australian Tapestry Workshop, Design, Edible Tapestry Tales, Melbourne, Mollydooker, pop up, State of Design 2010
It was role reversal for me on my first visit to Marrakesh (it was also my first visit to North Africa) where I attended some cookery classes. Normally I’m the one teaching.
The cookery class took place at a Riad in the Medina which was almost impossible to find. An hour and half late and after going round in several circles we finally arrived at this stunning Riad. It was like walking onto a set for a glossy interiors magazine. Anyway after a glass of freshly pressed orange juice (one of the best things about Marrakesh was the abundance of freshly pressed orange juice) we got down to some serious business by making some morrocan biscuits.
Tags: Cookery classes, cornes de gazelle, Dar darma, gazelle horns, marrakesh, morrocan pâtisserie, Riad
‘Finger food’ : deconstructed eclairs – raspberry and vanilla pastry cream with eclair choux pastry fingers which had to be worn in order to be dipped into the cream, created for the vernissage of an exhibition at the Slott gallery in June this year.
Tags: Art, finger food, food design, Paris, Photography, Slott, vernissage
On the 3rd of June I held my first clandestine dinner in Paris. Never to be one to do just a ’simple’ dinner party I had make it more of a culinary event and decided upon doing something fun with the 80s and French food. The 80s are not one of the decades to be known for it’s culinary delights which I discovered after hunting down some beautifully food styled (the more food or props they could fit in one photo the better) 80s recipe books.
The menu kicked off with a Tom Cruise inspired shaken cocktails (red berries, limonchello and gin) which fit perfectly with the summer evening and was accompanied by some 80s coloured savoury macaron (cream cheese & wasabi and green olive tapenade – Pierre Hermé started his macaron experimenting in the 80s).
First course was edible pacman with pâté powerballs and confit cherries. I had wasted considerable amount of time playing pacman in the name of research. Second course was twisted bacon and a two toned tartiflette, a kind of deconstructed version with the use of sweet potatoes and some peppery roquette to balance the Reblochon. Tartiflette was created in the 80s by the Reblochon producers to promote their cheese.
Homage to 80s power dressing and those big shoulder pads: main course of Power puff pastry shoulder pad with a boeuf printanier (slow cooked spring beef stew).
A cold war soup: communism watermelon gazpacho and cucumber capitalism sorbet was served as a palate cleanser. And to finish off a 80s Paris Brest (the 8 was filled with a praline pastry cream and the 0 with a salted butter caramel cream).
The first 4 dishes were accompanied by red wines recommended by my great local caviste who matches all my wines for me as I’m hopeless. He also recommended a lovely caramel/light Irish whisky to go with the dessert.
Special thanks to myprivatedinner for providing the apartment, Jay-P for an awesome 80s music mix, my lovely culinary assistant Bernadette, Sten Pittet for taking some pictures for me and my lovely guests for coming!
Tags: 80s, clandestine, foodie, fun, myprivatedinner.com, Paris, theme
