Communing with chefs

Savouring a communion wafer that tasted like the aroma of a freshly bathed baby was one of the experiences shared by a room full of dedicated food lovers attending masterclasses at The Langham in Melbourne over the weekend. But not before they?d also popped frankincense flavoured film rectangles on their tongues.

It was the closest most of us were ever going to come to indulging in the Heston Blumenthal experience at The Fat Duck. The shaven-headed bespectacled chef took us through some of the steps that were involved in the extraordinary Christmas dinner which featured on his recent TV series as he incorporated gold, frankincense and myrrh in his babe in the manger offerings.

Blumenthal?s presentation was basically a talk with film clips because the painstaking nature of his food construction (his chef to diner ratio at The Fat Duck is virtually one to one) doesn?t lend itself to mass production in a hotel kitchen.


The other masterclasses I attended during the day, however, were very much hands-on affairs with chefs cooking up a slick collection of amazing flavours and the hotel kitchen producing samples for us to try.

My day started with the Barossa Valley?s own Maggie Beer who had reunited the Pheasant Farm team from a period she described as her happiest in the kitchen. She was joined by Nat Paull and cook turned winemaker/cheesemaker Steve Flamsteed. They made a warm salad of roasted pheasant from the Beer estate, served with walnuts, citrus and bitter leaves and a touch of beautiful Black Pig belly bacon from a daughter?s holding. Meanwhile pastry whiz Nat showed us some insider?s tricks on producing a verjuice custard with bergamot-braised raisins ? smooth, creamy and piquant. An instantly usable tip ? place a folded tea towel on the bottom of the metal baking container used as a water bath to disperse the heat so the turned out custards have evenly cooked tops.


Shane Osborn left Australia for the UK in the early 90s and now runs London?s two Michelin star restaurant, Pied a Terre. He brought along his protégé Marcus Eaves who now runs L?Autre Pied. They produced a meltingly soft ? but still flaky ? sous vide-poached sea trout with fennel cream, olive and vanilla veloute and crisply delicious fennel and olive tuiles. The contrasting textures and good marriage of flavours made for a well-balanced dish. In fact, by way of a palate test, green olives were passed round for us to taste while vanilla beans were presented alongside to emphasise the vanilla overtones Osborn perceived in the olives and had exploited in the finished dish.

While we didn?t get to share the rabbit and carrot dish, it was a good chance to learn the basics of rabbit butchery, preparation of carrot oil and how useful a pencil sharpener can be in making carrot shavings for a garnish.

Eaves produced his simple but effective slow poached quail egg on crushed peas with smoked butter emulsion. The peas were lightly pulsed in blender so they were still slightly coarse in texture and the smooth emulsion included a small amount of peeled peas and peeled broad beans. This dish was a reminder that frozen peas can certainly star in their own right.





Melbourne can?t get enough of Frank Camorra. There?s always a queue of hopefuls at the door of his Hosier Lane MoVida restaurant looking for a seat. Even the opening of his MoVida Bar de Tapas y Vino next door has done little to alleviate the pressure so there?s a larger MoVida in the wind, likely to open towards the end of the year. And Frank and his co-author Richard Cornish have just completed their second cookbook based on a recent trip to Spain. The photos have been taken and now it?s revision time with the book expected out round November.

Tantalisingly, Camorra?s class started with some footage shot during their recipe-gathering trip to Spain and then he plunged into his menu.

He showed us how to preserve tuna in jars. He served the final product with a summer salad including fish roe, kipfler potatoes and tomatoes.

There were prawn fritters from Santucar. He explained the original features tiny shrimp, but he chopped up prawn meat as a substitute which was then cooked in a batter of chickpea flour and ordinary flour flavoured with coriander, parsley and chives.

Camorra and Cornish, who moderated proceedings, said it was often difficult to get basic recipes, specially when the cook ? in one case Herminda, a woman in her mid 60s who spoke only Galician ? liked to start at the very beginning and include instructions on how to grow and grind the corn. While Camorra?s interpretation of her peasant scallop pie wasn?t a dish scheduled to be sampled by the audience, it had us queuing at the end for a sample.

A simple chocolate dessert, sprinkled with salt crystals and served with a drizzle of Hojiblanca olive oil and a slice of crisp-baked two-day old bread left people scraping their plates for every last morsel.






This was just a sample of the 15 popular masterclasses presented over the weekend by local and overseas chefs and cooks as part of the 17th Melbourne Food and Wine Festival as it drew to a close.