Oh man, there’s some busy and exciting times coming up in Melbourne!

Melbourne Food and Wine Festival celebrates 20 years this year and starting tomorrow – its time to party! The line up in 2012 is incredible – David Chang, Massimo Bottura and Lennox Hastie just to name a few of our favourites.

Here at Rockpool – we have a barrage of events going on – kicking off with the “Best of Hong Kong” dinner at Spice Temple on Tuesday March 6^th. Neil and Ben have been hard at it testing, cooking, eating to plan the menu (it’s a tough job but someone has to do it!) – those lucky enough to get a guernsey will be indulging in the likes of Prawns in XO on custard, Tea smoked chicken with black vinegar sauce, Blistered black peppers with black beans & Braised beef brisket with spices and herbs.

Lunch on Thursday March 8 sees us behind the stoves at Rockpool Bar & Grill Melbourne with…yep….Rene Redzepi from Noma – San Pellegrino’s 50 Best Restaurants star kid and master of innovative Nordic cuisine. Rene visited us last year in Sydney and, more than an amazing and inspirational chef, the man is a true gentleman and just a pleasure to be around. We are all excited to be spending time with him and his team and look forward to helping out with Raw Squid with white currant juice and douglas fir; & Dried scallops with grains and watercress. Team Perry is serving up Congee with prawns, Drunken pigeon and abalone salad & Red braised pork with salt bush & warrigal greens (a couple of products we are truly excited about right now).

Lunches and dinners aside, Neil takes to the Masterclass stage on Friday afternoon with the one and only David Blackmore of Blackmore Wagyu – they are slow cooking a shoulder of Wagyu and pounding out chimichurri to feed the hungry eyes before them, all whilst talking beef, ageing, wood and all things fire – and who said men couldn’t multi-task!

Neil won’t be puffed enough after all this, and amongst the growing list of photo calls, interviews, meetings and doubtless cold beers and quenching glasses of red (to entertain our visitors!!), so we conclude it all with what is bound to be a great session of Chef Jam on the afternoon of Monday March 12, discussing “the secrets to success and longevity in the Australian restaurant Industry” with Julian Gerner from The Melbourne Pub Group and Paul Mathis from The Sharing House. This should be a fascinating session and worth getting along to if you have a finger or 2 in the industry.

So plenty for everyone there folks. We hope to run into a few of you kicking round Melbourne in the next few weeks.

Will Oxenham, Bar Manager at The Waiting Room recently wrote us a great speil on their gin training session – some folks get all the breaks! Take it away Will…

The session was a part of our fortnightly training sessions at The Waiting Room, where we cover everything, from beer, distillation, cocktails, food, or in this case, spirit categories. Today’s session on gin, was hosted by Jeremy Spencer and Jason Chan of The West Winds Gin. These guys have come up with a recipe for an all Australian product, using rainwater from the Margaret River region, and a whole bunch of locally produced and often native botanicals alongside the requisite juniper & citrus peels, and began bottling it and selling it nation-wide a little over a year ago… 

As Jason states on their website (http://thewestwindsgin.com/products.html)

“The Margaret River is home to a host of established producers creating exceptional wines, but more importantly for us, a pristine source of water and abundant natural otanicals. Hand selected delicate flavours such as wattleseed and bush tomato bring a flavor profile that is uniquely Australian and internationally unique.
The quality of the water serves to create a high purity in the final product.”

The session today was a great one, with the guys plying us with plenty of drinks, despite our early start at 11am (hic!), the highlight of which was a Gin & Tonic, made with their higher proof gin “The Cutlass”, (which is distilled with aforementioned bush tomato), and garnished with a slice of green capsicum. The capsicum, originally thought to be way too out there, was an absolutely inspired addition, as it brought out all the savoury aspects of the gin, and complemented the sharpness the Fever Tree tonic water spectacularly! 

Cheers boys for such an awesome session!

Pascale Gomes-McNabb rearranges William Johnston’s Collection

Take 1 great artist, I amazing venue, beautiful food expertly prepared and served on incredible pieces of porcelain, glass and more - and kind of mix it all up – thats the best way I can think to summarise this fascinating exhibition, on display during and beyond the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival – read below for a slightly more thorough explanation and a dreamy video.

Pascale Gomes-McNabb is well-known internationally as a designer of hospitality venues including her co-owned Melbourne restaurants, Cumulus and Cutler & Co. So, the theme she has chosen for this collection, “After The Meal: A taste for excess” will come as no surprise to those who follow her career.

In thinking about the proposal, Gomes-McNabb arrived at the idea of serving up themed culinary delights by exploring meals, or aspects of eating, over the course of a day in each room of Fairhall, a Georgian house in East Melbourne.

The drama will be the food and the furnishings with Gomes-McNabb working with some well known chefs, including Neil Perry and Ben Pollard at Spice Temple Melbourne, to create the memory of sublime dishes for each room, and a recipe to take home. Table settings will dazzle with silver, glass, gold and porcelain, creating rich tablescapes evocative of hedonistic consumption and excess.

An exquisite brunch from Spice Temple will be on display in the Blue Room. The room will be decorated with Chinese blue and white ceramics and other Chinese antiques form the collection.

This event is being presented as a part of the Melbourne Food & Wine Festival and will be on display from Monday 5 March – Friday 22 June 2012. The video below is with thanks to the talented Amanda Morgan and James Morgan who created the video for Spice Temple in response to Pascal’s brief and concept.

Pineapple and Ginger Puddings

If the roses are all sold out…and the pancakes flopped this morning – there’s till time…we reckon this pudding is just about the perfect way to say  I love you!

Serves 6

I love crystallised ginger and it is worth getting a good-quality brand for these puddings. If you don’t like munching on it all by itself, then it’s not good enough for this dish. These little baked puddings are very easy to make. They have a heavy texture, although the batter is made light by self-raising flour and baking powder. You could, I suppose, add the egg yolks separately to the white, then fold the whites through afterwards to make a soufflé effect, but part of the charm of this dish is its firmer texture, which makes it more like a pudding than a cake. In baking, when the word ‘cream’ is used in relation to the butter and sugar, it is very important that the sugar completely dissolves, as whole crystals will burn out during the baking process and create little air bubbles in the pudding. As this particular recipe has a heavy texture it wouldn’t be the end of the world, but it would be if you were trying to create a light sponge. These little puddings are great served with vanilla or honey and cassia ice cream or with some lightly whipped cream or a little warm crème anglaise.

Ingredients

200g unsalted butter
115g caster sugar
4 eggs
1 teaspoon baking powder
25g ground almonds
60g self raising flour
125g crystallised ginger, roughly sliced

For the topping
100g brown sugar
6 slices fresh pineapple, about 5mm thick, cut in circles the same size as the moulds

Method

Line a baking tray with greaseproof paper. Butter and lightly flour six individual bottomless moulds, about 5cm high and 7cm in diameter. Put the moulds on the tray and set aside.

To make the topping, dissolve the brown sugar in 60ml water and bring to the boil. Add the pineapple slices to the syrup and simmer for 5 minutes until tender, turning the slices over once. Remove the pineapple and leave to dry on a tray. Retain the syrup for later.

Preheat the oven to 190°c. To make the pudding batter, cream the butter and sugar together. Add the eggs. The mixture may appear to split at this point but keep beating and it will come back together. Mix together the baking powder, almonds and flour and add to the batter. Finally, thoroughly mix through the ginger. Place a pineapple round in the base of each mould, fill the moulds two-thirds full with batter and bake for about 25 minutes, or until golden and springy.

Run a small knife gently around the inside of a mould and upturn onto a white plate. Remove the mould and repeat the process with the remaining moulds. Drizzle some of the reserved syrup over the top.

From ‘The Food I Love’ by Neil Perry, Murdoch Books.

So who’s cooking dinner tomorrow night? Allow us to suggest a beautiful accompaniment to a chilled bottle of champagne…happy Valentine’s Day folks x

Wood-Fire Grilled Asparagus Bruschetta with Tomato, Ricotta & Basil

Serves 4

Asparagus is best in spring and early summer. These local beauties are great boiled, pan-fried or eaten raw. Here they are grilled over our wood-fired pit. This can be simulated at home by simply barbecuing the asparagus. The dish itself is so simple and you can swap the ricotta for goat’s cheese, if you wish. You can also pan-fry the asparagus and the result will be just as pleasing.

12 spears green asparagus
juice of 1 lemon
extra virgin olive oil, for drizzling
sea salt & freshly ground black pepper
4 x 2 cm thick slices sourdough bread
1 garlic clove, halved
2 vine-ripened tomatoes, thickly sliced
12 basil leaves
100 g fresh ricotta

Trim the bottom 3 cm from the asparagus spears and peel the bottom half of each spear. Heat a barbecue or chargrill pan to medium and cook the asparagus, rotating with tongs, until tender. Cut each asparagus spear in half and place in a bowl. Drizzle with the lemon juice and olive oil and season to taste with salt.

Toast the slices of sourdough on the grill, then rub each side with the garlic clove. Drizzle with olive oil and season to taste with salt.

Arrange the tomato and basil leaves on top of the toast and season to taste with salt and pepper. Lay 3 of the asparagus bottoms on top, then place 3 of the asparagus heads crossed over the bottoms. Top with some ricotta and drizzle with olive oil to finish.

Rockpool Bar & Grill by Neil Perry, Murdoch Books, photography by Earl Carter.

There’s yum cha…and then there is yum cha.

 At Spice Temple Melbourne, we are taking it to a whole new level – the country’s best ingredients, cooked with love, passion and a good old fashioned dose of flair. As always, the focus is on the produce – from David Blackmore’s wagyu to Tasmania’s Cape Grim grass fed beef, Wangara Game ducks and Fremantle octopus to the stunning Otway Farm pork.

The menu has been painstakingly created by Neil Perry and Spice Temple Head Chef Ben Pollard – a labour of love indeed, featuring items such as Nanjing salt water duck 南京盐水鸭, White cut chicken steamed bun with salted chilli and pickles 素鸡包, Braised lamb shoulder “pot sticker”  羊肩锅贴 , Steamed pork ribs and black olives on rice rolls  米粉蒸排骨, White Jade rolls with crab sauce  蟹酱白玉卷, Chicken feet with black beans and chilli 香辣凤爪,  Crispy roast pork  香酥猪肉 and 8 Treasure rice pudding  宝饭…and of course a  great selection of teas such as Jasmine Pearls  茉莉珍珠茶 and Dragon Well Lungchin 龙井茶

Word from a few already-satisfied customers…sounds like they’ll be back!

 Absolutely fantastic Yum Cha today @Neil Perry’s Spice Temple at Crown. First day of their Yum Cha Menu and can’t recommend it highly enough. The food is magnificent and not in anyway your ordinary yum cha ….not expensive either…. and what a treat (am a huge fan) to be seated two tables from the great man himself. Treat yourself it’s well worth it!!

Hi Neil. Had the pleasure of being your first covers at Yum Cha @Spice Temple today. Thanks for taking a minute to say hi. The food was brilliant. I love the idea and experience of yum cha esp but so often the food is same old, same old. I guess a lot of the dumplings etc are purchased in bulk frozen. The lightness and balance of your dishes really made them sing. Prices are pretty reasonable too so I cant recommend it highly enough.

 Daily – from 12 midday till 3pm

We look forward to seing you over a dumpling or 2!

Spice Temple Melbourne

Crown Complex, Southbank, Victoria

Phone +61 3 8679 1888

It was a thrill and an honour to be a part of Monday night’s OzHarvest CEO Cookoff in the forecourt of St Mary’s Cathedral in Sydney, a night when 120 CEOs came together with a gaggle of Australia’s best chefs and a wonderful group of volunteers to feed close to 1000 disdvantaged men and women, to raise money for OzHarvest and Mission Australia.

We served up mushroom soup courtesy of Qantas Catering (Qantas being the major sponsor), a main course of the chefs choice (with help from their CEOs of course) and stunning Manna from Heaven tarts accompanied by ice creams from the divine Maggie Beer who was on hand to serve up and later spotted swinging her hips to the inimitable Jimmy Barnes who took to the stage after dinner.

Guests were fed by the likes of  Neil Perry, Peter Gilmore, Guillaume Brahimi, Bill Granger, Sean Moran, Cheong Liew, Teage Ezard, Poh, Adam, Matt, George, Julie and more from Masterchef and a further cast of thousands.

Truly a great night and hopefully the start of an annual event. We raised close to $1 million which means it is  OzHarvest’s  biggest fundraiser ever – that means one million meals will now be served to those in need.

Thanks to Qantas and the 120 CEOs, thanks to Liquid Ideas, thanks to our wonderful and grateful guests and thanks to Ronni Khan. We look forward to being a part of it all again next year!