There's so much great stuff happening in the food world right now it's hard to know where to start.
But the topic on the lips of all of my customers, family and friends is Master Chef. Everyone has their favorite, and their least favorite, everyone has fancied themselves at cooking one of the contestant's dishes, everyone has a favorite judge and a story to tell.
Master Chef has really grabbed our imagination. Channel 10 used it to replace it's long running Big Brother franchise and the show has really delivered - in rating and in taking it's place in the local food culture. And there has been not too much cringing as some of the country's leading chefs line up to feature them or their kitchens in front of the cameras.
While the show differs in format from the US and UK versions and has adopted a few "reality" show stunts such as peer elimination and bringing back ousted contestants, there is no doubting the impact it is having on all kinds of food lovers.
In our store and cafe, customers are choosing the food from the menu that is similar to that cooked on Master Chef - after Justine cooked lamb shanks for the sailors of HMAS Kanimbla, we served more lamb shanks in a day than we normally do in the week.
When the judges ran their Master Class for the contestants and used Persian Fairy Floss to garnish a dessert, our stocks of Pariya Persian Fairy Floss - all flavours - sold out. Just for the record - we have new supplies in stock - Chocolate, Saffron, Pistachio, Vanilla and Rose. (This a a glorious product, definitely for the grown ups, not for the kids though.)
This fabulous product is made by Sydney based Pariya Foods and is part of a huge range of traditional Middle Eastern confectionery and sweet meats which they made by hand to traditional recipes. The Fairy Floss is a perfect garnish for many desserts and can elevate a simple home cooked dessert to looking and tasting very special. It's not necessarily a cheap product, but it's wow factor makes it a very worthwhile investment for the pantry. .. Anyway, I digress.
Customers have also been demanding really good quality extra virgin olive oil (of which we have a good selection) and a wide variety of spices. I also saw Sydney based reports of utensils such as pasta makers and piping bags selling out of quite large kitchen supply stores.
It led me to finally doing something I had been talking about for a while; we've started a regular bi-monthly publication - called Get in Touch With Your Inner Chef - Taste Gourmet's Food and Recipe Guide. First one focuses on winter and contains some great information on the basic products you need to have in your pantry to get you cooking each night of the week.
We also look at some of the common but misunderstood gourmet food products such as Extra Virgin Olive Oil, Verjuice, Salt Flakes, Vinocotto and Balsamic Vinegars. And we have heaps of recipes suing these products. Our first edition also features many of our Italian products and even shows how to cook your pasta the Italian way. The Guide is free and we will be publishing new editions each two months, the next one will feature Spring recipes and in December we will focus on the festive season with Christmas recipes, tips and information.
So far, for the first edition, we have printed over 800 copies and they are proving very popular.
But there is also a much bigger picture here. Worldwide, since the start of the Global Financial Crisis, there has been a massive increase in people cooking at home, taking cooking classes, buying cooking and kitchen utensils and in buying cook books and subscribing to food magazines. The national supermarket chains have also reported increased sales and have begun publishing recipes for "budget" meals in their weekly specials catalogues.
Foodweek.com.au reports that research by Mintel shows that the recession is definitely driving up food and drink sales and that we are indeed cooking more. Mintel Senior Analyst Bill Patterson says over the past year we have seen people trying to save money on food by either dining out less or cutting supermarket bills or both..more people cook at home more..
The Global Financial Crisis is helping us find a way back to the kitchen, and better still not only are we cooking more, we are interesting in cooking well, in creating high quality semi-restaurant quality meals, in using great quality fresh products and ingredients, and in experimenting with new tastes, flavours, tastes and techniques. It's nice that something good came out of the GFC.
And it helps to partially explain why we are sitting addicted to Master Chef SIX nights a week in prime time.
But is does beg the question - what will we do each evening when it finishes in a couple of weeks time? Maybe our inner chefs will drag us back to kitchen to start practicing what we have been watching..
Customers have also been demanding really good quality extra virgin olive oil (of which we have a good selection) and a wide variety of spices. I also saw Sydney based reports of utensils such as pasta makers and piping bags selling out of quite large kitchen supply stores.
It led me to finally doing something I had been talking about for a while; we've started a regular bi-monthly publication - called Get in Touch With Your Inner Chef - Taste Gourmet's Food and Recipe Guide. First one focuses on winter and contains some great information on the basic products you need to have in your pantry to get you cooking each night of the week.
We also look at some of the common but misunderstood gourmet food products such as Extra Virgin Olive Oil, Verjuice, Salt Flakes, Vinocotto and Balsamic Vinegars. And we have heaps of recipes suing these products. Our first edition also features many of our Italian products and even shows how to cook your pasta the Italian way. The Guide is free and we will be publishing new editions each two months, the next one will feature Spring recipes and in December we will focus on the festive season with Christmas recipes, tips and information.
So far, for the first edition, we have printed over 800 copies and they are proving very popular.
But there is also a much bigger picture here. Worldwide, since the start of the Global Financial Crisis, there has been a massive increase in people cooking at home, taking cooking classes, buying cooking and kitchen utensils and in buying cook books and subscribing to food magazines. The national supermarket chains have also reported increased sales and have begun publishing recipes for "budget" meals in their weekly specials catalogues.
Foodweek.com.au reports that research by Mintel shows that the recession is definitely driving up food and drink sales and that we are indeed cooking more. Mintel Senior Analyst Bill Patterson says over the past year we have seen people trying to save money on food by either dining out less or cutting supermarket bills or both..more people cook at home more..
The Global Financial Crisis is helping us find a way back to the kitchen, and better still not only are we cooking more, we are interesting in cooking well, in creating high quality semi-restaurant quality meals, in using great quality fresh products and ingredients, and in experimenting with new tastes, flavours, tastes and techniques. It's nice that something good came out of the GFC.
And it helps to partially explain why we are sitting addicted to Master Chef SIX nights a week in prime time.
But is does beg the question - what will we do each evening when it finishes in a couple of weeks time? Maybe our inner chefs will drag us back to kitchen to start practicing what we have been watching..
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