A Table for Fifteen - (ATFT Workshop)

The Shanks and Lobo show were lucky enough to get into Billy's of A Table for Two food photography workshop. Seats were limited to fifteen per session and held at Mumu Grill function room in Crows Nest. At $85 for the workshop + meals, it was well worth the experience.

15mth aged Jamon Serrano with Catlan bread

Billy has a reputation within the food blogging community for his unique style of photography. Us Yummers have admired his work since his work on the exhibited Victorian bushfires, Tex Mex menu photo shoot, and his regular updates on his blog ATFT (particularly for me the Cambodian/Laos blogs). So this was an opportunity to learn from the jedi master.

Home cured olives

Have you ever wandered through a market and come across an overflowing tray of green olives? Did you then wonder how you might prepare them? Until that moment, olive preparation was a mystery to me. They always came in a little bowl at a restaurant or out of a jar.

After some research, I bought a kilo of the glossy green fruits ready for curing. Green olives are the unripened fruit and black olives are the ripened versions that are allowed to stay on the tree that bit longer. Olives contain the bitter compound oleuropein. This gives raw olives an extremely bitter taste which is a bit like rubbing panadol tablets on your tongue bound in rubber bands. Hence, birds tend to leave the olives alone and seek other tastier stone fruits. In order to make them edible, the oleuropein must be leached out from the fruits.

Chocolate (Pork) Crackles

This Fall......

The epic saga continues...

Of one man's fascination of matching pork with chocolate to make edible bliss...

From the creators of "A Chocolate Porking"...

Starring Lindt as the gingered flavoured hero, "Chocolate".