2 hours ago, Duvel said:
Very cool !
Yes, you definitely need to tell us more 🤗
I have just recently finished my term as President of the Wine and Food Society of New South Wales, which was formed in 1939 as a vehicle to encourage and facilitate the association of people interested in fine wine and food. It is a male-only member club at which each week a different member cooks for his fellow members, with numbers of diners ranging from 25 to 50. I was also formerly Foodmaster.
Each year the Foodmaster chooses six to eight main courses that he considers to be the best meals of the year and we hold a cook off with members rating each of the competing meals. From this, the chef cooking the top meal wins the Chef of the Year Award. We also have an award for the top seafood dish as well and, from this year, an award for the best cheese accompaniment.
Winning the award is an honour, but it also brings the task of cooking at the next year's Chef of the Year Award evening. This time with appetisers, entree, main, cheese, and a dessert course. The function is mixed and this year had 67 attendees. Unusually this year, we also had three chefs as with COVID lockdowns, we have not been able to hold the function for a number of years.
I cooked the main course, while my colleagues cooked the appetisers, entree, and dessert.
The appetisers were:
Three cheese Gougères.
Prawn Cocktail on a rice cracker:
Chèvre and Tartufata Tartlets:
Entreé (this is not a main course in Australia) was Confit Salmon (also cooked sous vide) with a herb beurre blanc sauce:
The main was duck three ways:
the cheese was Beaufort (no picture)
The dessert was Lemon Tart with Lemon and Basil Sherbet and Cointreau marinated blueberries:
The accompanying wines were from the Society's cellar (which is around 9,000 bottles) and were served in the following sequence:
Photo Credit: Paul Irwin.
I also won the Chef of the Year and Seafood dish of the year with this seafood sausage dish (not cooked sous vide) so I will be cooking again next year for this function. The dish was a homemade seafood sausage made from hand diced salmon and ocean trout, smoked trout, egg white, cream, and pork back fat. Served on a Mooloolaba jumbo prawn with a tarragon beurre Blanc sauce. There was also a mango salsa, Canadian scallop, butter-glazed snow peas, and deep-fried forty-layer potato pavé with crème fraîche and Beluga caviar.
