New Years Eve Prawn Rolls

New Years Eve – is it the biggest party of the year or the most over rated night on the social calendar?  Do you revel in the celebrations with the sound of champagne corks popping and fireworks or are you making your own snoring sounds by midnight? 

Whatever the case, I came across these prawn rolls earlier this week that I think are a perfect meal to end the year on.  They are light, tasty and easy to make.  They are a real crowd pleaser if you are having party or a delicious treat to make yourself at home with a glass of bubbles whilst you watch TV.

Happy New Year friends.  I hope that every hour of every day in 2013 brings you love, light and laughter and lots of yummy food!

Prawn Rolls

What you need;

1kg cooked and peeled prawns

1 cup of good quality aioli

2 chopped avocados 

Zest of 1 lemon

2 tablespoons of chopped chives

Salt and pepper to taste

Rocket or mixed lettuce

12 x fresh dinner rolls

What you do;

Mix all ingredients together in a bowl (except for the rocket and rolls).

Cut the rolls lengthways, halfway down the roll.  Line rolls with rocket and top with prawn mixture.

Arrange on a platter and serve with your favorite glass of bubbles.

Christmas – it’s all about the food.

Let’s face it for most of us; once the gifts are given and received, Christmas is all about the food.  The whole lead in to Christmas revolves around celebrating with friends, work colleagues, family and neighbours.  All of these celebrations are centred around the food.  People haggle with much anguish about where they should go for the work break up dinner or the girl’s lunch, which canapés would be best or what meat they should have on the BBQ for the street party.

One of my best girlfriends, who rarely cooks or caters, has gone mad this Christmas by hosting a series of Christmas gatherings in the days leading up to Christmas Day and is then hosting Christmas Day with all the trimmings.  She is slicing, dicing, glazing, stuffing and garnishing.  I’ve never seen her produce more than one platter of 12 savoy biscuits with gourmet toppings on them, so I am waiting eagerly to see how this turns out for her!

These types of behaviors go on right up until Christmas Day then it’s absolute food anarchy. There is always way too much food and everybody eats way too much.  No matter where you go or where you come from there are endless tables full of roast meats, vegetables, salads and enough desserts to start a cake store.  It seems outrageous that for one day the majority of the population to go extremes to cater for their loved ones.

Coming from a Hungarian background on my mother’s side, the menu on Christmas day seems even more ridiculous than what I have seen on the Australian side of my family.  We always have to start with soup, even when its 45 degrees in the shade.  Then we have all of the Hungarian staples along with some Australian dishes to round out the main and then dessert course.  It’s a hot and cold buffet catering for every culture, age group and dietary requirement possible.  And that’s only lunch!  I don’t even want to get started on Christmas dinner.

But I love it.  I eat too much, drink too much then fall asleep on the couch, waking up 40 minutes later to realize I’ve been asleep with my mouth open and once again missed out on doing the dishes!

In all of this food absurdity there are some delights that only seem to appear at Christmas time.  I’m not sure why that it but I know that when you try and eat some of these things outside of the festive season they are nowhere near as good. So here are my top five food favorites at Christmas time that need not bother at any other time of the year.

1.    Sticky Date Pudding with Caramel Sauce.  My secret recipe that I share with no one – I’d rather make you one than share the secret.

2.    Cherries.  They need to come in a massive box and be delivered by that cherry guy that you never see.  The cherries just appear at the front door a day or two before Christmas.

3.     Aunty Marg’s Trifle.   I don’t want to know how she makes it so I can make it myself. Just turn up with it each Christmas please!

4.    Creamy Cucumber Salad. My Hungarian grandmother makes this for Christmas Day lunch and it’s the best.  I believe it’s Hungarian because she makes it and because it has paprika on the top of it!

5.   Left Overs on Boxing Day. Need I say anything except it all just tastes better the next day.  It really does.

Merry Christmas Friends!  

Eat, drink and be merry!

MANtastic Meals - Part 2

My husband, whether he realises it or not, is a fabulous cook.  I can remember the very first thing we cooked together when we first started ‘dating’.  It was a lazy Sunday afternoon and we were sitting in his backyard enjoying the sunshine, when he noticed a pumpkin that had somehow come over the fence from the neighbor’s veggie patch.  It was still attached and we queried with each other if it was stealing or not it we were to pick it – as technically it was on his property!  After very little debate we decided to acquire the pumpkin and turn it into soup.  We were both excited to have decided on dinner for that evening.  I’m not sure if it was the quality of the pumpkin or the lack of other key ingredients, such as stock, that made it the most offensive pumpkin soup we had ever tasted!  But it was fun and an enjoyable experience, and I had realised that despite this kitchen disaster he did have great cooking potential.

He moved on from the pumpkin soup debacle very quickly and really does enjoy cooking and can cook anything he wants with a marvellous result.   Even though he is the king of the BBQ at our house, he excels in cooking in the kitchen with the mouth-watering steaks, picture perfect stir-fries and his beloved slow cooker meals.

His passion of cooking came through when I sent the shout out for the MANtastic Meals series. I was pleasantly surprised that he was one of the first to respond.  His choice wasn’t what I had expected him to submit but it is a great old faithful from his University years when he was forced to create substantial meals on a shoestring budget with little fuss.  Now it’s something he throws together for our kids when they want a fun and tasty meal or for the adults when we just want something quick and easy and the cupboards are looking a little empty.

My Husbands Two-Minute Noodle Omelette

What you need;

1 packet of two minute noodles - cooked

2 eggs

1 medium tomato - chopped

3 slices of ham - chopped

½ teaspoon of chilli flakes

½ cup grated tasty cheese

Pepper and salt to taste

What you do;

Mix all ingredients in a bowl, shallow fry in a pan turning once.

Serve and garnish with fresh parsley.

Of course you can use any filling you please.  So easy and so yummy. 

Enjoy friends!

If there are any male readers that would like to submit their favourite recipe to be published in the ‘MANtastic Meals’ series please email me at foodforyoureviews@hotmail.com I would love to hear from you.

The things I learned, the things I loathed and the things I loved…

Where have I been?

For a weekly blog my performance over the past two weeks has been appalling.  I feel terrible about not sticking to my by line and my promise to provide a weekly food review from various people and places.  So now I feel it’s important that I explain my hiatus.

For the past five weeks I have been fulfilling a role for a client in my 'real' job.  I have recently started a hospitality consultancy business (and here’s the plug) called ZAP Consulting www.zapconsulting.com.au where I offer a range of services to assist in improving or enhancing their business.

In this particular case I was hired to care take a restaurant business so the owners could take a break and go on a well-deserved holiday.  The owners are a dynamic husband and wife team who run two restaurants with a bar in between within a major hotel complex.  By day I was undertaking the role of the wife in the administration office and by night I was managing the restaurants, as the husband would normally do.

This made for an extremely busy time for me working mega long hours most days of the week, hence my lack of blog time and omitting to post for the past two weeks. The two main reasons I’d like to give for this are number one, because every spare moment I had I needed to sleep and number two, because it wasn’t possible for me to complete my usual reviewing regime.

This was the first time I had undertaken a client job like this and it may not be the last.  There were many experiences I had being ‘back on the bike’ in the hospitality industry that I’d like to share with you for this weeks post.  The things I learned, the things I loathed and the things I loved.

The things I learned –

Not much in the industry has changed since I started working in it almost 20 years ago, however some things that stay the same really need to change, like -   

Chefs  (and not just good ones) are still hard to find, particularly in regional areas and they still get scary grumpy.  But the passion and love for what they do is as strong as ever which is great.

The customer is someone that has changed a fair bit.  I’m not sure if it’s because of Master Chef or Jamie Oliver’s 30 Minute Meals (do they ever work?) that have empowered the customer to push the ‘customer is always right’ belief to the absolute edge.  Customer comments (and I will call them comments because the majority of them do not warrant being called a complaint) are more ridiculous than ever. Accentuating that is the multiple platforms they have to complain on – like Urbanspoon, Trip Advisor, email and the list goes on.  What happened to the good old days when the customer told the waiter at the time they weren’t happy with something so then it could be corrected immediately and everyone went home happy?  There is NO point in writing negative feedback on a website two weeks later people – it helps no one!!!

Things I loathed –

There wasn’t much I loathed – it was heaps of fun getting back into the industry for a short stint.  But that’s the thing, I’m pretty certain I couldn’t do it full time again.  I just love being on the other side way too much!

I did loathe the aching feet and legs from being on them for several hours a day.  I also loathed the few rude people I encountered – thankfully there weren’t many of those. 

Things I loved –

I loved meeting some new people.  There were some very cool crew members on this gig and they made my days bright, fun and funny.  I feel blessed that I got the opportunity to hang out with them for five weeks.

I also loved some new music that I came across in the restaurant.  I have fallen in love with Josh Pyke and Mumford & Sons.  Great extensions to the iPod collection thank you!

Finally I loved that I got to give the owners of this business a chance to take some time out to relax and refresh.  Having been in their position before I understand what a massive thing it is to take a break and also to trust someone else to run things in your absence.  Thank you for the opportunity Mandy & Andy.

If you are ever in Mildura please go and visit Mandy & Andy and their fabulous team at their awesome award winning restaurants.  Tell them I sent you!

Seasons Restaurant & The new Spanish Bar & Grill

Corner Langtree Avenue & 7^th Street, Mildura Victoria.

Phone – 50 212377

www.seasonsmildura.com.au

Golden Plate Awards

The Golden Plate Awards have been run and won for another year.  This year saw the Geelong Otway region compete in its ninth year of competition, the Ballarat Daylesford region compete in its second year and the inaugural year of competition for the Bendigo Central Victoria region.

The Golden Plate Awards are an awards program for restaurants and cafes in these Victorian regional areas.  The program is a rigorous and thorough review of the restaurants that enter, by a panel of industry expert judges headed up by Rita Erlich.  I am one of these judges.

I am incredibly proud and honored to be one of the Golden Plate judges and I have thoroughly enjoyed the role this year.  Besides from the obvious reasons of enjoyment of going to wonderful restaurants and sampling their fabulous food, I am truly proud to be a part of the Golden Plates because of what it does for regional dining and that it gives the hospitality venues an opportunity to enhance their product from the feedback they receive from us.

Being as passionate as I am about regional food and produce, it’s fair to say that via Golden Plate I have been exposed to more regional food experiences than ever before and regional food is totally rocking it!  Regional dining is going from strength to strength by providing diners with more than a meal but an entire experience.  The quality and creativity is incredible and something that regional Victoria can be extremely proud of.

This year there were hundreds of entrants in the categories of fine dining, contempory dining, casual dining, licensed and unlicensed café with each venue being judged in two rounds by separate judges.  All aspects of the venue were judged from the food and wine to the ambience and safety of the venue.  Every stone is unturned.  Each region had their category winners announced at a gala event in each region with this year seeing for the first time a State Award for the best restaurant, best café and best chef out of the three regions.

The State Awards were announced last Monday night at the Geelong Otway region gala night.  It was an amazing night for the industry and a very exciting night for the Bendigo Central Victoria region with MASONS OF BENDIGO winning the State Award for Best Restaurant.  This is an extraordinary achievement for MASONS as they have only opened for business this year and it was the first time the Golden Plate Awards have been in this region.  It was totally well deserved and you can read all about how fabulous they are here in my very first blog post where I reviewed them.  Congratulations MASONS OF BENDIGO.

Check out all the other winners at www.goldenplateawards.com.au

I can’t wait for the 2013 Golden Plate Awards!

Note – none of my blog reviews are restaurants that I have personally judged for the Golden Plate Awards.