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.

MANtastic Meals – Part 1

Straight off the back of ‘The Sweetest Thing’ series, I’ve decided to start a men’s version using favourite savoury recipes from some of the blokes in my life.  I sent a call out to almost every guy I know asking them for their favourite savoury recipe, asking why it’s their favourite and where the got the recipe from.  I had a surprisingly wonderful response making me think that husbands, boyfriends, brothers, mates, fellas, guys, chaps and lads really do love to cook and they particularly like coming up with their own creations.  I guess this is no real shock when most chefs in the culinary world are male.

This week we start with my mate Peter.  Pete was a colleague of mine at my previous place of work.  When he is at work Pete is the management accountant and he made ‘crunching the numbers’ and ‘cooking the books’ much easier for me when we worked together.  After all I’m a words person not a numbers person!  When Pete isn’t at work sifting through a sea of figures he is an international cyclist. He rides his bike all around the world ‘tour de France’ style. So the food Pete eats is very important.  He is actually fuelling his body so that he can race.  Pete has shared with us a recipe that he has created himself and throws together when he is touring around Europe.  I’m sure you can make it anytime you are touring around life.  I think it’s a great healthy dish for the warmer months ahead.

Pete’s Healthy Chicken Salad

What you need:

·        Brown rice

·        Chicken breast

·        Seasoning

·        Whole beetroots

·        Spinach leaves

·        Capsicum (Red, Green and Yellow)

·        Cucumber

·        Cherry tomatoes

·        Olive oil infused with garlic

 What you do:

1.      Cook rice

2.      Dice capsicum, cucumber and tomatoes

3.      Add to hot pan with olive oil infused with garlic and lightly grill

4.      Cut chicken into small pieces and grill in a separate pan.  Lightly    coat with seasoning.

5.      Mix rice, chicken, grilled vegetables with spinach leaves.

6.      Cut up whole beetroots and add to rest of ingredients

7.      Enjoy

Thanks Pete. 

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.

 Enjoy friends!

The Sweetest Thing - Part 9

Marita’s Trifle

Wow – this is the final instalment of ‘The Sweetest Thing’ series.  This series of favourite sweet delights from the sweet, lovely, fabulous ladies in my family has been hugely popular.  So much so that I am considering extending the series to any of the sweet girls in my life that would like to share their favourite sweet recipe with me. Stay tuned sweet ones!

There is no doubt Christmas is in the air – I can smell it.  I know it’s only November but when the weather starts to get warmer, the flowers are in full bloom and the supermarkets have had the Christmas decorations out for a month already it’s hard not to start thinking about Christmas and the food that comes with it.

One of my all time favourite sweet things at Christmas is trifle.  Ever since I was a little girl I remember devouring my grandmother’s trifle, then when she retired from making it my aunty turned up with the goods.  These days it’s my sister in law Marita.   Her favourite sweetest thing recipe is this trifle that was passed onto her from her mum and the original recipe comes from the NMAA (Nursing Mothers cook book).  I can’t wait to hoe in to it this Christmas Day.

TRIFLE RECIPE

What you need –

18" sponge cake

3-4 tablespoons of raspberry or strawberry jam or 285 gram packet frozen raspberries or fresh raspberries

1/4 cup of sherry or fruit juice

600 ml warm custard

300 ml thick cream

What you do –

Split sponge cake in two, sandwich together with jam and put in bottom of glass bowl.   

Place raspberries on top and sprinkle sherry over cake. Prepare custard and while still hot pour over cake. Then leave until cold.  

Beat cream and spread over custard.   Decorate with almonds and cherries.

Handy hints –

Mum usually uses tinned peaches and also makes a raspberry jelly. When the jelly is set, chop it up and put on top of the custard decorating the top with the jelly instead of the almonds and cherries.

Aunty Margaret said in Ireland they make a jelly and pour it over the sponge and let it set, which works very well.

Thanks Sweet Marita. 

Enjoy friends!