Bring our ya Fruit

Published: 26th March 2011

Haven’t planned anything for Sunday? Tomorrow is one of my favourite events of the region. Market Day at the Feast of the Senses in Innisfail is going to be bigger and better despite what the weather has thrown at the district.

It is usual for the ‘Ultra-Tropics’ to put on a stunning display of its exotic fruits each year at the Market day. However with all crop devastation in the southern region, the Feast of the Senses is asking people to bring to the event (from far and wide) any exotic fruits from their backyard orchard, to make up one gigantic display. They are offering a prize of Clare Richards Tropical Cuisine cookbook for the most exotic fruit received.

Spread along Edith Street will be 72 stalls of laden with regional foods, exotic plant and other general items that you can taste and buy. Look out for the Taste Paradise stall. On centre stage Ajay Zalte of Rydges Resort will be back again this year with cooking demonstrations along with Jordan Lakin of the Barrier Reef Motel and our celebrity chef; Peter Russell-Clarke. You can also catch Peter wandering around between the Elandra Resort and Australian Banana marquees.

Just around the corner in Rankin Street, the family area will be home to the Youth Precinct with ‘Our Kitchen Rules’ competition, artists workshops, busking, circus and street theatre and rambutan stacking competition. (I wonder how many rambutans they can source.)

After looking at all that food you will probably be feeling a little peckish, so head on to the Canecutters Court for some local vittles and entertainment. Landcare have offered two free (1 hour) bus tours that will take you around the devastated and regrowth areas, one at 10.30 one at 12.00.

It’s a wonderful day and this year you can expect the unexpected, so jump in your car, throw the kids in the back; it’s a 1 hour cruise down to Innisfail for the day. At just $2 per adult and unaccompanied minors, $5 for a family, it’s a good opportunity to put a bit of money back into the Cassowary Coast economy. The Feast of the Senses Market Day is held in the main street of Innisfail from 9am – 3pm this Sunday. For further information check out the website www.feastofthesenses.com.au

Larry & Yasi - Still a Feast

Published: 19th March 2011

Come hell or high water (literally), the Innisfail Feast of the Senses gets under way this weekend and what a great opportunity it will be to show your support to the good people of the Cassowary Coast.

Starting today with Taste Paradise Food Trails, you will be driven around the cyclone affected areas to taste and learn about the foods of the ‘Ultra Tropics’. On Saturday the tour travels north to take in Mungalli Dairy, Yamagishi Eggs, Mena Creek Eco Gardens and Broken Nose Vanilla. On Sunday the coach travels south to Lizzio’s Banana Plantation, Salleras Fruit Forest Farm and Spurwood Springs. If you can’t make the coach tour this weekend, a self drive tour around the region will take place this coming week.

Special guest of the festival is Peter Russell-Clarke, a very talented icon of the Australian food scene; and the ‘original’ celebrity chef. What this down-to-earth Aussie hasn’t done doesn’t matter. His CV is star studded from writing, producing and presenting over 900 television shows, documentaries and programme segments, to publishing and nationally distributing a magazine. He has been a cooking writer for all the popular food mags, has written and illustrated 25 cookbooks and has recently published an Encyclopaedia of Food. He has been a food editor of a major newspaper and guest on all the national TV and radio talk-back shows. Peter became controversial when his bloopers featured on You Tube. Known for ‘Where’s the Cheese’ is only one of the many food television commercials that Peter presented.

Peter may have cooked the Silver Jubilee Dinner in Australia for HRH Prince Charles as well as having cooked for the Duke of Edinburgh but his style these days is very simple and relaxed.

An avid artist, for many years Peter was the Melbourne Herald’s political cartoonist so you’ll find his quick witted stories will have you in stitches. Peter will be the guest speaker at the Ultra Tropics Gala Dinner on Friday 25^th March so it’s sure to be a very funny night. Craig Squire of Ochre Catering once again has created a wonderful menu for the evening in the beautiful deco shire hall.

You can catch Peter at the very popular Market Day on Sunday 27^th March where the best of the regions food produce will be on display. This is a day I really love and worth the mere one hour drive from Cairns for a good day out.

In its ninth year, the Feast of the Senses is well entrenched in our region as an event not to be missed. So help support the community and check out the website www.feastofthesenses.com.au or call Kirsty on 0413 010 625 for full details of the events that start this weekend and continue through to next Sunday.

If I train them and they leave - If I don't train them and they stay??

Published: 12th March 2011

Gavin King has now referred to the service at a Cairns restaurant, similar to two snowflakes or two circumcisions; no two are the same??? Well Advance Cairns has decided to do something about it and through its food project will assist restaurants with ‘Aussie Host’ customer service training.

Great news, as this comes on the heels of a recent survey by Restaurant and Catering Australia that for every dollar you spend in a restaurant 44 cents goes towards wages and salaries. With staffing costs taking the highest percentage of earnings, you would expect great service, but alas that is not always the case. Finding good staff and retaining them is the bane of the industry these days and no one is prepared to train the itinerant backpackers who are filling the void. But what a vicious circle?

About 15 years ago ‘Aussie Host’; a customer service training program was rolled out across Australia. This one day course taught front of house staff in the tourism and hospitality industry, the art of making service a memorable experience. Something that today is repeatedly reportedly lacking in numerous establishments in this region! Back then many of our hotels, restaurant and tourism operators enrolled their staff in Aussie Host and surely this contributed to a more customer focused reputation in hospitality of the region at that time. Unfortunately management staff move on and Aussie Host was by-passed. It was a couple of years ago that Aussie Hosts made a comeback and although not taken up with the same zest as its former incarnation, it’s still an excellent training course that should be encouraged in every hospitality and tourism enterprise.

As a prerequisite to work in a restaurant, you need to have completed a Responsible Service of Alcohol (RSA) course. To uphold the reputation of this region, I believe it should be mandatory also for everyone (including backpackers) to have completed an ‘Aussie Host’ training course before serving customers in our restaurants.

Sustainable Seafood

Published: 5th March 2011

This week heralds the opening of the prawn season and fishers will be at sea for the next three weeks before bringing back the first bounty of prawns of the season. These fabulous morsels are the culinary icons of our region and to consume or serve an imported alternative should be deemed as sacrilege.

Strangely enough there is a assumption that our fishing industry does not care about over fishing and the extinction of a seafood, but that if far from the truth. With the exception of a minute number of rogue fishers, the Queensland seafood industry as a whole care very much for the ‘hand that feeds them’ and have self monitored and governed their fishing areas for many years and in 2001 a local group formed Eco-fish to formalise their activities. The Australian fishing industry is possibly the most regulated of its kind in the world and thus we have seasons, quotas and environmental regulations for each fishing sector. Hence the prawn season!

A publication of the Australian Marine Conservation Society’s (AMCS) Sustainable Seafood Guide recently caught my attention with over 100 species relegated to the categories of Better Choice, Think Twice, or Say No. I was surprised to see such a large number of seafood condemned to the Think Twice, or Say No category, so my scepticism led me to investigate.

Fortunately I didn’t have to look very far to find Nick Ruello who lives in Cairns and is a former fisheries scientist, Sydney fish merchant and consultant. For the past 45 years he has worked with many Australian businesses and national and international R & D projects on fisheries management and seafood processing, marketing, and quality assurance. He is a Slow Food member and acts as a seafood advisor on the Ark of Taste program. He is a founding member of the Australian Society for Fish Biology and a board member on two seafood industry organizations. He has an MSc degree from Sydney University and lesser qualifications in various fields.

Mentioning this publication touched a raw nerve with Nick. As he explains “Quite a few of their assessments are poorly founded and many of the Think Twice recommendations are so vague and general they are of little use” Nick gives the example “All trawl caught prawns are relegated to the Think Twice category although Australian trawlers are world leaders in sustainable harvesting, by-catch reduction and minimising environmental impacts and the major fisheries pass the Commonwealth’s Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act assessment”.

Nick contrasts the AMCS approach with the considered, constructive efforts being made by the Australian Conservation Foundation in collaboration with government fisheries managers, the University of Technology Sydney and the seafood industry to guide consumers to more sustainable seafood choices

(www.acfonline.org.au/seafood).

It is concerning when a ‘guide’ can be published with misleading information that can impact on an industry and on what we feel comfortable with at our dinner table. A full report of Nick’s findings can be found at www.australiantropicalfoods.com news page. So in three week, grab a kilo of fresh prawns and ‘enjoy’.

Serious Cooking

Published: 26th February 2011

In most parts of the world’s hospitality sector it is not uncommon to find a more mature workforce cooking or serving your meal, and here in Australia some twenty years ago this was the case. However for one reason or another the industry’s age went into free-fall and only the young were hired.

When I first started in hospitality I was inducted into a team of mature people who really knew their stuff; I am talking about gloved silver service and other skills that these people executed with much aplomb. Chef’s who learned how to bone out a carcase and a broad spectrum of classic sauces. Skills that may not be used in this particular era are dying out. And now even in a time when our television is flooded with cooking shows, there is not the uptake of younger people entering the culinary workforce.

Restaurants are screaming out for quality candidates to join their kitchen brigades and apprenticeships are at an all time low. An industry forum held in September last year identified the restaurant kitchens as in a critical situation.

Tropical North Queensland TAFE (TNQT) has answered the hospitality industry’s call for a greater number of commercial cookery apprentices by offering a free course to jump-start the careers of twelve would-be chefs.

The Certificate II in Hospitality (Kitchen Operations) is a pre-apprenticeship program for commercial cookery designed to introduce students to the culinary world and secure an apprenticeship. This initiative has been welcomed by a number of hotels and restaurants who have expressed their support.

There is no doubt about it, kitchen life is a hard slog but one that has instant rewards, and one that you can take it to wherever you wish. I am sure there are a number of mature age people who enjoy cooking and would grab the opportunity to make a serious step into a commercial kitchen.

Down, Down, Up, Up

Published: 19th February 2011

The state of grocery shopping is in turmoil at present with several factors adding to the destabilisation of the marketplace. Floods have inundated crops in many eastern (and western) Australian food growing regions and now cyclone Yasi has added a final touch to the sugar cane, banana and tropical fruit industry. It is said that the two large supermarkets are now weighing up imports of fruit and vegetables for the coming year. ...and they have now initiated a price war on several grocery essentials.

What effects will this have on Australian produce and farmers? Will there be pressure to relax the restrictions on imported produce into Australia at present? What bargain prices will other countries offer to deal with the two Australian supermarket giants? …and will these low prices set a buying precedent that will continue on after Australia has fully recovered from the floods and cyclone?

Down, down the prices are down and price cutting of milk and other commodities has outraged several agri-food groups, and the Australian Food and Grocery Council; slamming the price blitz as unsustainable for farmers, manufacturers and jobs. Using their generic brand for price cutting, the super two talk about absorbing their own cost so farmers and processors are not affected, well yes they are affected; that is, all the other farmers who don’t supply to the major supermarkets. I noticed in one suburban shop the local Misty Mountain brand has even been moved out of the milk fridge section.

Up, up, the prices are up and bananas have quickly reached $6.96 kg. But why so early after Cyclone Yasi? It appears that at least one of the two large retailers has justified this by posting a note in the store to let you know that they have decided to pay the growers double the original price of their existing stock! Great news for the farmer being paid twice as much, but at these prices great for the retailer whose margin could be close to twice as much as well!

Fortunately our banana industry has expanded across the region with plantations on the Tablelands and a very large one in the Lakelands area. This should mean that reasonable priced bananas should still be available at local outlets and markets.

Chefs Donate Menu

Published: 12 February 2011

Next Saturday at TAFE’s Tropics Restaurant, a Gala Dinner will be held to raise funds for the Premier’s Flood Relief Fund. The organising committee invited me to their planning meeting but hey! only chefs have meetings at 6:00am on a Monday morning. Suffice to say I didn’t make it. But I have kept in touch and found that this event is really turning out to be something special!

So many people and businesses have donated their expertise, produce, prizes (great prizes) or their time to make this event spectacular.

Craig Squire has now joined in with other high profile local chefs Phil Mitchell, Nick Holloway, Grant Jones, and James Saunders to create the four course menu and produce sponsored by Independent Seafood, Morganbury Meat, Simon George & Sons, Mungalli Creek Dairy and Rainforest Bounty. The inclusive price of $110.00 includes five excellent wines sponsored by Red and White Wines to compliment the menu, entertainment and the auction.

The fun starts with the auction, and this has proven very popular in the past when teams of local chefs from Rydges Esplanade, Thala Lodge, Sea Temple PD, Olivers, Chriso and other noted chefs of the region are auctioned off to create a dinner event in your home or at a venue. So if you have a special anniversary, birthday or corporate event coming up, these chefs will ‘just do it’.

Other fabulous prizes have poured in from restaurants, hotels, tourist operators and include 3 nights’ accommodation in a swim out penthouse at Sea Temple Port Douglas with spas and golf thrown into the package valued at $3500.

At $110.00 per person this is great value. Bookings for the gala dinner on Saturday 19^th February can be made through A-List Events on 4031 6200. All proceeds will go to the Premiers Flood Appeal.