Good Food and Wine Show 2013

I had the good fortune of obtaining 2 tickets to the Good Food and Wine Show.  Included were 2 complimentary tickets to the Woolworths Real Food Theatre and a choice of viewing any celebrity chef in person.  I invited Saaleha to join me and we opted to attend Gary Mehigan's show since we love Masterchef Australia and let's face it, the judges on that show truly make it wonderful.

Now I've never entered a cookoff before and even though I've watched it countless of times on Masterchef Australia and its South African counterparts, I still felt ill prepared.

When we finally got to Woolworths Real Food Theatre, I was excited to see that it was pretty well organised.  Kamini Pather, the winner of Masterchef South Africa 2013, was our host and she went around talking to all of us and made us feel comfortable.  I'm not used to a lot of chatting while cooking and I felt a bit out of my comfort zone when I had to talk into the microphone!

Anyway, our mystery basket was waiting for us.  Eggs were the main theme and we also had a block of cheddar and bok choy to go along with it. 

What on Earth is 'Bok Choy'?

I looked at this vegetable and I couldn't figure it out.  Apparently it's some sort of Chinese cabbage. Who knew?

Luckily Saaleha had a fantastic idea in mind and she got to it.  She came up with souffle's (genius!) and then we realised we didn't have any ramekin's, so we improvised with these little metal cups they gave us.  

We decided to do a second item, but I had an absolute brain freeze and couldn't think of anything.

Luckily I went over to the table filled with various ingredients and then decided to make Chocolate, Pecan nut and cranberry muffins...in those small tiny metal cups.  Some of our items didn't cook up in time, so we improvised and Saaleha came up with the most amazing soft, egg mixture which she dubbed 'soft tops'.  It melted in my mouth.  

Joy!

This was our result:

 Afterward we all gathered around with the other attendees and ate our food.  It was not a competition and there were no prizes, but it was a lot of fun and I now have loads of empathy for the Masterchef contestants!

Grater plate

Later on, we walked around a bit, bought a whole lot of goodies including this awesome grater plate for garlic, ginger, nutmeg, etc. and the most amazing toffee from Sweet Temptations.  I was also quite impressed by the Basilur Tea company.  I adore their packaging! 

Basilur Tea

Before leaving we just had to make a stop over at the Lazeeza's stand as their custard slices always make me salivate.  I grabbed some custard slices, and their must have burfee cupcakes.  Delicious! 

Sweet Temptations Toffee

If you follow Masterchef Australia, you would probably be quite appreciative of Gary Mehigan's humour, and wisdom.  He is brilliant in the kitchen and I am so glad I watched his show.  He made a delicious looking prawn ravioli dish with prawn oil.  Unfortunately I didn't get to taste it, but it looked amazing.  I love that he used simple and few ingredients to create a wonderful dish.

Gary Mehigan in action

Images courtesy of Saaleha from ShootCake (Thanks for coming with me Saals!)