Iron Chef Party: CARROT CHALLENGE

In Sydney this week, and it was Ben’s birthday, so we had an Iron Chef Party, with the secret ingredient being CARROTS.

here are Chefs Lockman and Kath’s carrot and parsnip fritters with rocket and persian fetta (oh god, so seriously, seriously good)

below: Chef Zoe (another Zoe)’s Carrot and Ginger Soup w crusty bread, Bob waiting patiently for Chef Kath to construct more of her morish morsels (they were eaten as qucikly as she could make them by a small kitchen crowd), Chef Ben’s carrot jelly (a sort of liquid carrot halva, a milk based jelly)

here, Chef Timtim’s dahl and carrot philo parcels, with yoghurt sauce;

Chef Zoe (me!) passing around potato and carrot gratin squares with prawns;

and here’s the spiced carrot and fetta dip I made;

CARROT & FETTA DIP

boil carrots until soft (I was going to roast them, but couldn’t be bothered), toast a handful of pinenuts along with some whole spices of choice (cumin, carraway, mustard seed, nigella seeds.. whatever your favourites are), then blend everything together, along with some olive oil and pepper in a blender or with a bamix.

stir through crumbled fetta (it’s why you don’t need salt) and chill until ready to eat - dip with toasted bread.

Also on the menu were Chefs Andy and Bob’s carrot cake, crackers, a flavoured fresh cheese, carrot sticks and dip, there was also another carrot cake, Chef Caz’s chickpea and carrot curry, some carrot icecream (mine) that didn’t set in time, and plenty of beer and wine consumed by all.

happy birthday Ben!

out to sea

wow, March has marched on past already. and what have I got to say for myself for my dismal blogging efforts? well…. um, there’s no internet connection when you’re sailing around the Whitsunday Islands?

compound that with a trip to hospital when I couldn’t pop my dislocated knee back in myself (I usually can, no problems) and resulting week in a brace, my ADSL2 ISP’s early demise (I’m still on dial up. do you feel my pain?) and a rather heavy workload up until the sailing trip.. there’s just not enough time! and I could have squeezed in a single March blog on the weekend, but everyone was up to seeTom became Dr. Tom offically! horray!

so.. 5 people eating on a boat. for a week. no shops. so we can’t run out of anything. including water. or chocolate, of course. but you don’t want to go hungry.. in the end, we ate really well, with everyone chipping in with meals plus cleaning the (really well equipped) galley.. highlights included Caroline’s always awesome soba noodle salad (which I will get around to re-creating here soon), BBQ’s on the deck, and the crackers, vege sticks, cheeses and dips with wine/beer/g&t as the sun set each evening!

miraculously, we did really well with quantities of food, despite shopping with no plan, we could have done better with eating our perishables early (we lost some chicken and cold sliced meats) and getting the hang of the fridge (temperamental) and I think a plan would have helped, but our final night ‘baked roll ups’ - mountain bread filled with .. er.. pretty much everything we had left! 3 cheezes, olives, veges etc.. was a good example of limited-kitchen improvisation.

unfortunately; no fresh fish! 6 days and not a single bite! we had the lure behind the boat when sailing along or the line out whenever we weren’t in protected zones.. but no fish dinners. we did see plenty of fish snorkelling, and some interested dudes hanging around under the boat and dinghy now and then.. Tom was most dissapointed in us

all in all… so worth it! Whitehaven Beach (the really pretty pic below) has to be one of the most beautiful spots in the world, with the purest silica sand (great for exfoliation!) if you get a chance to go, DO IT! we all kicked ourselves for having living only a few hours away for several years now, and not going more often. and there’s us enjoying a coffee and cake break.

so, back to the cooking soon, promise!