your dream festival of all things culinary

I blinked and I missed it.

The Melbourne Food and Wine Festival that is.

Is it my imagination, or has there been little or no buzz about the festival amongst the Melbourne food blogging community this year? Even Ed, festival hound that he is, has written very little.

I initially wrote a snarky post about my journey through the festival guide. In the twinkling of a keystroke, I’ve deleted it in my attempt to practice a more positive outlook on life (well for the rest of the week at least).

However just let me keep one little swipe:

The Age, who present the festival, produced a brochure studded with errors. This is what you get when your replace an experienced editor with Bill Gate’s spell-check.

2.00pm Tal Karp, Captian of the Melbourne Victory Women's soccer team reveals the secret BBQ ingredient that keeps her fir for elite sport

Ok, I feel better now.

As an aside, the problematic “Out of the Frying Pan” was binned this year, in favour of a sleeker look-a-like event. The global food trends promised “ an afternoon of provocative and informative discussion about the global futures of food, restaurants and the media that covers them.” Different name, same old-media-as-trend-setters scenario. Did anyone attend? I wonder what the experts predicted? Let me guess, did it involve depression era food, less glamour, more value for money?

But where my original rant led me was to ask you, the discerning reader, what do you want from a food and wine festival? Imagine the best celebration of the joys of eating was to be put on in your town, what would you leave your living room for?

This year people seemed happy enough to fork out $185 to make the meal a sold out event. Will next year's festival be heavy on high cost events?

One steam of the festival that has been popular over the years have been the “crawls” from the wonders of the Middle Eastern bakeries on Sydney Road to demystifying the organics at the market, I hope these cheaper events were just as popular. I’d love to see the “Sushi Crawl” make a return. This was the first festival event I ever attended, with a lovely teacher from William Angliss in a now defunct Japanese restaurant. We were instructed in the rituals of sushi (you dunk the fish, not the rice in the soy sauce) offered many different types of sushi and in the end ate our full – all for less than the average price of a Japanese meal at the time.

A recent thread on Progressive Dinner Party garnered an amazing response. Zoe asked what people would like to learn if they were going to a “demystifying the Asian supermarket” session that she was putting on at her local women’s group. From the comments she could run the class for a year and barely touch the surface. I am not a gourmand, I like grass roots stuff like this and so did many of her readers with requests for how to use tofu, rice noodles, shitake mushrooms and other fungi, make a good stir fry and much, much more.

In my dream festival I would celebrate the ethnic diversity in this city, not necessarily by show casing the big name chefs from each tradition, but by asking the nonnas, the mums and the like to show us how and why they use these interesting ingredients from each of the food stores.

I’d like Mark Bittman, of course and more cooks like him. The ones that don’t use the healthy word but often create something that would fall under that banner without anyone noticing.

I’d like people to have the opportunity to connect more with where the food comes from. Urban gardens and the dedicated, amateur gardeners who grow their fruits and vegetables. We don’t need Jamie Oliver for this giving a stadium presentation, just locals showing off their patch and sharing their tips.

Perhaps while we are at it the festival should also include abattoir tours and a look at what the Egg Marketing Board deems as “free range” or “barn laid”. This probably wouldn’t be that popular but it would be an effective reality check for many omnivores.

More appealing would be “take one chicken” - show folks what they can do with an investment in a rather pricey but luscious organically grown chook. How to use the bones for stock, roast or break up the bird, the diversity of meals a family could make from this worthy critter.

People continue to be mystified by what to do with fish. My whole fish cooking posts get a huge amount of hits. A class on romancing fish in all its glory would be popular.

So my festival would feature some cheaper, down-home events exploring the pantries, nooks and crannies of this town.

What would be in your festival?

more tales from the frying pan

Warning: This post contains opinions, lacks objectivity, is not written by a journalist and would benefit from a once over with a red correction pen. It would never appear in print media and will probably only be read by a couple of dozen hundred people.



I return to my modest, non-niched, only accidentally witty and rarely entertaining blog to formally acknowledge today’s post is sponsored by The Age. If not cash, then definitely a smoked salmon filled roll and a drink or 2 for comment. I managed to pop into the Food Festival’s Frying Pan sessions a little late, after a fulfilling a work obligation and left at afternoon tea. I’ll admit my limitations and say this is no fair review of the entire day as I can only write about putting my head into 3, half sessions on various aspects of the world of food writing and have come away a little baffled. I am not entirely sure what audience the presentations were pitched at (but then again, I spread myself thinly and did not witness a complete session so the bewilderment is likely of my own making). There was more than a pinch of smugness exuding from a few of the professionals on the very heavily Farifax biased panels but this was tempered by the generosity of many of the others that braved the stage.

I headed off to Recipe Writing because you may have noticed it is not my forte to slavishly quantify. I picked up some bitchy gossip about some famous food writers (if you want to appear witty and in the know, slagging off Nigella and Delia is currently in vogue) and as a bonus learnt more about writing styles than from the other sessions I attended. I came away a fan of Lucy Malouf for her modesty, calm and practical advice. While I don’t think I learnt anything new about actually writing a recipe, it was an eye opener to realise that cookbooks are rarely recipe tested by anyone other than the author. That explained a lot.

I had divided loyalties in the afternoon over which food bloggers to support by attending their session. Hence the double act starting with So You Want to Write About Food. Two panellists were Fairfax food publication editors – whose advice could almost be summed up by “Whatever makes you think you could be anywhere near good enough to get published?” along with “be funny, entertaining, irreverent and informative” (but still don’t imagine we’d ever print you). Julie Gibbs from Penguin, gave a similar message but with more humility and at least one story of hope for anyone whose manuscript has languished in a publishers slush pile. And then there was Jamie Wodetzki from The Breakfast Blog who as a “reformed lawyer” may be better equipped than the average blogger to hold his own in a hostile environment. It was mentioned that in earlier sessions there had been a fair amount of slagging off about blogs and he did a more than valiant job at representing us all. (If you are reading this Jamie, I’m the woman grinning inanely at you every time they tried to take a swipe at the blogworld and had a polite coughing fit to cover my laughter when there was the speech about the pristine ethics of wonderful journalists).

I snuck out and headed off to see Ed and others speak to the converted about the joys of blogging moderated by the irrepressible Helen Razer. Full marks to the organisers for taking onboard the criticism from last year's festival. The session was both practical and passionate (including input from the floor). I love Stephanie Wood’s Elegant Sufficiency but felt at times she straddled the dual roles of journalist and blogger a little uncomfortably*, though when she actually talked about writing her blog – she beamed. I left the session with my head spinning with all the reasons I blog. Do I secretly want to be a writer? Yes and no, I have been paid very generously in the past to write on other issues which was an utter joy but food writing is a hobby rather than a vocation. Do I see myself as a journalist? Not at all, nor have I ever claimed to be. I write a blog mostly out of enjoyment but am very happy to know other people get something out of it as well. A narcissist perhaps but if I learnt anything about the world of food writing today it is that I am not alone in that!

The highlight for me was putting faces to the names of some other bloggers and catching up with those who also get a perverse enjoyment of living a well-seasoned life. Thanks to Ed and Matt for facilitating that.


*Update: A spirited debate along the lines of 'does the quality (or lack) of writing in food blogs threaten the future of good journalism' (at least that's the part of the thread I've taken - there are other strands as well) continues in Stephanie's Blog - a must read for food bloggers.

Apologies for those who've stopped by to read more on cooking whole fish, how to make gyoza, thoughts on vegan food or just a peak to get ideas on where to eat in Melbourne healthily or not on an expense account. Normal food oriented, amateur writing will resume shortly.

into the fire

Last year I got a bit of a bee in my bonnet (or perhaps my apron) about a talkfest put on during the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival looking at the future of food and the media. I was stunned to see that food bloggers failed to rate a mention, let alone a seat on the panel.

I built up a good head of steam on the subject:

I find this curious. After all we are the punters. We are not the insiders from the mainstream media. We are the ones who pay for our meals, have no editorial restrictions and are read in the thousands each day. Bloggers are at the coalface. We actually try out the recipes from the latest hyped cookbooks (well some of you do), rather than have them displayed prominently and hope osmosis will do the trick. But we remain invisible, according to the festival guide and in a whole day of workshops discussing this theme, are nowhere to be seen.

Well guess what? They listened. Matt Preston commented on the post with promises things would be different this year. And they are. We have our own Ed from Tomato and Stephanie Wood from Elegant Sufficiency (yes she is in the Fairfax stable but she blogs beautifully) on the panel of one of this year’s Out of the Frying Pan sessions.

Though despite his response, inviting us to get more involved, “We are also keen to keep all those bloggers who are interested updated with Festival announcements. This was the first year that we started to compile a dedicated media list of online media and we'd love that to grow. If any one wants to email us so we can add them to out media database that would be great. Send your details …” I am sad to say this hasn’t happened.

But Matt’s made amends. If you’re interested in going to the all day event on Monday March 3rd and would like to score yourself a free ticket pop over to tomato for a very special ticket give away offer for food bloggers. It would be nice having an informal blogmeet sponsored by the festival, as well as the opportunity to add our 2 cents worth from the audience.



Update: It looks like I am one of the lucky recipients of a free ticket. Thanks Ed. As of 26.2.08 only 8 of the 20 tickets on offer have been taken. There might be room for a last minute pitch for bloggers who want to attend.



The Melbourne Food and Wine Festival is on from 22 February - 8 March. Tickets for Out of the Frying Pan can be purchased online.