Toast

No not the culinary treat of most saturday mornings (how good is english marmalade!), but in fact a australian/new zealand food festival that was on in London last weekend.

Lovely setting in Regents Park with a gorgeous summer day (I've now had about 3 months of very good weather, it really isn't that bad here, everyone is making it up) - loads of stalls for demos, wine tastings, travel etc. We didn't get into any wine sessions unfortunately (only started to try towards the end of the day) but they looked pretty well set up!

With £10 of food vouchers included in entry (quite steep at £35 but a friend from work had a 2-4-1 which made it okay), it made Michelin-starred food much more accessible! The som tham from nahm was very yummy, as was a baked cod with tamarind paste, and the strawberry bellini from the ledbury was delish! Now have three restaurants on my list of 'must visits' - nahm, the ledbury and pied a terre.

Also saw bill granger (his name looks wrong with capitals in it) do a demonstration of how to make braised chicken, chickpea salad and vanilla panacotta. When he asked who missed the ricotta hotcakes and corn fritters, it was definitely me! And he was talking about Martin Boetz (of Longrain fame) - making me miss the scene back in Sydney! Got him to sign a copy of his book and took a photo with him at the end which had me beaming - awesome meeting one of your heroes in the flesh unexpectedly :)

The som tham demonstration was quite good too - it was the end of a hot day so chef David Thompson was a little quieter than I think he would usually be. But he has an acid wit which I loved - an American in the front row asked if he shouldn't be using brown rice instead of sticky rice for the salad and he quipped that if brown vs white rice was going to make such a big difference in her diet, it must be pretty dire :)

Anyway, it was a good day out :)