It doesn't matter how early I wake up I just don't want to get up - it's just too dark and COLD!
I take the 144 bus to Chatswood then another bus 340 into the city due to trackwork again on the Northshore line. I walk from Town Hall to the ICC Darling Harbour and arrive just after 11 am ( show opens at 10 am over the 3 days the show is on in Sydney)
As soon as I arrive I collect my free glass ( yep yet another one - the last 2 years I gave my ones away to my manager Tiff and my travel agent friend Kathryn) from the merchandise desk and head on into the show.
The morning and early afternoon is spent walking around and tasting everything possible on offer. Below is a list of what I tasted at this year's show .
Swiss Gruyere Cheese 6 months, 10 months 14 months mature cheeses. The more mature the cheese the better.
Montague Apples there were 4 varieties on offer to taste . I only sampled the first 2 but returned later in the afternoon to sample the other 2 -
Yello, Envy, Jazz & Eve apples and took an whole Eve apple home with me to go with my Modi apple for my apple cake I intend to make.
The spice Tailor - 2 tastings were on offer
tandoori paneer cheese and butter chicken paneer cheese. I liked the
butter chicken spices better. Unfortunately the little tubs of mango chutney I had last year were not being sold at the show this year and were just for display to highlight their range of products.
Isowhey - The first product I sample is the
probiotic chocolate - looks like chocolate and yes it taste just like real chocolate! Next the brownies plain chocolate first then the rasberry- yuk so dry! Move on.
Rollo Wraps sold by Alliance Paper - grease proof and baking paper that is apparently composable , at least 260 degree heat resistant in the oven , available in 2 sizes normal and commercial as well as available in single and double sided and 2 thicknesses. Double sided was unavailable therefore I could not purchase a roll to test out their claims - I remain unconvinced - I did not want to purchase a single sided roll at $5 a roll as it is no marked which side is the coated side - apparently it is the inside of the roll. It just looked like an expensive roll of greaseproof paper to me - I would wrap my sandwiches in it but certainly not bake on it. I has trouble pulling the demomontration slab of baked chocolate cake away from it.
Mutti -
tinned tomatos olive oil on bread simple but yum although the whole cherry tomatos were a little tart for my liking
King Oscar - I don't eat tinned fish much except tinned salmon and have never tasted
tinned mackerel. The mackeral
salad for sampling on a cracker was quite tasty.
Hunter Belle Cheeses - I love this cheese and have tasted and purchased their beer cheese amongst other flavours. I wanted to taste a few more flavours in their range at the show but settled on M
exicana cheese. One word described it - nothing in your mouth then a hit of HOT! No purchases of course as I am lactose intolerant and have to watch my limits of daily dairy intake. You've got to love walking through the
Tuckers Cheese Alley each Good Food & Wine Show! but I always avoid the separate
Smelly ( Stinky) Cheese Project stand!
Sprout & Kernel - I have purchased this before and loved it. This is a non dairy cheese made from cashews. Plain sold out but I purchased a block of chive - it was a toss up between
chive and herb. My second purchase of the day @ $7 a block
Woombye Cheese Company - like most other cheese companies at the show their emphasis was on soft stinky cheeses all of which I can't eat. Only one hard cheese on tasting offer - plain chedder . They recommended the cheese company below.
Warranambo Heritage Chedder - a variety of chedder cheeses on offer for testing. I settled on tasting the
maple & toffee yum! Again no purchase and I think that's almost enough cheese tasting for today.
Oops I nearly forgot
Ashgrove Cheese Amaze Balls - tasted 2 out of about 6 flavours of this freeze dried cheese balls - loved the salted caramel ones which was one of the new flavours but at $5 a tiny pack I decided not to make a purchase and unfortunately they had sold out and closed their stand before the end of the day when I returned.
Moorebank Late Harvest wine & Mascato a red sparkling. I did not taste the Mascato but did taste the late harvest. Quite nice and balanced not too sweet or too dry. My first and only alcholic tasting for the day- yes I have an alcohol intolerance as well! Cheese and wine boy am I missing out!!!!! They also had a range of vordial and sauces.
The Great Dairy Collective - a tasting of
flavoured kifir - mango blueberry & coffee were available for tasting as well as a range of their
yogharts. I settled on tasting the mango - not bad but I was limiting my dairy intake for the day. I was already feeling sick from all the cheese tastings above.
Picky Picky -
favoured peanuts sampled only one flavour this year Mexican. Not really a peanut person and I don't have any allergies to them either.
Modi Apples - I kept going back and sampling these and actually took home a whole one at the end of the day for my apple cake I plan to bake - these apples are huge compared to the 4 varieties of apple I sampled earlier today ie yello eve envy and jazz.
Plantain chips - yum - I only took 1 sample to taste then moved on.
Macau City of Gastronomy
Dragon Beard Candy, octopus salad ,
Asian chicken? and another pork dishes were all available to sample or were these intended to be for sale to visitors? The first round of samples came out on a tray and were served in sample sized bamboo boats the size of a Asian soup spoon and I chose to sample the
octapus salad which consisted of just 1 tiny piece of octapus amongst some salad but when I returned later the same sample of octapus salad had grown into a small serving sized portion with several pieces of octapus amongst salad. Tempted to have a second tasting of the octapus salad I chose instead to sample the chicken dish. For dessert - I haven't had a Dragon Beard Candy for so long so when these were on offer to sample I took one - difficult to describe, it is a cross between shredded coconut fairy floss icing sugar and with a peanut filling. The octopus and chicken dishes were very tasty. I received a free luggage tag, pencil case and squishy Portugese tart to take home.
Saladmaster - I was confused as to what they were actually selling - I sampled their
chocolate vegetable cake which was very light then I entered my first and only competition at the show to win food processor.
Tropical Fruits Direct - I sampled fresh
papaya and took home 2 little containers of
pickled papaya, 2
passion fruits and a whole papaya with a recipe card. The pickled papaya was so yummy!
Fresh As - here I sampled a
freeze dried rasberry panacotta - I only had 1 sample and did not return for more due to my lactose intolerance.
Aquna Murray Cod - My first purchase of the day @ 1 pm was a $16 vaccumed pack of
fresh Murray cod - there was no pay and collect later therefore you were given a block of ice and draw string insulated drawstring bag to keep your purchases in. I sampled both the fresh cod pieces which were perfectly dusted in rice flour and fried and the
smoked cod pieces. I kept coming back and sampling as much as I could losing count of how many times I returned for samples.
It is so exhausting eating sometimes therefore I took a break and watched the
Prawn Peeler demonstration selling for $12 each. We sell these but I never knew how they worked. They really are a great Australian invention!
Next stop was
Fluffy Crunch flavoured fairy floss with strawberry flavour on offer for sampling. I haven't had faiey floss since high school and thought I had outgrown this sugary treat but it was quite delicious actually! Still feeling a bit sick from eating all that dairy,
Good someone hands me a
ginger and honey drink - my stomach needed it desperately! After half an hour or so my stomach feels better - I continue with more food tasting.
Tuckers had a new series of products -
Sam's snacks chocolate, chocolate chip, blueberry and rasberry crackers are sampled - Have they changed the recipe? Yep they are a lityle softer and lighter then the adult original.They are a kids snack now not an adult like the original chocolate and the packets are now half the size at $5 a box. Renamed and repackaged but not worth the $5 a box. If that is a show special I would hate to see how much a box is in the supermarkets! I sampled almost all flavours of the cracker range but only sampled one of their pastes . No pastes purchased but it was the end of the last day of the show and I ended up purchasing 4 boxes of crackers for $10. It was a tough savoury choice and I ended up with
Rosemary and Salt , Caramelised Onion,Chocolate and Chocolate Chip.
Kara coconut products is one of my favourite brands of coconut milk and coconut cream abd ocassionally coconut powder I use in my cooking as they don't come in tins but tetra packs for liquids and single foil packs for powder. I sampled the
laksa tofu on offer and it was quite nice but spicy. The
Kara coconut brand is imported by
Eastern Cross Trading
By
1.45 pm it was time to take a break and watch
Miguel "Crazy Bull" (refer my previous blogs if you don't know who this celebrity chef is) in the
Princess Cruises theatre. Was I actually watching his "Tastiest Show In The World" or whatever it was called inspired from Hugh Jackman's Greatest Show? No not really I was catching up on my bogging and trying to rest my legs but all the seats were taken including the Citi priority sests in the front so I sat on the floor near the side of the stsge at the front along with others which made my legs cramp up and was a bit uncomfortable for the 1 hour or so show but there was enough room to stretch. Miguel was suppose to cook 2 savoury dishes and a dessert but I think her ran out of time for dessert so but
ended up with a dance which also started off with. His
paella and
roast chicken looked fantastic though. It made me hungry so onto my next stop which earlier in the day I ummed and arred about.
A late lunch was a
$5 cup of very oily fried Korean pork dumplings with dumpling sauce from
The Korean Food Association stand. Some type of mini Korean fish cake was also on offer to purchase however most people preferred the dumplings and I certainly avoided them as I wasn't sure what was in them.
I stopped off at
Australian Prunes and the take one per customer sign had been removed so I picked up a total of 3 mini packets of prunes. I sampled the most delicious
prune and chocolate cake from this stand.
Somewhere along the way I passed the
Grove Juice stand and was given a very cute bottle of Grove orange juice which I did not drink but took home with me. It comes in very handy as I drink bottles Grove pink grapefruit juice that I purchase weekly from Aldi and will use the miniature juice bottle to refill and take to work with me.
It was then a quick round of the other half of the Good Food & Wine Show - the alcohol section of the show which is really becoming more a Good Wine Show rather then a Good Food & Wine Show. Alcoholic beverage stands now occupy more then 50% of the Good Food & Wine Show. I was trying to find a mini bottle of some sort of orange flavoured liqueur but was unable to find any that were not full sized. A large amount of visitors were still drinking after the 5 pm close of the last day of the show. Stands must stop selling alcohol by 5 pm yet visitors hang around as long as they can beyond 5 pm each day the show closes. I walk pass the
Clare Valley, Barossa, Mudgee, Margaret River & Mclaren Vale regional stands which were mainly alcholic to ensure I didn't miss any food sections before heading back to the food section of the show for a final revisit and purchase or sample of last minute food products - unsure if I missed anything that I deliberately wanted to miss this year eg
Everdure by Heston Blumenthal - previous years I have lined up at 1 or 2 of his tasting sessions because they were free. This year the very first session at 11 am was advertised free however every other hourly sesson from 12 noon - 4 pm inclusive charged $5 a session! A bit of a rip off considering what was on offer last year - I hope it was worth it this year and the portion sizes were bigger as I didn't even observe what was on offer this year at the stand.
Getting closer to the closing time of 5 pm on the last day of the Good Food & Wine Show, I needed some good quality olive oil which was on my shopping list of things to purchase at the show. Very disappointed that I could not find any quality Australian olive oil, I headed to
The Gourmet Sausage Company where I could not make up my mind which type of sausages to purchase. Duck or some other sort of protein eg lamb was also on my shopping list of things to purchase at the show. Disappointed there was no lamb or duck at the show, I settled on 1 packet of
chicken flexetarian sausages and 1 packet of
beef flexetarian sausages (which are suppose to contain no preservatives, artifical flavours or colours and are 40 % vegetables and 60 % meat)
for a discount price of $10 ( usually $8 a pack at the show). No tastings were on offer so I just went with gut instinct when selecting.
Final purchase of the day was a bottle og Virgin Olive oil which was $14 a bottle but all I had left was a $10 note after negotiating my sausage purchase - don't ask me what brand it was I didn't care at this stage as I was so disappointed at the range of pure olive oils available at the show. A large bottle of unflavoured Australian olive oil for $10 done!
Nearly time to leave the show for another year.
Disappointments this year - no bread, very little quality chocolate, no duck or meat , black grapes, Blush tomatos , Australian mushrooms and very few quality Australian unflavoured olive oils. There were less kitchenware stands but more eco friendly stands and too much of a dominance of alcohol. It was the first time I have seen an RSA Mashall at the Good Food & Wine Show. Not as many celebrity chefs or shows as at previous Good Food & Wine Shows - these seem to be decreasing each year. Was there suppose to be a Masterchef stand at this year's show? If so I totally missed it.
5 pm mass exit of visitors ( except the alcoholics that hang around as long as they can) from the 2019 Good Food & Wine Show. Again this year you can trade in your wine glasses to be recycled for next year's Good Food & Wine Show at the op of the stairs before exiting for free cans of sift drink. I decide not this year I am keeping mine as I gave away my last 2 free Good Food & Wine Sjhow wine glasses to Tiff and Kathryn and besides I tried the swap a few years ago - not a fan of sugary fizzy drinks. Hope these drinks given out weren't recycled from the previous Good Food & Wine Show!
Exhausted I make my way home on the jam packed lightrail then train and 2 buses home with my load of goodies from the show. End ofthe Good Food & Wine Show 20129 in Sydney @ the ICC for another year. Unfortunate could not make it to the Melbourne Good Food & Wine Show earlier this year - maybe next year.
