Annual SYC Seafood Cookoff

We were invited by friends to join them at the Sandringham Yacht Club's Annual Seafood Cookoff and we'll make sure it's in our diary for next year. 

The food was exceptional but Sue will explain this to you.

The head chef handed over his kitchen to his chefs 

who presented five individual dishes to be judged by us.

 Each diner scores each course in the degustation menu from one to five. The table tallies their score which is then handed in. then the room score is compiled and the chef who cooked the winning dish is named King Prawn 2015 and is presented with a bottle of champagne and many bragging rights.  In the past the head chef has cooked and has won at least once. This year he mentored the others and didn't cook himself. But no one knew this.

Tempura oyster appetizers with two sauces. Oh so yum.

T

This is too hard to see what it is, but underneath all that dill was a pasta rotolo as per the menu above. The beurre blanc was superb and the whole dish very good.

Grilled scallops. The orange and saffron pearls were made the same way I have made balsamic ones. So that's something new for me to try. It was quite nice but the puree didn't taste much of fennel and the scallops were just a little overcooked I thought. Picky, picky I know. As you can see, Leon forgot to take a pic until I had eaten part of a scallop. Couldn't photograph his as it was gone!

This was my favourite. The combination of flavours with the pop from the pomegranate was sensational I thought. I was the only one on the table who voted this number one, but it was the eventual winner. (Go me)

This is the one most people at our table liked best. It has been a signature dish of the head chef and it was thought he might have cooked it. Very nice, but a bit same same for me. Fussy pants!

A flop, I thought. Out of place after the previous delicate offerings. but a number of the blokes were pleased to see something substantial. The brioche was great, but I only ate a bit. I pulled the crab out and ate that though! It had lots of very hot (temperature) sauce in it and a number of us had it squirt out on ourselves and others when we took a bite. Very off putting. Made by a young guy, I suspect. Always hungry and they think others are too!

Yum dessert. Really delicious although they took the cowards way out with the panna cotta. Too much gelatin. It was only little, but IT SHOULD BE WOBBLY! Oops, sorry, didn't mean to raise my voice.(much) The honeycomb was extra, extra good and I plan to try making some soonish.

This is the clever man who won with his betel leaf dish. Yum, yum, yum, yum.
We had a wonderful night out with friends and the food was an added bonus! Hope they ask us next year!

Throwback Thursday

It was 1979 - I was in California, San Jose to be exact.

We raced our bikes up and down the west coast.

This picture was taken at the Hellyer Park Velodrome, San Jose.

I rider fell in front of me and I had no where to go,

except over the top.

I was 29 and had hair.

Wednesday in Mentone.

It's a Wednesday in Mentone today with a little bit of a French/Italian flavour.
I thought that with our move in the near future, I should feature a bit about our local suburb.

Our suburb of Mentone gained its name from the town that sits quietly between the border of France and Italy.
The beach is somewhat like that of France's Menton. We have stayed in Menton and except for the glitz of modern day Menton, the shape of the coastline is hauntingly familiar.

You can see how the early sub-divisions took their street names from the Italian side.

Up until around 1970, Mentone Melbourne had its own horse racing course. People would flock to Mentone to enjoy a day at the races.

Before Television, the theatre was the place of entertainment. This grand building sat almost opposite our street however it was long gone before we became residents.

Fresh bread came out of the Mentone bakery - the building with its ovens still stand and today is the Historical Society of Mentone.

We had our own skating rink

And our own sea baths

The tall bulding in this picture was the Mentone Coffee Palace before it became an elite Girls College.

Melbourne Monday

We do Wednesday in France on this Blog, so why not Melbourne Monday? I shall endeavour to post each Monday, either a current or historic photo of our city.

During the 60s - well that's when I remeber them, these were our traffic "lights". The only lights were those that illuminated the clock trafficator dials. I remember them near my home suburb of Preston and even more recently along the Nepean Highway from Morialloc to Frankston.

It must be Wednesday - we have another picture of France