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Melbourne Food and Wine Festival Langham Melbourne Master Class Recipe Book 2009 - Food

A master class weekend to turn you into a master chef - plus video

Robyn Lewis

Melbourne Food & Wine Festival

Every March the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival brings together a selection of global chefs and winemakers of renown, where in the Langham Hotel they demonstrate high-end cooking (and wine) that is setting trends across the planet.

Onwards and upwards from Master Chef – this is cutting edge. Generation C. The 2009 MFWF culinary lineup included:

From the UK:

•    Sat Bains of Sat Bains with Rooms, Nottingham
•    Heston Blumenthal, The Fat Duck, Bray, Berkshire
•    Philip Howard, The Square, London
•    Shane Osborn, Pied à Terre and L’Autre Pied, London
•    Antonio Carluccio, Carluccio’s, London

Spain:

•    Ramon Morato, Aula Chocovic, Barcelona

Germany:

•    Dieter Müller, Restaurant Dieter Müller, Schlosshotel Lerbach, near Köln

Denmark:

•    René Redzepi, Noma, Copenhagen

Holland:

•    Alain Alders, De Vrienden van Jacob, near Amsterdam

Italy:

•    Luisa Valazza, Al Sorriso, Soriso, Navare
•    Carlo Cracco, Cracco, Milan

France:

•    Jean-Paul Jeunet, Hotel Restaurant Jean-Paul Jeunet, Arbois, Jura
•    Thierry Marx, Château Cordeillan-Bages, Pauillac
•    Iñaki Aizpitarte, Le Chateaubriand, Paris

USA:

•    Thomas Keller, The French Laundry, Yountville, Napa Valley, and per se, New York

New Zealand:

•    Michael Meredith, Meredith’s, Auckland


Australian chefs were:

•    Patrizia Simon, Simone’s of Bright, Bright, Victoria
•    Alla Wolf-Tasker, The Lake House, Daylesford, Victoria
•    Anthony Ross, The Langham, Melbourne
•    Maggie Beer, Pheasant Farm, Nurioopta, South Australia
•    Shannon Bennett, Vue de Monde, Melbourne
•    Frank Camorra, MoVida, Melbourne 
•    Dan Hunter, The Royal Mail Hotel, Dunkeld, Victoria

You’d have to spend a lot of time, air miles and money and have planning skills of military precision to fit in such a culinary roundup in even one year, should you attempt to join the lengthy waitlists at some of these temples of global gastronomy. Far easier to attend the Masterclass sessions over a March weekend at The Langham, where you can not only taste but learn from the masters in one event-packed weekend.

Master class attendees each receive the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival Langham Melbourne Master Class Recipe Book, either for copious note taking whilst observing and tasting the master chefs’ products, or – from some generous chefs – the recipes themselves. They’re not all recipes you might undertake at home, unless you have an industrial kitchen and uncomplaining sous-chef at hand, but they will surely inspire you to higher culinary planes.

However, many recipes are adaptable to Australian produce and kitchens; I particularly like the look of seafood chef Alain Alders’ tea and mint marinaded prawns with a citrus salad; Carlo Cracci’s risotto with oil of anchovies, lemon and cocoa, or the very do-able spaghetti with tomatoes and sardines with vanilla; Jean-Paul Jeunet’s sautéed scallops with morels and silverbeet, and veal fillet with parsnip purée; Dieter Müller’s lobster with crystalline amaranth, Shane Osborn’s poached sea trout with fennel cream (there’s lots of seafood) and Luisa Valazza’s pumpkin risotto with gorgonzola.

Both Sat Bains and Frank Camorra present their takes on chocolate cream with olive oil and a salt crust. There’s a section aptly entitled ‘don’t try this at home’, but sadly (for me) nothing on food and wine matching, which given the equal billing given to wine at the Festival, and the huge interest amongst diners (and sommeliers) on this topic, I find a curious oversight.

Amongst the Australian chefs, Maggie Beer presents a pheasant recipe, smoked kangaroo pasta and a verjuice custard, Alla Wolf-Tasker two ways with smoked eel and Patrizia Simone with freshwater trout, and Frank Camorra  delicious prawn fritters from Sanlucar and scallop pies. Yum.

You’ll need lots of sticky note tabs as the MFWF Recipe Book lacks an index, although it helps somewhat that the chefs are arranged alphabetically. The back section contains a section on wine including some tasting notes (more on that later).

I can’t help but thinking that given Australia’s location and culinary leanings towards Asia, it would be fitting if in 2010 there were some top chefs invited from the Orient and the subcontinent. But for your European-inspired fix, there is a year’s worth of culinary adventure before MFWF comes round again from 12th - 23rd March 2010.

Buy your tickets early as it's sure to be a sellout.

VisitVineyards.com has 20 copies of the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival Langham Melbourne Master Class Recipe Book to give away to new subscribers joining from the MFWF e newsletter in August 2009.

Watch a video of the World's Longest Lunch at the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival:

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• Melbourne (VIC)
• Melbourne and Melbourne West (VIC)

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