Have you been to the coolest looking butcher in town? Huon Valley Meat Co have amazing top quality hormone free, grass feed meat. Sometimes it can be a challenge to style meat so we gave it go! It was the perfect day for it because someone had brought in their Thermomix from home for some recipe development – guess what was the star of this photo shoot? See my styling & photography buddy Ellie’s photos on her blog.
Fancy a seat while you are waiting.?
Maybe some inspiration or condiments ?
How awesome is this slicer & chopping board?
How about some meat??
Of course we had to buy some meat to take some home too for an awesome cook up, so much flavour & such good products, do yourself a favour & drop on in.
You may have been “instaspamed” when we had breakfast at the Pigeonhole Cafe, I was joined by Ellie of course & you can see her pictures here. The Pigeonhole Cafe have had their Thermomix for a few good weeks so it was a perfect excuse to do some taste testing & photography all in one. All the produce for the cafe is sourced from their own Weston Farm so it really is paddock to plate. It’s so awesome seeing all their preserves & pickles on the back wall of the cafe.
All good food styling & photography sessions must begin with coffee to keep our energy levels up!
The Chef Alex Mullan served us his favourite dishes, starting with the Pork Rillettes made from a pig from their own farm with an apple & rose hip paste, served with house made pickles & toasts. Even the greens & flowers are from the farm. Alex explained that he tries to make every thing he can from scratch & I can certainly relate to that! This dish was so amazing!! Not only did it look so good that I took about 20 shots of it (while drooling) but it was so balanced & full of flavour.
House made pickles
Next fresh lightly roasted figs with mascarpone cheese & caramelised honey on sourdough – I’m still in a food coma!!
Chai tea & more coffee required
Then the “Divorced Eggs” A combo of hot & cold with baked eggs – once I heard there was chipotle I was sold 🙂 So good!!
Now I think it might be time for 2 “ladies” to eat 3 breakfasts!! Let’s get some action shots – well at the very least slow motion posed eating shots!
We had a wonderful morning & want to thank the amazing team at Pigeon Hole Cafe’ for being so accomodating, allowing us to have a long breakfast with our cameras & tripods in the front of the cafe’.
While driving home from our Food Styling Photography course, we were talking about the sunrise on the Tessellated Pavements & Ellie said it was one of the most iconic & photographed spots in Tassie. I said, why don’t we do a food shoot there?! And we decided to run with it big time. With only a couple of weeks left of sunrise capturing available at the Tessellated Pavements we needed to get cracking! I couldn’t help it, I wanted to change the words to the song “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” to Breakfast at Tessellated. So we had our theme tune sorted now lots of other things to organise.
Our mission: To set up a beautiful delicious breakfast using Tasmanian produce, in time to capture the sunrise reflection on the tessellated pavement – Food photography for “posh ladies” – table for 4.
Props: I had seen the perfect trestle table that I just had to have but it wouldn’t fit in my small car! I wanted to take my wooden dining chairs too. We had a carafe, my Nana’s tea cups & saucers, napkins, table runner, vase & foliage, glasses & champagne flutes, candles & candelabra.
Sunday early evening scout out: We realised that it was a fair 5 min walk to the Tessellated Pavement from the carpark & it included stairs. So we needed to take a little as possible to make a maximum of 2 trips each. There was a perfect spot with a log up out of the way & this would make perfect seats for us so no chairs needed. Ellie had some old fence palings & I brought my husband’s workshop wooden horses to act as the legs for our portable table. We styled it up the night before at Ellie’s house (thankfully she leaves only 5 mins drive away).
I set the alarm for 5.30am but woke up at 4, we had packed everything the night before & only had a couple of last min things to prepare before we left. Lucky we remembered the torch!! We had 1 person that did 2 trips & everyone else did 1. We got to work setting up our camera’s Taking photos while setting up the table & styling the food. Our photography teacher from TAFE even showed up!
Well we thought it was well worth the effort, I have learnt a lot, (what to do & what not to do), an amazing few hours enjoying the sunrise & serenity not to mention the awesome company, delicious local food & drinks. How on earth will we be able to top this?!
Well first I think chocolate & then I think buns – Easter buns that is 🙂 I used to make the normal fruit buns, and they are so awesome when you make them yourself, but as my son says “that’s too main stream”. So here is my current list of hot cross bun flavours for you to try. I have done away with the boring flavourless crosses too & replace them with much more delicious versions!
Now onto the chocolate, well I got some awesome chocolate from the Nutpatch – see the photos from my photo shoot there a couple of weeks ago.
I do love making Quirky Cooking’s raw chocolate recipe too & I sweeten it with honey. I normally make it with my nephews but they are away for Easter this year!
Try making your own Choc hazelnut spread from the basic cookbook – it makes a wonderful Easter gift.
When I was in Sydney I got my very own special Lindt Easter Bunny!!
Where ever you are this Easter, you are bound to have an awesome Easter!! I hope you enjoy some rest, relaxation & delicious food cooked from scratch. Happy Thermomixing!!
We had a most enjoyable evening at Three Japanese restaurant with our INSPIRE aprons on.
Owners Yasuko & Ken were so generous with their time & knowledge. This is the 3rd class we have run with them, but the first one in their new location in Battery Point. We first met Yasuko when she bought her first Thermomix, she loved it so much that she kept taking it back & forward to the restaurant & then decided they had to buy one another one for the restaurant.
Arwen, Yasuko & Charlie
I just love how passionate Three Japanese are about sourcing quality ingredients – even the crockery is sourced from their home town Saga in Japan.
The story behind Three Japanese Ken (Norikazu Hirai) and Yasuko (Yasuko Hayashi) first met at high school in Japan in 1997 whilst playing soccer. After graduating from high school, Ken started working in a kitchen in Japan, where he learned a variety of cooking styles, he arrived in Hobart in 2012 on a working (surfing) holiday. Yasuko moved to Osaka to go to university and her first visit to Hobart was through the exchange Uni program. She then took every opportunity to be in Hobart (8 visits!!) until she finally moved here in 2009. Ken and Yasuko remained good friends throughout this time because of their love of great food! In 2014, they realised their dream when they had an opportunity to start a restaurant together with Yasuko’s partner Yuya who had been a baker in Japan & then graduated from Drysdale, he was working as a chef at the Source Restaurant (MONA). This is why they called the restaurant – ‘Three Japanese’. They love fresh, real food, and use only real Japanese ingredients and freshest local veggies, fish and meat to make delicious authentic Japanese food.
We set the tables ready for our class, everyone was provided with a recipe booklet to take home & emailed a copy in an eBook format.
Our Menu for the Evening
Japanese Green Tea on arrival
Chawanmushi – Savoury Custard (including the recipe for dashi stock)
The Three Japanese Tasting Plate: Miso Soup: Karaage Chicken: Rice: Tsukudani (preserved seaweed & bonito fish)
(It was so much fun recipe testing: here are the photos of all the dishes I tested. After I showed Yasuko these pictures she told me I had the Japanese spice containers upside down!! I had studied Japanese in high school & didn’t notice the writing upside down!! I even used one the images in the recipe booklet!! When we told our guests & they thought it was very funny too !!)
Chawanmushi had been specially requested & put onto the menu for the night. It is not currently on the menu because they don’t have a commercial steamer at their new venue so we had to bring as many Thermomix as we could to the restaurant as we could to steam approx 20 savoury custards.
We had 6 Thermomix in the kitchen & one set up in the dinning room to demonstrate through the class. It was well worth it though our guests loved tasting the dish & learning how to cook it. I showed our guests how to make the dashi stock using shaved dried bontio fish flakes & kombu (seaweed). Dashi is the base for a lot of Japanese dishes so it is important as usual to use the best quality ingredients you can get. You can buy powdered dashi but you won’t have that quality & depth of flavour.
We also used the dashi to make the traditional miso soup demonstrated by Yasuko. The kombu & bonito are not thrown out after making the dashi stock you can then use them with mirin to make tsukuduni a delicious preserve served with rice. Ken our chef came out & demonstrated the tsukudani to the class & showed us his awesome knives. We also showed guests how to make the karaage chicken it is one of the most popular dishes on the menu and very easy to prepare at home. The chicken is marinated for approx 1 hr & lightly coated in potato flour & deep fried. We also came up with some other ways of using the same marinade, either steaming, baking or grilling the chicken.
Then Charlie showed guests how to make the sesame pudding & we learned how to make the Japanese brown sugar sauce. The brown sugar is sourced from Okinawa in Japan. Yasuko also showed us how to make matcha green tea – this is the tea that is traditionally used at Japanese ceremonies.
Our guests left full of delicious food & inspiration to cook some of the dishes at home, they could even purchase some ingredients to take home with them. We are so grateful to have the the opportunity to work with Three Japanese again, their passion for their food is infectious.
![IMG_6666[1]](https://arwensthermopics.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/IMG_66661.jpg)
![IMG_6667[1]](https://arwensthermopics.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/IMG_66671-e1459655225765.jpg)
![IMG_6665[1]](https://arwensthermopics.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/IMG_66651.jpg)
Recent Comments