Your Home Chef

March 1999

We all know about those creative chefs at home who cook up a storm, use every available pot and utensil; serve the meal, drink the wine and leave the host to clean up the mess.

The chefs who come to your home as part of the Herald Sun Home Dinner Party are much better organized than that. They come well prepared and usually with an assistant so you'll get a great meal served to your guests, accompanied by Brown Bros wines, and all the evidence cleaned up and taken away.

That is, unless you can't receive them in your own home, last year's winners of the Max's dinner party were renovating their kitchen at the time, so elected to do it in the restaurant's private dining room at the Grand Hyatt. Easier for Chef Geoff Bone to organize, though he is an 'old hand' at doing home dinners.

He will probably do dishes, which are a normal part of his a la carte menu. There are some very elaborate creations being planned despite chefs not really knowing what equipment and what space they'll have in your home.

Jimmy Shu of Near East, has never done this before. He has planned an eleven-course banquet including vegetables, rice and dessert. The curries, braised pork, roast duck and Sri Lankan palm sugar brulee will have to be part prepared but, I imagine that he'll be stir-frying the Shanghai greens and assembling the Hanuman oysters at the last minute in your home.

Andrew Blake of Blake's Southgate would certainly suggest that he pre-prepares as much as possible and takes all his special cooking gear. He has only cooked once before for Herald Sun home dinner party winners but several times a year offers his services away from the restaurant kitchen for charities. He has learnt to be careful in choosing dishes. In one home kitchen he found that the springs on the oven door were weak and so had to keep leaning on the doors to keep them closed so that his grand dessert souffle could rise majestically.

Last year's competition was also the debut for Rod Barbey of B.Coz restaurant in Hawthorn. If his winner's guests this year are meat eaters, he'll be suggesting the B.coz Lamb Salad, which combines more than 20 ingredients and his signature dessert of white couverture chocolate semi freddo with Mandarin Brandy chocolate chip ice cream.

St Kilda chefs, Robert Hoare, Madame Joe Joe, and Yanni Psanis of One Fitzroy Street are both newcomers to the home dinner party concept. Robert is looking forward to "showing off a bit and talking about the food ... probably the char-grilled Caesar salad and Duck in three forms, both favorites at Madame Joe Joe." Provincial meat terrine with autumn greens, roast pear and apple salad, wok seared tuna, baked goats cheese tart, steamed snapper fillet, sandwich of lamb rack with eggplant pesto and Bulgarian fetta, king prawns on noodles with a coriander and chilli pesto, hazelnut and mocha tart with rose petal ice-cream and Autumn Figs with a honey and lime syrup and marscapone, are some of the dishes Yanni is offering as choices.

Sven Ulrich of Warrenmang Vineyard Resort will spend at least five hours travelling to and from the country to cook for his winner. Before coming to Australia, Sven did a lot of home catering in his native Germany and is used to working away from a restaurant kitchen. "I know very well the need to leave everything clean and tidy . . .so when they get up next morning it's as if nothing has happened the night before!"

He hopes to use local trout or yabbies and Tuki Dale lamb from Smeaton, a product exclusive to Warrenmang. Sven has been cooking there now for nearly 1 1/2 years and considers himself very lucky in the produce which he is able to source nearby.

But for former British chef, Jake Ward, of Le Meridien, produce in Melbourne could be better. "I love the strong food culture of Melbourne, the passion of people for food, but I would like to see better produce. It's a matter of battling with suppliers to get quality. It's here but you have to demand it." Last year was his first home dinner party and "I was very lucky, I had a wonderful kitchen to cook in, the guests left it up to me and I really spoilt them."

The other chefs participating in the Herald Sun Home Dinner Party are -- Darryl Hand, Bayside Brasserie & Bar; Rod Barbey,B.coz; Janette Young, Bistrot Balzac; Andrew Blake, Blakes; Simone Furlan, Caterina's Cucina e Bar; Stephen Bromilow, De Oliveira's; Anthony Dukic, Glencoe; Frank Burger, Hilton On The Park; Michael Conrad, Isis; Jake Ward, Le Meridien at Rialto; Robert Hoare, Madame Joe Joe, Bill Marchetti, Marchetti's Latin; Andrew Roscouet, Matteo's; Geoffrey Bone, Max's (Grand Hyatt); Stephen Mercer, Mercer's; Charles Hatherley, Michel's Brasserie; Yanni Psanis, One Fitzroy Street; Arni Sleeman & Peter Crawford, Punch Lane; Rok Trcek, Republique; David Braim, Half Moon; Lay & Margie Chun, Selbys; Jimmy Shu, Near East; Peter Hoy, The River; Jeff Tarrant, Turning Basin Cafe; Sven & Clare Ullrich, Warrenmang Vineyard Resort.

Mietta O'Donnell

This first appeared in the Herald Sun on 16th March, 1999.
©Mietta's 1999.