Sydney Good Food and Drink Show

And here's the star! I was at Friday's show with a friend from school (How crazy can life be when you move to the other side of the world and still go out with girls from school?) We managed to get tickets to see Gordon Ramsay in action and even though we were pretty well at the back, thanks to the big screens, we still had a good view. The theatre seated 2500 and there wasn't a seat to spare! He, and his assistant made a 3 course dinner comprising of a chorizo and butter bean soup, pan fried lamb with a green bean salad and pain perdue. Nothing too complicated so he had plenty of time to chat!

As to the rest of the show, there were loads of stands with lots of goodies to sample and as we had our glass (free on entry) to hand there was plenty to drink too! I did manage to pace myself as I went to both the day session and the After Dark one so didn't leave until 9pm!

What I really enjoyed was talking to the local producers who were there and can thoroughly recommend this raspberry wine vinegar. I happily drank the sample that I was

given as it just tasted so wonderfully raspberryish! I can't wait to try it made into a vinaigrette with some rocket. I was also given an ideas sheet which included using it with olive oil to pan fry salmon steaks and to pour it over vanilla ice cream as a pudding! Yum! And the lovely thing is that it is produced locally (well certainly by Australian distances!) and that it is available at a deli in a nearby suburb.

No show is complete without a gadget and here's mine! It claims to peel and devein prawns in one go and certainly it seemed to work in the hands of the guy demonstrating it. You take off the head with the safe blade at the base and then push the pointy end down the back of the prawn. This separates the prawn from its shell and loosens the vein so all you need to do is pull your pan ready prawn away! With a bit more practise you can shell your prawn and still leave the head and tail on....and there is a bottle opener too!! I just had to add the quince paste bargain that I picked up too....$1 each!

Other treats included a bagful of these wonderful chilli products. The mild chilli dressing is my wonderful way of getting the Little One to eat salad and I was so happy to see that there was a stand full of the stuff. I've only ever seen it available at the market at The Rocks before. The sate sauce is great for adding to noodles for lunch boxes, the green chilli sauce is a great Thai curry standby and the chilli jam is good anytime!

And finally I just have to track these guys down again as their chocolates are absolutely wonderful. We got a show bag which had a box of their wonderful chocolates, a couple of bars of dark chocolate but the absolute best find was their orange sticks. I'd sort of expected a Matchmaker moment but these are lovely candied sticks of peel with the most lovely dark chocolate over them. What a way to eat fruit!!

And a quick thanks to the guys on Hilliers stand who put loads of chocolate mints into my bag too!!

All I can say is roll on next years show!!