Last weekend,
Penguin and I headed to
Master Chef Live's Saturday show. It wasn't exactly a gorgeous sunny day but isn't there something about seeing celebrities that can put a shine on your day? :)
Sometimes I can be a bit of a later-than-fashionably-late person so I only arrived at 12 and headed over to How-To theatre where
Adriano Zumbo was giving everyone a few tips about using chocolate. That's where I found
Penguin happily taking snaps right at the front of the crowd.
Afterwards we rushed over to the Queen Fine Foods stage to see if we could spot him again, but from my experience of the day, I think you should wait at least 20 minutes in advance to get a good view for the smaller shows. So we wandered around the various stores sampling bread, chips and drinks while on our way to the Horden Pavilion to grab the free Master Chef magazine for booking the tickets online.
We noticed the biggest theatre with the biggest line-up was the Kitchen Point Mystery Box Theatre, and for those who hadn't lined upon time, they had big screens for us to get a squiz at Gary and George who occasionally hosted the theatre show.
I wanted to see some of the cute shops which
Penguin mentioned to me so we proceeded back to the Royal Hall and spotted Anna Gare as well as the Junior MC twins at the book signing stall.
Liddy Design has some very cute baking accessories but I ended up making my first purchase at
Lunch Boxes with Love which had the cutest bento accessories. (I absolutely love her cute logo). It was funny because the girl minding the store showed me the egg moulds (basically you put a boiled egg in the mould to give it a shape/face) but I said I already had the whole set that she was selling :P
 |
| one of my sets! There is also a fish, bear and bunny. |
I bought the sauce bottle set because they had really cute lids and also came with a tiny funnel to get the sauce in the bottle - ingenious XD as well as food colour pens, I've wanted to buy some since I saw them on
Bakerella's blog, but I couldn't find them in the short time I spent in the US since
Williams-Sonoma didn't sell them. (Since Bakerella was originally inspired by a set of mini cookie cutters she purchased there, she also did her book signings at the W-S stores, which I missed out by a month :( )
Moving on we ran into the
Oriental Merchants stand which had a special demonstration on making Kimono Bundles (which seemed to be similar to rice paper rolls but wrapped in tortillas and nori). I was very tempted to buy one of their discount bags which came with a reusable bag, wasabi, small Japanese mayonnaise, sushi vinegar, a packet of nori and a super cute phone charm of the mayonnaise. I decided to think about it but later came back and one of the charming guys gave me the phone charm for free ^^ I would have bought the pack if it wasn't so heavy!
Kimono Bundle Recipe
We had some rice paper rolls in the courtyard while admiring the pretty Zumbo macarons I bought for my friend's birthday, eliciting a few jokes from a couple sharing our table about people who don't ever seem to eat but only photograph their food. We were very elated at the time as we'd been able to spot Zumbo various times in the crowd, he was wanted back at his store to sign his newly released book
"Zumbo" and we were able to get close enough for a photo and signature. As well as telling him we'd be the first to sign up if he ever held a Zumbo's Zumba class.
We wandered around the Horden Pavilion a bit more and spotted Billy Law and Gary in the VIP lounge, we were lucky to be able to get a photo with them after a bit of a stakeout. We thought to try and see if we could get into Alvin's black sesame dumplings class to find that the tickets had been exhausted earlier in the day, but a girl waiting for the next class said there were a lot of tickets left over for the Cheeky Food Flambé School, we rushed over and a lovely couple gave us one of their tickets for us to share. At first we couldn't both get in due to safety reasons, so after a bit of a walk I came back and
Penguin informed me there were a few free spots (and on her table too!) so the staff let me in and the chef Tobi came over and taught me some cutting skills since I arrived late.
The dish was made of
flambéd chorizo with sundried capsicum and tomato, halved cherry kumatos, parsley, olives, capers and slivered almonds. It was quite delicious meaning we needn't have had those rice rolls beforehand!
We went back to get a few glimpes of Alvin's show which was hosted by Dani and to give our thanks to the girl who tipped us off about the flambé class.
As the day was drawing to a close we thought we'd either see if we could watch Hayden & Ellie's Banoffe Pie class or Billy's 3-way chocolate class. We ended up sitting on same fake grass to watch Billy's class and he made a quick microwave chocolate cake with chocolate mousse and
chocolate coated pop rocks (you know those lollies which pop inside your mouth!). There was a pop quiz to reward the crowd with Billy's three way chocolate creation, one of them being what was the name of Justine's show (Everyday Gourmet).
Penguin being a huge fan of the show was one of the few people who could answer and we were able to sample the dessert. ^^
As his class ended near six,
Penguin made her way to catch a glimpse of Ellie and Hayden while I went to
Red Spoon who sold the pop rocks which although the surrounding stalls had packed up for the day, they still had a bit of a roaring trade thanks to Billy's class. So I bought my own little container of poprocks and some of their pink lemonade.
A few more of the day's photos
See you next time! ^^
-
Gummi
P.S. The next day I went to a cute store called Monster Threads (I know there's one in Newtown and QVB) where I bought these pink bunny chopstick trainers!
Other Mentions~
How To with Moraitis hosted by Roberta Muir (Zumbo & Chocolate)
Baking Sweets and Treats in association with Queen Fine Foods
Alvin's class: De Dietrich Cooking School with Urban Graze
Cheeky Food Flambe School with Elgas and Primo
Lilydale Contest Theatre with Billy Law (ATFT and MC 3) and hosted by Justine Schofield (Everyday Gourmet and MC 1)
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