I couldn’t have been more relieved to hear this: his Quay cookbook – though an amazing visual read – is quite limited in what it offers the humble home cook. I wondered whether my foodie companions felt the same, as we sat in on this special masterclass organised by Electrolux.

Tackling the tricky category of seafood which many shy away from (myself included), Peter set out to show us how quick and easy it is to prepare seafood at home with two simple recipes: seared scallops with lime creme fraiche and sauce vierge and steamed snapper with soy and ginger.

Peter offers these tips:

* For scallops, the key is to sear quickly and evenly on a hot pan. The middle should still be glassy.

* One trick to cooking scallops is to line them up on a sheet of baking paper and wack it straight onto a hot pan.

* For steamed fish, Peter uses a pin boned snapper, which he squares off so the fillet cooks evenly. Steaming is a very delicate and healthy way of cooking fish requiring no oil at all.

* Microherbs and flowers make all the difference to the presentation of a dish by adding that special gourmet touch!

It’s a joy to watch Peter in the kitchen – he makes it all look so darn effortless, tossing ingredients together like an orchestrated symphony. His knack for turning simple ingredients into elaborate creations has earned him the awe and respect of diners around the world. You also see just how much Peter enjoys induction cooking. In fact, most of the entrees at Quay are prepared at a dedicated induction station in the kitchen.

The masterclass ended with a sinfully decadent caramelised French toast, which he confesses he has never made for his wife but will need it one day for when he’s in the dog house.

As Peter bid farewell, we all sat down for a five course degustation at a beautifully elaborate long table with the harbour lights surrounding us.

I’ve always been a fan of the produce Peter selects for his menu and tonight is no different – from the rich bluefin tuna belly and marbled Berkshire pig jowl to the crimson confection of vegetables that is the starter – each is a decadent highlight.

Southern Tuna, toro, pink turnips, jamon de bellota juniper, wasabi flowers

Slow braised Berkshire pig jowl, maltose crackling, prunes, cauliflower cream, perfumed with prune kernel oil

Salad of pickled rhubarb, endive, beetroot, purple carrot, rosa radish, kohlrabi, sheeps milk curd, pomegranate molasses, violets

What Peter does with textures is also quite intriguing. Take the corturnix quail breast for instance, slow cooking gives the quail a delicate, chewy, almost raw quality, yet it sits on a bed of creamy chestnut purée, milk skin and a crunchy mix of quinoa and walnuts. What a delightful and unusual contrast!

Slow cooked coturnix quail breast, pumpernickel, walnuts, quinoa, truffle, chestnuts, milk skin

While my companions were disappointed not to see the snow egg on the menu, the amazing caramelised white chocolate in the dessert certainly made an impression. The chocolate nibs had a dulce de leche taste about them with the aroma of roasted nuts, I could really see myself getting hooked on these!

Warm vanilla and palm blossom brioche, caramelized white chocolate, amaretto cream, walnuts and prune sorbet

Many thanks to Open Haus and Electrolux for the great evening, I certainly will be pulling out Peter’s recipes for the warmer months ahead!

This fantastic recipe by Peter Gilmore will make an excellent dessert and equally an amazing indulgent breakfast. The custard soaked brioche is the real highlight of this dish and the double-sided caramel coating is just the icing on the cake!

Check out other recipes from Peter Gilmore’s recent home entertaining masterclass, organised by Electrolux.

Caramelised vanilla brioche French toast with roasted hazelnuts, maple and double cream

Serves 8

1 loaf of brioche
2 vanilla beans
500 mls milk
5 egg yolks
120 gms sugar
250 gms shelled roasted hazelnuts
100 mls top quality maple syrup
Icing sugar
200 mls double cream lightly whipped

200 gms castor sugar for caramel
100 gms unsalted butter

Method

1. Buy or make a loaf of good quality brioche. Cut 8 x 3cm thick slices of brioche. Preheat your steam oven to maximum. Have 8 – 20cm x 20cm squares of silicon paper or glad bake paper pre cut.

2. Split and scrape the two vanilla beans. Place the seeds in a bowl, add the milk, egg yolks and sugar and whisk well. Soak each piece of brioche in the custard mixture fully submerged for 20 seconds.

3. Lift out the soaked brioche and place in the centre of each piece of paper. Wrap the brioche as you would a simple parcel. Place the join side down on a steamer tray and place all the brioche in the steam oven for three minutes on high steam. This will heat the brioche and cook the custard mixture through to give you a warm soft centre. Put the brioche aside and leave wrapped.

4. Add 100 gms of castor sugar each into two large non stick frypans. Place them on the induction top and turn to high. Allow the sugar to caramelise. This is called making a dry caramel. With the induction power it will only take a minute or so to happen. Once the sugar has taken on a deep golden colour add 50 gms of unsalted butter to each pan. Shake the pans around a little and turn the heat down to low.

5. Unwrap the hot brioche and place directly on top of the hot caramel. Allow to cook on the first side for about one minute and then using a spatula of palette knife carefully turn over the brioche and cook on the other side for a further minute. Turn once more and turn the pans off. (You could choose to just deal with one pan at a time and keep the brioche warm while cooking the next batch).

6. Place each piece of caramelised brioche in the centre of each serving plate. Mix the roasted hazelnuts with the maple syrup and dress over the top of each piece of brioche. Sprinkle liberally with icing sugar and serve with double cream on the side.

The secret to phenomenal hotcakes lies in the egg whites, which ‘puffs’ up the mixture, turning hotcakes into soft airy pillows. Give them a shot and let me know what you think!

Ricotta hotcakes recipe

Ingredients

250g ricotta
150ml milk
3 eggs
185g plain flour
1tsp baking powder
30g caster sugar
50g butter
A pinch of salt

Method

1. Cream egg yolks and sugar in a mixing bowl. Add ricotta and milk, mix to combine.

2. Sift the flour, baking powder and salt into a bowl. Add to the ricotta mixture and mix until just combined.

3. Place egg whites in a clean dry bowl and beat until stiff peaks form. Fold egg whites thorugh batter in two batches, with a large metal spoon.

4. Lightly grease a large non-stick frying pan with a small portion of the butter and drop 2 tablespoons of batter per hotcake into the pan (don’t cook more than 3 per batch). Cook over low to medium heat until both sides are golden.

5. Top with fresh fruit, maple syrup, yoghurt to serve.

While my friends and I joked about making it lifesize (a la Heston’s Feasts), we knew the sensible approach would be start small.

Using my gingerbread cookie recipe as the base for the house, we rolled out our dough and cut it to size using this template from Gingerbread House Heaven. After a quick bake in the oven, we allowed the gingerbread to cool and slowly, we erected the house piece by piece.

Once the four walls were up, we were worried about roof as the incline was quite steep. So we came up with the idea of using four candy canes as the load bearing posts. It worked a treat!

Gingerbread house

Ingredients:

Gingerbread
250g butter
1 cup firmly packed brown sugar
2 egg yolka
5 cups plain flour
2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
6 teaspoons ground ginger
6 teaspoons all spice (or mixture of cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves)
1 cup golden syrup

Icing
2 egg whites
2½ cups pure icing sugar, sifted

Decorations
Round cake board
Candy canes
Silver balls
Jaffas
Red sprinkles
Dessicated coconut
Holly wreaths

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 180ºC. Beat the butter and sugar together until light and creamy. Add the egg and beat until combined.

2. Sift dry ingredients and stir into butter mixture with the golden syrup. Mix to a light dough and knead gently on a lightly floured surface until smooth.

3. Roll out between 2 sheets of baking paper until approximately 3 mm thick. Cut the dough to size using a gingerbread house template. Leave on baking paper and bake each piece for 10 minutes or until lightly golden. Re-roll dough as many times as necessary. Cool on trays.

4. For the icing, whisk together the egg whites and half the icing sugar until smooth. Gradually add the remaining icing sugar until the mixture is quite thick. Spoon into a piping bag with the corner snipped.

5. Decorate the four walls as you see fit before construction. This makes it much easier than trying to do it when the house is already up.

6. To construct, start with the four walls, working with the back and side first, then the front and side. Cut four pieces of candy cane to size and attach to the corners of the house. Allow to set.

7. Gently ease on the roof, making sure there is plenty of icing on the edges to hold it together. Fill in the top edge and line with jaffas.

8. To finish, make a fence using the ‘hook’ end of the candy cane and dust with coconut. Mark out a footpath using the red sprinkles.

Tip: use the remaining gingerbread dough to make some cute seasonal cookies and impress the kids!

I decided to go with pink lamingtons, which seemed suitably festive given the theme.

I adapted a recipe I found on Taste and the lamingtons turned out really well. The key to a good lamington lies in its fluffy sponge centre. This means that you have to try to get as much air in the cake as possible, achieved by beating the cake on high speed, but not overdoing it so it loses volume. The batter should look light and voluminous, almost like foam out of a siphon canister.

Pink lamingtons

Ingredients

Sponge cake:
1/3 cup cornflour
1/3 cup plain flour
1/3 cup self-raising flour
4 eggs at room temperature
2/3 cup caster sugar
1/4 tsp salt

Pink icing:
3 cups icing sugar mixture
1/2 cup hot water
2 drops red liquid food colouring
4 drops of strawberry essence
2 cups desiccated coconut

Method

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees celcius and line a rectangular slice tin with baking paper. Sift flours and salt together three times to aerate.

2. Using an electric mixer, beat eggs and sugar in a large bowl on medium-high speed for 6 minutes, or until mixture is pale and tripled in volume.

3. Gradually sift flour mixture over egg mixture while simultaneously folding in with a large metal spoon (not a wooden spoon because it’s heavy) until just combined. Pour and level mixture into tin and bake for 20-25 minutes. The cake just needs to be cooked, not necessarily golden or brown in colour.

4. Turn out on to baking paper-lined wire racks. Carefully peel away baking paper, then leave to cool. Cut cake into neat squares once cool.

5. Sift icing sugar into a mixing bowl. Add in food colouring, strawberry essence and hot water. Stir until combined. The mixture should be runny and easy to coat.

6. Using your fingers, dip the cake squares into the icing mixture and coat with coconut.

7. Transfer to a clean plate and leave to set (around 30 minutes). Serve and enjoy!

In complete contrast, Casa Barilla was a breath of fresh air and the atmosphere was incredibly relaxed: no one was here to be the next Guy Grossi, they were just looking for some inspiration to jazz up their tired repertoire. Plus, there was plenty of bubbles and vino to go around.

“We try to keep it as much fun as possible and to give a true Italian experience to the attendees from the minute they walk through our doors, until they leave. The locals love it and embrace it, so we keep working hard to improve it at all times,” says Luca Ciano, Casa Barilla’s Executive Chef who explains that Casa Barilla opened in 2008 with the aim of sharing the diversity of Italian cuisine with Australians.

“We only focus on Italian cooking, no twist no gimmicks, it’s simple and easy to understand and people can go home and truly replicate the dishes demonstrated.”

The class format is relatively easy to follow – first, Luca demonstrates the steps involved in putting the dish together and then the class breaks to their stations and replicates what they’ve just seen. The process is made a little easier with an elevated LCD which provides an aerial view of what Luca is doing.

I was won over by Luca and his assistant Angelo’s nonchalant attitude to cooking. They were also a great laugh and I really didn’t think a cooking class would be this enjoyable. Luca doesn’t profess to be an expert, but simply provides you with the basics for creating great dishes at home and giving you freedom to interpret and adapt however you wish.

Many of the classes are built around different regional dishes in Italy. The class we attended was inspired by the region of Lombardy in Italy’s north. On the agenda was Osso Buco, Salame di Cioccolato (Chocolate Salami) and Polenta.

Osso Buco is a Milanese specialty of veal shanks cooked in meat broth, flavored with white wine and vegetables. Slowly braised, this relatively tough, yet flavorful cut of meat becomes meltingly tender, and the connective tissues and marrow dissolve into the sauce, making it rich and creamy. Unfortunately, we didn’t have the luxury of time with our Osso Buco. I would really like to give the recipe a go in a slow cooker: a slow braise over six or seven hours will really soften the meat and bring out greater flavour in the dish.

Osso Buco alla Milanese
Serves 4

Ingredients
½ onion, finely chopped
½ carrot, finely chopped
½ stick of celery, finely chopped
100g unsalted butter
4 veal osso buco (300 – 350g each)
100g plain flour
1 glass white wine
2 glasses veal stock
1 tin peeled tomatoes or 3 fresh vine-ripened tomatoes (optional)
100g green peas

Gremolata
30g lemon zest
¼ bunch parsley
1 garlic clove
Salt & pepper and olive oil

Method

1. In a large casserole, gently cook the onion, carrot and celery in butter until golden.

2. Coat the osso buco in flour, season them and sear on both sides in the same pan.

3. Add the wine and let it evaporate. Add the stock and tomatoes and simmer with a lid on for an hour and a half.

4. To make the gremolata, finely chop the lemon zest, parsley, garlic and mix with a little olive oil and season to taste.

5. Five minutes before serving, add the peas and season to taste. Serve with gremolata.

Barilla Polenta

375 grams Barilla polenta flour
1.5 litre water
1 tbs salt
1 tbs exra virgin olive oil
60 grams grated grana padano
20 grams unsalted butter

1. Bring to boil the water in a large pot, add salt and oil.

2. Once boiling, add the polenta a litle at a time, whisking constantly.

3. Cook on gentle heat for 3 minutes.

4. Remove from the heat and add butter and grana padano, allow melting and mix well.

Salame di cioccolato

100 grams dried biscuit, crumbled
50 grams almonds finely chopped
80 grams unsalted butter, room temperature
150 grams caster sugar
1 whole egg
1 egg yolk
2 tbs dark cocoa powder
1 tbs rum

1. In a large bowl mix the eggs with butter, sugar, cocoa and liquor.

2. Add the biscuits and almonds and mix well.

3. Place the mix onto the grease proof paper and roll it into a salami shape.

4. Allow to rest for for 2 hours in the freezer before serving.

For more information about Casa Barilla’s upcoming cooking classes, please visit www.barillaaus.com. Classes are priced from $50 per person.

Casa Barilla
4 Annandale Street
Annandale NSW 2038
www.barillaaus.com

The Tastebuds tend to get a little carried away when we’re together – especially when it comes to food. With dessert already in the oven, we decided it wasn’t enough and there had to be a second dessert – or ‘pre’ dessert as Mr. Taste likes to call it.

We all settled on reproducing Martin Boetz’s Tapioca Pudding, in honour of the version we sampled earlier in the year at Taste of Sydney. Tapioca pudding is a quick and easy dessert that doesn’t take long at all to pull together. There’s no real setting required and tastes fantastic served warm. Sadly the season doesn’t allow for fresh fruit, so we used the tinned variety, which works just as well!

Although Australia drew against Ghana that night, the Tapioca Pudding did help to ease a little of that pain. Let’s just hope the boys pull a big victory against Serbia tomorrow!

Tapioca Pudding with Lychee, Jackfruit and Rambutan

Adapted from a recipe by Martin Boetz, Executive Chef of Longrain

Ingredients

1 cup tapioca pearls
12 cups water
500g superfine castor sugar
½ cup coconut cream
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1 tablespoon salt

Method

1. Bring 12 cups of water to the boil and pour in the tapioca, stirring so that the pearls do not stick to the bottom.

2. Simmer until the pearls become transparent with just a tiny dot of white left in the middle. This will take about 10 minutes.

3. Pour into a strainer and rinse in cold water.

4. Combine the castor sugar, coconut cream, vanilla extract and salt in a heavy-based saucepan over a moderate heat and stir.

5. Once the sugar dissolves, remove from heat. You can serve warm or cool the mixture small bowls. Serve with shreded jackfruit, lychees, rambutans and longans.

I sure have, and I fell hard.

The sticky date pudding on last season’s Masterchef set my heart aflutter and it took me a good while to recover.

Sticky date pudding is the perfect winter dessert – warm, rich and comforting. Although there are three elements to this dessert, the process couldn’t be easy enough. Best of all, you can work on all three parts simultaneously.

The result tasted better than I thought it would. It was sticky as a pudding should be and the caramel and butterscotch glaze was just divine. The slight crunch of the almond praline was the icing on the cake!

If you’re after for a comforting dessert for the cooler weather ahead, don’t look past this recipe!

Ingredients

180g dates, pitted and roughly chopped
1¼ cups (310ml) water
½ tsp bicarbonate of soda
¾ cup (165g) firmly packed brown sugar
60g butter, softened chopped
2 eggs
1 cup (150g) self-raising flour

Almond praline
½ cup (110g) caster sugar
¼ cup (35g) slivered almonds (I substituted with chopped cashews)

Butterscotch sauce
50g butter
1 cup (220g) brown sugar
1 cup (250ml) cream
1 tsp vanilla extract

Method

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees (160 degrees fan-forced). Lightly grease eight (½ cup capacity) metal dariole moulds.

2. Place dates and water in a saucepan and bring to the boil over a high heat. Remove from the heat. Add bicarbonate of soda, stir until dates start to break down, set aside to cool, stirring occasionally.

3. Beat butter and sugar in a bowl using a hand beater, gradually add eggs one at a time, beat until light and fluffy.

4. Add date mixture, stir to combine. Carefully fold through sifted flour, divide mixture evenly between the eight moulds, until 2/3 full.

5. Place moulds in a baking tray, carefully pour water in tray until it comes up 1/3 of the side of the moulds. Bake in oven for 40 minutes or until golden and skewer comes out clean.

6. Meanwhile, for the almond praline, combine sugar and 2 tablespoons water in a saucepan over medium heat and cook caramel without stirring, swirling pan, until deep golden. Scatter almonds onto a baking paper-lined oven tray, pour over caramel and cool until set. Break praline into pieces.

7. For the butterscotch sauce, combine butter, sugar, cream and vanilla in small saucepan over low heat until butter melts and sugar dissolves. Bring sauce to the boil, reduce heat and cook for 5-6 minutes or until sauce thickens slightly.

8. To serve, invert the hot pudding onto a serving plate, top with butterscotch sauce and shards of praline.

This month’s Gourmet Traveller magazine features a collection of Christmas themed recipes from Adriano Zumbo. The gingerbread christmas tree in particular wowed me and it was surprisingly easy to pull together (well, compared to his other famous creations, the croquembouche and the mousse cake).

I decided to forgo the recipe for gingerbread in the magazine and use my old faithful gingerbread cookie recipe. I bought a star shaped cookie cutter set in three sizes and baked eight in each size (it’s important not to overcook the gingerbread). Once they were cool, it was a matter of stacking them together and fixing the layers together with royal icing. To finish, I propped a star on top of the tree with a toothpick and dusted with icing sugar.

And voila! a fabulous and festive centrepiece for the Christmas table.

I always feel a little cheated paying $45 a head for High Tea. So I set out trying to recreate the special experience at home. I made all the staples the night before – scones, cupcakes, sandwiches and macarons, while my girlfriends each brought a little something as they arrived.

In the end, we managed quite a spread of goodies. Blessed with perfect weather, we spent the afternoon sipping champagne, eating sweets and catching up.

And on the High Tea menu was…

* Vanilla cupcakes with raspberry and rosewater frosting
* Trio of macarons – lemon cream, raspberry jam, peach & strawberry
* Salmon sandwiches without crust
* Fresh strawberries and cherries
* Scones with freshly whipped
* German pastries – cherry custard strudel, chocolate custard slice
* Savory quiche tartlets
* Assorted teas
* Piper champagne