Spirit House wedding photos

It’s easy to capture pretty photos of the ‘happy couple’ in our gardens. But the photographer Todd Hunter Mcgraw took some photos at a recent wedding at the Spirit House that are quirky, original and unique.

Todd truly has a great eye for that unusual shot and manages to take the ordinary and turn it into something special. An example is this photo from our smoker’s courtyard – an area that most wedding photographers never use:

This is definitely not your traditional wedding photo but it really makes a statement – you can see more great photos and read more about this wedding on his blog:

Dusk is a must ! .. Cara & Craig » toddhuntermcgaw.com.au.

Food Styling for Spirit House book

Ever wondered why your food doesn’t look as nice as the recipe books? That’s because you don’t have paint brushes, tweezers and essentially a make-up kit for your food. Jaime Reyes was our wonderful food stylist for the new Spirit House cook book. It was a great experience watching Jaime at work:

See what I mean, Jaime is painting glistening highlights on to the chicken in the salad.

With so many of Annette’s recipes to shoot and just a few days to make all this happen, we are lucky that we have such great chefs like Katrina and Kelly to lend a hand:

And the person responsible for making the food look great in print is photographer Graeme Gillies, who had help from Spirit House owner, Helen Brierty. Here Helen can be seen working as a photogaphic intern – which basically involves standing around all day holding the fill card.

All in all, this promises to be our best recipe book ever. The photographs look amazing and eating the left-overs from the shoot had us all raving over the flavours. The new book should be available by Mother’s day 2010.

Masterchef judge Matt Preston at Spirit House

Masterchef judge and super-nice-guy Matt Preston dropped in at the Spirit House on his way to the Noosa Food Festival. Officially he was here to gather some information for Delicious Magazine but unofficially we chatted about the show and the future of food and cooking talent in Australia.

Totally different to his television persona, Matt was charming, witty and more than happy to joke around with the staff:

He surprised the cooking school by walking in unannounced and telling everyone he was here to judge their food. You’d think he’d be bothered with everyone recognising him and bothering him for autographs but he was more than happy to spend time posing with my niece and her two friends (now his greatest fans):

What came out of our chat was shows like Masterchef are helping change people’s view of cooking. Being a chef is no longer a ‘trade’ or a career choice for when high school leavers’ grades are not so good. The show – and our experience – have shown there are people out there who love food and have a talent to blend flavours in to an expression of themselves.

Spirit House Soups – now available

Hitting the shelves in time for winter are our new range of delicious frozen soups – Chicken and Galangal (Tom Kha Gai) and Spicy Thai Pumpkin. Each soup packet serves two people and serving is as easy as thawing and heating the contents in a saucepan or microwave.

To turn our soups into a hearty meal, simply add some cooked prawns or chicken – Easy! Available now at a stockist near you.

Can’t decide where to eat?

Urbanspoon is one of the largest restaurant review sites in the USA. It’s a site that allows customers to review restaurants and you can see menus etc. They have a great app for the iPhone that finds your location and let’s you spin a ’slot machine’ restaurant picker to find restaurants close to you. You can demo it below – I’ve locked in the Brisbane area for the app and you can click the LOCK icons to lock in a suburb or food style or price – or any combination of the three.

Here’s what others say about us:

and restaurant reviews:

Monky and Froggy visit Spirit House

My google alert came through this morning with a great review of our new menu. It seems that Monky and Froggy from bellygood.net had paid us a visit. I’m glad that the Spirit House lived up to their expectations. Bellygood.net is run by two avid food lovers, monky and piggy, who have some great reviews of other restaurants – worth checking out.

And if only they had some contact details we’d love to send them a little something for their kind words.

Luminescent Mushrooms

Wandering around the restaurant last night I noticed some glowing dots coming from a log in the garden. Upon closer examination they were coming from tiny mushrooms. The light is bright enough to catch your eye but still took nearly 20 seconds of exposure to bring you this photo:

The largest mushroom cap is about the size of your finger nail.

They seem to spring up after heavy pro-longed rain and apparently as they grow, a chemical reaction involving luciferin (a light-emitting pigment contained within the mushrooms) occurs, causes them to glow a ghostly green.

Gordon Ramsay’s best scrambled egg recipe

I know what I’m cooking this Saturday morning:

Sticky Rice in a rice cooker

I’m not sure about this one – but according to About.com in the Thai food section, someone has posted a technique for cooking sticky rice in your rice cooker. And no, apparently you don’t have to soak it over night. I haven’t tried this technique yet but if you want to be the first let us know how it turns out.

Ingredients:

• SERVES 4
• 2 cups  “sticky” or “glutinous” rice
• 2 1/2 cups water
• 1/2 tsp. salt

Preparation:

1. Place 2 cups sweet rice in your rice cooker. Add 2+ 1/2 cups water and stir.
2. Let the sweet rice stand for 30 minutes (or longer if you want – up to 4 hours).
3. Add the salt and stir once more. Turn on your rice cooker.
4. When your rice cooker switches off (after 15-20 minutes), let the rice sit at least five minutes extra.
5. Enjoy your sticky rice!

Sticky Rice Tip: Sticky rice will become sticker the longer it sits.

The death of farmers’ markets

Despite the fact that since the dawn of civilization we’ve been buying and eating at village markets, the USA has introduced the ‘Food Safety Modernisation Act’. Essentially regulating and forcing registration on any producer who produces food of any kind and then transports it – the fines for non compliance are horrific.

Now I know what you’re thinking, “those whacky Americans” … but seriously, our politicians lack any sort of imagination and I think it’s only a matter of time before we see similar laws in Australia. Which could mean the death of farmers’ markets and a big win to Woolworths and Coles.

Farmers’ markets are a great solution for these troubled economic times – keeping the money in the local community where it gets spent locally. Let’s hope that our politicians leave our markets alone.

On another note, if you want to fight the economic meltdown, why not plant a vegetable garden and get some chooks? Not only do you save money but you now have some chores to give the kids that gets them away from their play stations.