3AW amazing rave about Spirit House

The other day we received a call from a man in Victoria wanting to desperately make a booking in a few months time because he heard we booked out well in advance. He went on to explain that his local radio announcer was on air raving about an amazing dining experience he had in Yandina. People were phoning in, sharing their experience with Spirit House — so he thought he better get in quick. We tracked down the radio station and managed to get a copy of the talkback show. It’s so nice to hear that people throughout Australia have fond memories of Spirit House:

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.

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:

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.

Can I put this in the microwave?

If the kids are begging you to put some crayons in the microwave ‘ to see what happens’ or you are wondering what would soap do if you set it on high for a few minutes – then I’ve got the site for you. Heaps of videos of every day items put in a microwave and ‘nuked’. The videos are sped up which helps if you’re impatient like me and need to see results fast.

Onion ring volcano

I love an open kitchen, but it gets more exciting when danger is involved. A Japanese chef creates a volcano from onion rings, and oil plus some neat lava:

What! – they don’t even eat this.

Cool effect: Phonographantasmascope

What happens when you have an old record player, some cardboard, pins and a pair of scissors? You create these amazing effects: