"australian" news and stories

I believe that I mentioned one of my favorite things - although I had quite a lot of "favorites" to be perfectly honest - from the Fancy Foods Show were the meat pies that I had at the Vili's Gourmet booth. Meat pies are a favorite Australian snack food, the sort of thing that you'll find at pubs, random takeaways and - of course - at any major sporting event. They exactly what they sound like, too: small pastries that are filled with a thick mixture of meat and gravy. It's important that the filling be thick enough not to run out all over the eater, since the pies are usually eaten by hand and they are best when topped of with a bit of tomato sauce (ketchup).

Chef Domenico Crolla has cooked up what could turn out to be the world's most expensive pizza, and is probably already the priciest for its size. The 12-inch pizza is worth about $2,800. Dubbed the Pizza Royale 007, it has an organic crust with a sunblush tomato pizza sauce, smoked salmon, venison medallions, cognac-marinated lobster and champagne-soaked caviar. The whole pie is topped with 24-karat edible gold.

Crolla, who is from Glasgow, worked with the British Pizza, Pasta & Italian Food Association and will auction off the pizza to raise money for the Australian Fred Hollow's Foundation, a nonprofit group that works to "prevent curable blindness in developing countries." It will be sold on eBay, where both Crolla and the BPPIFA hope that it will make at least $3,800, which would apparently break the world's record for most expensive pizza, currently held by the white truffle pizza at Gordon Ramsay's Maze Restaurant in London. Whoever wins the auction can either have the pizza prepared in one of Crolla's restaurants or have it prepared in their home.

[via Slice]

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A "slice" is the Australian term for a bar cookie, though slices can tend to be a little less cookie-like in some instances, so they have a slightly broader scope than simply being a cookie relative. These slices are quite similar to brownies, but are topped with everything but the kitchen sink. Niki of Esurientes turned out these delightful Caramel Hazelnut Chocolate Slices for a party and I believe that the attendees must have been a lucky group. Both the top and bottom of these bars a rich with bittersweet chocolate and the caramel layer is made with sweetened condensed milk and studded with hazelnuts. Check out the recipe is you want to try your hand at them!

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Over at 101 Cookbooks, Wayne Bremser recently did a great post about his experiences tasting olive oils at this year's San Francisco Fancy Foods Show. I was glad to hear that I'm not the only one that over-uses the word "grassy" to describe olive oil. Wayne goes over some tasting techniques used by exhibitors at the show to get beyond "the 'G' word." Along with some humorous talk about lots of people making strange slurping noises, there's a good list of imported and domestic olive oils, including several rising Australian producers.

[Photo: The Cook's Thesaurus]