They are such an amazing resource!"
Writer
Hospo Resources for COVID-19
This page is to assist hospo businesses and workers with resources that might be useful as we all try to navigate a COVID-19 worldscape. Inclusion does not necessarily equal endorsement. If you are looking for something that’s not here, please ask.
Eater
Perfect Cheesecake’s Secret Ingredient
Life goes better with Basque cheesecake, a lockdown #2 love affair. I became obsessed with this cake about five years ago when I ate it in San Sebastian at La Viña pintxos bar. It was perilously wobbly and jiggly, somehow both light and rich, creamy white and custardy within but with a bitter edge from the dark, caramelised perimeter. I mumbled, “It’s a miracle,” and I meant it.
Traveller
OS Workers Resources
This page is to assist overseas workers in Australia on working visas who have lost jobs or reduced hours due to COVID-19. I am a food writer who cares about your plight. I am not qualified to give you legal advice. Please use this page as a starting place. I can take no responsibility for your actions or the consequences that may arise from them. I wish you all the best and I want you to know that many people care about your situation!
Cook
Sri Lankan Black Curry Powder
This is a deep, dark curry powder that is delicious in meat and vegetarian dishes. It’s beautifully fragrant and you can use it in any curries.
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Stage 4 update. Restaurants and cafes can continue takeaway and delivery. All food stores can remain open. Abattoirs will be scaled back so yay for our secondary cut and vego repertoires. Many other businesses to be scaled back or closed. Stay strong, Melbourne, we really can do this together ❣️ #i❤️melbourne
❣️Melbourne I love you, we've got this ❣️
STAGE 4 METRO MELB
- six weeks to Sept 13
- food businesses no change
ie. takeaway & delivery OK 👍
- curfew 8pm-5am (unless working)
- panic buying definitely not nec 💖
Regional Vic > stage 3
ie. restaurants close ☹️
Stay strong Melbourne ❣️
LOVE YOU LOTS
More detail from @danielandrewsmp today...
- 6pm tonight state of disaster declared across Victoria, in addition to state of emergency. This means police and other agencies have other powers to get job done.
Melbourne:
- Stage 4 for metro Melbourne 6pm tonight for six weeks - to 13 September
- stay at home restrictions enhanced: Can no longer leave home any further than 5km radius for purposes of shopping. Only one person can go shopping once per day within 5km radius.
- Recreational activity no longer allowed. One hour of exercise no further than 5km from home. Jog, walk, fresh air. No longer any groups bigger than 2, even if from family with commonsense exemptions for children.
- From 8pm tonight curfew implemented across metro Melbourne - 8pm-5am. Only reason to be out of home between those hours is to get or give care, or to go to and from work. Can't be out and about for no good reason.
Significant workplace announcements will be made tomorrow. Business as usual: supermarkets, butcher, baker, food, beverage, groceries. Restaurants & cafes can continue to offer takeaway. Sounds like abattoirs and possibly shopping centres will close.
Schools: from Wednesday online learning for all students across state. Monday normal, Tuesday pupil free. Wednesday remote learning.
Regional Vic: midnight Wed regional moving to stay at home stage 3. Restaurants, cafes, bars etc to close.
This fortnight on @dirtylinenpodcast, our topic is visa holders in hospitality. Who are they? What are they struggling with? Is it fair that they were told to 'go home' if they couldn't support themselves during the pandemic? There are five conversations to catch up on, starting with the extraordinary @tugcebayrakdar, a geneticist turned chef who moved from Turkey to study hospitality in Melbourne. She lost her casual job at Omnia in March and instantly spiralled into a demoralising period of worry. She's now working at food charity @fareshare_australia which has helped her map out a food dream for her future. Visa holders aren't statistics, they are real people with compelling stories and unique gifts. We are lucky to have Tugce in Melbourne. Listen via link in bio or head to bit.ly/dirtylinenpodcast #savehospo
Life goes better with Basque cheesecake, a lockdown #2 love affair. I became obsessed with this cake about five years ago when I ate it in San Sebastian at La Viña pintxos bar. It was perilously wobbly and jiggly, somehow both light and rich, creamy white and custardy within but with a bitter edge from the dark, caramelised perimeter. I mumbled, “It’s a miracle,” and I meant it.
An ambition formed in me before I’d swallowed my first mouthful, a deep desire, a life’s work: I wanted the recipe.
I assumed there was a secret ingredient, probably some kind of sheep cheese farmed in a hidden Basque valley. I’d been to such a place the previous day, trudging up and down hills through fog and drizzle to come upon a tiny family farmlet with 80 smelly sheep and a modest but active cheesery. Perhaps these woolly milkers were the key to La Viña’s signature dessert?
Fuelled by cheesecake passion, I made my local friends ask the chef what was in it. He looked at me. “Feel. Ah. Dell. Fya.” Was this Basque for “I’m never going to tell you, stupid tourist”?
I pleaded with my translator @thebasqueway. She looked at me. “Fill. Argh. Delf. Ya.”
Basque is so hard, I moaned inwardly. Was I going to need to move to San Sebastian so I could keep eating this cake?
Then someone whispered in my ear: “Philadelphia.” Oh. A standard supermarket cream cheese available all over the world is the secret ingredient.
Suddenly, the cheesecake seemed within reach. I could breathe again. I could move on... I COULD GET THE RECIPE AND SHARE IT!
The pictured cake is from @marion_wine but my recipe is within the pages of @goodfoodau and on my site at danivalent.com. Enter the bliss...
📣 I'm super excited to launch a collab that I've been cooking up behind the scenes 😃 My "Cooks and Chefs Series" is a new way to enjoy some of Australia's best-loved recipes at home, launching with the wonderful @juliaostro. For the first time ever & for one day only, we're preparing dishes from Julia's Ostro cookbook and delivering them to your place!
Julia has selected her favourite winter recipes (greens pie! braised lamb! ricotta tortelloni! tiramisu! more!) and is overseeing their preparation at @cookes_food, assisted by gun chef and Ostro food prepper @emmaguapa. We are also thrilled to have @bakerbleu create an exclusive focaccia to match Julia's menu. Our tech partner is @cookaborough ❣️
The Cooks and Chefs Series is a new way to connect with outstanding cooks and chefs and experience their cookbooks, recipes and expert insights. It's also a new, easy, enriching way to get a special dinner on the table. And, of course, in the current circumstances, it's an innovative way for Julia to do cooking classes when she can't, for me to run events when I can't, and for Cookes to cater big when they can't. Orders are open now until next Sunday. Limited numbers, don't delay! Link in bio or head to cookaborough.com
Three men over three days talking mental health in hospitality on @dirtylinenpodcast. In many ways, these guys are very different.
Nathan Toleman is an accomplished restaurateur and leader with an explicit focus on wellbeing threaded through his workplaces @hazel_melbourne @dessousmelbourne @common_ground_project.
Steven Kilminster is a veteran chef who speaks from rehab in Townsville where he's recovering from alcoholism, jaded and depressed, and finding it very hard to see a path forward in hospo.
Finally, @georgewintle is a young chef ex-@oakridgewines who can't speak more highly of his old bosses @chefmattstone and @jobarrett, or his mum @rae.bonney, who has inspired George to speak up about mental health in hospitality, even while he's in quarantine in the Blue Mountains. He founded @eattheissue.
Three blokes, three states, three very different chats and perspectives. What connects these guys is the world of restaurants and their shared conviction that open conversations around mental health are crucial. I respect these men so much for their words and actions.
Thank you to each of you, and to everyone who has spoken to me for 'mental health fortnight', which wraps tomorrow with an interview with @mhfa_australia.
My podcast is a @deepintheweedspodcast production. Thanks @huckstergram @foodwinedine ✨
Here's what I did with my celeriac! Celeriac & Apple Soup with Parsley & Thyme Oil. Recipe up at danivalent.com.
I often find myself thinking about ways to use regular ingredients in unusual places. Why can’t we use fruits in savoury dishes and vegetables in sweet dishes? Who says we can't? That’s one reason I’m a big fan of this celeriac soup with the sweet spark of green apples.
There’s also something delightful about colour-matching produce as with this dish of tonal greens. I remember when I interviewed @alain_passard, he told me how he gathers each day’s vegetables and fruit and arranges them like a bouquet then waits for inspiration as the ingredients start whispering to him, telling him what they want to be matched with and in what sort of dish. Often, he said, items of similar colour would desire to be together.
I was thinking of this concept again recently when chatting to the remarkable @aliceinframes about her upcoming book @inpraiseofveg. The chapters in this book are also arranged by colour 🌈
And so to this soup, which takes the various greens of celeriac, apples, parsley and thyme and jumbles them together in a healthy soup. It’s a marvellous medley, a humble symphony, a beautiful bouquet of warming tones and cool weather flavours. I hope you find the idea intriguing and the taste magnificent.
JobKeeper extended 👍
PM speaking now...
JobKeeper will continue through to the end of March 2021.
From end of September, there will be a new eligibility test for JobKeeper. Continuing eligibility will rely on a continuance of 30% turnover reduction. (Have to prove decline in previous two quarters and then again for December quarter.)
From October, JobKeeper payments will be reduced to $1200/fortnight for full-time workers. For part-time workers doing less than 20 hours a week, the payment will drop to $750/fn.
For the March quarter (ie from Jan) that will reduce again to $1000 and $650.
This is a massive and welcome relief for many business owners. It is also disappointing in the extreme that an extension of eligibility to visa holders has not been announced today.
I love you, celeriac, you humble, gorgeous thing. In these tough, weird and ever-shifting times, I'm finding it comforting and sustaining to tap into the rhythms of the seasons. Lots of things - like this ugly beauty - are as they ever were.
It's about the small, good things. @bakerbleu toast, @caravan_eggs broken fried egg, @babka_boi great hummus, @tomsarafian's zaatar, @oliveriamel olive oil, @glenntebble plate ❣️
What does a top chef do in isolation? If you're @martinbennreal you spend a few weeks looking at an apple before deciding to go at it with a lathe. You then shave it into a two-metre strip and painstakingly reconstruct it into the form of a toffee apple, albeit spread with caramel, slowly baked, stuffed with miso caramel and raspberry sauce, dressed with salted white chocolate cream and sour apple jelly, and surrounded by elaborate, edible leaves.
This epic apple project – all 110 steps and three hours 45 minutes of it – is tonight's semi-final elimination challenge on @masterchefau. It's the dish which will send either @reynoldpoer @emelia_jackson or @laurasharrad home, leaving the other two to cook for glory in Monday's grand final... Read my story via @theageaustralia @goodfoodau bit.ly/masterchefapple
@fooderati @sepiasydney Pic @eddie.jim ❣️
Life rule #245(C): if someone doesn't reply to your message, assume they haven't seen it.
(D) unless you're being mean, in which case just stop it and be nice.
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