Pretty sure that cheese platter grabbed your attention. I thought I'd put Nicki Minaj's butt up there but some of us are at work here and that's as NSFW as NSFW gets. Look hard. I ate some of those cheeses. You did not. My life rocks. Yours, not so much.
Okay sorry. This is not about the cheese I sampled at Nature's Basket yesterday. It's about meeting Sarah Todd. I don't go on about it so much but I am a crazy MasterChef Australia fan. Have you seen that show? The contestants are enthusiastic, friendly, classy, supremely talented, unlike America's show-offy, scripted malicious and ridiculously competitive ones. The week that Tracy from MasterChef Australia's season 6 got her power apron, I was not in town and with very limited access to a television set & internet & it almost hurt physically to not tune in every night at 9.
So when I got an email from Godrej Nature's Basket to come & meet one of my absolute favorites from this season, I just said a very impulsive yes. Monday morning (oh yes) at the Hill Road branch of Nature's Basket, to meet Sarah Todd do a live demo of two of her recipes from the series.
Some of us bloggers went out to meet her while she demo'ed at Nature's Basket. It's unfair that somebody so incredibly pretty is also such a knock-your-socks-off-awesome cook.
Of course, there were the biggies from Nature's Basket welcoming here and introducing her. The bloggers? Well, we were mostly just beaming ear to ear waiting for Chef Sarah to talk.
And cook. And to frantically scribble down her recipes. And go ape shit nuts about seeing a recipe in action that hasn't yet aired on national TV.
I also ran into Rushina, which was a very, very pleasant surprise - I love that woman, she's a joy to work with and so talented. And I also ran into some old college friends, blogger pals. It felt good to see them all after a while.
I tried not to be entirely star struck and have a fan moment when I ran into her as soon as I got into the Cocoa Tree Basement at Nature's Basket. I did keep my head on long enough to ask her a few things I really wanted to hear about. This is her first time in India & she is actually pleased with the horrid humid receding monsoon climate right now in Mumbai, mostly because she's from Queensland & is used to tropical climate - it's good weather for the skin!
I asked her how it felt to get eliminated & then miss out on Marco Pierre White before getting back to the MasterChef house again. She hasn't quite gotten over that but said it helped that she was with her family at the time. She totally loves Indian food and shared that the other contestants were pretty wowed by North Indian foods and that she taught them to roll chapatis :D
Sarah demo'ed two of her recipes from the series: Scotch Quail Eggs & a Mint & Goat's Cheese Parfait with a Nutmeg Tuille - delicious, that dessert, a fine balance of sweetwith savoury, minty freshness bursting through every scoop. I can imagine why thejudges must have gone bats over that one. I also managed to meet a bunch of oldfriends who showed up for the demo. All in all, a great Monday.
And oh, for those of you who want the parfait recipe, lookie! I ate that. I cannot even begin to describe how good it was. I am attaching a screenshot of the recipe here for you guys to replicate at home if you are up for it. And while you do that, I will be out buying a truckload of goat's cheese.
Go. Make. Send me some coz hey, I did share the recipe after all. Kindness must beget kindness.
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