Cook Here and Now: Melbourne, AU

Cook Here and Now coming in October!

Hello all you very patient Cook Here and Now followers (my apologies for the double posting - I'm new to this blog thing),

Yes, we've been very slow about posting news about our first event (no surprises there). Because a few of us from Slow Food will be overseas during winter, we've decided to hold off until October for the first event so we can celebrate the flush of spring in true Cook Here and Now style.

The first event will be either the 2nd or 4th Saturday of October so it corresponds with either the Children's Farm or Slow Food Market, and we are still searching for a venue that can accommodate us. If you have any ideas for a commercial/catering kitchen that a kind soul might make available to us, please let me know!

In the meantime, I'm posting some suggested menu ideas below for our first attempt, but I'm open to suggestions. Feel free to send through your favourite springtime culinary creations by posting them here. Just remember that they must be a dish that can be made with ingredients from the farmers markets (e.g. what's in season). Of course, things like ginger, flour, condiments are not excluded - you just have to bring them with you!

We are cooking for around 40 people, but bear in the mind it is not expected everyone will eat everything on the menu (nor will every dish feed 40 people). There will be several dishes that we can pick and choose from and to suit different tastes.

Here's what I'm thinking so far:

Appetisers -
Broad bean dip with veggies
OTHERS??

Entree -
Slow cooked white chicken (SO beautiful)

OTHERS??

Soup -
Chicken soup with ginger
Sweet spring pea soup with mint

Salads -
Farro and artichoke salad
Simple green salad
Something with asparagus
OTHERS?

Meat -
TOTALLY OPEN TO SUGGESTIONS - pork, duck, quail, beef

Desserts -
Pavlova with seasonal fruit (berries, etc)
Rhubarb stew with vanilla creme anglaise (so we can use the leftover egg yolks)
OTHERS?

I'd love to hear from you with other creative suggestions for dishes that are manageable, and more importantly, tasty!

Looking forward to hearing from you. Watch this space!

Kelly Donati

Cook Here and Now

Cook Here and Now is a communal cooking and eating experiment started by Marco Flavio Marinucci in San Francisco two years ago. The seed for Cook Here and Now Melbourne was planted when Alison Peake, the convivium leader of Slow Food Melbourne, returned from a trip to San Francisco where she had gotten word of a great new event concept that celebrates local, seasonal food and the conviviality of eating and cooking together. Alison was also part of a group of Slow Food members that set up the Slow Food Melbourne Farmers Market back in 2006 and is always looking for ways to introduce people to the joys of the abundance of amazing food that we available to us here in Victoria. So how does it work? Somewhere between 30-50 people sign up on the Cook Here and Now blog and commit to buying the ingredients and preparing one course (entree, salad, main, dessert or drinks) of a collective meal. Small teams work together to produce a dish that celebrates the best of what the season has on offer. It can be as simple or as elaborate as the team can manage. There is no cost to participate (except the cost of ingredients). Part of the fun is sourcing the produce, making new friends whilst cooking together and, of course, indulging in the fruits of our collective culinary labour. Alison and I will be working together over the next couple of months on the first Cook Here and Now in Melbourne, and we'll be keeping you posted on any new developments. The event is likely to take place around the end of May which is a time of year that offers an abundance of seasonal fruit and vegetables to inspire you. Here's just a few to get you thinking about a late autumn feast: carrots, cavolo nero, chicory, cauliflower, broccoli, spinach, fennel, celery, green beans, borlotti beans, wild and cultivated mushrooms, lettuce, herbs (parsley, coriander, dill, mint, sorrel, oregano, arugala/ rocket), turnips (find some japanese turnips if you can - they are incredible!), french radish, daikon, leeks, rhubarb, quinces, pears, apples, cima di rapa, new season potatoes, beetroot, pumpkin, clingstone peaches, citrus fruit, choy sum, bok choy, garlic, leeks, brown onions, spring onions, avocado, pomegranates, lamb and oysters. So put on your culinary thinking caps, and keep your eyes peeled for Cook Here and Now Melbourne updates on the blog. A big thank you to Marco Flavio for his generous support and infectious enthusiasm in getting Cook Here and Now off the ground here in Melbourne!

Welcome to Cook Here and Now, Melbourne!

Buongiorno, Melbourne! Two years ago when I founded Cook Here and Now, I figured there might be other people who get inspired by what they find at their local farmers' market -- and I suspected that if we could get together, we'd cook up a proper local, seasonal feast. Since then there have been 35+ feasts in San Francisco ... and now it's Melbourne's turn.

I'm delighted to announce that Kelly Donati is heading up the new Melbourne chapter of Cook Here & Now, and she'll be blogging right here about the latest and greatest in Victoria produce. She's officially in charge of organizing Cook Here & Now's Melbourne feasts, which are free and open to all on a first-come, first-served basis.

Get ready, Melbourne: These are the cooking events that got Cook Here & Now listed as one of Travel + Leisure's "10 Best Secret Dining Clubs in the World."  Kelly will be posting event announcements on this blog, and here's a word to the wise: in San Francisco, our events featuring local and seasonal food fill up within a couple of hours.

If you want bragging rights to attending the very first Melbourne Cook Here & Now feast, you'll want to subscribe to this blog via an aggregator or by clicking here, via email. That way, when Kelly posts a call-for-participation for an event, you'll receive it in your mailbox, and can sign up by posting your comments to the event announcement right here on the blog. (A techie here in SF even developed special software to alert him to Cook Here and Now posts ... seriously!)

So subscribe to the blog, keep an eye on your farmer's markets, and prepare to share your recipes, tips, and company with your fellow Melbourne foodies. Occasionally I'll add to the blog, and maybe even join you in Melbourne for a feast. I know Kelly was working on that.

Enjoy!
Marco Flavio