Wild Lime Cooking School Calendar to November 2009

All Schools – Start at 10am - Two hour class followed by lunch with local wine - $90

We’ve done some wandering around the globe in the last few years and wherever we go, we find that sampling food is a sure way to gain insights into different cultures.

This year we would like to share our journeys and the food we’ve tasted and in typical Oz fashion we’ve adapted recipes and styles to include wild food ingredients gathered nearby.

So our pungent wild native limes replace the tame ones adding sour flavour bubbles to sauces, stir fries and sorbets.

Fragrant lemon myrtle adds the freshness of lemon to chicken wraps, teas, pasta, stir fry and bread and absorbs the gamey taste of roo fillet.

Peppery warrigal greens replace spinach in gnocchi, pound beautifully into pesto and enliven a nutty pilaf.

And the list goes on.  We hope you can share some of our experiences in perusing this calendar and through Wild Lime Cooking School.

Next Cooking School - Saturday 13th June – Winter Warmers in UK and Ireland

Saturday 21st February - Vital Vietnam

Imagine the bustle and buzz of a Hanoi market, fragrant herbs, fresh picked from the fields.  Dodge a motor scooter as you choose your live fish from the tank then come back to the quiet of our kitchen to chop and blend and simmer and grill.  Hot sour soup, chicken skewers wrapped in lemon myrtle leaves, larb and green papaya.  Cool off with gingered watermelon and wild lime granita.

Saturday 21^st March – Mysterious Morocco

Take the time warp on a donkey through the medina of Fes where lined faces in kaftans and djellabahs attend to the same business as their forefathers 1000 years ago.  Arrange to be in the Grande Place of Marrakesh at dusk as the Berbers fill the area with restaurant stalls laden with pyramids of steaming fragrant food.  Enjoy tagine and tamarind flavours, harissa seasoned lamb, salt preserved lemon and lime with fish and fowl and fresh carrot salad.

Saturday 18^th April – Italy My Italy

In Tuscany, soft green trees are weighed heavy with olives.  The grapes have been pressed and the wild greens on the hillside will be gathered and moulded with cheese gnocchi.  The tomatoes will be chopped for sauces and salads, the pasta shaped to be filled with pumpkin roasted in honey.  Fragrant additions to the creamy risotto are being considered.  You are invited to join our journey.

Saturday 16^th May  - Topkapi in Turkey

Put some time aside to wander through the kitchens of Topkapi Palace with its huge domed chimneys and giant pots abandoned  over cold fires.  A mortar and pestle big enough to grind spices and nuts  for 4500 people daily, lies idle.  Ladles and platters to serve the sultan his favourite dish – Imam Bayaldi – are carefully stored.  As the name implies the imam was so impressed with this dish that he fainted with delight.  You may be delighted with Imam Bayaldi or you may prefer the zucchini fritters or the exotic chicken in pistachio, sumac, bush tomato and sesame crumbs with a macadamia tarator.  Pistachios feature again in the pilaf and the honeyed baklava is a sweet conclusion.

Saturday 13^th June – Winter Warmers in UK and Ireland

The Cliffs of Moher drop away into the wild Atlantic that pounds the Irish coast and surprising snow is falling lightly on the Yorkshire Dales.  Out of the cold, the warm pubs offer mulled wine by the fire, hearty leek, potato, and watercress soup with soda bread, roasted beef with limed horseradish cream, salmon simmered Welsh style in red wine and wild fruit warmed with brandy and chilled with spoonfuls of wattleseed ice cream.  

Saturday 18^th July – Tapas in Spain

From Andalucia in the shade of a laden orange tree, glimpse the drama of mountains and stony villages through Roman arches and arrow slits.  Then Madrid at New Year – tapas in a crowded bar with champagne and grapes as the bells toll to midnight.  Quite probably we can sample beetroot gazpacho, tortilla with onion tops, wild mushrooms in setas a la plancha, wild bitter leaves cleverly dressed, grilled sardines and savoury fritters.  We are only limited by our imagination.

Saturday 15^th August – Glorious Greece

Early morning in Delphi and the gods and goddesses whisper wisdom from rocks and crevices.  Spring flowers appear in stony cracks.  Their seeds have lasted longer than the temples of the ancients.  The stadium of Olympia will wait till we have sampled aromatic soup with cheese and olive bread, squid stuffed with rice and nuts and greens, carefully wrapped dolmades, slow cooked meats enlivened with lemon myrtle and wine, spring salads and rice stirred through with leek and wild greens.  Consider halva or sweet pastry for dessert.

Saturday 12thSeptember – In Provence – Missing the Mistral

Chilled chimney pots, moonlit from our Parisian attic, frame the gargoyled spires of Notre Dame.  We escape the cold with delicious spoonfuls of crème de lentilles with fois de gras.  And afterwards we slide through patchworked stone villages to just spring Provence where we savour squid with olives and tomatoes in the sun, aioli hand beaten in old stone kitchens honeyed chicken with spring vegetables and Tarte Tatin.

Saturday 10^th October – Asian Connection

Try a cyclo through the beep and bustle of Ho Chi Minh City or wander the wide streets of Singapore to a market .  Sit back and wonder at the huge tentacles of tree roots claiming ponderous victory over temple walls in the jungles of Ankor Watt.  Let the fragrant vitality of herbs, spices and the freshest of produce take you there through laksa, curries, the tang of tamarind in sauces, or fish sauce and ginger in eggplant salad.  Dessert will be icy.

Saturday 14^th November – Travelling Home for Christmas

And at the end of the road there is Worendo and Wild Lime Cooking School and afternoon light adding drama to wild mountains bisected by chill bubbles of river.  Join us for a bush Christmas feast with pestos and salsas and chilled soups of red and green.  Salads dressed for Christmas  in wild food flavours and chutneys with meat and fish and fowl.  Finish with a wild fruit dessert.

Please wear closed footwear to all cooking classes

Corporate Team Building, Christmas Party and Private Group bookings welcome!

Register your interest by phone: (07) 55448104 or email:  worendo@bigpond.com

Classes dependent on numbers.