Well, it's over for another year but we'll be eating well for at least a month thanks to all the tasty treats we picked up at MasterChef Live this weekend. We visited on Friday and Saturday and it was packed with celeb chefs, top producers and thousands of hungry London foodies. Within half an hour of arriving, we had already spotted Tristan Welch, Lawrence Keogh, the Masterchef judges and the South London boys from The Restaurant!
This snapshot of the Restaurant Experience was taken around midday on Friday - it was the quietest we saw it all weekend. On Saturday afternoon, you could barely move for all the hungry Londoners sprawled across the floor, squashed on to tables and eating their way around London's finest restaurants.
We started the day with a breakfast of Prosecco; delicious fish fingers with zingy tartare sauce from Roast; and seared scallops with pancetta on a bed of chili-spiked lentils and rocket from Theo Randall.
Some of the best deli offerings were found upstairs and we soon filled a bag with hand-carved hams and artisan cheeses (including the ever-popular Keen's Cheddar) and Italian goodies from Savoria and Sicily in London. We also picked up some fantastic bacon and sausages from Royal Berkshire Pork, and returned on Saturday to feast on their sausage baps and pork and apple burgers. (Highly recommended for hangovers!)
The free-to-watch Hot Tip Pods were buzzing throughout the day and we stopped by to watch Tim Hughes and Gary Lee from Caprice Holdings cooking an elegant Asian fish dish. There were Q&As with MasterChef winners (including Professionals winner Steve Groves) and celeb chefs like Michel Roux Jnr and Tristan Welch.
One of our favourite finds of the day was the huge mixed bags of chillies grown in Bedfordshire by Edible Ornamentals. The colours are incredible and even the milder ones pack a punch. Fiery food fans should also look out for Mr Singh's Dynamite Hot Sauce - an insanely hot Punjabi chilli sauce that's great as a dip or swirled into curries. Definitely not for the faint-hearted! They also sell Indian spice tins filled with classic spices like garam masala and black mustard seeds - perfect stocking fillers for home cooks.
Nadia Sawalha and Thomasina Miers in a Masterchef cook-off, hosted by the lovely Olly Smith!
Another great bargain was the three jars for a fiver deal from the Devon Cream Company. Their creme fraiche comes flavoured with strawberry or lemon - great for cheesecakes - and they certainly don't skimp on the booze in their brandy clotted cream. We'd love to save it for the Christmas pud but it's unlikely to last that long!
Having done a full sweep of the Producers Village downstairs, it was time for more food. Blue Elephant's green chicken curry is always a winner - fresh, fiery and served with a smile, but we also loved the radga pattice from Cafe Spice Namaste - a potato cake sitting in a sea of fragrant white pea dahl. Dim sum and Beijing duck pancakes from show newcomers, Min Jiang, were tasty, but the overall winner for us was The Ivy who served up Hereford beef with bashed neeps and a creamy butternut squash risotto with crispy sage and a generous sprinkle of aged Parmesan. It always amazes us how these restaurant churn out hundreds of sample-size star dishes and there wasn't a single disappointing dish this year.
The Oishii Pavilion was a great success, perhaps helped by its prime position by the entrance. We couldn't stay for the Eat-Japan Sushi Awards on Saturday night, but we did manage to catch a tea ceremony demo and a great sushi show where Ken Kawasumi (from the Tokyo Sushi Academy) made sushi likenesses of John and Gregg. The udon noodle stand seemed popular, even though it was set apart from the other restaurants, and we loved the free wasabi sachets from the Japanese ingredients shop they had set up.
Here's a snapshot of our final haul. We tried to hold back this year but couldn't resist some essential purchases like the big wedge of Cornish brie or the Oval 'structured' vodka miniatures - one of which is 56%! The only thing we missed this year was fresh pasta, which we couldn't find anywhere, but we happily settled for an after-show fry-up made with some of the finest pork products the UK has to offer.
We hope our competition winners had a great time at the show and that everyone who went managed to pick up some great British produce. Will you be going next year? We will!
mmm didn't get to try the fish fingers or the green curry but they look fantastic! masterchef live was amazing. very glad i went.
Posted by: diva | November 16, 2009 at 12:46 PM