Join Darren For A Dessert Masterclass - Dates In June & July 2010

This is offered to current pupils at Class Culinary School - hope to see you there.

MFWF Review 3 - Theatre Of Ideas With Mugaritz IMAGES

Chef Andoni describing calcium oxide, and its uses in his cuisine.

Stunning dessert that showcases Mugaritz' unique style and wit.

Matt Preston hosted the event and was able to help the audience understand a little bit about the significance of Chef Andoni's food.

Salsifi cooked in the calcium oxide to produce a self pureeing vegetable. Their food photography is some of the best we have seen.

A packed house is entertained and informed.

The dessert being explained by Andoni and prepared by Javier Bergara (in picture) and Leire Extaide (out of shot).

Dan Hunter - one of Mugaritz' favourite sons, moderates the event. 

Interaction from the chef to the audience kept everyone entertained.

When a vegetable is cut and immersed in the calcium oxide solution, it's pectins react and forms a gel on the outside of the fruit/veg. This is then baked at a low temperature and the steam cannot escape through the gel. This causes the inside of the ingredient to almost puree inside itself giving rise to a unique texture. The picture is of Jerusalem artichoke cooked in this manner which gives way to the appearance of crab.

Ian & Darren were lucky enough to spend some time with the guys from Mugaritz and it was inspirational learning from the humble approach to life and cooking. We helped in some prep for this class and the offer was extended to us to visit the new Mugaritz. We cannot wait to visit San Sebastian and experience the cuisine and hospitality of Andoni, Javier and Leire. Thanks to all three for your humility and passion.

 

Visit Mugaritz at http://www.mugaritz.com/index.html

MFWF Review 2 - Burch & Purchese Announce Exclusive Deal With The Cocoa Alliance During Masterclass

Burch & Purchese are excited to announce and exclusive deal with The Cocoa Alliance based here in Melbourne. The Cocoa Alliance are the Australian distributors of Chocovic chocolate our preferred brand of chocolate. So we are happy to align ourselves with these two great brands and hope to have a fruitful partnership in the future. The deal was completed just before our Masterclass in Flinders Room at the Langham hotel last week. The Cocoa Alliance provided us with the Selvatica range of chocolate for our demonstration and to give away to the attendees. The demonstration itself was titled "New Ways With An Old Obsession" and focused on some of our techniques in chocolate and dessert making. We received great feed back and had a lively exchange of questions from the diverse crowd. We have to say a special thanks to Adriano Zumbo for his moderation and to Alistair McLeod for his MC skills. Burch & Purchese produced three dishes, two of which were produced as tastings for everyone and the chocolate turron (above) went down extremely well as did our impressive gift bag. The bag contained a Burch & Purchese chocolate piece, promotional material from The Cocoa Alliance and chocolate from Chocovic as well as samples from our other partners Fresh As. and Melbourne Food Ingredient Depot and we want to thank all of our supporters in making the day so successful. We will post more on Tommy Roff from Fresh As. and Phil Vernon from Melbourne Food Ingredient Depot later on as they have great products and we have built good relationships with these professional companies. For now, here are a few useful links. 

http://cocoaalliance.com/

http://www.chocovic.es/

http://adrianozumbo.com/patisserie.html

http://fresh-as.com/

http://www.mfcd.net/depot/

MFWF Review 1 - Massimo Bottura - Theatre Of Ideas

Burch & Purchese were lucky enough to spend a little time with Massimo Bottura, the talented chef from acclaimed restaurant Osteria Francescana. Massimo was over for the festival to participate in the Theatre Of Ideas event at BMW edge in Federation Square on Sunday 21st of March. His restaurant holds two Michelin stars and is situated in Modena, Italy and the man himself was as humble and polite as anyone you could meet. It was a pleasure for us just to be in his company over the festival and it thrills us to be up son stage with a culinary master such as this. Massimo's food is right out of the box but still with a firm respect for classical cookery. He says that, like an artist, his food is and outlet for his emotions and the plate is his blank canvas. During his highly engaging and thoughtful presentation last Sunday, Massimo demonstrated his dish "The potato that wants to be a truffle". This concept arose from the similarities in flavour profile of the two ingredients, but the real twist was that it was a dessert! Or was it? These were the questions that Massimo was trying to ask the audience, clearly this dish was conceptualized over a long period of testing and uses his wealth of experience. The dish was presented to host Matt Preston who was excited to be tasting such an evolutionary dish and we were thrilled when Mr Preston walked to the top of the auditorium to ask us to try Massimo's dish. The dish comprised of a sweet potato filling with sweetened hazelnuts, vanilla foam and a generous topping of black truffle. We were surprised as we tasted the dish, as it turned from a dessert sensation, to something more savoury and back again. It was thoughtful food and we have to say a big thanks to Matt for thinking of us, we think he was trying to open our minds to possibilities in dessert making and it certainly did. We can't wait to visit Modena one day to sample the whole menu, but for now we are grateful to have been in the company of and tasted the food of such a great inspirational chef. Check out the website for Massimo's award winning restaurant. http://www.osteriafrancescana.it/ 

Phew! Festival Over - A Few Teaser Shots Before We Post In Depth!!

What a week, great fun and hard work at the same time. We are now in the process of sorting out our photos and other bits in preparation of a full insight to our experiences in the last week or so. We will post in detail on the many events that we participated in including our successful Masterclass on Saturday. We would like to thank everyone for their support and help and will name them accordingly in the next few posts. For now we will leave you with a few teaser shots and see how many chefs you can name in the top photo!! Answers on a postcard..........

MELBOURNE FOOD & WINE FESTIVAL 2010 UPDATE 2

Our samples from Melbourne Food Ingredient Depot - thanks Phil!

Promotional chocolate supplied by The Cocoa Alliance

Each of our attendees receive a handcrafted Burch & Purchese chocolate piece

Chef Andoni from Mugaritz is presenting 'Theatre of ideas' at the Langham

Are we going to see the famous Mugaritz bubbles on Sunday?

Phew! It's all go at Burch & Purchese HQ, this morning we met with Chef Andoni and his chefs Javier & Leire from Mugaritz. They have a demonstration on Sunday and we have made ourselves available to help them with ingredients and some prep work to ensure all goes smoothly. It is always such an honour to be in contact with great chefs and we are excited that we are able to help. Chef Andoni along with two star Massimo Bottura are planning a spectacular demonstration and we can't wait to see their cuisines first hand and listen to their philosophy on food. We especially wish all the best to Andoni and his team after the tragedy of the recent fire at Mugaritz and we hope positive things happen for them soon.
Back to our Masterclass on Saturday and we are preparing tastings for the class along with gift bags for the attendees to take away. We took hold of some specially prepared samples from our friend Phil Vernon at Melbourne Food Ingredient Depot today which will form part of our giveaway. We are giving away a recipe and the components in the gift bags so the public can go away and make some of the more obscure recipes at home. It was Chef Andoni and Dan Hunter from the Royal Mail that introduced us to Kaolin clay a few years ago so it ties in well with the weekend. Also The Cocoa Alliance, the official Australian distributors of our favourite chocolate, Chocovic, have provided us with giveaway samples. We will be including all of these goods as well as a handcrafted and sprayed exclusive chocolate piece from Burch & Purchese which we made yesterday. Tomorrow we are meeting with Tommy Roff from Fresh As. who is flying in from New Zealand with yet more samples from us from his range of freeze dried fruits. So if you are lucky enough to have procured a ticket for our Masterclass, we have some great presents for you!! Other stuff, we bumped into Chef Andrew McConnell today and he was with David Chang, a special Momofuku dinner is planned for tonight at Andrew's restaurant Cumulus Inc and we wish them well with that. That's it for today so far, it's back to the kitchen to finish preparing for the weekend. We will update you again tomorrow as we will have more fun stuff to tell you by then!!
Check out these links for further information.

http://www.mugaritz.com/index.html    Mugaritz
http://www.cumulusinc.com.au/            Cumulus Inc
http://www.momofuku.com/                 Momofku
http://www.mfcd.net/depot/                  Melbourne Food Ingredient Depot
http://fresh-as.com/                                Fresh As.
http://cocoaalliance.com/                       The Cocoa Alliance
http://www.royalmail.com.au/               Royal Mail Hotel

MELBOURNE FOOD & WINE FESTIVAL 2010 UPDATE 1

Ok so it's not exactly pastry related per se, but we thought we would let you know how the festival is shaping up from our point of view. The function we attended yesterday was at the stunning balcony of Siglo above The European on Spring street in the city. Porkstar were the sponsors in association with Australian Pork. Although we here at Burch & Purchese have used bacon on our desserts in the past, yesterday was all about celebrating the pig in delicious small bites from The European's chef Ian Curley and St.John (London) chef superstar, Fergus Henderson. As is the philosophy of one of the worlds best chefs, nose to tail of the beast were used in preparing the food. Excellent full flavoured small bites were made from some of the most unfashionable part of the pig and they seemed to go down with great success. From our point of view the function gave us a chance to meet up with some internationally famous chefs including Fergus himself. It gave us a chance to network with local chefs, food media and contacts which is always of a great benefit. Chef Ian Curley was charming and is clearly an excellent chef and organiser so well done to him and thanks for the hospitality. We also met with Miss Phee Gardener who, along with Luke Mangan, is one of the hardworking people behind the Electrolux Young Chef/Waiter Of The Year awards of whom my wife Cath Claringbold is a state judge. We at Burch & Purchese support any initiatives to improve skills and prospects among young persons in the hospitality industry. Check out these links below for further information.

• http://www.theeuropean.com.au/           The European Restaurant
• http://www.pork.com.au/                      Australian Pork
• http://appetite.butterflyinternet.com.au/  Electrolux Young Chef
• http://www.stjohnrestaurant.co.uk/        St.John Restaurant

MELBOURNE FOOD & WINE FESTIVAL 2010 NOW UNDERWAY

This is one of our favourite times of the year at Burch & Purchese, the Melbourne Food & Wine Festival 2010. This year we are heavily involved with the program and we are busy preparing for our sold out Masterclass at the Langham next Saturday. 'New Ways With An Old Obsession' is the title for our class and we hope to enthrall the attendees with some of our signature tastes, techniques and dishes. The festival seems to get better and better every year and we are proud to be involved and to share the stage with some of the most exciting chefs from overseas and Australia. We are especially looking forward to seeing David Chang and Alex Atala in action as well as Peter Gilmore, Claude Bosi and French baking genius Gontran Cherrier. We are also excited to announce that we will be helping legend chefs Andoni Luis Aduriz and Massimo Bottura in their 'Theatre Of Ideas' session with Matt Preston on Sunday next week. Wow, so much to learn from all of these great chefs. We hope you get to experience a great festival and hopefully you are attending one or more of the 250 events planned in Victoria this year. We will keep you posted on our involvement and hopefully pass on some of the skills we hope to learn from some of the worlds greatest chefs. See you soon

Burch & Purchese Sponsor BalletLab

Last week Burch & Purchese were invited to help promote Philip Adam's stunning BalletLab concept. We were pleased to accept the offer and donated two very special prizes to be auctioned off at last Thursday's fundraiser. If you don't know of BalletLab and of Mr Adam's special work then check out their website here http://www.balletlab.com/about/. We are always happy to support creativity and originality and we feel the BalletLab concept sits very well next to our brand. We donated one of our signature avant-garde chocolate cakes as well as a unique afternoon tea experience for six people to be prepared in the winners home by us. We are happy to say the auction went well and we managed to raise a significant sum for BalletLab. Congratulations to the winners and we look forward to providing them with a creative treat of our own.

Burch & Purchese Pastry Demonstration At 'Class Culinary School'

On Friday last week we were asked to help the guys at Rely Services open their new cooking school 'Class' in Ascot Vale. Rely are the Australian distributors of some of the worlds best cooking technologies including Irinox, Pacojet and I.C.C. We were happy to help on a fun night of introductions, cooking and a little wine! Burch & Purchese will be hosting pastry classes at the school later on this year and we will update you of dates when they are confirmed.

Latest News - Adriano Zumbo To Moderate Burch & Purchese Masterclass

Here at Burch & Purchese we are delighted to announce that top Sydney pastry chef Adriano Zumbo will attend and moderate our Masterclass at this years Melbourne Food & Wine Festival. Adriano has had a masssive twelve months since we worked with him on last years event (pictured above with Ramon Morato), his pastry shop has never been busier since his appearances on Masterchef Australia. He will be taking the weekend off from the croque en bouche madness to help and ask questions during our session at the Langham.

Melbourne Food & Wine Festival website click: http://www.melbournefoodandwine.com.au/index.php

For Zumbo website click:
http://adrianozumbo.com/patisserie.html

Burch & Purchese To Talk Chocolate At Hotshot & Teapot At The Melbourne Food & Wine Festival 2010

Taste and compare single-origin and single-region chocolates from around the world. Darren Purchese will reveal the secrets to using the perfect variety for every occasion. For tickets click here http://www.ticketmaster.com.au/search?tm_link=tm_homeA_header_search&q=HOTSHOT+%26+TEAPOT&search.x=47&search.y=2&camefrom=CFC_AU_MFW11

Burch & Purchese To Hold Pastry Demo's At Melbourne's Newest Cooking School

Ever wondered how a Pac-O-Jet Works?

What's the secret to a perfect chocolate mousse?

You would like to know what makes a great custard?

Burch & Purchese are holding a series of pastry demonstrations later this year we are pleased to announce. Melbourne's newest and best equipped cooking school 'Class' run by the talented people at Rely Services is open soon, with a fantastic schedule of chefs all on hand to help you improve your cooking. We look forward to seeing some of you and helping your skills develop. Please contact  relyservices.com.au for details of this years schedule & soon as their website is up we will post here