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Wattleseed Ground 200g

Vic Cherikoff Food Services — Tue, 18 May 2010 15:54:32 +1000

Wattleseed is also available in 100g as well as a 200ml extract see Wattleseed 100g or Wattleseed Extract

Wattleseed is a highly versatile and nutritious roasted grain (Acacia seeds) with an amazing coffee, chocolate, hazelnut flavour.

Spicemaster notes for Wattleseed:

COLOR - toasted chocolate brown grounds, milled to perfection for cooking or use in espresso, drip filter or plunger coffee equipment. Also available as a dark brown water-based liquid

AROMA - toasted roasted notes with coffee, chocolate hazelnut characters

PALATE - chocolate short palate with coffee notes less the bitterness and a nutty finish similar to hazelnuts (filberts)

Wattleseeds from around 100 species of Acacia have been used as foods by Australian Aborigines for at least 6,000 years. This matches the first cultivation of wheat on the fertile deltas at the mouths of the Nile in Egypt; the Euphrates in Mesopotamia (now Iraq); and the Indus in India.

However, while the move to cultivation began a trend of reliance on an ever-decreasing number of food species, Australian Aborigines maintained a completely different relationship with the Land. They saw themselves as part of the ecosystem and did not attempt to conquer it. They were care-takers of their country and employed land management methods to maintain ecological bio-diversity in Australia and the long-term health of the land. Maybe there is a lesson here for modern societies everywhere.

Add wattleseed to bread or muffin mixes, pasta, white chocolate and chocolate fillings, biscuits and beverages. Also use as a flavouring for red wine sauces, in marinades and dessert sauces or any application where the wattleseed get boiled or moist cooked. This softens the grounds and releases the flavour.

If the use is just a cold blending then use our Wattleseed extract which is a concentrated water based extract (see the entry on the specific item for more information).

Approximate usage rate is from 2-3%, depending on the flavour of other ingredients and whether the watttle is enhancing or competing with these other tastes."

Platinum Authentic Australian package

Vic Cherikoff Food Services — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 09:08:40 +1100

Our platinum authentic Australian Package is the ultimate package for creative chefs, cooks and foodies who are passionate about great flavours and in experiencing the real taste of Australia.

The Australian Menu Planning Guide includes a 12 month subscription to updates as we develop them.

The Platinum Authentic Australian Package features;

Alpine Pepper - 30g
Australian Menu Planning Guide ebook
Bush Tomato Chutney - 250g
Dining Downunder Cookbook
Australia Smoke Bar-B Skews
Fruit Spice - 30g
Illawarra Plum Sauce - 150g
Lemon Aspen Syrup - 150g
Lemon Myrtle Sprinkle - 30g
Mountain Pepper Sauce - 150g
Paperbark Smoke Oil - 150g
Quandong Confit � 250g
Rainforest Lime Splash - 150g
Rainforest Lime Confit � 250g
Rainforest Rub - 40g
Red Desert Dust - 40g
Riberry Confit � 250g
Wattleseed Extract - 200ml
Wattleseed Ground - 100g
Wildfire Spice - 40g

NB. Not pictured in the above image is the ebook on Australian Menu Planning and Australian Smoke Bar-B Skews.

Paperbark Smoke Oil 150ml

Vic Cherikoff Food Services — Sat, 16 Apr 2011 15:10:39 +1000

Paperbark smoke oil is a delicious flavour oil used in the same ways as truffle oil only even more versatile. It is ideal for any meat, fish, shellfish, vegetable (try it over roasted sweet corn on the cob), eggs, rice, mash, condiment, dressing in fact, any dish that a subtle hint of smoke can enhance. Try a seeded mustard made interestingly smoked with just a dash of paperbark smoke oil. Whisk some in to your favorite sauce. It even works in a basic custard or how about some paperbark smoked ice cream?

The smoke is infused into a canola oil (GMO free) which makes it cholesterol free and because it is used sparingly, the added oil hardly matters if you are concerned about dietary fat.

Available in a 150ml spouted bag and easily shipped globally.

For more information, visit the product glossary pages on www.cherikoff.net, look at our article on Paperbark smoke oil or go to Benjamin Christie's website and search for paperbark smoke oil.

Suggested recipes using Paperbark Smoke Oil

Feta cheese marinated with Paperbark Smoke Oil

Marinated mushrooms with Paperbark Smoke Oil

Mashed Potato with Paperbark Smoke Oil

Mountain Pepper BBQ Sauce (150g)

Vic Cherikoff Food Services — Sat, 16 Apr 2011 12:51:36 +1000

Our Mountain pepper BBQ sauce is the same recipe as the product we launched in the USA called Kakadu Wildfire Pepper sauce. We have merely packaged it in soft, food grade spouted pouches to reduce the freight cost and reisk of breakages for on-line orders.

Mountain Pepper BBQ Sauce is the definitive Australian sauce for steaks, sausages (snags), kebabs, chops, ribs, roasts and mince - in all its forms.

But that's not all. It also works as a marinade for red or white meats, a drizzle over cooked vegetables, it's great over fried potato chips and on gourmet pizzas (along with some sour cream), perfect with pumpkin soup and interesting as a flavour for various dips and spreads eg baba ganoush, hummous, avocado etc. You can also add Mountain Pepper BBQ sauce to emulsion sauces and dressings eg hollandaise, bearnaise, mayo and simple cream reductions.

Another complementary flavor is coconut cream or use our Coconut Skews�.

Suggested recipes using Mountain Pepper BBQ sauce

Aussie burger and chips

Ingredients: water, malt vinegar, Worcestershire sauce, tomato paste, tamarind, smoke oil, dates, modified corn starch, brown sugar, canola oil, mountain pepper (5%), guar, xantham, salt, cayenne, cracked pepper, ground black pepper, garlic granules, onion powder

Hot Sheet from Vic Cherikoff Down Under

Vic Cherikoff Food Services — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 10:29:52 +1100

The Vic Cherikoff Down Under BBQ Hot Sheet makes BBQ cooking sheer bliss. It's a great tool for public BBQs where you just don't know what's been on there last. Just crank the heat to medium and drop a Hot Sheet onto the plate. Instantly sanitized and ready to cook.

The thing I most like is that I never have to scrape and brush the hot plate on my BBQ ever again. It can go rusty between uses since all I do is cover it with my Vic Cherikoff Down Under BBQ Hot Sheet, turn the heat to medium and I�m ready to cook.

Even if you have a stainless steel hot plate, my Hot Sheet will mean you'll never have to spend ages cleaning up after using it. And besides, it increases the versatility of your BBQ immensely.

I can just throw on meats or vegetables without adding oil and they brown as they cook just as they would in a pan. And like a pan, I can pick up those delicious juices which typically get left on the hot plate (and then burn to form those unhealthy trans-fats). The Vic Cherikoff Down Under BBQ Hot Sheet lets me make my finishing sauce right on the BBQ. By pouring on some wine or cream, stock or even a little water, the juices can be lifted and the sauce reduced to intensify the flavors. Use a fish slice or egg flip to scoop up the thickened sauce taking care not to cut the material (it�s pretty tough but it�s not a cutting board) and the result is super special. You couldn�t do this on an ordinary hot plate unless you like the metallic taste of iron.

Use the Vic Cherikoff Down Under Hot Sheet to cook pancakes, eggs, whole fish and a whole lot more.

I guess it�s stating the obvious but the Vic Cherikoff Down Under BBQ Hot Sheets also let you cook fat free and non-stick. Anyway, check out the DVD for details on all of this. I promise you that once you try it, you�ll be a convert. This is a really smart cooking aid and probably the most exciting thing in BBQing since the gas bottle.

If you want a great gift at Xmas or anytime of year why not pair up a BBQ Hot Sheet with one of our canister sets of spices? What a terrific present for anyone who loves to BBQ with some of the best flavors on the planet.

Authentic Australian Gourmet Gift Package

Vic Cherikoff Food Services — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 17:07:02 +1000

Treat someone special (or simply yourself!) to a little luxury with our delicious Australian Wild Food Gourmet Gift Package. The Australian Wild Food Gourmet Gift Package offers a wide variety of authentic Australian foods and flavours to include in your cooking.

Now make delicious soups, appetizers, entr�e�s and deserts with Australian herbs, spices, sauces, fruit confit and infused oils. Try using the Australian ingredients like Alpine Pepper in your marinades when barbequing or try the Fruit Spice in your next tray of muffins. The ideas are endless.

The Australian Wild Food Gourmet Gift Package features ;

Alpine Pepper - 30g
Bush Tomato Chutney - 250g
Fruit Spice - 30g
Mountain Pepper Sauce - 150g
Lemon Myrtle Sprinkle - 30g
Paperbark Smoke Oil - 150ml
Rainforest Rub - 40g
Red Desert Dust - 40g
Rainforest Lime Confit � 250g
Wattleseed - 100g
Wildfire Spice - 40g

Ideal for corporate gift, birthday or simply for someone who enjoys cooking and learning about the unique flavors of Australia.

Looking for recipes? Why not add the Dining Downunder Cookbook to your order.

Australian Smoke Skews

Vic Cherikoff Food Services — Sat, 26 Mar 2011 16:43:26 +1100

We have chefs giving us glowing reports on our Paperbark Smoke Skew saying that this is the best way to get a subtle smoke flavour into food without cooking it twice and drying it out.

Try our Paperbark Smoke Skew with chicken, fish, prawns, calamari, scallops, turkey and vegetables. The delicate smokiness is delicious. It works with beef and lamb but is far more pronounced with white meats.

Chicken or seafood sausages on these Skews are really good.

Australian Menu Planning Guide

Vic Cherikoff Food Services — Sat, 16 Jul 2011 09:52:05 +1000

Menu Planning is an important and timely task every chef has to undertake. So to help easy the task, Australia celebrity chefs and native food experts, Vic Cherikoff and Benjamin Christie have written the Australian Menu Planning Guide. Vic Cherikoff is an evangelist for an authentic Australian cuisine, an ombudsman for Australian chefs, an advocate for creating a globally recognizable food style and a godfather to the commercialisation of dozens of indigenous Australian ingredients. Benjamin Christie is a young Australian chef with a rapidly growing international reputation as a television presenter, cookbook author, culinary educator and chef consultant.

The new look Australian Menu Planning Guide provides 48 pages of dishes and concepts for restaurants, hotels, conference, function and venue caterers who are interested in discovering ways to integrate Australian ingredients. The Australian Menu Planning Guide can be considered a foundation for establishing Australian set menus, buffets, breakfast menus and a la carte dishes.

Hundreds of chefs around the world now use Australian native ingredients on their menus everyday. Thousands of dishes have been created featuring them and probably millions of diners now recognize that an original, unmistakable, Australian cuisine is emerging from this concerted effort.

Apart from regular menus, you could develop a series of Australian menus offering including breakfast, morning tea, lunch dinner and cocktail party all with the unique flavours of Australia. Australian ingredients such as Lemon Myrtle, Wattleseed, Alpine Pepper, Yakajirri and Paperbark together with Australian game meats such as kangaroo and emu which have really become popular on menus also.

Topics included in the latest version of the Australian Menu Planning Guide are;

Breakfast
Freshly squeezed juice cocktails, Blended Smoothies, Sparkling Wines, Cereals, Cold Buffet Breakfast, Breakfast Sausages, Live Breakfast Stations, Cold Plated Breakfast, Hot Plated Breakfast, Breakfast Crepes, Breakfast Bakery

Coffee Shop & Room Service
Cookies and Biscuits, Friands, Sweet Muffins, Savoury Muffins, Caf� meals / Room Service, Gourmet Wood fired pizzas, Australian Gourmet Meat Pies

Buffet
Bread Selection, Buffet Soups, Buffet Salads, Antipasto, Hot Buffet Dishes, Wet Dishes, BBQ Dishes, Carvery and Roasts, Buffet Condiments, Potato & Farinaceous Dishes, Vegetarian Dishes, Live Pasta Station, Buffet Desserts

Canap�s
Cold Canap�s, Hot Canap�s, Canap� Oysters, Soup Canap�s, Hot Fork Styled Dishes, Antipasto, Live Cooking / Carving Stations

Alacarte
Amuse Bouche, Soups, Cold Appetizers, Hot Appetizers, Vegetarian Appetizers, Oysters, Sorbets, Main Courses � Seafood, Main Courses - Meat, Poultry & Game, Vegetarian Main Courses, Desserts, Australian Cheeses, Ice-creams, Gelato, Chocolate Truffles

This is the third edition of the Australian Menu Planning Guide. When you order the Australian Menu Planning Guide, you�ll receive regular updates and special offers for 12 months. So when we publish a new version, you�ll receive an update within days via email. The Australian Menu Planning Guide comes as a PDF and requires Adobe Acrobat to be installed to be read. This is handy for chefs that travel who don�t want to carry around large and bulky cookbooks.

The Australian Menu Planning Guide is also included in our Chefs Hamper which is includes a wide range of Australian native ingredients and allows chefs to experiment and plan menus.

So join the elite group of creative chefs, chefs who are pioneers in their own exploration of the newest concept in food anywhere in the world.

Alpine Pepper

Vic Cherikoff Food Services — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 13:26:43 +1000

Alpine pepper is a carefully considered formulation of the peppery leaves and fruits of a high country wild pepper bush found in the mountains of Tasmania. The firey leaves get draped in snow in the winter and blasted by Antarctic winds kissing the icy valleys where this tough plant grows.

COLOR - olive and pastel green herb pieces with dark purple flecks of fruits of the spices; sumac and pepperberries

AROMA - woody peppery note with a hint of fruit

PALATE - herbaceous short palate with conventional pepper zing then exhibiting an increasing burn with rich berry and a hint of green tea

You may think that you have tried all the varieties of pepper already but here is a totally new one. Sure. There's black, grey and white pepper as well as green, pink and red pepper which all come from the same plant (a climber, originally from India). You may have even tried betel pepper, Indian long or Javan long peppers or the rough-leaved pepper - all are different species of the same genus, Piper.

However, here in Australia, we have a totally new type of pepper which is more closely related to the source of aspirin or oil of Wintergreen than to the tropical true pepper vine. We call it mountain pepper and it's actually a herb although the berries we call pepperberries are also used - sparingly. I say this because chewing on a few pepperberries is like having a grenade go off in your mouth.

I also include a specially prepared, encapsulated extract of the leaves which imparts that instant zing of bushy heat. There's some forest anise, which not only ideally complements the taste but adds to some serious functionality in that the combination is super-strongly anti-microbial so that there is some preservative action when using Alpine pepper as a marinade. Finally, I have added some of the tangy, Turkish sumac for its fruitiness to enhance the pepperberries and some conventional Piper corns in their black and white forms are added for those familiar pepper notes.

You'll grab for the Alpine pepper as most cooks would for a peppermill. It can easily and deliciously substitute for ordinary pepper on meats, seafood, soups, vegetables, eggs and cheese dishes. Use it to taste and you'll discover that Wow! factor you want in your food.

Alpine pepper can also be used in far more ways than just as a seasoning over cooked dishes. Use it as a dry marinade on meats or add it to breads, batter and pastry as a herb mix. It makes the best salt and pepper squid you'll ever try.

Now here's something I discovered by accident - Try sprinkling Alpine pepper over raw or cooked fruit or mix it into ice cream (particularly strawberry flavoured), yoghurt, cream cheese or custards. Alternatively, generously season peeled and sliced bananas with Alpine pepper and pan-fry them in butter and a dash of your favorite oil (olive, macadamia, avocado, walnut, pumpkin seed, whatever) until they just brown and soften. Serve with ice cream and a small cup of strong coffee.

By the way, I store my Alpine pepper on the door of my freezer. It keeps the aromatics fresh and is always at hand so it won't go the way of less valued spices which get buried and lost or just forgotten in the pantry.

Suggested recipes using Alpine Pepper

Alpine peppered venison on rainforest herb linguini

Tasmanian salmon with soy Alpine Pepper dressing

Wine drenched lamb with Alpine Pepper mash

Alpine peppered pineapple with wild fruit yoghurt

Ingredients: mountain pepper, sumac, pepperberry, black pepper, aniseed myrtle, white pepper, encapsulated pepper