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Taste.com.au : The dinner party is back in vogue - but with a competitive bite June 2008
Sydney Morning Herald : Foodies Face Off in Kitchen June 2008
Scoop Magazine : Party Tricks Winter 2008
Spice Magazine : Feature Winter 2008
Articles
Foodies face off in kitchen : Sydney Morning Herald, Fay Burstin June 05, 2008 12:00am
THE dinner party is back in vogue - but with a competitive bite.
A new cooking game called Champion Chef has combined Aussies' insatiable love affair with great food and our national passion for sport, turning suburban kitchens into gourmet battlegrounds.
Pitting teams of dinner party guests and their culinary skills against each other, the challenge is to produce the best dish on deadline for everyone to eat -- and judge.
Experts say it's all part of a new trend in which food has become a pastime in its own right, fed by the rise of the celebrity chef, pay-TV's 24-hour food channel, and the growth in glossy food magazines in recent years.
Nutritionist and author Catherine Saxelby said being a foodie has replaced arts and crafts as one of today's most fashionable hobbies, thanks to the likes of gastronomic pin-ups Jamie Oliver, Nigella Lawson, Curtis Stone and Ben Donoghue.
And increasingly thrifty families, keen to make the most of vegie patches and herb gardens, are embracing home entertaining with zest, she said.
"For many people cooking is a passion, not a chore, and they want to share it with others," she said.
"And growing numbers of people are going on special cooking holidays, touring the world's great food and wine regions."
Dinner parties have evolved enormously over recent decades.
The formal five-course dinner parties of the 1950s and '60s gave way to more casual dining; fondue parties and progressive dinners were popular in the '70s and gimmicky themed gatherings such as "how-to-host-a-murder" dinners emerged in the '80s.
By the '90s, Australians were heading out in droves to sample the explosion of cafes and restaurants, especially multicultural cuisine.
But today's latest trend, the ultra-competitive team cook-off, is bringing the bacon back home.
Champion Chef inventor, West Australian mother of two and passionate foodie Jodie Sounness, 33, cooked up the idea as a way of getting a group of friends
on a weekend getaway involved in preparing dinner.
"Everyone got into the game's competitive nature, with friendly banter over a few drinks as teams watched each other cook under pressure," she said.
"They loved dressing up in the chef's outfits, and it was amazing how people took such ownership of their dish while others scored it. It
was like having our own cooking show at home."
The game is taking off around the country, and Ms Sounness hopes to market the concept overseas.
"It's a good way to get people involved in cooking, especially guys, who often just take care of the drinks," said Delicious magazine's food director, Valli Little. "And it would work well as a corporate team-building exercise."
Ms Little said Australians were lapping up the smorgasbord of cooking shows on TV, especially the argy-bargy of foul-mouthed Gordon Ramsay and the kitschy Japanese cooking challenge Iron Chef.
And they loved experimenting with new recipes on friends at home.
"Australian homes are now being designed with open-plan, eat-in kitchens instead of formal dining rooms, with exactly this kind of entertaining in mind," she said.
Although he spends 10 hours a day sweating over a commercial stove, Boulevard chef Ian Richardson still loves to cook at home with daughter Daisy, 11, and entertain friends over dinner.
But when a friend invited him to play Champion Chef, the London Savoy-trained chef relished playing kitchen hardball over a few drinks with mates.
"I loved it because I'm naturally competitive, and we had a ball teasing the other team and trying to psych them out with our secret recipes," he said.
"We mixed up partners and everyone got the chance to cook and be creative, as well as relax over a drink, eat fantastic food, and judge their mates' efforts.
"It was a really fun, novel way to have dinner at home."
