We hope you have been enjoying the Crave Food Festival – although we haven’t participated this year we have enjoyed hearing your discoveries and the delicious food being offered. It’s certainly galvanising us to look at holding classes here in the store – let us know what you would like to learn more about.

For our part we wanted to share a few of our recent discoveries;

The Wild Cockatoo bakery in Waterloo (30 Botany Road) is a great find – not exactly where you’d expect to find the most amazing breads and pastries. Ray has worked at various well known bakeries before setting up his own and is already drawing a huge loyal crowd. His sourdoughs are well textured and not overly sour –he’s feeding and using the starter regularly and has enough crust to make it interesting without having to worry about losing your NHS fillings.

Feather and Bone in Rozelle - Look at their wonderful website and subscribe to his newsletter for the best ethically produced meat. Grants passion for sourcing the best producers and their lovingly reared livestock really shows and he also sells aged beef from his own controlled rooms.

Pepe Saya butter - visit the website and learn how this great butter is being made under our nose here in the Inner West  - they’re next door to the new IKEA and you can buy direct from the factory for a really fresh taste.

We have some great new lines arriving all the time in particular more specialist food items.

Look at these wonderful pails of Dijon mustard – it doesn’t get better than this!

We have also managed to secure a limited supply of Extra Virgin Olive Oil from Tasmanian producer Ashbolts. Anne has been supplying us with her Elderberry and Elderflower cordials and due to a good harvest last summer we now have her award winning oil. Normally this is only sold via the cellar door and is highly sought after by chefs for it’s complex characteristics and notes. Quite a ‘thick’ viscosity and very well balanced – ideal for using on it’s own or dressing salads.

A great addition to our range of chocolates – we also stock Callebaut and Belcolade from Belgium and E.Guittard from California as well as local hero Zokoko. Weiss has a very intense smooth taste and the buttons are a good manageable size making it ideal for tempering.

In our next newsletter we will be including our Christmas hamper list but in the mean time we are announcing what we believe is a great ‘first’ – mini hams.

Our friends at Booth St Bistro have been serving their famous suckling pig sans legs – which means a wonderful opportunity for you to buy great tasting small hams. (They only use sows for a sweeter tasting meat)
Each ham weighs approx 2 kgs which provides about 6-8 serves. This is an ideal size for the smaller gathering at Christmas and you still get to freeze the bones for winter pea and ham soup.

The meat being so young is amazingly sweet and lean with no additives. The hams have been cured and smoked and then vacuum sealed and then frozen and we can supply either frozen or glazed ready for serving. $30/kg ($35/kg glazed). Please contact us to place your order as supply will be limited.

Want a recipe from a hot chef? Have a kitchen question? Want to share a great eating experience?

Shape the Digest content and email us.