The Tasting Station.

Seriously. Put down whatever you're doing and go here. NOW!!!! The Tasting Station has been around for a while, and Furry and I occasionally drop in to get a serious food porn fix. The source products from the Mornington Peninsula and showcase them all in one handy little shoppe. So, after a Saturday spent working in the garden, moving 3 tonne of soil and mulch, we decided to spend Sunday adventuring around our beloved Mornington Pen. Well.. guess who forgot it was the weekend of the "Around the Bay in a Day" bike ride???? With full and grovellish apologies to Mr Stickyfingers, whom I am sure is a thoughtful and talented bike ride (and was fueled up bu Mrs Stickyfingers Pasta alla Cabonara), I have to say I have never encountered a ruder, more arrogant group of "sportspeople" that the lycra-clad idiots that swarmed, like day-glo coloured maggots on the roads this weekend. A mob of Ecstasy-crazed rabid sheep would have been easier to avoid than some of the pillocks we encountered this weekend.

Ahem.. I digress..

So after deciding that Furry's blood pressure couldn't cope with a jaunt down the front road to Sorrento for Vanilla Slices, we popped by the Tasting Station for a coffee and some eye candy.

Leonie, behind the jump, wasn't at all phased when I asked if I could take a few shots. We talked about food and produce and mayonnaise olive oil and truffles. and the food paparazzi (now, forever referred to as Wankerazzi), I had found a soul-mate in her!!! We watched the lycra-clad budgie-smuggling tossers stream by, over a capuccino and had a most pleasant morning.

So, without further ado get some of this into you!!!




























And it's a Tasting Station, so you can TASTE STUFF!!!

Get off the computer and GO THERE NOW!!!!

What/How to cook in an outdoor woodfired oven...

Using some old fence posts, get a good fire happening. Then throw on 10 or so sticks of red gum. Believe me, we've experimented with LOTS of variations of wood, but red gum burns the best.. long, hot and slow....You can get about 1/2 a tonne delivered for about $120, but a 1/2 tonne will last you about 10 firings.








What you want it a hot HOT fire that burns down to nice coals.




Once the coals are glowing, get a big stick and push all the coals to the sides of the oven. Wait a few mins for the dust and soot to settle...



Assemble all your ingredients.



Test out the temp of your oven by cooking something small... In this case, pasta dura spread with basil and pine nut tapenade and topped with baby boc's... and sprinkled with dukkah (after the cooking. the seeds in Dukkah don't stand up to the heat of the oven and burn rapidly and become all nasty and bitter.



This should cook off in less that a minute.

What we do, is lay out various ingredients on the bench and then let the kids and the guests run free.... This weekend, we had ham, salami, bocs, asparagus, eggs, chicken, Indian pickle, pasata, olives baby tomatoes, spinach and whatever other random things were lying around the fridge...

Here's one in the making... It's about 800c in there.. I burnt all the hairs off the back of my hand taking this shot!!!




You need to watch them carefully and move them around the oven, so that the centre ingredients melt and the crust doesn't sear.


And the final product!!!





Enjoy!!!