Chocolate Rum Balls

What with the feeling of Christmas coming and the love of chocolate in most of us, I thought that I would share with you this simple recipe for Chocolate Rum Balls. Do your self a favour though, get your hands on the best chocolate that you can, believe me it makes the difference in almost all chocolate recipes.

You will need; 480g Butter, 8 Egg yolks, 150g Cocoa, 500g Icing sugar, 6 shots Rum and 1.2 kg Chocolate grated.

This should make you 160 balls, depending on how much you eat and how big you roll the balls!!

Cream the butter with the Yolks in your mixer. When light and fluffy add the cocoa and sugar, allow this to mix in ( turn the speed on slowly or you will get it all in the face) Add the rum and a kilo of the chocolate, the rest you will need to roll the balls in. Place in the fridge. (warning don’t taste it as you won’t be able to stop) When cool, shape into small rounds with your hands. The balls now roll them in the grated chocolate and then store them in airtight containers in the fridge. You could also roll them in coconut, pistachio, hundreds & thousands etc, just use your imagination. Enjoy

Big Tables

Well what a week. Busy with conferences and a la carte. One chef down but still pushing on. Tonight Saturday was a relatively easy one all things considered. The wedding was simple and ran smoothly, only 86 with pre dinner cocktail food followed by one main meal alternate drop. The restaurant was fully booked and all was going great until the two big tables hit. One suffered unfortunately, they had to wait, and were a little upset about that, understandable. Hope it was worth waiting for anyway. Big tables are just a pain, they are often “messy”. We are now coming into the festive party time and that means big groups, some with set menus, which are great but you do get the ones that chose to go a la carte. So it’s head down and into it.  The boys let off some steam with some serious cleaning with water every where, all good. Time for a cold beer now. Check out the clip from tonights Saturday service click the link video action…….

Potato in Ice

Well today some of us went back to work after having an extra day off. Much appreciated by all, some wish (need) another! It was a long day with lots of prep to be done, naturaly after a closed day.

This picture of a potato in a cm thick round piece of ice was taken this morning. Obviously due to the doors to the walk-in cold room being closed for the day. We keep potatoes peeled in buckets of water. (just goes to show what difference it really does make to keep the doors closed!)

I have had 101 hits to this site, and I’m very excited about it. Looking forward to adding more links and interesting items for you look at. Bfn

The Nation Stops

Today, the nation stopped for approximately 2 minutes. Each year on the first Tuesday in November one of the worlds greatest horse races takes place in Melbourne at Flemington, “The Melbourne Cup” Today was no exception.

It was extra special for myself and a group of others as we were able to attend the local race meat in Rockhampton at Callaghan Park. You can probably guess that due to the fact that myself and the team were at the races that we were closed for the day!!!!! It is quite unheard of to close for a day but not only did the nation stop, but so did the restaurant. That is the power of this race in Australia. We made full use of our day out together and began bright and early with a casual game of golf. Enjoy this quick video of the boys.

Sorry not much of a food related article today!! Back to work in the morning.

Melbourne Cup Pictures

Nothing To Rant

Day off today. Keeping busy setting up my Blog. Lucky my wife Monika is computer savvy and helping me getting organised. I must admit that I was a bit lost before she stepped in. Ahh…well we can’t be good in everything we do can we
It is a beautiful day and it’s heating up fast. Summer isn’t too far away and even though I love the heat, cooking in summer sometimes is hell. The temperatures in the kitchen easy reach 50* Celsius. Yep, no aircon here baby!

Welcome To The World Of Food

 Welcome, this Blog Site was created to give you an inside view into the life of a kitchen, it’s chefs, patrons and not to forget the restaurant. It is ment to be interractive and you are welcome to leave your comments and feedback. It is also designed to introduce to you John Mundell which is one of the greatest chefs you will ever come across. Not only is he a master of his craft, but he is also a very nice person with a heart of gold. If you see him ranting in his “The Kitchen Rant” then please remember that he is only human like the rest of us.

You will get to know and come to love the action presented to you. Most restaurant patrons don’t realise how much effort, hard work and design goes into serving their needs and even though it is expected to be of top service ( after all we do pay for our meals) it isn’t to be taken for granted.

You might have seen a show on TV about a famous chef and it’s hub, but often these shows are edited and designed to aggravate the viewer. After all these ARE reality TV shows. In this case, we will showcase the raw action and should you not like what you see, then we suggest you watch a nice soap instead.