Guns For Show, Knives For A Pro!!

We just wanted to show you our new ceramic knives, which we just can't put down at the moment. These are quality and don't need sharpening. Made by Japanese company Kyocera Advanced Ceramics, these tools slice through fruits so effortlessly. The blades have been designed with such precision that we have noticed the cell membrane of fruits and vegetables have much less stress and damage to them after slicing with one of these. This is evident in apples, which don't seem to go brown once cut now! The knives are super light due to the lack of metal and they are our favoured tools for sashimi or fruit slicing (see above)! If a bad workman blames his tools, then we have no excuse now!!

Burch & Purchese Dishes - 16 Flavours Of Summer Trifle

With the great weather we are enjoying lately here in Melbourne, our attentions turned to utilizing the excellent summer fruits available to us. Although its still a bit early for cherries and other stone fruits, the berries are coming through beautifully. This dish encapsulates the essence of summer with a modern interpretation of the classic 'pud', trifle. Although this may look unlike any other trifle you may have seen or eaten, the basic essential components are all there. We still have custard for example, this is now in the form of a foam. Cats tongue sponge is still present in the form of an ice-cream and the classic sherry flavour is now made into a jelly. We had fun coming up with this dish and in many ways it reminds us of home, although I don't remember Mum with 20 litres of liquid nitrogen in the kitchen! This dish is enhanced with flavour packed seasonal raspberries, a dried meringue of berries, dehydrated raspberry sponge and aerated white chocolate. Hopefully you enjoy these pictures and if you want to try the dish out it is now on the degustation menu at No.35 restaurant at the Sofitel Hotel in Melbourne where we have been doing some work.

Chocolate Work

We have been working with chocolate a lot this week, (probably why the weather has decided to get so hot!), and we are starting to get thoughts together for our Masterclass at the Melbourne Food & Wine Festival next year. We really want to impress the guests attending and are working on a plated dessert and chocolate display. This is just a sample of this weeks work.

P.S. can you guess which rubber mould was used for the picture at the top of this post??

Interesting Ingredients

Sugar cane, which is juiced and turned into a slush puppy.
Spices are an important part of Asian cusine, especially szechaun!
Wow! This is a Pomelo(on right), a kind of citrus fruit, next to a normal size grapefruit.
Pandan leaves.
Something we were not expecting to see in Asia
We have just returned from some promotional and consultancy work in Asia. One of the best things about working abroad, (for a chef), is exploring the local cuisine and working with produce you don't normally see. These are just a couple of pictures from our trip and we saw so much more. The pandan is a fragrant leaf used in infusions and jellies. The Pomelo was cool, not too sour and massive segments, apparently that was a small one!! It was funny though to see a box of rocket from down the road in Bacchus Marsh, country Victoria in the kitchen. Just shows that great produce is found all over the world.

Thanks To Jasmine & Jess

Ian with Jess Edgar

We just wanted to say thanks to two very talented people who have helped us with photography this last year. We say this because the images taken have been used extensively in programs, brochures and press without credits to these two girls.

So stand up Jasmine Thom for her cool graffiti shots of us and thanks so much to Jess Edgar who took some great shots and is a talented artist.

Check out Jess Edgars work at her website here http://www.jessicaedgarphoto.com/or watch this cool video of kitchen life by clicking this link http//www.youtube.com/watch?T_miAIZx4ZM watch carefully and you may spot Mr Burch lurking in the background.

Really Useful Food Blog - CLICK HERE TO CHECK OUT FOOD PAIRING

When we have a spare minute or so we love, (like you we suspect) to surf the web for interesting food sites. Here is one we have found and have spent quite a lot of time using lately. Foodpairing is absolutely quality and so much effort has been put in to give the reader as much information as possible on this vast subject. Check out the database on the right hand side which allows you to choose an ingredient and find out possible food pairing combinations. We have no connection with this site but we thought we would share with you what we have found. Click on the text for the link and happy surfing!!

Burch & Purchese Recommended Books 3 - Chocolate by Ramon Morato

Ramon's book: Chocolate

In depth recipes with Spanish and English translations.
Quality photography throughout.
Ramon signs our book!!We were asked just recently by a journalist, "What is your favourite and most used cookbook of all time?", well where to start. Firstly we individually and jointly have an extensive range of books on all subjects covering the culinary spectrum. All have them have provided us with much joy and knowledge over the years. Looking at the question again though "most used", well we probably don't need to look much farther than the book illustrated above. 'Chocolate' by our good friend Ramon Morato was a revelation to us and was a benchmark in books on chocolate in our opinion. It is massive in content and quality and covers all areas including, plated desserts, entrements, pralines and much more. We were big fans of this book before we met Ramon, so when we had the chance to work with him we felt privileged. The book certainly conveys his professional attitude and we could not resist asking him for his signature which has pride of place in our library. We recommend this book to all pastry chefs out there.