Are these local oysters?

Its oysters for Africa at this year’s annual oyster bash in Knysna currently on the go. Whatever your preference, you are guaranteed to find oysters served to suit your taste at the Pick n Pay Knysna Oyster Festival. With over 200 000 oysters to be shucked and served naked or dressed the 2011 Oyster Festival is a haven for lovers of these delicacies of the sea. Festival organisers are anticipating the biggest festival in its 28 year history with over 100 events and over 65 000 visitors expected to descend on Knysna during the 10 day festival. In fact so successful has been the marketing of this annual event that oysters have become so synonymous with the town that you’ll find them on restaurant menus everywhere as Knysna oysters. That’s a bit of a fib. You see you don’t get oysters in Knysna! These 200,000 oysters started out their lives in Chile as the Chilean flat oyster, then as young oysters or “sprats” they are exported to Port Elizabeth to be raised in farms ready for Knysna and other destinations around South Africa. The power of marketing or deliberate deception?

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Stay healthy, eat at home

You’ve gotta hand it to the Yanks, they do have an uncanny ability to state the bloody obvious! Obesity experts carrying out a study have come up with the mindblowing conclusion that the more you eat out the more likely you are to be fat. I wonder how that little gem escaped them for so many years that someone had to put up the money for lots of people with clipboards and white coats to examine the link between restaurant and fast food over sized, over sweet, over fatty, over caloried meals. "For the average consumer, eating one meal away from home each week translates to roughly two extra pounds a year," said Lisa Mancino, a food economist for the USDA. More than half of adults eat out three or more times a week, and 12 percent eat out more than seven times a week. Obesity-promoting foods include sugar, high-fructose corn syrup, processed grains and trans fats — all cheap ways that restaurants add flavour. These foods lead to changes in blood sugar that cause cells to store food energy rather than burn it and as a result, the pounds are adding up. You don’t say!

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Beak to toe

If you want to get ahead cook a duck seems to be the new mantra as quackers are rapidly becoming the new porkers. For several years now pork has been enjoying a favoured place on many top restaurants menus. No doubt fuelled by the efforts of Fergus Henderson at St Johns in London and perhaps Hugh Fairly Dipstick at the River Cottage, nose to tail pork dining has been all the rage but now it seems that duck is the new pork! We won’t see a return to those infernal fans of thinly sliced breast so beloved by trendy chefs for years, this time around the dishes are going to be much more rustic, exploiting every part of the duck. Crisp skin served as a separate course, duck fried rice, fragrant consommés, duck charcuterie, sausages and tongues, smoked and barbequed ducks and maybe if you’re unlucky some good old sauce a l’orange.

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Pizza by post

Why on earth would anyone want to order a pizza by post? The Mr Delivery thing I understand, you get an attack of the munchies, couldn’t be bothered getting into the car and shooting down to the pizzeria and so you compromise by ordering a pizza to be delivered in a semi warm condition by some stranger. You pay over the odds for the pizza, the delivery and the tip and usually the pizza is crap but it’s an impulse buy I suppose and you’re usually drunk. But why in hell’s earth would you be so dumb as to make a premeditated decision to order a pizza through the mail? Well, Germans, and that may be part of the answer, can create and order the pizzas of their dreams online and then receive them by mail the next day. Consumers begin by browsing through pizza maker Panamore’s diverse assortment of toppings, descriptions of which include details on origins and also pairing recommendations. Meats, seafood, deli selections, gourmet cheeses and a variety of herbs, nuts and oils are available, including particularly intriguing options such as hummus, lemongrass and truffle oil. Consumers can order up to four pizzas at a time and pay on the site. Pizzas are then created and packaged with professional cooling packs before being sent via DHL. Depending on their ingredients, Panamore’s pizzas can stay fresh in the refrigerator for up to 21 days – now what the hell does that tell you about the product?

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Sunday afternoon at the bioscope

A brilliant piece of editing turns MasterChef judges Greg Wallace and John Torode into hip rappers. It just doesn't get better than this does it Greg? FeedBlitz subscribers should visit the site to view.

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Dilly Diner of the Week

The Flying Chicken is this week's Dilly Diner. Situated in Bangkok, this is one of those restaurants that you definitely don't seek out when you're looking for a gourmet experience but if you've got a camera handy and are looking for a bit of fun and don't mind having to pay for some fairly grim food then The Flying Chicken is certainly the place for you.
A roomy outdoor cafe, the Flying Chicken features a wide, open seating pavilion, and like many cafe/restaurants of its kind, features a stage where young women in garishly colorful evening gowns take turn singing Thai love songs to the accompaniment of a synthesizer "band." But all that pales into insignificance when the real cabaret starts when they fling chickens, high up in the air, while they're still on fire. Flying chickens you wanted and flying chickens is what you get as they are projected via a spring powered catapult, doused in brandy and flaming to be caught by waiting waiters (well isn't that what waiters do?). But to make the whole spectacle even more bizarre the waiters are perched on unicycles which they peddle over to your table to deliver your bird. There's more but even I can't get these surreal images out of my head so I'm going to lie down for a while!

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That Was The Week That Was

Just when you thought they couldn’t come up with another angle on TV cooking programmes up pops "EXTREME CHEF" which debuted on The Food Network this week. Extreme shows are the way to go it seems. This is "Top Chef" with a "Survivor" -infused twist. This programme takes it to a whole new level of silliness. In each episode, a whopping three "extreme" challenges will be featured. Chefs will have to complete tasks such as swimming across a lake for ingredients, get ingredients from a frozen block of ice or, even more tricky, from a bucket of rattlesnakes. In other words, it's not just how you prepare the food. It's how you get it and how you maintain a sense of cool in the kitchen - even if that kitchen is on a deserted island. Think how nice it would be to be on that deserted island after the TV crew had packed up and taken away all their TV sets.


Meanwhile from extreme chef to extreme performer who just wants to be a chef. This week Lady Gaga dropped the oddball pop star image revealing she’s just a home girl at heart. She said: “I like cooking and I love to clean. I never want to go and do fancy things, I want to be at home and clean or cook.” The singer, who appeared on Japanese TV dressed as a panda, added: “I’m good at all types of pasta. I’m good at making homemade spaghetti sauce with fresh tomatoes. While wearing a dress made out of meat I suppose?


The competitors at Wimbledon this week of course were suckers for the new pasta bar in the players restaurant but there are suspicions that regular helpings of seafood pasta dished up during the past week, could be responsible for the wave of stomach trouble at this year’s tournament. Marion Bartoli, Serena Williams’s conqueror, became the latest player to report gastric sickness on Monday. After ousting the defending champion, Bartoli explained that her fit of pique on Saturday afternoon — in which she sent her parents off the court during her three-hour victory over Flavia Pennetta — stemmed from being “sick in my stomach really, really sick”. In the men’s draw, Robin Soderling confessed to feeling “weak and a little dizzy” during his straight-sets exit against 18 year-old qualifier Bernard Tomic on Saturday, while the Slovak player Karol Beck also called for a doctor during his third-round match against David Ferrer on Friday. Beck later told a friend that he knew of 10 players who were suffering with stomach problems of one kind or another. Maybe they should have employed Lady Gaga!

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