Lasagna – the word conjures up all sorts of ignominy, especially for someone with a long vegetarian history, like me. Normally I shudder to think of it. But this – light, sweet from the delicate crab, bound with cream – dispels all past issues. There is nothing stodgy about it.

Some of you will not shy from the expense of fresh crab meat; the sheer preparation time if nothing else…for those of us of somewhat more modest means, I mix it with fresh, peeled chilli prawns, straight from the Byron Bay fish shop.

I didn’t make a song and dance of it but note: the cream, the butter, the spinach, the garlic are all organic, the lasagna sheets gluten free. The rocket salad came spray free from the garden. Just saying.

Seafood Lasagna

Preheat the oven to 190C

500g peeled prawns and crab meat, equal weight of each or as you please

300g Semi Dried Tomatoes

200 ml double cream

100 ml fish stock or water

450g baby spinach

6 sheets lasagna, Latina, by the way make a brilliant, brilliant gluten free version and it’s fresh

30g butter

1 clove garlic

Pinch freshly grated nutmeg

1 tbs brandy or white wine

Basil – a couple of leaves

120g Gruyere or Jarlsberg, grated to a fine thread

Salt and pepper

Preparation

Thouroughly rinse the spinach, even if you are told that it is ready washed. Shake dry.

Melt half the butter in a large pan and add the spinach together with a light grating of fresh nutmeg, a small crushed garlic clove, a few turns of the pepper mill and on a moderate heat, wilt till soft, adding a scrunch of salt to season at the end. Set aside.

If you are using prawns, in a mini food processor, blitz them in 2 or 3 batches, or just take a knife to them and roughly chop – you want to retain texture, some discernible prawn.

In a frying pan, heat the remaining butter to a gentle bubble and add the seafood meat. Toss in the pan for a minute, not more, adding a wee dram of brandy if you have it or a splash of white wine, or just stock if you prefer. Also set this aside.

Now wiz the semi dried tomatoes to a smooth paste and transfer to a jug. Add the double cream, also the fish stock or water and mix to an easily pourable sauce. Season with extra salt, if needed, some freshly ground black pepper, a roughly torn leaf of basil or two. Set aside two ladles worth and add the rest to the seafood.

That’s pretty much it for prep. The rest is assembly.

Take a dish – mine is a round 24 cm earthenware thing – any close approximation will do.

Take the two reserved ladles of the tomato and cream “Bisque” and pour into the dish. Then place two sheets of lasagna, side by side, cutting up half of a third to fill the gaps. Spread half the spinach over, then a third of the seafood sauce, another layer of pasta and on till you are done, making sure you end on a layer of seafood and its tomato sauce.

Generously cover with the finely shredded cheese, place in the oven and bake on 190c for 35 minutes, to a soft gold.

Remove from oven and set aside for five minutes, before serving with lightly dressed rocket; a little mustard in the dressing is good.

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Sample.  It’s a

perfect word for the perfect festival.  Every year we get to eat so many delicious goodies that dieting is a must for several days afterwards.  Do we care?  Not a jot.  Take a look at all the great events on offer:

The Cellar Group Masterclass
Bookings are limited and only available on the day at
The Cellar Group Marquee – Site 39
Midday – Cloudy Bay
1pm – Chandon
2pm – Moet

Lismore Come To The Heart entertainment arena

10.15am  The Olssons Salt TAFE cooking challenge with
James Viles & Jody Vassalo

10:30am – Adriano Zumbo book signing

11am –  Mullumbimby High School students
12 – Heartworn Highway
1pm – Lucas Zorzo Trio
2pm– Jesse Morris Band
3pm – Darren Middleton

Kids fun! (opposite site 55)
9:30am & 11am – Macadamia Castle animal shows.
11:30am NBN Big Dog
Circus Arts Byron Bay
Balloon Magic
This Old Duck Kids Fun

The Northern Rivers Food Cooking Stage has a full program of cooking demonstrations from 8.15am right through until 3.30pm.

For more information go to samplensw.com

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Many of my favourite recipes are born out of disappointment and failure. Sounds a bit dramatic but it’s true.

One of the would be highlights of my recent visit to London had been a booking, made six weeks in advance for dinner at NOPI, the most sophisticated of Yotam Ottolenghi’s many restaurants. Volumes have been written about the superlatively good food, its originality and multi cultural marriage of ingredients. If anyone could produce something new and scintillating, it would be Ottolenghi, especially in association with Ramael Scully, the cooking of the Far East merging to excellence with that of the Middle East and Eastern Mediterranean. But on the awaited day, my son, in whose birthday honour the dinner had been planned, took ill, took to his bed in fact.

“No, no darling, it’s absolutely fine,” I said, masking my disappointment in the face of his green – tinged contrition, “another time.”

I munched on an apple as I jealously perused the missed menu.

Twice cooked chicken – simple but tempting – left tracks in my brains. Despite other plans, when came the time to write this article, twice cooked chicken it had to be.

The Ottolenghi/Scully offering is extraordinarily Antipodean, lemon myrtle its primary aromatic. But my love affair with Ottolenghi has its genesis in his affinity with my own culinary roots and so in a gesture of fraternity, my recipe refers to the Harissa and cumin, the lemon and garlic, the saffron and olive oil we both enjoy so much. And to the fragrance of roses. Pounded into the paste, they release soft notes into the kitchen and delicacy to an otherwise potent mix.

I am more than a little grain phobic – is anyone not these days – but today, I decided to experiment with Freekeh (the phonetic spelling of an Arabic word), a green wheat whose middle eastern origins lend it well to the chicken.

Served in garnish like quantities – nothing more than a scattering in other words – it felt benign enough. But not before having been cooked considerably longer than any recipe suggested. I cooked it for 50 minutes though if I hadn’t needed to get this to the printer’s, so to speak, I would have given it longer still. This modestly sized bird fed four. Doubling the recipe is easy to do and works.

Stage One

Pre heat the oven to 180C

Ingredients

1 smallish chicken, about 1.2 kg, organic

1 litre chicken stock, home made or shop bought

Juice of 2 lemons, plus one whole

3 – 4 fat cloves of garlic

1 knob of ginger, peeled

1 tbs Seasalt, a fat pinch of cracked black pepper and 6 rose buds pounded together

1 whole banana chilli cut in half and seeds removed (Keep a little aside for garnish)

Stage Two

Ingredients

1 scant tbs Harissa

1 tbs maple syrup or honey

1

tbs ground cumin

6 cardamom pods, seeds scraped out

1 tbs olive oil

A fat pinch

of saffron

6 -7 blood red, dried rose buds( Red Ginger in Byron Bay and Bangalow sell these)

1tsp freshly grated cinnamon

1 tsp Sea salt

Garnish

150g Frikeh

8 ladles of chicken stock

1 garlic clove

150g baby spinach

Handful parsley and coriander, tough stalk removed

1 tbs toasted pine nuts, optional

Pound the cumin, grated cinnamon, saffron filaments, cardamom seeds and sea salt together. Add the rose buds and pound, till crushed to a flake. Add the maple syrup and olive oil and bind the lot to a fiery paste. Set aside. Place the chicken in a bowl, pour the lemon juice over it and rub it well into the skin. Then rub chicken with the seasalt, rose buds and black pepper. Cut the remaining whole lemon into quarters and stuff into the cavity, together with the knob of ginger and the chilli.

Place the stock in a pan large enough to also hold the whole chicken and bring them both to the boil. Cover with a lid and continue to cook for 25 minutes, or till the chicken is cooked through. Remove and drain, reserving the stock, then transfer to an oven tray. Brush (use your fingers, if you’re game) with the Harissa mix, top, bottom, breast, insides, behind the thighs, into the fold of the wings. Be generous.

Pour a ladle of the remaining stock all around and place in the oven for 35 – 40 minutes, until crisp and golden, basting throughout with pan juices and small additions of stock if necessary.

To serve

While the chicken is on the boil heat a tablespoon of olive oil in a large frying pan, add in a crushed clove of garlic, sautéed until translucent, add 150g Frikeh and stir till well coated. Add eight (more if absorbed before the grain is quite soft), ladles of the stock, bring to the boil, reduce the heat, cover with a lid and simmer for at least 50 minutes till swollen to tenderness, only a little liquid remaining.

Remove the chicken from the oven, add what should now be the last ladle or so of stock and the spinach. Return to the oven for a final minute or two. The spinach will have wilted, and there will be a generous jus in the pan.

Scatter the Frikeh and its juice onto a large plate. Lift the chicken onto it. Garnish with little mounds of wilted spinach. Pour the pan juices over, also the softened garlic cloves, the lemon wedges, the crisp, caramelised knubble,(the word is not in the dictionary), sticking to the pan.

Scatter with the toasted pine nuts and the fresh herbs.

Serve. Eat. Enjoy.

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The passion fruit vine that garlands my fence is heavy with great big, ovoid fruit, slowly ripening in the sun and rain. The orange tree is bowed down with fruit, branches practically sweeping the ground (and no, I’m not a very good gardener). There are lemons at the market and limes are bright and plump with juice.

So I decide to make curd. Which should be plain sailing. Except that it isn’t. The first batch, made to the letter, according to the doyenne of Australian cookery writer’s instruction, is disappointingly opaque, grainy, dense. It omits the additional egg yolks that add silken gloss and translucency – vital measures of a good curd – to the whisk of egg, sugar, butter, juice.

All my instincts tell me the recipe is flawed but in characteristically dogged fashion, I battle on. It’s no use. In the end it is salvaged by a friend’s effort, still all of a warm wobble, brought to the dinner at which she is a guest. Sandwiched between disks of meringue, and a swathe of whipped cream, there is a gasp of joyful anticipation when I set the whole teetering construction on the table (after what I must say has already been a stupendously extravagant meal). Everyone, but everyone, even the “I don’t eat sugar” brigade, delve into it, spoonful after spoonful. The company is cheerful, warm-hearted, full of goodwill, and dessert slides down accompanied by laughter, that most powerful of digestifs.

It doesn’t end here this little tale.

I freeze the excess to prevent further excess. Ha! The next morning, out it comes – semifreddo – part ice, part not. It makes the most glorious of breakfasts.

Three days later, I pick enough passionfruit – turned at last to lemon yellow, the flesh neon bright – and make a big fat jar of it, to keep, to share, to give away. This time the recipe is mine and it works!

Passionfruit Curd

 120g unsalted, organic butter, cut into cubes,

245g caster sugar

1 cup passion fruit juice (8 – 10 passion fruit), strained, seeds reserved

3 large eggs

3 egg yolks

Beat together the eggs and yolks. Because I am a pedant about such things, I strain the egg through a sieve and discard the stringy bits. Place the butter, caster sugar and strained juice in a medium sized saucepan. Put the seeds in a sieve and stir them with a spoon to loosen the fibrous flesh. Return the seeds to the pan. Set onto a gentle flame and stir gently (gently does it) till the caster sugar has dissolved and the butter melted. Do not on any account, allow to boil, or your eggs will curdle when you add them in. Remove from the heat and stir in the beaten eggs and yolks, until well incorporated.

Then on a very low heat, stir continuously with a flat edged wooden spoon or a large metal one, moving the amalgamating curd away from the sides and bottom of the pan, so there is no risk at all of it catching. I hover my pan 10cm above the flame for almost the entire nine minutes it takes for the curd to coalesce. I like to take every precaution.

It fills a small, round-bottomed, sterilised preserving jar to the brim with a little left over. Breakfast anyone?

There’s more too: alternate teaspoons of curd and yoghurt into tea glasses and serve, a little zest atop.

Make a simple trifle with limoncello soaked finger biscuits, curd of any zesty persuasion, a whip of cream.

Then there are the usual curd filled sponge cakes, buttery tarts and curd-topped brioche.

You can find Nadine at Art Piece Gallery in Mullumbimby on artpiecegallery

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Lismore’s CBD is vibrant and unique and offers a diverse range of food, retail and arts experiences. This one day Festival is a showcase of our outstanding local produce, writes the Lismore Business Panel.

Event Scope

The opportunity to attract new customers into Lismore and the CBD is our focus, and to invite our Lismore community to a fun, free, family event in the CBD. Participating existing retail businesses will promote a single special offer or a Festival ‘storewide discount’. Trade is also allowed on the footpath, by having a table directly outside your business. Participating existing Magellan and Carrington Street restaurants and cafés will trade from their premises as per normal and will also offer one $5 or one $10 ‘street food sample plate’ based on their product type. For example, an Indian cafe might choose a traditional ‘butter chicken dish’, outside of their regular menu. Similar for Mexican, Thai and so on.

The Streets

Magellan Street will be transformed into a ‘street themed strip’ with the road blocked to traffic. Market stall marquees will be arranged in Magellan and Carrington Streets and the Back Alley Gallery, alongside a beer garden and extra food stalls if required.

A music stage will run throughout the event, plus a cooking stage with a celebrity guest chef live cooking demonstrations. A children’s entertainment area is also included.

For more information go to: visitlismore.com.au

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This recipe is from my book, Utterly Delicious Simple Food, (Lantern, 2014), and I thought it was a lovely one at this time of year when local fresh asparagus is starting to appear in the markets.

Although it can seem that anything to do with pastry or tarts is inordinately time consuming, this isn’t necessarily the case, and these lovely tarts are a perfect example of what you can do with a few sheets of ready-rolled pastry. They’ve become a bit of a staple for me when I need something that feels and looks really special, but doesn’t take forever to make. I recently served them to friends for a light lunch along with a vibrant beetroot and pecan salad, and platter of ripe tomatoes, then finished off with a bowl of gently sweetened raspberries topped with a splodge of thick cream swirled with brown sugar and yoghurt. It was such a simple meal, yet everyone loved it and I had no-end of requests for the recipes.

If you can only find very thin spears of asparagus, which happened to me for the photograph, you will need to buy extra as each tart will take about 12 thinner spears.

Serves 4

2 sheets ready-rolled butter puff pastry

36 medium-sized spears green asparagus spears

2 tablespoons roasted pecans, sliced; tiny dill sprigs; and a little crumbled goat’s cheese, optional, to garnish

Goat’s cheese filling:

280g soft goat’s cheese marinated in olive oil and herbs (I use Meredith Dairy, which is terrific)

¼ cup finely chopped dill

2 tablespoons finely chopped tarragon

1 tablespoon finely chopped flat-leaf parsley

1 tablespoon finely snipped chives

Lemon dressing:

¼ cup (60ml) lemon-infused extra virgin olive oil (or use regular extra virgin)

3 teaspoons freshly squeezed lemon juice, or more to taste

½ teaspoon balsamic vinegar, or more to taste

¼ teaspoon caster sugar

½ teaspoon sea salt, or more to taste

Line a large baking tray with baking paper, and set it aside. (You can use two smaller trays if that works better for you.)

Using a ruler as a guide, cut each sheet of pastry in half, then trim each half into a neat rectangle measuring approximately 12cm x 18cm. Use the tip of a sharp knife to lightly score a 1cm border all the way around the edge of each rectangle, being careful not to cut right through the pastry. Sit the rectangles on the prepared tray, then use a fork to pierce the pastry within the scored borders at 2cm intervals. Pop the tray in the fridge for 15 minutes.

In the meantime, preheat your oven to 200C.

To make the goat’s cheese filling, scoop the goat’s cheese into a bowl, mash it to break it up, then thoroughly mix in the herbs.

For the lemon dressing, whisk all the dressing ingredients together in a bowl until the sugar and salt have dissolved, then taste it and adjust the flavours to suit you.

Bake the pastries for 10 – 12 minutes, or until they’re golden, then remove them from the oven and let them cool slightly on the baking tray, pressing down with the back of a spoon inside the border of each one to form a slight well.

While the pastry bases are cooking, trim the woody bases of the asparagus and peel them if you like. When they’re all done, slip the asparagus spears into a large frying pan of lightly salted, boiling water and adjust the heat so the water bubbles gently around them. Cook them for 3 – 5 minutes or until they’re tender but still lovely and green (you may have to do these in batches if your pan is small). As soon as they’re ready, remove them from the pan and dunk them briefly in cool water to stop them cooking, then wrap them in a thick tea towel.

Divide the goat’s cheese mixture among the pastry bases, spreading it evenly into the ‘wells’ in the pastry, then pop the tarts back into the oven for 3 minutes to heat through.  Meanwhile, gently mix the asparagus with the dressing.

When the tarts are ready, slide one onto each plate and sit some asparagus spears, higgledy-piggledy, on top. Sprinkle with pecans, dill sprigs and the crumbled goat’s cheese, if using. Serve immediately.

Do aheads…

To make this dish even easier, you can cut the pastry bases, and make the goat’s cheese filling and asparagus dressing a day ahead and store them in the fridge.

To find out more about Belinda Jeffery go to: belindajeffery

Utterly Delicious Simple Food, (Lantern, 2014)

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Last Minute Christmas Cake

Makes 1 large or 3 med/small cakes

Although I call this a Christmas cake, truth be known I whip it up regularly through the year as it’s my favourite cake of all – chock-a-block with fruit and fragrant with spices. I make a big cake for us, but I also bake smaller cakes like the one in the photograph, as gifts.  For me there is nothing more special than giving or receiving something that is homemade, knowing all the care and love that has gone into creating it.

300g unsalted butter

420g dark brown sugar

1.2kg mixed #dried fruits (I use fruits such as raisins, pitted prunes and dates, sultanas, currants and lovely smoky sun-dried apricots)

2 teaspoons bicarbonate of soda

1 cup (250ml) dark rum, port or muscat

½ cup (125ml) water

½ cup (125ml) cognac

2 teaspoons freshly grated nutmeg

2 heaped teaspoons cinnamon

4 eggs, lightly beaten

2 ½ cups (400g) stone-ground wholemeal plain flour About 150g pecan halves and 120g whole blanched almonds, for decorating

Apricot glaze, optional (see below)

* As far as the dried fruit goes; I tend to use whatever happens to be in the pantry at the time – as long as the quantity is roughly the same the cake will be delicious.

Place the butter in a saucepan large enough to eventually hold all the cake ingredients and melt it over medium heat. Add the sugar and stir to partially dissolve it so it’s wet and slushy.

Meanwhile, slice any large pieces of dried fruit (such as the prunes and dates), into two or three pieces.

Now, tip all the dried fruit, the bicarbonate of soda, rum, port or muscat, water and cognac into the pan with the sugar mixture. Increase the heat to high and keep stirring until the sugar has dissolved. Once it has, stop stirring and bring the mixture to the boil, then reduce the heat and let it bubble gently for four minutes. You need to keep an eye on it and adjust the heat at this stage, as it froths up considerably because of the bicarbonate of soda. When it’s ready, turn off the heat and leave the mixture to cool in the pan. I often make this in the evening and leave it to cool overnight. However, if you do this cover it well – I once left the lid slightly askew and woke to find an army of very inebriated ants weaving their way to and from the pan!

Preheat your oven to 150C.

Butter a 23cm x 23cm x 8cm square cake tin (or three 13cm x 13cm x 8cm cake tins) and line the base and sides with a double thickness of buttered baking paper.

Add the nutmeg, cinnamon and eggs to the dried fruit mixture and stir them in well. Mix in the flour, then leave the batter to sit for a few minutes. Scrape it into the prepared tin/tins and give it a gentle shake to level the top

Now comes one of the most enjoyable things to do: decorating the top of the cake. I love doing this as you can create all sorts of different patterns by marching alternating bands of pecans and almonds across the top, curving them into waves, or creating smaller and smaller squares.

Bake the cake for 2 ¼ – 2 ½ hours (if you are baking smaller cakes, they will take approx. 1 hour and 40 minutes) until it feels firm-ish in the centre when lightly pressed and a fine skewer inserted in the middle comes out clean. After an hour or so, it’s a good idea to check the top; if it’s a good rich brown cover it loosely with a sheet of foil to stop it getting darker.

Leave the cake to cool completely in the tin on a rack, then remove it from the tin, wrap it tightly in cling wrap or foil, and store it in the fridge where it will keep well for up to three months.

Just before serving the cake, brush a little warm apricot glaze over the top, if using.

Apricot glaze (delicious and easy to make)

Boil about ½ cup of apricot jam or conserve with 1 ½ tablespoons of water for five minutes or so until the mixture becomes thick and syrupy (keep an eye on it and stir it regularly so it doesn’t catch and burn on the bottom of the pan). Pour it through a fine sieve into a bowl to remove any bits of apricot skin that may be in it, then brush the hot glaze over the cake and leave it to set.

To find out more about Belinda Jeffery go to: belindajeffery

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These tartlets really are the most delicious things, and they’re remarkably quick and easy to make for such a gorgeous result. I have to admit that as soon as we’d taken this photo, Rodney, the photographer, and I sat down and demolished one each in an embarrassingly short time! I’d also have to say that if anything they’re even better served barely warm with a scoop of icy-cold vanilla ice cream. The two important things to remember when you’re making them is to use sweet, ripe peaches as otherwise they will taste a bit insipid, and to use butter puff pastry.

If you would like to get these ready well ahead of time, the night before you can cut out the tartlet bases, put them on the oven tray, cover them lightly and chill them. You can also make the amaretti crumbs and store them in an airtight jar. You need then only prepare the peaches and you’ll have them in the oven in no time.

Serves 4

2 sheets ready-rolled butter puff pastry

4 medium-sized sweet, ripe (but not squishy) yellow peaches

1/3 cup (75g) caster sugar

½ – 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

About 1/3 cup (110g) apricot jam, warmed so it’s runny, then strained

Icing sugar, for dusting

Vanilla ice cream or rich cream, to serve

Amaretti crumbs:

60g amaretti biscuits

3 teaspoons caster sugar

½ teaspoon cinnamon

1 tablespoon plain flour

Line a shallow baking tray with baking paper and set it aside.

For the amaretti crumbs, pop the amaretti biscuits into a thick plastic bag (a snap lock bag is ideal), seal it tightly, then finely crush the biscuits with a rolling pin. Tip them into a bowl; thoroughly mix in the caster sugar, cinnamon and flour, and set the mixture aside.

With a ruler as a guide, cut each sheet of pastry in half, then trim each half into a neat rectangle measuring approximately 9cm x 16cm. Use the tip of a sharp knife to lightly score a border, about 8mm wide, all the way around the edge of each rectangle, being careful not to cut right through. Sit the rectangles on the prepared oven tray and pop them in the fridge for 15 minutes.

In the meantime, preheat your oven to 200C.

Peaches ready to go…Photo: Rodney Weidland.

Halve the peaches, and carefully peel away the skins before slicing them into thickish wedges. (I usually pull away a little skin before I halve the peaches to see how easily they peel. If the skin clings stubbornly to the flesh, you’re best to dunk the whole peaches in boiling water for 20 seconds or so, then quickly drop them into a bowl of cold water. Now try peeling them and the skins should pull away easily.)

Scoop the peach slices into a bowl and sprinkle the caster sugar on top. Drizzle in the vanilla and using your hands, gently mix them all together. (I find hands are best for this, as a spoon tends to make little gouges in the slices.)

Sprinkle 2 tablespoons of the amaretti crumb mixture into the centre of each rectangle and spread it out evenly, being careful to keep it within the scored border. Now sit a fairly tightly overlapping row of peach slices down the length of each rectangle, again keeping them within the border. There will be some sugary peach juices left in the bowl, so drizzle the peaches with these, being careful not to get the juice onto the border as it may burn, or dribble down the sides and stick the pastry layers together so they don’t rise properly.

Pop the tray in the oven and bake the tartlets for about 20 minutes until the pastry is crisp and the peaches tender.

Brush the tartlets (including the pastry border) with some of the warm apricot jam then run them briefly under a medium/hot overhead grill for about 1 minute or until the edges of the peaches and pastry start to caramelise and darken (they may be some very dark bits but don’t worry, they taste delicious.) Watch them like a hawk as they can burn quite easily, and as soon as they’re ready, whisk them out from under the grill, dust them with icing sugar and leave them to cool a little – they’re lovely served warm or at room temperature. (If the tartlets are a good colour when they come out of the oven, there’s no need to grill them. Simply brush the peach slices with the jam, leave them a few minutes then dust the tartlets with icing sugar.)

To serve, simply sit a tartlet on each plate, dust it with a wee bit more icing sugar if necessary, and serve it with a scoop of vanilla ice cream or cream.

For more information on Belinda Jeffery’s recipes go to:  belindajeffery

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According to Festival Director Remy Tancred, this year’s Sample Food Festival is promising to be one of the most exciting and entertaining yet. Bangalow is once more playing host to the largest gastronomic gathering in the Byron Shire’s calendar, and it’s all on today…

The 2015 festival welcomes celebrity guest chefs Adriano Zumbo (Zumbo), Luke Hines (The Paleo Way) Clayton Donovan (Jaaning Tree, Nambucca Heads) James Viles (Biota Dining, Bowral) and Steven Snow (Fins, Kingscliff).

The day starts from 8am with fresh food offerings at the Farmer’s Market and then evolves into a feast of food.  Thirty of the region’s best restaurants will offer a $5 and $10 tasting plate which will keep you full all day. . In between plates, wander the marketplace and chat to local producers and designers about their wares. With over 200 exhibitors, there’s plenty of  products, gifts and homewares to discover.

Cooking demonstrations will be abundant from early morning at the highly regarded Northern Rivers Food cooking stage. Kicking off at 8:15am is trainer, celebrity and promoter of healthy living, Luke Hines and his MKR buddy Dan Mulhern. Luke and Dan will demonstrate their favourite breakfast recipes, using produce from the Byron Farmer’s Market. Providing further entertainment is the competitive TAFE NSW North Coast cooking.

Adriano Zumbo of ‘Zumbo’  – famous for his croquembouche towers

Keeping the children entertained is easy at the festival. The well-known Macadamia Castle will bring a host of baby animals for the little ones to pet and feed. And new to the festival this year is the creative cabin This Old Duck, featuring hands-on, imaginative craft ideas. And in the afternoon, keep an eye out for the ever-vibrant Shorty Brown who will wander the arena, making balloons come to life.

To help cleanse the palate over the day, the award winning local brewery Stone & Wood will offer a range of beers, alongside delectable wines from Cloudy Bay and effervescent Moet and Chandon. There will also be plenty of non-alcoholic beverages including Madura Tea, Mount Warning Spring Water and the new Organic Drink Co.

The festival offers visitors the chance to relax, take a plate and a drink, settle on the grass and enjoy the atmosphere, tastes and sounds of the event. Soak up the vibe from midday at the SAE Byron Bay Music stage, where local, professional artists will play a variety of genres including blues and roots, jazz and contemporary tunes. Prior to this, students from the local Mullumbimby High School will entertain guests with their emerging talents. Sample is also thrilled to have former guitarist and songwriter of Powderfinger, Darren Middleton, closing the festival with his acoustic charm from 3pm.

Tickets are $5 per person and children are free. Come and indulge your senses in this culinary, stunningly decadent event on Saturday September 5 from 8am until 4pm. www.samplensw.com

HIGHLIGHTS

Sample Food Festival is the premier food and lifestyle festival for Northern NSW.  The Festival is held in the village of Bangalow, Byron Bay Shire, and is supported by 200 exhibitors comprising local chefs, producers, growers and artisans. Their impressive flavours and bold creative flair attract over 15,000 visitors annually. With the great food comes live music as well as celebrity cooking demonstrations and other evnts. Guests include Adriano Zumbo, James Viles of two-hatted restaurant Biota Dining and musician Darren Middleton (formally from Powderfinger). Saturday September 5th from 8am – 4pm at the Bangalow Showgrounds.

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