The Guinness World Record Breaking Champagne Glass

It is perhaps a little known fact that Balaklava in The Ukraine boasts the ideal conditions for growing grapes, and in particular varieties that produce award-winning, Champagne-quality wines.

It seems that Ukrainian wine makers have grown tired of their craft being relatively unheard of in the public mind. Now they’ve pooled their resources to announce their presence as a hotspot of viniculture and wine providence in the most fitting of ways. They’ve created the World’s Largest Ever Champagne Glass.

Created by Ukrainian glassmakers ART Glass, the Champagne flute can hold 60 Litres; more than double the 27.5 litres the previous Canadian record holders achieved. The attempt used 75 bottles of Zolotaya Balka sparkling wine to fill the colossal glass, but there was still plenty to go around after the judging was completed! With guests including the host of Ukraine’s Got Talent! and a fashion cat-walk, the entire day was aimed at celebrating the best of Ukraine.

75 Bottles of Champagne Later...

The event was, in part, the culmination of a wine tradition which reaches back to the late 19th Century, when Prince Lev Sergeyevich built Russia’s first ever champagne factory in the region. Since then however, the wine industry has flourished, and some of the most popular Zolotaya Balka can be found here

http://kudarom.com/c/crimea/zolotaya/?nrd=1

Of course, what better way to experience a new wine than by travelling to the sloping, sun drenched vineyards of the region? For more details about travelling to Ukraine, visit

http://www.traveltoukraine.org

RAW, the artisan wine fair, is a two-day celebration of some of the best natural wine talent in the world taking place in London on May 20^th & 21^st. Featuring around 200 growers and over 800 wines, RAW will be one of the most exciting collections of fine, organic and biodynamic wine artisans ever to come together in the capital. These are wines that are pure, kind to the planet and very possibly better for your health.

Organised by Isabelle Legeron MW – the first French female Master of Wine, presenter of Travel Channel wine shows, co-founder of last year’s Natural Wine Fair and recently profiled in the Observers ‘Green Crush of the Week’ – RAW aims to build on the success of last year’s show by acting as a truly independent natural wine event open to all producers, importers, wine associations and official bodies.

RAW offers a wonderful opportunity to taste and buy a variety of fine natural wine from around the world including classic regions as well as exciting international wine scene newcomers. Big name producers, future stars and wines that have never been shown in the UK before will all be at the fair.

Talks, discussions and masterclasses include ‘the authenticity of taste’ by Nicolas Joly, a biodynamic & permaculture gardening Q&A with Mark Garrett and Channel 4’s Monty Waldin, the world-famous microbiologist Claude Bourguignon will be giving a talk on the importance of soil life for producing quality wine and Jancis Robinson’s co-author, grape geneticist Dr Jose Vouillamoz will give a talk on obscure grape varieties. A seminal panel discussion on transparency and wine labeling will be a highlight of the show, chaired by Clive Barlow MW and featuring some of the wine world’s most respected names, including amongst others Julia Harding MW (Jancis Robinson’s associate palate), Guy Woodward (Editor of Decanter Magazine), and Clark Smith, founder of Vinovation.

Raw takes place at the Old Truman Brewery, London on the 20th and 21st May 2012. Our readers can find further information about this fantastic event at the festival’s website here (www.rawfair.com).

This is precisely the latest craze sweeping across the states.

Celebrate a father’s birthday, a friend’s wedding anniversary or a son’s graduation by having a photo of the occasion etched onto the front of a cookie for the world to enjoy.

The baker in question, called Edible Gifts Plus based in Middletown, New Jersey, is offering a range of cookies that can be personalized for any occasion including photos and logos.

And now for the food part! Each cookie is made using an all-butter recipe and are baked fresh and ready for order.

All the pictures on the cookies are iced by hand in either chocolate or crème flavours before the photograph or image is then glazed upon the top. Also, for those chocolate lovers out there an optional frame of dark, milk or white chocolate can also be added to a customizable shape and size.

To top it off the cookies come gifted in a presentation box to make the memory extra special. Just make sure you don’t eat them all at once after all the effort that has gone in to make them!

To bake your own cookies, this is a great starter recipe; http://allrecipes.com/recipe/easy-sugar-cookies/detail.aspx

To learn more about Edible Gifts Plus visit; http://ediblegiftsplus.wordpress.com/

They've finally done it, they've made a website you can *almost* eat

So it’s true, you really can make anything with chocolate.

Of course, chocolate serves very nicely as a tasty treat, but it seems that it also has many other uses. For example one man proved chocolate to be a fairly sturdy material to build seaworthy boats ( see that here).

Perhaps the most fantastic of all chocolate’s uses though, may well be as the building blocks for a website.

How can chocolate – soft, melting and delicious chocolate – be used to create something as ethereal, as phantasmal as a website? How can it be fused with data, bandwidths, wi-fi?

It seems that Portuguese beer company Sagres has the answer.

In 2011, the company launched their chocolate flavoured lager. Without wishing to advertise on television, their advertising team decided to enlist the help of master chocolatier Victor Nunes – artistic director of Óbidos International Chocolate Festival – in helping them create this delicious website.

Nunes sculpted the entire website in chocolate pieces, moulding it according to the design of Sagres marketing agency. Afterwards, at the agencies studio, the chocolate frames and all the website components were shot in various positions and ‘stages’. These images became the raw materials for the website.

Once the website was up and running, Sagres offered the first visitors a piece of the chocolate, as well as a six-pack of their chocolate flavoured beer.

This fiendishly tempting looking website was not just a great piece of marketing by Sagres, it also opens up some serious questions as to the future of chocolate, and indeed the world wide web. Will the two become inseparable? Where will this lead? Will we have tiramisu social networking sites? Google maps made from an assortment of cakes? Will the Apple website actually become an apple?

All these questions lead to some mouthwatering prospects.

The annual Wellington Food Show rolled into town this week, and as always it was an event not to be missed for all those with a keen appetite, for both cooking and consuming culinary delights. The 3-day road-show took place at the Westpac Stadium in downtown Wellington, and was packed to the rafters with food and drink, kitchen equipment and master-classes to ensure every attendee’s palate was catered for.

Aside from its breathtaking landscapes, New Zealand is probably most renowned around the world for the fact that its population of sheep outnumbers its population of people! And whilst this inevitably leads to Kiwi food being strongly linked to high calibre lamb dishes, there’s so much more on offer here,  not least the wonderful supply of seafood available thanks to the outstanding island coastlines. This coupled with the multi-cultural nature of a population influenced by a number of ethnicities, means there really is something for everyone.

The layout of the venue saw hundreds of stalls spread throughout the full stadium concourse, allowing visitors to simply pick a direction and keep walking to hit all the stands on offer. This ensured you didn’t miss a trick, and even if you were busy tasting on route, you could make a mental note of places to try on your next ‘lap’ round. We went left and the first thing we hit was 3 stalls of wine from the Hawkes Bay region, all offering free samples. Not a bad start! As it turned out 95% of the stands were giving away freebies and, reflecting the general attitude of the country, there was no hard-sell or expectation that a nibble/slurp would lead to a sale. This made for a great atmosphere with the various queues and crowds all in high spirits.

The wine looked great, but it was 2pm and breakfast had been a loooong time ago. I filed the Clearview Estate Merlot for the next trip round, and we went looking for something to quieten my rumbling belly. Luckily it wasn’t long before we found it, and what better way to start a Kiwi food festival than with a pie! Hannah and Steph from Barista Hospitality had a massive selection of pies on display, but after careful consideration I went with pork, apple and bourbon, and I was not disappointed. The flavours complimented each other really well, the pastry was thick and almost creamy, and the pork fell apart in my mouth.

A great start, but I was a long way from done. Next to the seafood, and something I’d been meaning to try since I arrived here a year ago: Whitebait! This traditional NZ dish consists of an omelette type base, filled with a generous portion of these tiny fry of fish, which are typically between 25 and 50 millimetres long. My whitebait hailed from the West Coast, and the fritter was served on bread with lemon.

It was a very delicate flavour, and not entirely what I expected, but it was delicious and actually complimented the pie pretty well.

With my stomach appeased we could now enjoy wandering the event at leisure, stopping off now and again for some tasters, mainly cheese, chips and freshly cooked meat. Before we knew it we’d completed our first lap, and celebrated our feat with a well earned beer. Wigram Brewery operates out of Christchurch and has a great selection of boutique beers. Pale Ale and Pilsner are pretty standard fare for NZ, so I gave the honey ale a go. As you’d expect it was a fairly sweet tipple but the hoppiness gave a refreshing taste and it all went down rather too easily! In fact I could have quite happily tried a few more, but luckily my fellow foodie reminded me of our mission and I was quickly back on the food trail again.

As mentioned the great thing about NZ food is choice and just as I began to think about some spice, a Mexican stall reared into view. Señor Andres has been bringing the spice to Wellington residents for years now and I was excited about the Flautas I was about to try, though a little nervous about the amount of hot sauce applied to the top! The taste was very similar to a chicken taco, but the kick from the sauce took it to a whole other level. Happily though the spice was contained and the creamy tomato flavour was not lost in the process.

The Flautas were great but the quantity of food, coupled with the size of the venue was starting to take its toll. As we reached the end of our second lap it was about time to call it a day. One more stop before we left though, and one I’d earmarked at the very start. I’m always happiest finishing with sweet, and so the fudge stall just before the exit was perfect for me. Heavenly Fudge hails from Hamilton and they offered fudge for every taste. In the end I couldn’t decide and had to go for half Caramello and half Butterscotch Baileys, both fairly self-explanatory flavours and both fantastic, a fitting end to a great day!

We headed home with full bellies and appreciative of the wide variety of food on offer in this wonderful country. Come see for yourself!

Written by Ralph Hobbs — a Wellington based foodie!

Event photos by Ralph Hobbs
Feature aerial shot by Lee Gilbert
Tram shot by Glutnix

The new website created by Australian food company Sanitarium, encourages readers from New Zealand to make good use of the country’s current seasonal vegetables in order to create delicious  meals sourced from their very own homeland.

‘Try It’ lists simple yet delicious recipes that are updated season-to-season in order to reflect the fruits and vegetables that are flourishing at the time.

The benefits of buying vegetables in season are partly environmental as the carbon emissions that may be produced when shipping out-of-season foods internationally are significantly reduced. It also ensures that the greens you do purchase are practically garden-fresh.

As well as providing recipes, ‘Try It’ gives readers the option of following the creators’ blogs as they too ‘try it’ and provides articles that include veggie related hints and tips.

If you too would like to have a go and producing wholesome, healthy and locally sourced meals, the try it website can be found here: http://www.tryit.sanitarium.co.nz/ .

To find out what’s in season outside of Oceania, visit:

http://www.sustainabletable.org/shop/seasonal/ – for the US.

And http://eattheseasons.co.uk/ – for the UK and Europe.

Peligoni Club, is a stunning boutique members club based on the island of Zakynthos, Greece.

We are are currently looking to staff our fantastic kitchen, working in an efficient and close knit kitchen brigade.
We serve a funky, modern brasserie menu in a stunning al fresco restaurant. We serve up to 250 covers at lunch and 60 at dinner during peak season.

The job includes a competitive salary, flights, accommodation, watersports, food and a discounted bar tab.

Apply by contacting Peligoni via: Peligoni : Home.

http://www.lambcountry.co.nz/

http://www.toastmartinborough.co.nz/

http://www.scallopfestival.co.nz/

http://www.bluffoysterfest.co.nz/

Recipe: Toffeed fig pavlovas – Quick and Easy Recipes From Stylist Magazine – Stylist Magazine.

A selection of the soda sold at Rocket Fizz, featuring some of the more bizarre flavours.

Imagine I told you that my favourite flavour of soda was not orange, lemon or any other you would call normal. Instead, imagine I told you that it was buffalo wing, bacon, or, depending on my mood, sweetcorn.

You would probably look at me as if I had gone crazy, or think that I had drunk one too many orange sodas and should go for a lie down.

However one chain of candy stores are making these bizarre flavours a reality.

Please say hello to Rocket Fizz, the store behind the creation of these truly wacky concoctions.

The company, which has its roots in California but has spread to other states such as Nevada and Tennessee, are a chain of candy stores which specialize in the unique side to sweets. However it is in the creation of their sodas that the store has found fame.

The flavours that they produce do not stop at bacon and sweetcorn either; they get even more weird and wonderful.

So if buffalo wing doesn’t tickle your fancy, how about pumpkin pie? Or coffee? No? Ok, peanut butter and jelly then? Whatever your taste buds, Rocket Fizz should stock at least one soda that doesn’t turn your stomach.

The store hasn’t just stopped at strange and peculiar flavours. Their latest invention is a glow-in-the-dark beverage with an outer space theme that they have called ‘Martian soda.’

Will there be any end to the Rocket Fizz madness?  One thing’s for sure, they’re a hell of a lot of fun.

Via:  food_porn: Gooey Chocolate Skillet Cake Ice Cream Sundae

£120 pounds of cool crystal glamour, brought to you by Swarovski

London is simmering at the moment. As temperatures rise, the start of the Olympic Games approaches and the Queen prepares to mark her 65th year on the throne in style, it’s clear that 2012 is not a year to forget.

With excitement and anticipation reaching fever-pitch, it might be a good idea to take time out to enjoy what is possibly the coolest cocktail in London at the moment.

The 1952 Gin Martini is The Goring hotel’s toast to the Queen’s reign. Through May and June they are offering a Diamond Jubilee cocktail, with a twist.

With 2.5 measures of Hendricks Gin, mixed with Noilly Prat, shaken (not stirred) over ice with a real silver leaf, this delicious concoction is served in a Swarovski crystalline glass. The stem of the glass is filled with clear crystal chatons which make the whole cocktail shimmer and sparkle.

The twist arrives as a cool £120 price tag per glass. However, you get to take the glass home with you, so that you can toast the Queen in the most glamourous way possible.