This week in The Forager: a funding campaign to keep the food trucks rolling on, more chocolate news and the latest success of “big cheese” Kris Lloyd – who also shares a tasty recipe for herby baked brie.
Fork on the Road needs you
Fork on the Road, the monthly gathering of food trucks that pop up around Adelaide offering new diversity and vibrancy in food and entertainment, is one of those events made possible by the tireless efforts of a few people. But now the event needs some help, says organiser Joe Noone.
Noone has launched a crowd-funding campaign through Pozible in an attempt to raise $40,000 to keep Fork on the Road going.
“We need to raise funds for infrastructure (chairs, tables, marquees, umbrellas, lighting, bins and toilets), venue hire, insurance, licences, entertainment, flyers and promotion,” he says. “Over the past few years we have borrowed furniture – the last marquee I used was my parents-in-law’s. We need to become more self-reliant.”
Noone was inspired to create Fork on the Road after seeing a similar event while travelling overseas a couple of years ago. The first Fork was staged in Adelaide in November 2012. Noone has since organised a further 17 in different locations around the city, prompting similar events in Perth and Brisbane.
To make this happen, he has put in thousands of hours of work outside of his full-time job and family commitments.
“I’ve emptied bins, picked up rubbish, collected generators and light towers, designed flyers, produced site-maps, managed social media, developed relationships with vendors and partners, found and booked musicians, driven trucks, and filled and emptied them with milk crates and furniture,” he says.
“It’s been good fun; an amazing learning experience and, most importantly, I get to see people in Adelaide having a great time at every event.
“Along the way I have received some amazing support from the council’s Splash Adelaide team, the food vendors involved and my friends and my family – my daughter even designed a couple of the flyers – but putting on events is not cheap, especially when it’s a community event with no entry price, no fences and no big sponsor logos to plaster everywhere.”
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Vendors do pay fees to participate, he says, but this doesn’t cover all of the associated costs.
The crowd-funding campaign has got off to a slow start, so far raising just under $3000, but it still has 26 days to go.
“If everyone was to buy a ticket to Fork on the Road’s secret venue event, we will meet the target,” Noone says.
More information about the Pozible campaign can be found here.
Spreading the news
Hats off to InDaily editor David Washington [currently on annual leave], whose weekly Forager reports have earned recognition at the 2014 Restaurant & Catering Awards for Best Media Coverage. Washington introduced The Forager and The Food and Wine Digest to InDaily readers 12 months ago. See more of the Restaurant & Catering Awards winners here.
The big cheese
South Australian food industry hero Kris Lloyd is this year celebrating 15 years of cheesemaking and a scroll of achievements, topped off by her most recent success at the International Cheese Festival in the UK.
Lloyd has just returned from the festival where, from more than 4500 cheeses, her Woodside Cheese Wrights Monet cheese won gold. Grace, a new French-style goat cheese, won bronze. They are the latest of countless awards won by Lloyd’s artisan cheeses.
Starting from a small factory at Woodside in 1999, she created South Australia’s fertile cheese culture and at the same time has set benchmarks for business and innovation, gaining four Premier’s Food Awards, a 2008 Zonta Women’s Achievement Award for Outstanding Entrepreneur and a 2010 National Telstra Business Women’s award for Innovation. In 2012, she was also named among the Financial Review & Westpac 100 Women of Influence.
“Nine years ago I approached the then-premier Mike Rann about starting a cheese festival,” Lloyd recalls.
“My hands were shaking as I stood up in Parliament House with no microphone to explain what I wanted to do and that I wanted some seed funding – and here we are up to our ninth CheeseFest this year. At the first CheeseFest we had 800 people attend and last year we had around 15,000.
“As women, we do a lot of things that go unnoticed and we don’t always puff out our chests, but to be recognised for my business strategy and innovation has been very special.
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“The sceptics said I couldn’t put fresh flowers on cheese and sell it, but Monet now is my biggest-selling cheese – don’t tell me something can’t be done!”
Who else would have thought of stuffing a whole brie full of herbs and then baking it? Lloyd shares her baked brie recipe below.
Woodside Cheese Wrights baked brie
Preheat oven to 160C.
Using a very sharp knife, cut the lid from the top of a very ripe Woodside Cheese Wrights McLaren Camembert 230g (serves 4 – 6) or Charleston Jersey Milk Brie 110g (serves 2 – 4). The key is to choose cheeses that are nearing their best-before date or ones that feel soft so they are nice and gooey.
Place the cheese in an oven-proof dish which has a light smear of extra virgin olive oil to prevent it from sticking. Now stuff the cheese full of your favourite herbs and spices. Fresh herbs such as rosemary, oregano, thyme and chilli and garlic slivers are best, but dried herbs also work.
Replace the lid, top with some extra herbs and a drizzle of olive oil, then place in the oven. Keep a watchful eye on the cheese – it is ready when the inside becomes molten and begins to ooze.
Serve immediately with good crusty bread, beetroot relish or dill pickles and a glass of Coriole fiano.
Milking it
In other cheese news, local Italian-style cheesemaker La Casa Del Formaggio has just formed partnerships with six Fleurieu Peninsula dairy farms for the direct daily supply of fresh milk, ensuring consistency for all of the businesses concerned.
“The idea was formed to create stability for both our business and the farms. With this security, our farmers can invest in their farms and grow their herds knowing they will always receive a good price for their milk,” says La Casa Del Formaggio managing director Claude Cicchiello.
“We think our customers will also be pleased to know the majority of our milk is produced right in our own backyard.”
New HQ for Bracegirdles
Bracegirdles House of Fine Chocolate has found a new home in the landmark Tudor-style building that was Marni’s herbal emporium on Cross Road at Clarence Park. The new HQ houses a café as well as the company’s production, office, storage, distribution and training facilities.
“The site ticks all the boxes,” says owner Sue Bracegirdle. “Customers will be able to see how our award-winning handmade chocolates are made through a glass viewing window into the Bracegirdle’s kitchen.”
And she says there are plans to introduce chocolate and coffee-making classes there, too.
Chocolate substitute?
Marketed as a chocolate alternative by health-food stores in the 1970s, carob got off to a bad start. It was low quality and foodies hated it. But with SA being Australia’s largest producer of the drought and salt-tolerant carob plant, and thanks to the hard work of food technologists and chefs, the carob industry is set for some reinvigoration.
The Carob Kitchen on the Fleurieu Peninsula is already producing some tasty treats and the further potential of this superfood will be unlocked when scientists, farmers, chefs and food producers come together at a public workshop at the Food Forest in Gawler next month. Further information can be found here.
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