Kate Gibbs food preparation, styling and photography workshop

Kate Gibbs is a journalist, author, blogger and cook.  She’s a columnist for and regular contributor to Good Living in The Sydney Morning Herald and writes Sunday Night Dinner, a weekly restaurant review in Sunday Life magazine in The Sun Herald. She has written for Australian Gourmet Traveller, Frankie magazine, London’s The Evening Standard and other publications.  She’s a co-author of The Thrifty Kitchen, with mum, Suzanne Gibbs.  Her popular blog, The Kitchen Inc. covers food, kitchen-based inspiration, and workable design as it impacts our dining, eating, cooking lives.

So when the invitation arrived for noodlies, Sydney food blog to do a workshop with Kate on food preparation, styling and photography, I had to come!

Food bloggers (front to back): Jeroxie, Food Booze and Shoes, Simon Food Favourites and noodlies (off camera)

Basically, it was a pretty informal affair with Kate and four food bloggers.  Kate cooked three dishes for us in the stunning Concrete Blonde open kitchen, giving inside tips on photography and food styling.  The three dishes all used a different Kraft Philadelpia product:

• Nicoise crostini (Philadelphia spreadable light cream cheese)
• Baby beetroot salad with broad beans (Philadelphia block cream cheese)
• Mussels with speck and cream sauce (Philadelphia light cream for cooking)

And kudos to the stunning Concrete Blonde bar and restaurant: open airy, very, very contemporary, warm and inviting atmosphere.

Nicoise crostini: tuna on a bed of olives, light cream cheese and toasted baguette slices rubbed with garlic. It’s the ultimate appetizer to be served with a glass of chilled white.  The tuna is cooked so it’s still raw inside, so it’s silken textured and not too fishy. Full recipe.

Baby beetroot salad with broad beans, walnuts and cream cheese: this tasty summer salad was full of goodness including vitamin C and folic acid from beetroot alone. Full recipe.

Mussels with speck and cream sauce: an interactive, light summery snack bursting with juicy flavour.  The mussels were cooked in a large pan and flavoured with a tasty cream sauce that includes onion, garlic, thyme leaves and bay leaves.  Full recipe.

It was interesting and and informative workshop and concluded with a meal and good humoured, interesting conversation.

Noodlies Sydney food blog (me) and Kate Gibbs, Kraft Philadelphia Ambassador.

The people at Kraft Philadelphia have developed several interesting resources filled with easy and delicious recipes:

• simply heaven cookbook: with 75 recipes from salads, starters to mains
• love it shamelessly: an amazingly userfriendly website; search by ingredient, dish or product. It’s quick and simple.

This fun and delicious experience was courtesy of Kraft Philadelphia and Liquid Ideas PR.