12 December Ted’s Aussie Picnic

(Photo page 1)

My friend asked me to cater for a big Christmas party at his house. The theme was “Aussie Picnic” including a coffee machine and barista! We did hot dogs and rocket ship iceblocks for the kids, and of course ginger ninjas. The adults received an airline style compartment tray. It consisted of a Serrano ham sandwich, chicken pie and salad, frittata of smoked trout and lentils, lavosh crackers and prawn salad. But the real star was the Mega Pavlova, or Mega-Lova as we call it. We deconstruct a pavlova into its core textures and put it together in a way that you always get the crunch of meringue, the pillowy softness of marshmallow (which is threaded with sharp passionfruit jelly to cut the sweetness), whipped cream and summer fruit. We piped the cream, arranged the fruit and sliced it up in front of everybody for added drama! It was as big as we could fit in our oven and there was nothing left. Unbelievable!

1. We had to add the beer bottle to give a sense of its true size.