Thanks to James Hill for the food review.

Our last lunch of the year saw almost half our membership turn up to enjoy the fare of our Foodmaster Bill Alexiou assisted by Voula Price with James Hill on initial canapés.

Canapés 

 James provided some of our canapés today the first homemade tarama served in filo cups topped with half a black olive.

The second, served on spoons, fava (split yellow peas) topped with pickled sardines, capers and onion.

We couldn’t pass a lunch without some Iggy’s bread so we saw Iggy’s ficelle topped with tarama and some of the pickled sardines.

Bill and Voula sent out croutons topped with thyme, sautéed mushrooms and Danish feta then followed by a 120 (who’s counting) filo triangles filled with ricotta, Parmesan and feta.

All canapés were a good match for our aperitif wines.

Main Course

Our main course today consisted of a tapenade, feta and olive crusted lamb rack. This was cooked over potato which soaked up the juices of the lamb.

The lamb was cooked perfectly pink and moist with a salty crust and some mint yoghurt that matched well with stuffed tomato (yemista) which was surprisingly sweet and stuffed green pepper (papoutsakia) that was baked with a bechamel sauce.

Flavours were perfectly integrated, and it was a very good meal for a service of such large numbers 

Bill is noted for making sure we don’t go home hungry and he didn’t disappoint today. 

Cheese 

James Healey presented Holy Goat Brigid’s Well from Castlemaine Victoria. It’s a handcrafted pasteurised organic goat’s milk cheese and an ‘ashed’ version of the “La Luna Ring”. It has a full-bodied interior delivering a creamy citrus flavour.

Bill chose to serve this with Christmas cake, moist and full of flavour that was a perfect match to the cheese.

Coffee 

Spencer Ferrier introduced a guest today, Rob Forsyth, who supplies most of the coffee we have during the year. Today we had Ethiopian Guji which Spencer thought was coffee of the year. It showed fruit notes with good acidity.

President Peter Kelso introduce a guest today, Trevor Gibson, President of the Federation of Wine and Food Societies of Australia. Trevor presented members James Hill and Michael Staniland with certificates and medals for meritorious service to our society.

  Following lunch, presentations were made to our team at the Royal Exchange Club.

In the kitchen chef Leo, chef Amish and kitchen hand Ashish, front of house Rex Manager Ida and Gabriela.

In closing lunch, Peter asked us to raise our glasses with the traditional toast to the Society.

Our first lunch in 2020 is Tuesday, February 4th.