Bloggers Banquet 2

Introduction
After the success of the first movie, Bloggers Banquet, we decided to make a sequel for all the fans out there.

Location
The setting of the first movie was more rustic and had a nice country feel to it. This time, we wanted to bring a more seaside feel to it. After much scouting, we finally decided to use the holiday home of one of the main cast members. Ella from A Goddess In The Kitchen provided the perfect location for the film at Chez Fur de Mur in Dromana.

Cast
Ella and Furry from A Goddess In The Kitchen
Cindy and Michael from Where's The Beef
Agnes and Alaistair from Off The Spork
Vida from Vida
Claire from Melbourne Gastronome
Duncan from Syrup and Tang
Jon from Melbourne Foodie
Thanh (your intrepid reporter) from this blog
And last but not least, Marc and Lillian from Canada. Canada is not their blog, it's the country they're from in case you're wondering.

Synopsis
The synopsis of the film is that we have a bunch of food loving people who gather to have lunch. They stand around, sit occasionally while the whole time munching on food and talking to each other. They occasionally laugh and share stories and get to know one another better.

Photos From The Set
Vida doing her pre filming profiling to make sure the camera was capturing her best aspects. Michael in the background is talking to the diretor.


Duncan at the front doing his best "stare into the distance" method acting. Claire is doing her best to give a natural smile. Jon in the background is doing his De Niro "are you looking at me" stance. Furry and Cindy in the far far back are being "support crowd".


Cindy, Ella and Agnes are resting between filming their eating scenes.


Preparations take place to make sure all the props are in the correct places.


First scene is Tofu balls by Cindy with the most divine "Chinese inspired" tomatoe sauce I've tasted. I did the best take and gobbled down about 6 for the cameraman to film.


Upon moving the filming indoors, it was onto more action. There was Poor Man's Potatoes from the Movida cookbook by your intrepid reporter. It went down pretty well, if I say so myself. It was the first time I made them and I thought they were nearly as good as those from Movida.


The most anticipated dish by myself and Vida were the famous Duncan macarons. Duncan had fought off thugs in Frankston and made sure the macarons were delivered unharmed. They were the most divine things. The orange and rose macarons were great, but the violet macarons were in another league again. The flavour was so wonderful, untterly indescribeable except for mmmmmmmm, I want more.


Ella's fig tart with blue cheese worked. The contrast of sweet, savoury and a bit of tang with crisp pastry was delicious.


Jon's chocolate tart was pure indulgence, and so well decorated to boot.


Agnes' Caramelised Onion and Cheese tarts were a wonderful starter to the whole show.


Vida's Oblatna was more indulgence. As if we weren't already indulging enough, these caramel nut filled wafers upped the ante some more.


Again, Agnes provided a yummy combo of bagels with smoke salmon. A nice savoury respite from all that was sweet.


There were some unseen stars which I forgot to photograph. Claire made a "free form" cheesecake that was more indulgence with lashings of cream everywhere. Michael made a Chocolate Brownie with a Surprise. My question of "what's this white thing inside" got a response of "cream cheese" from Cindy and "where have you been all your life" from Vida. Finally, I also made a Coconut, Lemon and White Chocolate Cake.

You may have noticed an over abundance of sweet. This meant that we had to film all the sweet scenes before the savoury one. Luckily, Ella was prepared and knocked up this beautiful lamb. It was enjoyed by most after eating all the sweets.


A before scene.


And an after scene.


It was a fabulous day of filming. I got to know a lot more about my fellow Melbournian food bloggers. It was also great to have a different perspective about food from our overseas guests, Marc and Lillian. Plus when they spoke in French, that was just delicious.

Food wise, I would have to nominate the highlights as being the macarons obviously, but the Tofu Balls with the "Chinese inspired" tomatoe sauce was right up there. I will definitely have to make that soon.

Thanks to Ella and Furry for hosting the event. And to everyone else for making the day so much fun and tasty. Till the next filming. Any suggestions for a location and theme? May I suggest some co-ordinating in regards to food next time. :-)

Rating
5 stars out of 5

Your Intrepid Reporter
Thanh

EDIT: A huge apology to Jon from Melbourne Foodie who I totally left off the cast list. This is because I used his links about the banquet to compile my list and obviously he didn't have a link for his own blog his own blog post. This has been a lesson, always double check my own work. But then again, I'm too lazy to do that so let me know if I make any errors on anything. :-)