In Knysna the annual Gastronomica festival takes place from this Saturday until Sunday, October 1, and includes a professional chocolate and patisserie workshop hosted by American champion pastry chef En-Ming Hsu.
Entertainment, culinary art, music, fashion and education provides a backdrop for this unique culinary event.
The festival will culminate in a chefs part~c which promises to be a plating extravaganza. For this gala dinner participating chefs will showcase a course in the fivecourse menu.
Large screens will enable guests to experience the workings of a 1ine~up of talented chefs.
Gastronomica is 10 days of hands-on workshops, demonstrations, competitions and discussions. This years theme is From the earth to the plate, and includes everyone in the food chain, from international and national chefs, restaurateurs and cookery enthusiasts to the farmers and artisans who produce the ingredients.
Main attractions include the Think Like A Pastry Chef and the Professional Chowlate and Patisserie workshops hosted by En-Ming Hsu. Professionals attending this workshop will get to compete in a Chocolate and Patisserie Invitational challenge.
Visitors will also get to flex their biceps in a hands-on Great Bread for your Family and Friends workshop, with award-winning author and chef Jeffrey Hamelman.
While their parents update their culinary skills, children aged four to 12 can don aprons for the Kids Cooking workshop hosted by Hungry Heads Gourmet Foods and learn to make biscuits, pizzas, sweets and other treats.
Aside from celebrating a love of good food, the festival has a larger agenda: to encourage participants to adopt a lifestyle which encompasses food with integrity.
Knysnas top restaurants will offer menus featuring ingredients which are in season such as blueberries, strawberries, artichokes, mushrooms and asparagus, and presented in dishes which contain no preservatives, additives, colourants, frozen or long-life ingredients or MSG.
Visitors can also visit the three-day Food with Integrity Market and meet farmers and artisans from the Garden Route and Little Karoo and experience their natural and organic produce.
Tickets are available at w w w. gastronomic a k fly. co.za or call The Boatshed, Thesen Harbour Town on 044 302 5749.
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