7 Awesome Foodie Finds

Finding something new, interesting and incredibly delicious to eat or drink is probably one of the most satisfying and invigorating things ever! Here are 7 new foodie finds we’ve got our teeth into.

When we first thought of this post, Mrs Romance and I were working towards the elegant alliteration of ‘5 Foodie Finds’. But then we discovered two more we just couldn’t leave out… I hope you understand!

Some of these little nuggets of food excellence we found at the Sydney Good Food and Wine Show this year. Others we’ve just happened upon or people have told us about. But they’re all game-changers in the kitchen and in our home bar.

1. Ambra Limoncello

Mrs Romance loves limoncello… I mean LOVES it! It’s made from Australian fruit but is based on a traditional recipe from the Amalfi Coast in southern Italy. This stuff’s great just on ice or over ice cream or with champagne – or even in tonic water!

Ambre does a couple of other spirits; our other favourite is the Ambre Chocolatino. It’s a smooth chocolaty liqueur with a hint of orange!

ambralimoncello.com.au

2. Beak & Sons sausages

Australian-owned and family-run since the 1900s, the sausages burgers and meatballs are all gluten-free and delicious to boot. Try the chorizo sausages – they’re amazing!

beakandsons.com.au

3. Currong Comestibles – Shrubs & Chutneys

One of the most impressive uses of native Australian fruits and herbs comes in the form of these amazing natural products. The shrubs are – as creator and owner, Denyse McDonald, says – ‘cordial syrups for grownups’. They’re much more than that, and we’re working on some excellent non-alcoholic mock-tails for this Dry July.

The shrubs and chutneys develop the much underused flavours of the riberry and the rainforest lime, both native Australian fruits. Currong Comestibles are 100% natural, with minimal ingredients. They’re also incredibly tasty!

currong.com.au

4. Pic’s Peanut Butter

This is one of the tastiest peanut butters we’ve tasted. It’s the perfect collaboration between Australia and New Zealand: the Kingaroy peanuts are grown here in Aus then shipped to Nelson, NZ to be roasted and ground up and made into this crunchy jar of genius. It’s a delicious product with some classic New Zealand undersell humour on the packaging!

“Really good,” it promises. “Well worth eating.” And the website mirrors the slogan: www.reallygood.co.nz. You can almost hear Murray from Flight of the Conchords saying it!

reallygood.co.nz

5. The Spice Tailor

You probably know how much we love curry by now. Well, these Spice Tailor packages are brilliant, simple and super authentic. Each one comes in three sections: the dry spices, the curry paste and the finishing sauce.

You fry off the dry spices then add your meat or veggies. Add the curry paste to coat the ingredients in the pan. Finally, you pour in the finishing sauce! This just seems so much more like cooking a proper curry than a lot of those all-in-one jars you get in shops. Plus the packaging’s cute, with little secrets to customising your curry too.

thespicetailor.com

6. Nõshu gluten-free doughnuts

We couldn’t believe it when we tried these little beauties at the Sydney Good Food & Wine Show. Nõshu (working on the ‘all love, no sugar’ selling point) is the brainchild of the lovely Rachel, while hunting for a healthier snack for her family. Her folks have a history of type 2 diabetes, so coming up with something like sugar-free doughnuts was a moment of genius.

Instead of being wheat-based, these little fellows are made from things like coconut flour and pumpkin! They taste just as good (if not better) than regular doughnuts, but they’re gluten-free, nut-free and sugar-free, so they have an incredibly low GI too.

Watch this space for Nõshu Anzac biccies and chocolate brownies in the near future!

noshu.com.au

7. Barilla pasta and a couple of cooking tricks

While we were at the Sydney Good Food & Wine Show, we had a cooking lesson with Barilla’s executive chef Luca Ciano. He shared a couple of tricks to making the perfect pasta sauce:

Chop root veggies and onion into small cubes, fry them up. Then add about 1/2 a cup of the salted water that you’ll cook the pasta in to the pan. This creates a stock. When you cook the pasta, under-cook it by about a minute then scoop it out into the stock pan. Never rinse your pasta.

We added a couple of tablespoons of Barilla sauce then stirred it in, still on the heat, then grated a bit of smoked ricotta over the top. We were really surprised with the result, I must say. I thought ready-to-use pasta sauce was a thing of my past… but maybe not!

We’ve been told that Barilla will also be releasing a new line of gluten-free pasta later this year!

barilla.com

Do you have any food wonders you’d like to share? What do you think of these foodie finds? Tell all in the comments!

Images by Mrs Romance and courtesy of Barilla, and Beak & Sons.