Pizza Diavola

Back to the market today for more of Andrew and Andrea's heirloom tomatoes. We use their cherry tomatoes in a range of dishes including our tagliatelle nero, fettucine with Queensland spanner crab and on our pizza diavola!

Here's the pizza diavola with hot salami, buffalo mozzarella, olives and cherry tomatoes before being finished with some spicy rocket. Delicious! I know what I'm having for lunch.

Sunday Market

Weekly trip to Port Douglas Sunday market full of stunning local produce!

Lovely paw paw from Mossman producer Scomazzon. When in season we purchase a variety of produce from Scomazzon including soursop, jakfruit, mangosetin and chocolate sapote!

Above is Philippo Calabro and wife Norma. Check out his incredible purple cauliflower grown at Mareeba. Philippo has been at the Sunday Market since we first came to Port Douglas in 1988.

Purple seemed to be the colour of the morning! Beautiful purple eggplants grown by young Mareeba couple Andrew and Andrea. Stay tuned to see how we use these local ingredients in the restaurant. And from now on it wont be two years between posts.

Buon Natale

Over christmas I was lucky enough to have my mother come to stay with me. She was born to cook and at 89 years old I still can't keep her out of the kitchen. Here's what she got up to...

Christmas morning making Pizzelle. Pizzelle are a biscuit traditionally from our region, Abruzzo, made from eggs, flour, sugar and lemon.

Rosa

L'uova

La farina

The secret ingredient, my fathers grappa

Placing the mixture onto the Pizzelle iron

The finish biscuits on a hand 
screenprinted tea towel
made by my daughter.

Here we are in the restaurant kitchen making Baccalá mantecato, which is a salt cod and potato crochette.

And what better way to finish christmas day, singing along with one Australia's leading jazz musicians and great friend, John Nicol.