An inspiring story

I love food shows and one of my favourite chefs is Chef Curtis Stone who is this Australian guy who looks more like a surfer than a chef. Blond hair bleached by the sun and skin bronzed by the sun.

There are two shows of his that are aired on Discovery, Take Home Chef and Surfing the Menu. Although I adore Surfing the Menu, I also love Take Home Chef; the show is about how Curtis comes to someone’s home and helps them cook a meal for their loved ones.

He specializes in what most call ‘fusion’ cuisine and he does a great job of it. His flavours are simple and clean and his food is healthy and fresh. He seems to like Thai and Indian flavours and uses them liberally.

I happened to watch an episode of Take Home Chef over the weekend and was very inspired by the woman featured. He met up with a woman who I think was Indian or Srilankan. She has been living in the US with her husband who seemed to have Mexican roots. She has recently lost a lot of weight and looked fabulous. Her total weight loss has been 190 lbs which in Indian terms is about 87kgs. Which I thought was crazy; she has basically lost the equivalent of a slightly fat man!!

He made her this really nice light chicken soup flavoured with spring onions and then for the main course there was beef (a bit surprised with that) with a Thai flavoured stir fry of greens. The dessert was an ‘Exotic’ fruit salad with pineapple, lychee and papaya that was flavoured with lime zest* and there was a lime sorbet that was garnished with the same zest.

*Zest basically refers to the outer layer of any citrus fruit. It is extremely flavourful and can greatly enhance any dish it is added to. To get the zest you can either take a grater and gently grate the outer layer or if your knife is sharp and your knife skill are good then peel the outer layer, get rid of the white portion (its bitter) and then finely either slice the zest or then you can even mince it. There is also a 'zester' available in specialist stores that is a hand held tool that is meant to remove the zest easily.