Last year Caterina Sterrantino & Effi Tsoukatos from The Sydney Food Sisters won the Sydney Markets’ annual Fresh Awards for the best food writers. Here, they share their journey and a favourite recipe.
Tell us about your blog and website, The Sydney Food Sisters.
Our website and our Instagram page are a celebration of our favourite recipes, the food we love to eat, the beauty of seasonal produce and the people that inspire us. We use photography, words and recipes to inspire people to live and eat seasonally, by giving our followers a glimpse into our journey.
How did you get started and what is your mission?
Our main mission is to inspire people to live (and eat) seasonally, whether that be specifically related to the four main seasons of the annual calendar, a specific festive season, or a season specifically in one’s personal life. Our Sydney Food Sister journey started as a hobby business between two friends who had a communal love and passion for great food, great wine and great company. We started by telling our seasonal stories very simply – through sharing our favourite family recipes, celebrating local restaurants we loved and organising food and wine experiences for like-minded people. Our little hobby blogging business has now grown and flourished into a full time venture. We now work with businesses in the food, wine and hospitality industries to help tell their seasonal stories by creating photographic, written and recipe content for them. We absolutely love what we do!
Congratulations for winning the Fresh Awards best blogger award in 2018. What has been the feedback you’ve had? Why would you encourage other bloggers to take part in entering the award this year?
We were overwhelmed by the experience in a great way, we tell people it was like winning an Academy award! We started off with a blog and we are now so busy that we rarely actually have time to blog! If you love what you do, enter. If you want to be recognised at a different level to what you currently are and want to expose yourself to a wider audience and greater possibilities, enter. If you want to meet a great bunch of people, enter. If you want to challenge yourself, enter!
You can enter here.
Your passion for fresh food is evident. Where did you get your love of food from?
Most definitely from our parents. We were raised by mothers who cooked almost every meal for their families, and they did an amazingly great job at it. Much of the produce they used in their cooking was picked straight from their backyards where they grew it. We were raised eating seasonally, simply yet very well. Eating wholesome, tasty seasonal meals has always been the norm. When you grow up eating the best food, it’s impossible not to love food.
What are your favourite dishes and why?
How long have you got? So many! Our communal favourite ingredients would have to be pasta, cheese, chilli, crab, eggplant, figs and zucchini flowers – so any dishes featuring those ingredients would likely make it to our favourite dish list. Chilli crab is high up on the list, a fluffy gnocchi with a gorgonzola cheese sauce would have to be high up on that list as well. Stuffed zucchini flowers are always a must-pick if they are on a menu. Shall we keep going???
Effi picked up for us one of her favourite recipe…
PORK & PORCINI RAGU
Ingredients
3 Tablespoons olive oil
1 kg pork neck, cut into 4 large pieces
1 brown onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, crushed
40g porcini mushrooms
800g tin chopped peeled tomatoes
1/2 cup thickened cream
1 & 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon freshly cracked pepper
1/2 cup chopped parsley
To serve – grated Parmesan cheese & fresh chilli
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 140 degrees Celsius.
- Soak the porcini mushrooms in 1 cup of warm water.
- Meanwhile, heat the oil in a heavy saucepan or baking tray. Brown the pork. Add onion and garlic and sauté for 1 minute.
- Reserving the liquid, drain the porcini mushrooms. Chop the mushrooms and add to the saucepan along with the reserved liquid.
- Add chopped tomatoes, cream, salt & pepper. Cover with lid or foil.
- Transfer to the oven and bake for 4 – 4.5 hours, or until pork is beautifully tender
- Cook pappardelle according to packet instructions
- Remove the pork from the oven and shred the meat. Season with extra salt and pepper to taste.
- Add the drained pappardelle to the pork. Garnish with fresh parsley. Serve with Parmesan and fresh chilli.
You can find more of Food Sisters Recipes on their website: https://sydneyfoodsisters.com.au/blogs/recipes
This post was last modified on 14/03/2019 10:14 am