WA Day at the Perth Cultural Centre for WA Signature Dish Grand Finale
Over recent weeks I have been providing you with insider coverage of the inaugural WA Signature Dish competition run by Buy West Eat Best; a government initiative to help promote eating locally grown and made produce. I was appointed as the official blogger for the Gascoyne region and travelled up to Carnarvon to attend the regional final.
The three other participating regions were Perth and Surrounds, Southern Forests and the Great Southern. Each region’s finalist received one-on-one mentoring by their delegated chef to help prepare them for the Grand Finale held at the Perth Cultural Centre on WA Day. On the big day, the Cultural Centre was alive with activity with much to see and do for people of all ages.
The WA Day event was a free event and the Buy West Eat Best tent was packed full of stalls offering tastings of all sorts of local deliciousnesses including banana smoothies, gelato, oils, condiments and best of all, gluten free lupin flour chocolate cake. I was joined by two of my dear friends Foodie Cravings and Perth Munchkin who were also attending as official bloggers representing Perth and the Great Southern.
Each contestant had ninety minutes to prepare their dish from scratch using a variety of ingredients sourced from their region. Rhiannon Birch was competing for the Perth and Surrounds region and her dish was Dorper lamb with a lupin and za’tar crust with sweet potato and lupin salad with Moroccan flavours. Much to my approval her dish is entirely gluten free.
Clare King’s dish came from the Great Southern region titled “A Celebration of Beef in Thai style” and was made using a luscious Butterfield beef fillet topped with pearls of Pemberton Finger Limes.
Many of you have already been following on the blog the story of Paul Kelly, the contestant for the Gascoyne region with his Gascoyne tasting plate. This colourful plate included Shark Bay wild King prawns with salsa verde, plantation vegetable gazpacho with Abacus crab sticks, Shark Bay snapper ceviche and some simple pan-fried Shark Bay Pink snapper with lime mayonnaise and pickled Gascoyne vegetables.
Competing for the Southern Forests region, the softly spoken Alana Starkie prepared some stunning fresh Southern Forest marron with a Pink Lady apple, avocado and lime salsa. To make the competition even more challenging, throughout the entire cook off the four contestants were individually interviewed by both their chef and the hosts Anna Gare and Don Hancey. I was surprised how well they all kept their cool under pressure and kept their focus on cooking!
The final decision for the winning dish was made by the panel of high profile judges; Guillaume Brahimi, Ralf Vogt and Rob Broadfield. You could nearly hear a pin drop in the packed marquee as each judge carefully tasted the four dishes.
Whilst the quality and standard of each dish was high, there can only ever be one winner and this year the winner was Rhiannon Birch for her Perth dish of Dorper lamb with a lupin and za’tar crust with sweet potato and lupin salad with Moroccan flavours.
Congratulations Rhiannon!
For the recipes for all the contestants dishes head over to the Buy West Eat Best website.
The Buy West Eat Best WA Signature Dish Finale was a free event held on the 2nd of June 2014 at the Perth Cultural Centre. I would like to thank buy West Eat Best and all the team at Clarity Communications for allowing me to be part of this fabulous WA Signature Dish experience. Also thanks to Paul Kelly and Chef Peter Manifis for putting in such an incredible effort for the Gascoyne region. Fingers crossed for a win next year!
6 thoughts on “WA Day at the Perth Cultural Centre for WA Signature Dish Grand Finale”
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What a journey… I have loved reading each of your WA Signature Dish posts and it’s amazing to see the final outcome (yay for Rhiannon Birch!). Paul Kelly did an amazing job in representing the Gascoyne, I’ve loved reading his story and I don’t envy the hard job of those judges in selecting the final winner (each of the prepared dishes looked faultless). I am seriously impressed that each candidate managed to create a wonderful dish whilst being interviewed on stage – I am sure that I would’ve completely freaked out! Martine – you did an INCREDIBLE job as the official blogger for Gascoyne. It wasn’t a small task and you did the entire process a huge amount of justice. What an incredible celebration of WA produce.
I am so chuffed to have been part of this event and am truly thankful for those that invited me to participate. It has made a refreshing change from some of my usual blogging content and I’m happy that you found it a fabulous journey to follow! The movement towards focussing on locally sourced produce is one I know is dear to you heart as it is mine. Thanks so much for your generous compliments, I tried my best to bring readers to the emotions of each step of the competition.
Well done Martine for your coverage and well done to Rhiannon for winning-she has a bright future ahead of her! I can only imagine how nerve wracking the wait would have been for her!
Thanks Lorraine! Its been so much fun, am looking forward to next year!
Great coverage, Martine. Superb to see the regions being so well covered – great for producers and for consumers. Thank you.
Thanks Noelene. We have so much wonderful produce right on our doorstep in WA