My piece in today’s Agenda:

It’s a not every day that you find yourself covered in flour, cracking eggs, gutting fish and sipping Champagne to the trifecta view of Sydney’s harbour, bridge and opera house. But Altitude’s cooking classes aren’t your everyday ‘home ec’ lessons.

Perched on the 36th floor of the Shangri-La Hotel, with floor-to-ceiling windows providing a 270-degree vista, is your kitchen – the private dining room of one-hat restaurant, Altitude. Your teacher is head chef Steve Krasicki.

The focus is firmly on seasonal, local and stunningly fresh produce, and the accent is uncompromisingly fun. So, with charged glasses, expect to get stuck into making the likes of scallop-stuffed tortellini with a prawn bisque and Jerusalem artichoke puree – from scratch. Monthly sessions are filling up so quickly that extra dates have been tacked onto the original run.

The once-monthly classes officially last for about three hours but are known to go on and on, as long as wine is flowing and Steve’s larrikin conversation has warmed up.

Waiters are at hand to clean up after each wayward spill and – heavenly – to wash up too, leaving you free to hone down your fish gutting skills and beef up your pasta-kneading forearms – all while you soak up some bubbly and expert tips.

And the best bit? At the end of the practical session, you get to take your dirty (complimentary) apron off and head to the dining room to sample the pro version of the dishes. They arrive straight from Steve’s bustling kitchen with specially-matched wines – not a burst tortellini or lumpy puree in sight.

Where: Shangri-La Hotel, 176 Cumberland St, The Rocks, Sydney
When: 3rd Sat of each month | 11am-2pm
Price: $135pp
Phone: (02) 9250 6123

Or read at Agenda…

The obituary of First Fleet member, convict and builder, James Bloodworth, birth date unknown, died 1804. Published in the Sydney Gazette, 25 March 1804.

Update, 20th April: I have just learnt from a historian at the ANU that James was sentenced to seven years’ transportation in 1785 for stealing one game cock and two hens. Food, or bounty, for thought.

“On Wednesday last died, generally lamented, Mr. James Bloodworth, for many years Superintendant of Builders in the Employ of Government.

He came to the Colony among its first inhabitants in the year 1788, and obtained the Appointment, from his exemplary conduct, shortly after his arrival; the first house in this part of the Southern hemisphere was by him erected, as most of the Public Buildings since have been under his direction. To lament his loss he has left a Widow and five Children, the youngest an infant now only one week old; and the complaint which terminated in his dissolution was supposed to proceed from a severe cold contracted about two months since.

The attention and concern which prevailed at the interment of the deceased were sufficient testimonies of the respect with which he filled, and the integrity with which he uninterruptedly discharged the duties of a Public Trust during so long a period. His Excellency was pleased to order that the Funeral should be provided for at the Public Expense, and to show other marks of attention to so good a Servant of the Crown.

Four in the afternoon of Friday being as the wish of the widow appointed for the Funeral, the Relics of the deceased were at that hour removed from his house in South Street, and conveyed to the place of interment, attended by a great number of friends, among whom were most of the Sydney Loyal Association, in which he had been appointed Sergeant.

Opposite to his old residence a Procession was formed, which moved in the following order.

12 of the Loyal Association, arms reversed
Sergeant of the Association
Drum muffled & Fife
THE BIER
Two Sons, chief Mourners followed by an Infant Daughter,
Fourteen Female Mourners,
Twenty-four Male ditto
A number of respectable inhabitants in Rank
The Non-commissioned Officers of the New South Wales Corps
And a crowd of spectators

When near the Burial Ground the Association were obliged to file off, for the accommodation of the friends of the deceased, and the populace, who were become very numerous; and when the remains were disposed approached the grave and performed Military Honours.”

Cited from Obituaries Australia.

Dear enormous piece of red flesh, seeping blood onto the plate and asking to be cooed at. You do look lovely and bright tonight (and yes, you are sitting on a normal dinner-plate sized plate).

But I am not interested in you this week.

I know that fellow Australians love to fill half of their plate with you each and every lunch and dinner time and also sometimes for breakfast if they live north of Tweed Heads.

But I am feeling rather you’d out. So, this week, I am being uncharacteristically puritanical. Or, that is, I am trying not to eat you and your bedmates.

So here’s a little problem. Last night, I ate a snail or six.

Garlicky, buttery, moreish and piping hot, I dipped my bread and sank my teeth into the diminutive, dark flesh and totally forgot about my week off.

So, this is my question to you, mister steak, miss bacon, muchacho tenderloin and monsieur liver: do snails count as meat? Are they one of you? Do little house-carrying slugs mean that I may as well have tucked into a juicy steak last night instead of eating an omelette for my main course?

Being vegetarian in Sydney – I have decided after just one meal out – is a bleeding minefield. Safe to say the whole city country thinks along the same lines as Bart and Homer…